I was honestly so surprised myself when I realized that the supposed most famous picture of the massacre didn't show a single dead body.
Just makes you think about how easily can falsehood be used for propaganda.
One of the first casualties of the whole protest was an unarmed PLA officer that was tied to a bus by the protestors and burnt alive. Then mocked and photographed. They never share that photo around though.
Westerners refuse to believe that about half the fatalities were PLA members because in their countries, the police would never be unarmed, never abandon their equipment, never hesitate to kill in retaliation.
Westerners also don't pity the murdered PLA officers because they view them the same as their own police: violent people that eagerly abuse their power.
I think that's the most eye-opening thing about this "massacre"
if this had happened in the US, the streets would have run with rivers of blood. It would've been utterly brutal. And the US would be the one rewriting history to try and pretend it never happened. It's always projection.
Yeah so much western propaganda is essentially just accusing this or that country of being like the USA. I genuinely don't understand why it's so effective
The same reason why slave-ocrats said that enslaved people liked to be enslaved, but were in constant fear of revolts. They live in fear of being treated like they've treated others.
And they've been taught that history is over, there's no alternative, which means other places must be exactly like the US. It's inconceivable that other places could be run differently even while those places are thought of as other.
It's even worse, they automatically assume those places must be worse. So if US politicians are being unaccountable corrupted bureocrats, the others must be complete tyrants, if US police is murdering and brutalizing people left and right in the open without any repercussion, the others must be worse than gestapo, and so on and on.
Thanks for the essay! I just finished it, it's some of the most pointed and relevant stuff I've read in a long while. I especially liked this bit towards the end:
When we proudly assert that we are for the individual over the collective, we’re essentially saying that some people count as people, and some don’t. At the heart of liberalism lies dehumanization; we should not forget that slave ownership was one of the original “individual rights” that was so fiercely fought for by American revolutionaries.
Therein the arguments against socialist states. Every death under socialism is a failure of the government, because it dared to try to solve problems collectively. Under capitalism, deaths are due to the individual’s failures, and therefore no one’s responsibility.
Also it's hilarious how the author thought to compare Marx with Tupac
It works because America's propaganda regime is so hegemonic and overwhelming that the vast majority of Americans assume everywhere else is just like america - All cops are violent, all soldiers are used for foreign wars of aggression, all politicians are corrupt and believe in nothing. The idea of a political leader who acts from firmly held convictions, wants to help people, and is uninterested in using their position for wealth and power simply isn't something that exists in the average American's conceptual framework of reality. They readily believe so much propaganda because in many ways the propaganda simply tells them that other places are just like the US they experience every day.
Definitely. Americans in particular are surrounded by media that affirms and reaffirms their supposed greatness, but libs across the west believe similar stuff and it's not just because they're in an echo chamber. emizeko shared this article that goes into another aspect of liberal myth making: westerners agree with this shit because they want to.
Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live.
I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy.
I think everyone is well aware of how little change they can truly effect within liberal democracy. How much carnage their governments cause at home and abroad. What happens to people who protest... Accepting that all the people our government subjugates deserve it brings a sort of comfort. Pride, even.
I do disagree with the article somewhat. Though it is probably more splitting hairs than anything else.
From my point of view it seems less that they want to believe it, and more that they aren't given the tools to properly analyze it. They are given fiction as their "tool" for understanding the world, and when the propaganda resembles their fiction, they don't question it because it matches their toolset.
Of course, there's still no excuse for not breaking out of that pattern and refusing to learn more. I agree with the article there. I'd say almost everyone here did at some point, even under awful circumstances where it would've been much easier to just "switch off" and remain content. Though intellectual laziness is one of the biggest virtues in the west.
That's true. Though being politically illiterate doesn't explain why libs are so incurious, to the point of dismissing evidence before even looking at it. Their ignorance is willful to an extent because they know on some level that they benefit materially from playing along. Or if they don't benefit, then they can at least avoid getting punished for rocking the boat.
Yeah, I can't ascribe much agency or self awareness to the us burgerosie. I'll grant that most of them have normal human faculties but the ones i interact with are profoundly ignorant and incurious to the point where they might as well be ayerdales for all the intellectual function they utilize
Everyone here knows that there's a threshold where the US will explode in to armed conflict. There are 800,000 cops in this country and every one of them is a psychopathic fascist champing for a chance to spill innocent blood.
It's harrowing trying to do street marches with Libs who are too ignorant and foolish to understand how dangerous the cops are. Trying to save them from themselves is not fun.
Imagine if BLM protestors had tied an unarmed, out of uniform, cop to a bus and burnt them alive what the libs would be screaming for. They would want outright slaughter.
I think they were strung up after they were immolated, and the fire was so effective because it was a petrol bomb (which was likely sourced from a certain oil-obsessed freedom country)
My understanding that in the initial ambush firebombs were thrown in to PLA troop trucks and in to the open hatches of APCs, and the troops inside had no warning and no real chance to escape.
In authoritarian America, citizens aren't taught the history of the New York Draft Riots and anyone who googles 紐約徵兵暴動 gets disappeared by their secret police! 😱😱
Word. Kent state? Armed National Guard goons in full battle rattle with bayonets fixed fired 7.62mm rifles point blank in to students. Tianemen? The majority of the PLA soldiers in the square didn't have any weapons of any kind what so ever. They didn't have batons. They didn't have helmets. They were just wearing their uniforms and basically standing there. It was a show of force, certainly, but unlike anything I can think of in Western political history.
I don't think it's fair to group the insurgents who attacked the PLA in with the protestors. The vast, vast majority of the protestors were peaceful throughout and never had any interest or intent of instigating a violent conflict with the CPC. The insurgents who ambushed the PLA were a very small group of people who did not reflect the interests of the greater protest movement.
Yea that was the version I was "taught", that no one knows who is is or what happened to him and obviously that means the communist party disappeared him
Western media loves to talk about disappearances because you can say anyone has "disappeared" if they've just been out of the public eye for a bit. The audience is led to believe the implication that they were killed or imprisoned at some black site, but since the source never actually said that they technically didn't say anything false, even if they were perfectly fine the whole time.
Anybody remember that tennis player, Peng Shuai? I had a lib I know irl hit me with it as evidence that China was disappearing dissidents. I mentioned the above to him, and then, sure enough, she got Juche necromancy-ed.
Meanwhile, in America, where the cops kick your door down at 3am and your family doesn't have any idea where you've gone or what happened to you...
Not to mention the literally millions of undocumented people who get kidnapped and shipped somewhere. Even the government admits it doesn't know what happens to some of them.
Yeah, a bunch of people grabbed him and were like "Dude there is literally shooting a few blocks from here get out of the way of the tanks and get to cover". But they were just people, not evil SEE SEE PEE death spies.
ummm nice try tankie scum but i've seen video footage of the evil dick sucking dungeons of the orient, i know what you communist monsters did to that poor hero
I remember being sat in my classroom as a primary school kid with my teacher showing us that photo on the newspaper days after the event and him telling us to think about what happened to that poor brave man.
He probably went home to clean up, and later hooked up with some PLA Chad for a romantic dinner. When he climbed on the tank for a chat he was actually exchanging numbers.
Guy buying groceries seeks Lt. tank commander for romantic candlelit dinner to discuss merits of Deng's reforms in light of the student protest movement
I was honestly so surprised myself when I realized that the supposed most famous picture of the massacre didn't show a single dead body. Just makes you think about how easily can falsehood be used for propaganda.
One of the first casualties of the whole protest was an unarmed PLA officer that was tied to a bus by the protestors and burnt alive. Then mocked and photographed. They never share that photo around though.
Westerners refuse to believe that about half the fatalities were PLA members because in their countries, the police would never be unarmed, never abandon their equipment, never hesitate to kill in retaliation.
Westerners also don't pity the murdered PLA officers because they view them the same as their own police: violent people that eagerly abuse their power.
I think that's the most eye-opening thing about this "massacre"
if this had happened in the US, the streets would have run with rivers of blood. It would've been utterly brutal. And the US would be the one rewriting history to try and pretend it never happened. It's always projection.
Yeah so much western propaganda is essentially just accusing this or that country of being like the USA. I genuinely don't understand why it's so effective
Because the other half of the propaganda is convincing people that the USA isn't like the USA. No idea how that one works so well either thought.
The same reason why slave-ocrats said that enslaved people liked to be enslaved, but were in constant fear of revolts. They live in fear of being treated like they've treated others.
And they've been taught that history is over, there's no alternative, which means other places must be exactly like the US. It's inconceivable that other places could be run differently even while those places are thought of as other.
It's even worse, they automatically assume those places must be worse. So if US politicians are being unaccountable corrupted bureocrats, the others must be complete tyrants, if US police is murdering and brutalizing people left and right in the open without any repercussion, the others must be worse than gestapo, and so on and on.
Sounds about right!
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ explains it well
Thanks for the essay! I just finished it, it's some of the most pointed and relevant stuff I've read in a long while. I especially liked this bit towards the end:
Also it's hilarious how the author thought to compare Marx with Tupac
It works because America's propaganda regime is so hegemonic and overwhelming that the vast majority of Americans assume everywhere else is just like america - All cops are violent, all soldiers are used for foreign wars of aggression, all politicians are corrupt and believe in nothing. The idea of a political leader who acts from firmly held convictions, wants to help people, and is uninterested in using their position for wealth and power simply isn't something that exists in the average American's conceptual framework of reality. They readily believe so much propaganda because in many ways the propaganda simply tells them that other places are just like the US they experience every day.
Definitely. Americans in particular are surrounded by media that affirms and reaffirms their supposed greatness, but libs across the west believe similar stuff and it's not just because they're in an echo chamber. emizeko shared this article that goes into another aspect of liberal myth making: westerners agree with this shit because they want to.
I think everyone is well aware of how little change they can truly effect within liberal democracy. How much carnage their governments cause at home and abroad. What happens to people who protest... Accepting that all the people our government subjugates deserve it brings a sort of comfort. Pride, even.
I do disagree with the article somewhat. Though it is probably more splitting hairs than anything else.
From my point of view it seems less that they want to believe it, and more that they aren't given the tools to properly analyze it. They are given fiction as their "tool" for understanding the world, and when the propaganda resembles their fiction, they don't question it because it matches their toolset.
Of course, there's still no excuse for not breaking out of that pattern and refusing to learn more. I agree with the article there. I'd say almost everyone here did at some point, even under awful circumstances where it would've been much easier to just "switch off" and remain content. Though intellectual laziness is one of the biggest virtues in the west.
That's true. Though being politically illiterate doesn't explain why libs are so incurious, to the point of dismissing evidence before even looking at it. Their ignorance is willful to an extent because they know on some level that they benefit materially from playing along. Or if they don't benefit, then they can at least avoid getting punished for rocking the boat.
Yeah, I can't ascribe much agency or self awareness to the us burgerosie. I'll grant that most of them have normal human faculties but the ones i interact with are profoundly ignorant and incurious to the point where they might as well be ayerdales for all the intellectual function they utilize
"Burgerosie" is much more fun than "labour aristocracy."
Everyone here knows that there's a threshold where the US will explode in to armed conflict. There are 800,000 cops in this country and every one of them is a psychopathic fascist champing for a chance to spill innocent blood.
It's harrowing trying to do street marches with Libs who are too ignorant and foolish to understand how dangerous the cops are. Trying to save them from themselves is not fun.
Imagine if BLM protestors had tied an unarmed, out of uniform, cop to a bus and burnt them alive what the libs would be screaming for. They would want outright slaughter.
No need to speculate
I think they were strung up after they were immolated, and the fire was so effective because it was a petrol bomb (which was likely sourced from a certain oil-obsessed freedom country)
My understanding that in the initial ambush firebombs were thrown in to PLA troop trucks and in to the open hatches of APCs, and the troops inside had no warning and no real chance to escape.
Where'd you see that?
I mean a lot of libs did want outright slaughter.
During the New York Draft Riots, the New York Times machine gunned protestors.
In authoritarian America, citizens aren't taught the history of the New York Draft Riots and anyone who googles 紐約徵兵暴動 gets disappeared by their secret police! 😱😱
I asked an American about the New York Draft Riots once, and he gave me a clearly uncomfortable look. That said it all.
Word. Kent state? Armed National Guard goons in full battle rattle with bayonets fixed fired 7.62mm rifles point blank in to students. Tianemen? The majority of the PLA soldiers in the square didn't have any weapons of any kind what so ever. They didn't have batons. They didn't have helmets. They were just wearing their uniforms and basically standing there. It was a show of force, certainly, but unlike anything I can think of in Western political history.
Not true, they do ... And they claim that it's another instance of SeePeePee violence ...
Let me see if I can find the libbed up reddit thread where I saw it:
Not as upvoted as I remember, the post is a Midjourney selfie from tank man.
I don't think it's fair to group the insurgents who attacked the PLA in with the protestors. The vast, vast majority of the protestors were peaceful throughout and never had any interest or intent of instigating a violent conflict with the CPC. The insurgents who ambushed the PLA were a very small group of people who did not reflect the interests of the greater protest movement.
I didn't know there was a video of tank man until like two years ago. It was always shown as an image with the implication he was then killed
i distinctly remember being 'informed' that "right after this photo, he was disappeared by the secret police and never seen or heard from again!"
Yea that was the version I was "taught", that no one knows who is is or what happened to him and obviously that means the communist party disappeared him
Western media loves to talk about disappearances because you can say anyone has "disappeared" if they've just been out of the public eye for a bit. The audience is led to believe the implication that they were killed or imprisoned at some black site, but since the source never actually said that they technically didn't say anything false, even if they were perfectly fine the whole time.
Anybody remember that tennis player, Peng Shuai? I had a lib I know irl hit me with it as evidence that China was disappearing dissidents. I mentioned the above to him, and then, sure enough, she got Juche necromancy-ed.
Meanwhile, in America, where the cops kick your door down at 3am and your family doesn't have any idea where you've gone or what happened to you...
Not to mention the literally millions of undocumented people who get kidnapped and shipped somewhere. Even the government admits it doesn't know what happens to some of them.
Now there's a man who could have done with a little Juche necromancy.
When really he was just some guy and it was 1989 so it's not like there was social media or anything to identify him.
"whenever tank man isn't on screen, all the other characters should be asking, 'where's tank man?'" but genuinely
funny how that works
Yeah, a bunch of people grabbed him and were like "Dude there is literally shooting a few blocks from here get out of the way of the tanks and get to cover". But they were just people, not evil SEE SEE PEE death spies.
ummm nice try tankie scum but i've seen video footage of the evil dick sucking dungeons of the orient, i know what you communist monsters did to that poor hero
I remember being sat in my classroom as a primary school kid with my teacher showing us that photo on the newspaper days after the event and him telling us to think about what happened to that poor brave man.
He probably went home to clean up, and later hooked up with some PLA Chad for a romantic dinner. When he climbed on the tank for a chat he was actually exchanging numbers.
My theory, based on the fact that he had a shopping bag, was that the dude in the tank was his son:
"Hey, didn't I tell you grandma and grandpa are coming over tonight?"
"Uh, yeah dad, could we talk about this later?"
"No. And do you remember how I specifically asked you to pick up some lettuce and tomatoes on the way to work?"
"Uh, dad, we're kind of holding up traffic here... WHAT THE HELL, DAD PLEASE GET OFF THE TANK, PLEASE, YOU'RE EMBARASSING ME"
Tank Man was later given a medal for Most Epic Dad Moment
Aww, that would be so romantic
Guy buying groceries seeks Lt. tank commander for romantic candlelit dinner to discuss merits of Deng's reforms in light of the student protest movement