And if something did maybe happen, it’s the CIA’s fault
Well, to be perfectly clear, here in Mexico happened a students massacre in the Three Cultures square in 1968. The CIA was involved.
Americans will post a meme about Tianimen Square while eating a Chiquita banana.
And making Dole pineapple upside-down cake with Imperial Sugar.
Americans can, and will, openly discuss this stuff, and think badly of their government for it, and won’t get in trouble with the government for doing so publicly.
Well, sort of.
Well, sort of.
A repeat of 1932-1933 Ukraine, really.
Who wants to risk it and repost this to memes in .ml?
Risk what? Would anything of value be lost?
try posting it on grad, they’ll love it
A grad is being sent to your location
Or ml. Or Hexbear.
Why can’t we have a leftist instance that doesn’t suck CCP dick?
https://queer-bolshevik.medium.com/the-aes-doctrine-wrong-then-wrong-now-a8666de371da
This is a good read. There is a pretty large socialist movement that seems to have the idea that to reach global socialism we need to defend every self proclaimed socialist state without asking any questions at all and hope they’ll get better over time.
I love this article while also finding it frustrating. The author seems to be a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, but also goes into detail about how all the ML states have devolved into capitalism. Maybe that should be taken as evidence that ML’s vanguard party is a fatally flawed concept?
The idea that China was socialist under Mao but became capitalist under Deng is a common Maoist take and something that distinguishes them from Marxist-Leninists, it’s kind of in the name.
Sometimes when people call China capitalist, I half-jokingly ask if they’re a Maoist, or if they think the best policy is closer to Mao than what they’re currently doing. Of course, usually, the answer (when I get an answer at all) is no: they opposed what China was doing when it was more state-controlled and they opposed what China was doing when it did reforms and opened up to private investment, if they make moves to hold billionaires accountable to the law or to move more of the economy to the public sector, they’re bad, and if they did the opposite, that would also be bad, but if they stayed steady, that too would be bad.
Maoists and Capitalists are both at least coherent in what they think China should do, in opposite extremes: either undo the reforms and revert to how it was or take it further and become more capitalist. Marxist-Leninists tend to have more nuanced takes about adapting to changing conditions, in line with what they’ve done. But then you have this other category that’s super prevalent on Lemmy that wants to criticize China’s every move without ever offering any kind of coherent idea of what they actually want them to do, economically. I don’t even know what to call that position because it makes no sense to me at all.
db0 is pretty neutral while being intentionally left.
A lot of bad actors on Slrpnk but overall the community is anarchist leaning, anti-dictatorship.
Blåhaj is here! I don’t recall seeing a tankie with a blåhaj account, and also we have personalities outside of politics.
If you check the Blahaj rules it explicitly states being tankie adjacent is a bannable offence, I love it.
lemmy.world is basically that. You’ll get the most concentrated socdem/socialist engagements without traipsing into hunny-cum-shot territory.
I still don’t get how the far leftists (the types who think soc dems are basically the same as any flavor of lib, including libertarian, neolib, etc) are so convinced that socialism is the answer when there hasn’t been a country that even comes close to making it work. I guess China works for certain values of working, but it’s pretty capitalist these days, and you’ve got an overbearing government that goes along with it.
Whereas countries like you see in Scandinavia, with strong soc dem policies under capitalism like high taxes on wealth and strong safety nets, seem to be doing pretty well. I get why socialism would be good in theory but implementing it is another story.
The Nordics still fucking suck, trust me.
Is there any country that doesn’t suck?
So those people calling it neoliberal are fucking liars
Eh, it’s a mixed bag. There’s a very high concentration of centrist, “vote blue, no matter who,” liberals in Political Memes. They’re not the whole instance, but they’ve made a nice little echo chamber that makes them a pretty loud minority.
Yeah, basically. ‘Neoliberal’ and ‘lib’ are just snarl words many tankies use to mean “Anyone less fascist than Mao”.
In general, .world is much less radical than many places on Lemmy. But they’re far from neoliberals. The average poster is slightly left of a Berniecrat, probably; that is to say, either a very strong SocDem or a very weak DemSoc.
Thanks for calling tankies what they are: fascist.
Listen all I’m saying is that if we were so far left that Bernie was center right on policy the country would be a much better place for everyone.
Wouldn’t it be lovely? Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of fighting on the ground to convince our fellow citizens to get their asses there instead of some weird 90s fantasy world.
The people who think .world is socialist also think socialism is when the government does things and that social democracy is a type of socialism and not a type of liberalism.
This is especially evident the way they get whipped into a froth any time actually existing (and former) socialist countries get brought up.
Socialism is when the CIA goes in and kills your leader right?
The CIA tried to kill Charles DeGaulle in 1961, but if the CIA isn’t trying to kill your leader, you’re not doing socialism.
This is especially evident the way they get whipped into a froth any time actually existing (and former) socialist countries get brought up.
It’s funny that all the “AES” countries that are brought up are just authoritarian states, and sometimes, for that matter, authoritarian capitalist states. It’s almost like the people championing these supposedly socialist countries are just fascists painted red.
most communities on ml are fine tho, also I got banned on hexbear because I called the CPC (their official name) CCP
The admins are tankies. It’s just better to avoid it. The smaller their communities the more of a joke it is getting banned for writing a fact.
I don’t have a problem with any of the communities but I regularly catch the instance ban hammer for asinine reasons.
yeah, I mean you’re kinda right
From what I know, dbzer0 is libertarian left and therefore not tankie
but dbzer0 is anarchist?
Yes
If I had to choose between a libertarian and a tankie I’d shoot myself with a rusty spork.
Maybe I should have said “anarchist left”. The term “Libertarian” is overtaken by the Right by now
Libertarian left is very different from “libertarian”
Genuinely there are a lot of people that would like that. Maybe start with a community first before an entire instance.
Yeah .ml will be enough
They felt the same way the Kent State Students felt before the attack.
That tens of millions of people across the nation were about to be slaughtered, broadcast on tv around the world?
It wasn’t tens of millions deaths if that’s what you’re implying. An atrocity but always good to stay to the facts.
I wonder if there are comments here that I’ve blocked
I don’t know if this is the case for other apps or anything, but on Jerboa I end up seeing blank posts (like a post but without any user or instance attributed to it) that just say “there is no record of this comment” whenever it’s someone I’ve blocked.
That is hilariously in-line with the joke at play
there is 1 user you have blocked.
you have not blocked any users.Ssst! Don’t tell them it’s all just a joke, a trope even. Some people take this stuff very seriously.
Hexbear will flood this post if they find it
Hexbear
Post on .world
…
They have alts on lemmy.ml.
The flood has started below. And indeed it is a bunch of @lemmy.ml, surprising nobody.
There was one when I looked before. Oh wow there’s… more than one now. 😵💫
Deleted
Then that would be .ml users. Semantics yes, but considering that .world never federated with Hexbear, I feel it relevant for accurately describing things.
hexbear.net is known for discussion of what goes on in the rest of the Fediverse (I went and found a recent example to show you: https://hexbear.net/post/3645205). Whereupin people with accounts that are able to often brigade places that if we take the narrowest view of who “hexbear” users are, they would not have access to. It just goes with the territory of (a) being passionate about a subject, along with (b) caring not in the slightest bit about the consent of the recipients.
I myself have multiple alts, and went to some trouble to ensure that it is barely recognizable which I am using (identical name and icon). I started on Kbin, and before it went defunct it got slower and slower so I switched to StarTrek, but it got slow for a bit too so now I made my final home on Discuss.Online. And when possible I will love to try out Sublinks, and probably I’ll try Piefed too then.
If someone switches from their hexbear.net account, where they heard about this post, to their Lemmy.ml one for the express purpose to downvoting and trolling this post with their “commentary”, I would call those hexbear users. If you read hexbear posts, it won’t be all that long before you find people not only admitting but being outright proud of doing precisely that. Here’s a very tame one to get you started: https://hexbear.net/post/272530, here’s another: https://hexbear.net/post/277508, and another: https://hexbear.net/post/280770, and there are links from there and available by searching.
That’s a fair way to look at it, yeah. I blocked the instance a whole back after being the target of the dunking culture and classification of statements like “peoples historically oppressed by a country can be reasonably expected to turn to terrible geopolitical powers, if faced with existential threat from said historical oppressors without other recourse” labeled as “fascist apologia” (referring to the USSR’s invasion of Finland, a country that was occupied and used as a battleground and colony by Sweden or Russia for centuries, leaving them with few options but the nazis to try to maintain a semblance of independence that they had previously won from the Russian Empire). If one can’t examine the mistakes of the past, they aren’t serious about trying to avoid them in the future and I ain’t got time for that shit.
There are lots of REAL leftists here on Lemmy. I haven’t researched enough to even know if I am truly one, but anyway it’s obvious that they are children (of whatever physical age) merely playing at philosophical and political concepts.
They constantly claim to be the victim, citing how “unfairly” they are treated, always conveniently ignoring that it’s not their political beliefs that turn people away, but their abusive toxicity. Using tactics such as controlling the conversation, which apparently works on their instance, but can’t hold a candle when talking with a real adult.
However, since anyone who even so much as politely asks (if not sufficiently obsequiously enough) the wrong sort of questions there are promptly removed, the ones who remain are absolutely convinced in the rightness of their cause, seeing nothing first-hand to counter such a claim. Echo chambers can really be dangerous.
Hexbear users are just like Maga conservatives, only on the other side of the spectrum - or at least claiming to be.
Lemmy.ml users on the other hand, are a much more eclectic bunch. Some are great to talk to, though conversely whenever I receive the most batshit insane replies, even after blocking Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net sth like 99% of the time it is a user from lemmy.ml. I find it highly relevant that a LOT of hexbear users went over to Lemmy.ml when Lemmy.world defederated from the former. So after resisting for a long time and even arguing with others against doing it, I finally relented and just blocked Lemmy.ml too. I find my sanity greatly improved as a result:-).
They even explicitly stated in one of their old federation threads that their sole purpose in federating with other instances is to “dunk” on anyone they disagree with and send brigades. This has been a longstanding problem with them, nothing they do outside of their instance is in good faith.
Multiple of those links say that yeah. And the one where the admins took the vote, then ignored it and did the opposite of what the community asked. They are so toxic that they’ve even run off their own developers (I’m not sure if that really meant admin, but seeing as how iirc hexbear predates Lemmy it does make sense as actual developer too).
Some hexbears have left hexbear bc they were kicked out - too toxic for them even - but also some were not toxic enough, as in even they could no longer stand it there.
The only thing we absolutely must be intolerant of is intolerance.
The spirit of hexbear will flood this post if they find it
I use these posts to tag people, so I can disregard and ridicule them in different posts.
It was a relief when I started tagging them since I realised it’s just a small handful of people that are usually all over the comments so it looks like there’s way more of them.
You can always rely on alcoholicorn to show up and say something stupid, for example. Ever since I tagged them I’ve seen them everywhere, always heavily downvoted for coming up with inane nonsense.
Surprisingly I didn’t have a tag for them yet. Fixed now.
Lol, the .mls are mass downvoting now. Such fragile individuals!
Next best thing after being banned by them. A badge of honour.
Instead of blocking them I should start tagging them so I can still clown
Why are people so laser-focused on this one event that happened over three decades ago?
Because there is a real effort by a government to prevent people millions of people from remembering.
Because Lemmy is considered and made by communists.
Communists, tankies who will always rush in to defend the CCP and suppress the atrocities committed by the CCP, without fail. It’s both hilarious and madening.
Basically what shitposting is all about.
Are you for real? Should we forget the people that are silenced in this world?
No, just wondering why the obsession with this one event. This particular event gets brought up more on lemmy.world than perhaps any other historical event. I would ask the same if people kept bringing up the great molasses flood and cracking the same old “slow as molasses” joke.
Because it’s a world famous event that is virtually unknown in the host country. There are usually examples for each country.
The US doesn’t know anything about the war crimes exposed by wikileaks.
Russia knows almost nothing true about the Ukrainian war.
The UK has superembargos (usually about celebs and royalty) which is only reported on abroad.
Thailand doesn’t gossip about its royalty.
Etc.
Every single person in China knows about this event. And the average Chinese person’s understanding is closer to reality about it than that of the average Westerner. Sure Chinese people’s understanding of it is overly sympathetic to the government, and they scrub internet posts about the event, but Americans have a completely cartoonish propaganda view. Listen to the reporters who were there, not random redditors with a hate boner.
Every single person in China knows about this event
How does everyone in china know all about it if the CCCP scrub internet posts about the event?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2024/06/what-is-the-tiananmen-crackdown/
In the 35 years since the crackdown, all discussion of the incident has been heavily censored in China, as authorities have effectively attempted to erase it from history. Public commemoration or mere mention, online or off, of the Tiananmen crackdown is banned.
Regularly since 1989, activists in mainland China have been detained and charged with “subversion” or “picking quarrels” if they commemorate those who were killed, call for the release of prisoners or criticize government actions during the Tiananmen crackdown.
The government has never accepted responsibility for the human rights violations during and after the military crackdown or held any perpetrator accountable. With each year that passes, justice becomes ever more elusive.
Amnesty is probably a capitalist lib propaganda group or something to them.
Sure they scrub any mention of it, it’s totally fine
Are people in China or on Chinese social media allowed to talk about it today?
Being able to talk about the genocide of the Palestinian people doesn’t seem to change anything. Turns out freedom of speech is happily granted when your speech is powerless.
You asked why people care about it so much, and I’m pretty confident the reason is because we’re allowed to talk about it here. If we don’t, someone will forget about it. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
Furthermore, what we’re remembering is a moment when people who were trying to make their voices heard were silenced. By making our voices heard and remembering that they lost their lives in the name of their voices is in itself an act of remembrance that honors their memories.
Lastly, for the low hanging fruit, asking why people are “laser-focused” on an event from a long time ago is a stupid fucking question when today there are nazis and fascists on the fucking ballot. That’s why we remember the past.
And yes, to your point, those do who know history are doomed to watch others repeat it but remembering it is nonetheless valuable, and honoring people who died for something noble is also valuable.
I don’t know anyone who is laser focused. But anyway, do you think important historical events exist? If so, what are your top ten of the last half century?
The idea of Tiananmen Square being one of the top ten most important historical events in that time period is wild to me. Just in terms of death toll, the highest estimate mentioned on Wikipedia of 10,000 comes from a US ambassador citing an anonymous “friend,” and is many times higher than any other estimate - a more realistic generous estimate is closer to 1,000 (the official number is 300). Let’s compare that to the lowest estimates from the list of genocides page:
- Gaza: 38,000 (ongoing)
- Darfur: 98,000 (2005)
- Congo (Effacer le tableau): 60,000 (2003)
- Congo (Massacre of Hutis): 200,000 (1997)
- Rwanda: 491,000 (1994)
- Bosnia: 31,000 (1995)
- Somalia (Isaaq): 50,000 (1989)
- Iraq (Kurds): 50,000 (1989)
- Cambodia: 1,386,000 (1979)
- Indonesia (East Timor): 85,000 (1999)
- Uganda: 100,000 (1978)
The same year that Tiananmen Square happened, two separate genocides were ongoing that, even by the most ridiculously generous comparisons possible, each killed at least 5 times as many people. Searching “Isaaq” on either .world or .ml gives exactly one hit which is a comment listing off a bunch of genocides, like I’m doing now. Entire cities were leveled and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee the country, but nobody ever talks about it (myself included, until today).
In addition to that list, if we’re talking about events in general, then we should also look at the list of interstate wars (again, lowest estimates):
- Persian Gulf War: 29,000 (1991)
- War in Abkhazia: 25,000 (1993)
- First Congo War: 235,000 (1997)
- Kosovo War: 16,000 (1999)
- Eritrian-Ethopian War: 53,000 (2000)
- Second Chechen War: 20,000 (2000)
There’s ongoing conflicts in Myanmar, in North Africa, in Mexico, and in Sudan, and more, each of which has left more dead than Tiananmen this year and the year’s not even over yet.
So it doesn’t seem especially significant in terms of raw numbers, but you could argue that it’s more significant because of the effect it had on Chinese politics, as the controversy led to the resignation of the head of state, Deng Xiaoping. Except that I never ever see anything like that discussed. Either way, it didn’t change the broad direction of the reforms.
I could give my own reasons as to why it’s given such a high position of importance, but I’m genuinely curious to hear your own explanation of why Tiananmen would warrant a spot on a top ten list of important events, compared to any of the other events I’ve listed.
I don’t know anyone who is laser focused.
Really? You haven’t seen the many posts on this one event on lemmy.world? Hell, this is the shitpost community, not even a political one.
deleted by creator
You know those tanks were trying to leave the square, right?
Someone think of the poor tanks that were trampled into paste that had to be hosed off into the sewers.
Those poor, forgotten tanks.
Tanks have the right to self-defense, too!
With a detour over some dead people.
suuuuuuure
Oh, well that changes everything then /s
The chinese narrative isn’t that nothing happened, it’s that there was a battle outside the square, including protesters lynching and burning cops and cops gunning down unarmed protesters on bikes from their trucks. This is corroborated by videos and pictures.
The western narrative of tanks going into the square and gunning down tens of thousands of protesters (after getting delayed by tank man) is blatantly false, as you can see in the uncut tankman video pans over to show the square the tanks are leaving was empty except for some bikes.
Only when someone denies the massacre do I link to these horrific NSFL photos.
You do know that the pictures support what he said right? There’s pictures of dead soldiers because they weren’t given ammo when marching into the city. Once they started getting killed, they gave them ammo and they just started shooting everybody. Before then the protesters smashed their heads, stripped them, and burned them.
The ones who stayed in the square were mostly the peaceful hunger strikers and not the fighters so the square itself was cleared without much trouble compared to the march into the city.
Armed troops and tanks made their way to the square on the night of June 3 and into the morning hours of June 4. They soon shot those who stood in their way and crushed those who wouldn’t move out of it.
Once again, that’s not out of line with what he and I said. There were barricades and fighting in the streets of Beijing and the army killed whoever got in their way to the square, but the people occupying the square were negotiated with and peacefully dispersed. They then once again took all the ammo from the soldiers.
ACAB 😄🖕
Your comment after being imported into China:
The chinese narrative isn’t thatnothing happened, it’s that there was a battle outside the square, including protesters lynching and burning cops and cops gunning down unarmed protesters on bikes from their trucks. This is corroborated by videos and pictures.The western narrative
of tanks going into the square and gunning down tens of thousands of protesters (after getting delayed by tank man)is blatantly false,as you can see in the uncut tankman video pans over to show the square the tanks are leaving was emptyexcept for some bikes.“After several weeks of standoffs and violent confrontations between the army and demonstrators left many on both sides severely injured, a meeting held among the CCP’s top leadership on 1 June concluded with a decision to clear the square.[15][13][14] The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.[16][17][18][19][20][21]”
When you go to Wikipedia, click on those numbers in the brackets
As I said, there were clashes at major thoroughfares surrounding the square, there was not tanks gunning down masses of protesters inside the square.
Who said anything about tanks shooting people? Did you just make that up and denied it yourself? Lmao.
Student protesters where shot up and killed. Indiscriminataley. I could not fucking care less what type of pew pew was used.
Yeah but if you don’t know what exact bullet they used or what they had for breakfast that morning then your argument is invalid I’m afraid /s
It’s what I learned in highschool and I see it repeated every time this discussion comes up, that there were a bunch of peaceful protesters inside the square, and tanks came over, machine gunned them, then ran the bodies over.
There’s a huge difference between protesters lynching some cops and other cops responding with indiscriminate murder and the military murdering everyone because they dared protest.
ACAB
Fuck you.
Like clockwork you’re here to deny the many atrocities of authoritarian despots.
What do you even get out of constantly getting your metaphoric-cock beaten into the dirt 2 dozen times a day?
What exactly do you think happened, and what do you think I am claiming happened?
No, I’m not playing your games.
Answer the question:
What do you get out of having your metaphoric-cock beaten into the ground 24 times a day?
Please don’t deflect.
I am not deflecting, I am trying to understand what you think I am denying.
Everything I’ve said happened, protesters lynching police and police gunning down protesters in the streets surrounding the square, is reflected in the wikipedia article, the only thing that I’ve denied, that masses of unarmed students were gunned down and run over by tanks in the square, is proven false in the tankman video, which I linked.
Wait I also denied that China claims nothing happened at Tienanmen square, that’s also proven false by the official Chinese account of what happened in the Wikipedia article.
Deflect away, coward.
Removed by mod
You’re never going to convert sinophobes. It’s like trying to convert white supremacists, except even more unlikely to work since there is zero pressure to not be sinophobic in society.
This is no different from calling critics of Israel antisemites even though plenty of us Jews do it too.
There are a huge number of Chinese people not living in China who are very open about their contempt for Xi’s regime.
Criticizing a regime isn’t racism against the people living under that regime.
The people control that regime in a much more robust democracy than the US has.
This has nothing to do with what I was saying. Try again.
Criticizing a “regime” run by democracy, both direct and representative, is criticizing the people. It’s also criticizing a race, in this case, as you people never evolved past the “sneaky Chinaman” stereotype in your criticisms.
So any criticism of the U.S. is racism?
No, again, it’s not. Once elected the government can go against the people’s will. Try again.
So because you assume China to be a democracy, other people are racist for criticizing the government?
Let’s agree that both are bad. What is your goal with this whataboutism?
The implication of what they’re saying is that the Chinese government’s actions generally represent the will of the Chinese people so you can’t just separate them like you can with America.
Do you agree with this implication or did you just explain it to me? Because I would never equate the actions of the government of a nation state with the people who happen to live there
I would if the people overwhelmingly support that action, yes.
Imagine knowing what words mean.
At this point I should ask for a delicious cookie recipe…
