Muricans; TIANAMEN SEESEEPEE 10,000 dead tank jelly gutters!
Also Muricans: What do you mean Indonesia slaughtered half a million innocent people with the knowledge and support of the US government? What do you means the US and Saudi conspired to kill hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in a campaign of naked and uncomplicated genocide? What do you mean the South Korean forces murdered tens of thousands of innocent people using a pretense of communism? That's all bullshit I would have heard about that and anyway they weren't white so I don't care.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh it has been. Libs simply don't care. They have a religious conviction that communism bad and they'll interpret any information to support that conviction, and dismiss anything that contradicts it. Parenti's "Non-falsifiable orthodoxy" is a great term for how they think.
I believe there's actually video footage of tank man climbing up on the tank, conversing with the tank commander, and then getting down and walking away.
I'm told that many people were lying prone because there was machine gun fire from the battle between the PLA and the insurgents several blocks away.
From what I understand hundreds of thousands of PLA troops were moved in to Beijing from other regions, but throughout the demonstration the PLA and students had good relations with each other, singing songs and sharing food. At any rate, the PLA soldiers were mostly unarmed, especially the ones in the square, and there was very little violence between the PLA and the student protestors.
It's worth keeping in mind that many of the PLA soldiers and students were likely of similar ages, came from similar backgrounds, and were both experiencing the new hardships caused by Dengist changes in economic policy.
I think this is misleading. The people who were encouraging violence were not leaders of the student movement. From what I understand there were a number of different groups with different goals in the square, but the majority were young people who wanted an end to market reforms that were causing strife and a return to a more communist economy. My understanding is that there were also a substantial number of people who were advocating for more relaxed, permissive social norms and who believed that the social conservativism around things like public affection, dating, casual relationships, dress, and music were not in keeping with communist values.
The group of CIA backed students who attempted to initiate a violent confrontation was very small, and from what I understand they basically bullied their way to the PA equipment and took it over. They were not popular and many people were confused by them, but apparently the students were unsure what to do with them. At any rate they had little if any influence and their attempt to start a color revolution failed miserably. Shortly after they tucked tail and fled to the USA as part of a CIA operation.
Some additions - The majority of PLA soldiers in the area were unarmed, and from what I understand relations between the students and the PLA were positive throughout. There are a lot of stories of them all singing songs together and sharing food. The vast majority of the PLA soldiers had no weapons at all, not even riot control gear or helmets. They were just there in their uniforms. When the students were finally told to leave they did so in good order. I think there may have been some use of riot batons, but if there was it was very minor and the vast, vast majority of the students left peacefully.
The fighting was apparently between relatively small numbers of insurgents and PLA soldiers. As the PLA in the area were initially unarmed the first deaths were PLA soldiers who were ambushed in their trucks and APCs by insurgents with molotovs and burned alive. It took a while for armed PLA units to arrive and engage the insurgents. The ~300 deaths number is agreed on by the Chinese government as well as a number of western observers and researchers.
Agreed! Criticism of the 20th century, both it's failures and it's successes, is vital to moving forward! We can't treat our past comrades as saints, nor ignore them, and they wouldn't want us to! Imagine knowing that those who came after you refused to learn from the mistakes you made! I can't imagine anything more horrible for someone who devoted their life to a scientific understanding of economy than people refusing to learn from observation.
religious orientation (traditional Islam is reactionary
iirc correctly he had a pretty weird conception of Islam that was a deviation from most of the traditional schools of jurisprudence, but admittedly i don't know many details.
iirc a bunch of European and American special forces spookys who absolutely were not supposed to be there got caught in Libya during the insurrection.
![Frank [he/him, he/him]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/7a7a0556-ce69-4e05-a56c-89b65fb37753.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
Muricans; TIANAMEN SEESEEPEE 10,000 dead tank jelly gutters!
Also Muricans: What do you mean Indonesia slaughtered half a million innocent people with the knowledge and support of the US government? What do you means the US and Saudi conspired to kill hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in a campaign of naked and uncomplicated genocide? What do you mean the South Korean forces murdered tens of thousands of innocent people using a pretense of communism? That's all bullshit I would have heard about that and anyway they weren't white so I don't care.