hit the character limit
make sure to read sources before sharing them.
DO NOT COPY-PASTE THIS ON LEMMY LOL, THIS IS A BRAINSTORM FOR OUR USE
We should pool our sources and evidence in this thread so that people with approved lemmy accounts can start spreading it there.
Feel free to contribute lol, it's a lot of work for me to do on my own and I might miss stuff or make mistakes, although I'm gonna keep going help or no
I'll grab links in a second (and there are some good articles I'd like to find that gather lots of evidence in one place), but here's some stuff off the top of my head:
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Wikileaks published a private diplomatic cable stating that no one was killed in the square itself, although a smaller number of people did die in clashes elsewhere in Beijing, consistent with China's own official account. (Here is the cable)
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A spanish film crew was in the square all night and filmed crowds of people walking out of the square in the early morning, singing the Internationale. Two wounded people are shown among them, possibly people who had been brought to the red cross station in the square, but no gunshots are heard, no one is running, and there are no bodies. (courtesy of /u/robinn, here's footage of a Hong Kong news report that includes the spanish film crew footage)
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two of the main organizers of the protest, Hou Dejian and Liu Xiaobo, state that no one died in the square, and call out other organizers for lying (courtesy of /u/GarbageShoot: interview where Hou Dejian, a Taiwanese national and one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests, says he was in the square all night and saw no one killed, and Liu Xiaobo agrees with him — and also courtesy of /u/robinn, here is a twitter thread covering testimony by various organizers, including Hou Dejian and Liu Xiaobo)
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Numerous western media sources have stated that no massacre occurred in the square. (This article links to multiple western sources, including James Miles, attesting that no one died in the square. — be warned that this site also hosts some crank articles, you might want to focus on the sources)
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various western massacre reports cite wildly different death figures, usually with little or no justification for the number
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an attempt to collect all the names of the massacre victims ended early when they only found 155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Mothers
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CIA and NED goons were known to be present in Beijing and involved in the protests. (Here is an article from the Vancouver Sun in 1992, showing western intelligence involvement was known in the west decades ago)
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during most of the protest, protesters were calling for a return to stricter communism, not for liberal market reforms. These were Marxists. Their signs showed Marxist figures and slogans. (This article shows some images of the protesters displaying Marxist slogans and iconography and discusses it a bit — again, be warned that this site hosts some crank articles, so you might want to focus on the sources)
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toward the end protest signs were suddenly in English
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tank man: the guy survives and is led away by bystanders, and also the tanks in the video are leaving the square (you can see this in the uncropped footage) and it is broad daylight, whereas the main violence occurred at night (also, courtesy of /u/robinn again: China in 1989 for one man vs. the U.S. in 2020 for a whole crowd and courtesy of /u/LegaliiizeIt, another video in the same vein)
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online photos of corpses were visibly taken elsewhere, not the square
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the first violence was against troops, not civilians. On June 2, 1989, two days before the June 4 incident when the main violence occurred, multiple unarmed Chinese troops were burned alive and their corpses hung from nooses in public. ((CW: gore) courtesy of /u/robinn, here is a thread of photos showing dead and wounded troops, some being rescued by civilians. Multiple men were burned to death, others were beaten. Some protesters stole guns from the army and can be seen brandishing them.)
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the violence against troops was uncharacteristic of the previous tone of interactions between troops and protesters in the preceding weeks. Troops and protesters had peacefully coexisted, singing songs and sharing food together. (Here's an article that goes into it a bit — again, be warned that this site hosts some crank articles, so you might want to focus on the sources)
I don't really have much off the top of my head for Uighur genocide stuff
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libs should hear who Zens is
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even the US State Department and the UN concede there is no mass killing in Xinjiang.
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western intelligence has been stoking and funding islamic extremism in Xinjiang. There's that talk by some American general or colonel where he acknowledges this, and I think there are other sources online as well
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Qiaocollective is a good source on Xinjiang, courtesy of /u/BynarsAreOk
I'll stick articles down here, some of which aggregate lots of evidence in one place
How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning ...edgy-sounding title though
1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth
How Much Longer Do We Need to Propagate Lies About Tiananmen Square?
Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t
1989 Tiananmen Square "Student Massacre" was a hoax
The Truth Behind the Myth of the 'Tiananmen Square Massacre' - Opinion Piece By Dr. Dennis Etler
Notes for 30th Anniversary of TianAnMen Incident, courtesy of /u/GarbageShoot
Tiananmen Square Massacre – Facts, Fiction and Propaganda Lots of good images and western media quotes, but the site hosts some goofy articles so be careful citing it
Let’s talk about Tiananmen Square, 1989: My hearsay is better than your hearsay
Birth of a massacre myth, courtesy of /u/GarbageShoot
CBS news: There was no "Tiananmen Square Massacre", courtesy of /u/robinn
a NYT questioning the massacre, courtesy of /u/robinn and here's a pastebin rip
dessalines, a Lemmy dev, has a good socialism FAQ, including sections on Tiananmen, courtesy of /u/PorkrollPosadist
[link] [link] these two /r/ChangeMyView comments on China are great, courtesy of /u/geikei
[link] [link] [link] Some old hexbear threads, courtesy of /u/Finger
not China, but /u/robinn also made a carrd on the DPRK and linked a good twitter thread by ProleWiki
Comments in this thread to check out. I'll try to also add their info up here.
/u/robinn: https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3513792
/u/Awoo suggests keeping things short and digestible instead of posting long effortposts, since libs will just count on people not reading the whole thing and they will point at it and say "See? They deny the Uighur genocide" or "See, they deny Tiananmen" https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3514089
/u/GnastyGnuts has some great links but I hit char limit https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3514972
/u/Krause has more great links https://hexbear.net/comment/3529874
Lemmy posts and comments from us
by /u/GarbageShoot: https://lemmy.ml/comment/476526
These posts will just become the wedge issue itself. They will link to these posts and say "see, they deny uighur genocide" and "see, they deny tiananmen square". This will then be used to convince people either not to use lemmy at all or to defederate with every single left wing instance.
They will count on people not actually reading these posts, because the quantity of information you need to consume to understand the position held here is absolutely massive compared to the pre-programming that they already have which creates the massive emotional reaction in them.
What we need is to make shit as short and digestable as humanly possible.
i just call them racist and their primary source is a german holocaust denier :shrug-outta-hecks:
Are you basing that on this or something more? https://twitter.com/Mango_Press_/status/1340072338893758465
The whole post should be this image with a brief explainer that the entirety of the accusations of genocide in China come from this man.
Zenz is definitely homophobic and racist but do you have a source for holocaust denial?
That was specifically what I was asking for lol. I assume it's some comment he's made at some point? Best I can find is this: https://twitter.com/Mango_Press_/status/1340072338893758465
i dont have a link but iirc he minimized nazi crimes in eastern europe, particularly in ukraine. i dont feel like searching for it, the guy is a dirtbag
They will count on people not actually reading these posts
That's a good point.
What we need is to make shit as short and digestible as humanly possible
Good idea. Punchy headlines linking elsewhere instead of effortposts maybe.
Effortposts are fine, but they need summaries, and the summaries need to be at the start and in a bulletpoint format with links for further reading.
I don't know if you ever saw the lib that got famous on /r/politics for their big link posts in comment sections but that seems to be a format that worked, digestable enough points with links for further reading to back it up. I can't remember that user's name right now though.
Effortposts are fine, but they need bulletpoint summaries at the start with links for further reading
This sounds good. I'd like to get a polished draft like that put together here on hexbear, maybe in the comments of this thread, something that hits hard even if someone only glances at it. For now I'll try to finish gathering links in the post body, then I or someone else can get a draft started that others can help with
I suspect the average lib can only absorb 5 points at a time. If I were to do something like this I'd try to keep summaries down to 5 key points, with attributable links. The links might be long themselves but the point is to drive things down to an extremely digestable level.
We're really shit at the information war in part because we frontload the heavy information when we should frontload the crib notes and rearload the heavier content backing it up. Even news sites are aware that people only read the headline and the first paragraph like 90% of the time or some shit.
Maybe:
- link to compilation of western media voices acknowledging no one died in the square and calling out the propaganda
- link to compilation of protest organizers including Hou Dejian acknowleding no one died in the square
- link to Telegraph article on the wikileaks cable
- link to Spanish news crew footage of people leaving the square
- maybe something about NED and CIA involvement? idk about this one
I think the video I mentioned in my Lemmy comment would be great for point 2, since it juxtaposed those testimonies with some of Chai Ling's statements.
That's why you start by pointing out that their favorite source is antisemitic and can't even speak a Chinese language.
Exactly what happened here
User 1: It’s almost as if Chinese Imperialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing is still bad even if the West built its powerbase on Imperialism.
User 2: How many colonies does China have? How many countries has it invaded? How many wars has waged?
Fascists like you and followers of the capitalist death cult can only say this: Tibet, because they drove the feudal lords and dalai lama paedophiles; Taiwan, because the bourgeois dictatorship claimed that land as theirs, as if it isn’t historically all one China, a similar story with Malvinas, I guess you also think they belong to the British; Hong Kong, which was a British colony but for some twisted reason you think they should be it’s own thing, because again it historically has not belong to China; the Uyghur thing, which even Western sources deny and/or doubt of its veracity and which was propelled by a right-wing organisation pro US imperialism; and delirious ideas about China being “imperialist” in Africa or South America because it trades with them and builds infrastructure, instead of providing bogus “financial aids” which then end up in the hands of US puppets like you did in Argentina with IMF funds. So basically all of the “imperialism” you claim is China trying to recover its historical territories lost in the process of the proletarian revolution.
Meanwhile, I don’t see any of the likes of you denouncing the plethora of colonies Europe and the US has been having and continue having for centuries. Why are you no so openly in favour of a Hawai’ian independence movement but you are so fervently obsessed with China? I know why, because you have fascists freudian slips and you can’t even realise about it yourself, since you live surrounded by people who justify themselves, and you have never interacted with a person from the Global South that’s not a fascist. By the way, the things I’m telling you, this is not “tankie” stuff, I have Peronists friends, Trotskyists friends, and all over the spectrum in Argentina, and they all know what you people say is complete and utter disgusting, the thought that everyone agrees with this kind of thought is something only maintained in first world imperialist countries. Don’t fool yourself.
User 2: I'm not talking with someone who defends genocide
User 3: Yeah, don’t bother. Tankies are red fascists.
User 2: Yup, tankies are fascists under a new name.
Something along this conversation causes a "brain off" switch to trigger and they glaze over.
The information is good, absolutely fine. But we must find a way to make them actually take on board and absorb it. What they are doing is triggering a glaze-over switch that has somehow been programmed into them over years of propaganda and that switch causes the fallback to completely refusing to engage or absorb information. If they absorbed this information they would have to critically analyse the position they continually push, the issue is that they do not.
There is definitely a methodology for breaking this barrier as some of the people here were reached by it at some point along the way. The problem is that everyone who is eventually reached by this information seems unable to properly describe the exact method that broke through this barrier to reaching them.
Perhaps what we need is Chinese educational content that is completely separated from any political ideology? We can then point to this content, which is presented in a purely academic way, and show their position as being historically incorrect.
My take is that it's nationalism causing the problem. As soon as the nationalism trigger is set off in a person's brain they resort to pre-programmed defence mechanisms. As soon as it is made about colonialism or the US in the above conversation they resort to the defensive "west good" "china bad" mindset. Even in the so-called leftists (radlibs really but they wear black and call themselves anarchists) in some of these conversations they have a mindset of "the west is still better though so I side with the lesser evil". This mindset is a nationalist one in defence of the america empire or "international community".
lmao, I stand corrected. after seeing that 196 thread, you and axont are right, it's nationalism. it's fucking nationalism.
It is and we need to revive internationalism with a righteous fury as a counter weight to it. I keep going over this subject again and again and again and I can not find a lower-level issue that needs dealing with, it's a primary core issue that we have very little effort going into countering. It's the primary source of A LOT of shit.
I just don't know how. I'm going to keep talking about it in the hope it spreads to some people who do know how to get that ball rolling. I feel like we probably need more people writing books about this shit to try and get it in front of some people that are good at getting that to happen. Or something. I don't know.
people need to spend time in social spaces where 1) internationalism is articulable and is the overall feeling, 2) nationalism is understood as a problem and people can recognize it and point it out, and 3) there are communists from around the world. Then hopefully the memes and discourse from there spread to shape norms elsewhere. And it's gotta be bigger than hexbear lol
they'll just be like "what the tank man video doesn't show you is the 10,000 peaceful students crushed into a paste under tank treads in tiananmen square
It's wild people still believe this. Even the wiki goes in to detail about how the 10,000 number is pure unaulderated bullshit now.
Okay found out what Lemmy is and I hate it. Like wtf is this.
Hey, tankies, decent countries don’t have to violently suppress their populations and then lie about it. Oh, and socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, not whatever the fuck they’re doing in China. (inb4 people assuming I must support the US since I hate China)
The socialism understander has logged on. Wouldn't even know what to reply to this since it's literally nothing.
Oh, and socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, not whatever the fuck they’re doing in China.
What would you have a hypothetical, newly socialist country do at this moment in the global economy? How would you go about increasing living conditions? How would you build your productive capacity? And, most critically, how would you do it without being overwhelmed by capitalist forces?
don't have a lemmy, someone feel free to use this
:parenti: The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.
Also even if we take the "argument" at face value and consider that the people doing these gotchas usualy jerk off to co-ops being socialism or doing co-ops under capitalism being the road to that . Welp China has more co-ops and people working on them than the rest of the world combned. Im pretty sure the more chinese people are working just in agricultural co-ops or communal owned agricultural buisnesses than the entire combined population of all European social democracies lmao. Let alone in other sectors. And the rate of co-op establishment has accelerated a ton in the last decade. This breaks a lot of anti-chinese demsoc brains
They aways talk about how they hate the US too while supporting their foreign policy entirely
It’s nice how you can tell someone is absolutely brain dead from their use of the word “Tankie”
Truly the definition of a meaningless and thought terminating cliche
the tankie now actually mean anyone who doesn't want to send the tanks in (to the ukraine) which is fucking nuts
lemmygrad.ml needs a replybot that hits any instance of the words uighur or xinjiang with the same paste as r/thedeprogram uses
It'll be way more lib. Early chapochat sessions were at least between (mostly) people that think of themselves as leftist
The first wave will be the anti-China libs
Once they are conquered the second wave will be the pro-Ukraine radlibs
Then the final boss battle will be against V*ush
The main issue I find with trying to argue on this front is that it is a fight that isn't needed.
Anyone who is usually arguing this, is usually is coming from some country that has literally no moral high-horse to speak on these issues. Especially if they are American. The genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of Black people, or even contemporary imperialism.
Why are they not up in arms about the largest imprisoned population in the world? Why don't they take issue with the treatment of homeless people? Why don't they take issue with the US ongoing support of coups and invasions of other countries?
They turn a blind eye to these issues because it isn't about the issues at all. The reason they bring up the Tianamen square massacre and the Uighur genocide is because they want to attack communism. You only need to point this out to them when they get upset and try to dismiss other issues as "whataboutism". Strip their intent down to its naked truth and expose their virtue signaling with the overwhelming amount of active atrocities they don't seem to care about.
Being succinct and to the point about why they actually care about arguing these things, because I fucking promise you they don't give a shit about those people. They want communism to fail. Hell, just troll them and talk about the My Lai Massacre or Kent State.
The point I make using this avenue of argument is that if you try to argue "what actually happened" its just going to be your facts vs theirs. They are the ones creating a moral argument, so show them that even they don't believe what they are preaching.
I don't think libs harping on China are a homogeneous group. I think some genuinely believe and are disturbed by the Tiananmen and Uighur narratives. Before I radicalized I definitely believed Tiananmen and was upset about it, and I was otherwise already pretty sympathetic to socialism.
I just say this because from my experience everyone that argues the narratives is just some dumb redditor. They all say the same shit and pretend to care in order to try to stifle friendly attitudes towards China. I have found them to be quite homogeneous, but that is just me.
I've definitely run into some like that, but if I sent this thread to lib me years ago I think it would have gotten through to me
*in fact I think I found out DPRK defector testimonies were bullshit when I was still a lib and I accepted that, and it helped open me to further radicalization
Yeah, most Westerners simply believe that China is the Evil Authoritarian 1984 Country
Fair enough. I just get annoyed when liberals pretend to care about people. All the best.:stalin-approval:
You have a good point and I'm glad you pushed back against an overly-totalizing account, but it must be said that people who argue the most passionately are the ones immersed in motivated reasoning. People uncomfortable with the topic are way more likely to just avoid it.
If this site hadnt delete the comment section of older posts you could just go into one of the early days China struggle session (yeah there were a ton) posts and copy paste the best arguments. Lots of great stuff and not full of links usualy
https://test.hexbear.net/
Hexbear devs are trying to get a version of the site working that has all the old posts and comments again. NOTE: the test branch is temporary and anything you post there will eventually be lost.
this is a great idea, one for DPRK would be awesome too
@robinn also made this great DPRK carrd
https://dprkorea.carrd.co/
https://twitter.com/prolewiki/status/1666083354477993986
added both! thanks again @robinn and thanks Carcosa for linking these
No idea what's a Lemmy thing, why don't they just create their own lemmy where they behave libly
Get ahead of all of them and create a Lib instance and slowly indoctrinate them and shut out any attempts at getting lib mods
You can just go to the instance they are at. They are already "Bernie supporting progressives" who are willing to hang out with communists at arm's length. If they cared more they'd go somewhere else entirely.
It's easy to avoid a ban, just don't be a dick and have a normal conversation. You can even dunk on the strawmen they've built a bit and then lob plenty of softball stuff right behind that.
One person posted a huge screed because someone was banned on Lemmy.ml for orientalism, and they saw this on the modlog of their own instance. Clearly having their own Lemmy isn't enough for them.
So one dipshit whined about someone being banned in a subreddit they don't even participate in? lmao
This is standard Reddit tier discourse. Won't be long before we see Lemmy instances labeled "Stop Lemmy Tankie Spam" or some dumb shit.
maybe they will reconsider how much antipathy they have for reddit when they show up to places like lemmy and get run out.
imo it's best if libs do not create another echo chamber and sequester themselves inside it, but china will be used as a cattle prod to make them do so. i would rather they stick around in an area open to leftists
imo it’s best if libs do not create another echo chamber and sequester themselves inside it,
But I like this place
Modern NazLiberalism literally requires their ideology to be hegemonic and beyond critique with 0 alternatives to function rhetorically and in their heads.
Worth noting, Dessalines himself has a collection of links: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#on-mao-maoism-and-marxism-leninism-maoism-and-the-prc
The libs will just make their own instance called Lemmit or Reddy and refuse to federate with any instance where the general sentiment on China and Russia isn't "nuke them"
Their instance is at hexbear.net
Jk, it's beehaw.org, but I suggest making an account on lemmy.ml and jumping in from there. Due to the federation you'll be able to see lefty stuff from lemmy.ml and other instances, as well as libby stuff from theirs.
some will, and they'll try to use china to bring as many people with them as they can. countering the china narratives early might help reduce their sway
I agree that we can get some who aren't completely gone but the majority will lose their shit, get banned, and join Libby.dem
I think it's cute that you guys think that libs can be converted with logic and facts
some can, some can't. Did you come out of the womb as a leftist?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I leapt from Marx's forehead like Athena
i was primed for communism my entire life but due to living in :amerikkka: i spent most of two decades thinking i was some esoteric sect of liberal until i picked up state and revolution
the more i learn, the more correct old me's assessment of my political inclination becomes
some can, if you had sent this to me years ago it would have worked
Good luck on fighting with people on the Internet. I salute thee. :rat-salute:
I was never a liberal, moreso just used to be an apolitical, non-brainwashed, non-bigoted person but I instantly got won over by MLs on reddit because of their logic and facts about the world around us
There are probably others like me there
