cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25378355
“No bro you see no one was turned into gore paste IN the square itself, it was the SIDE streets, and besides, they should have Just Complied anyway, so it’s all Western lies”
It’s taught in every single school, information about it is online. It’s just not the western lie invented in the 2000s that it was unarmed peaceful kids versus tanks that were called in for no reason… They literally stole military weapons and massacred civilians then took over and barricaded themselves in a local school more than dozen cops died.
The famous tank man photo? That guy wanted the tanks to stay to make sure the area was safe. He was protesting them leaving. There’s video of him that I guarantee people like you haven’t seen despite it being on YouTube.
Why watch the video when one photo and a lifetime of anticommunist propaganda tells me everything I need to know? 😐
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGkThe famous tank man photo? That guy wanted the tanks to stay to make sure the area was safe. He was protesting them leaving. There’s video of him that I guarantee people like you haven’t seen despite it being on YouTube.
Aye man cmon not even the most patriotic Red White Blue American believes the IRS are good guys lol
That’s because you don’t have a democracy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48445934
According to the BBC little is known about the guy in the photo
The BBC also says trans people are mentally ill and Israel is a peaceful democracy. Let’s not deal with hostile state corproganda
Yes, college kids with automatics chased away an entire column of tanks 🙄
Nice strawman, try again.
Im just saying what you said.
Nope. Tanks came after the terrorists stole weapons and started killing people. Then the military called in backup, put down said terrorists, and was preparing to roll out when said tank man photo was taken.
So who were the tanks supposed to be protecting?
The people that were attacked by the terrorists that stole police weapons.
So tankman was just a confused citizen that attempted to stop a column of tanks?
You think the story was invented in the 2000s? This was the story coming from press that were supposedly there or in touch with people there. We were hearing this after just after it happened.
In the West we know little about what happened before other than protests that went on and were eventually suppressed by state violence.
I doubt that whatever propaganda you were exposed to is any more reflective of the truth.
Seethe and cope.
Why? I’m not rooting for the CIA and they failed their color revolution in China. Maybe they should’ve stayed with tiny countries.
You have been site-banned from .ml
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48445934
Let’s try to keep it civil. In general the BBC is fairly trustworthy
“In general, state media from the west reliable portrays its geopolitical adversaries” is one hell of a take regardless of your opinion on this topic
Hmm, so many tagged accounts in the comments… It’s like the same handful of dudes under each Tiananmen mention… Hmm, what could that mean? I wonder.
I’m just gonna link this here.
I’m going to link this here as well
TW: Gore + Dead bodies https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs
I guarantee you nobody who believes Tank Man was run over, and then the military boxed everyone in and machinegun’d tens of thousands of protesters is going to watch this. Why would they? They already know exactly what happened.
And they think it is the Chinese who are “brainwashed” NPCs, whilst they swim in propaganda and question nothing.
People not only don’t know what’s happening to them, they don’t even know that they don’t know. — Noam Chomsky
It is kinda weird. We don’t have any problems talking about our historical atrocities, unless your community is really, really conservative. I first learned about the Trail of Tears in elementary school, we even took a field trip to a historical location on it. That’s some heavy shit for a little kid. We didn’t go into all the gory details, but the wide scale of the suffering and betrayal we committed was covered.
Even into current events, American bombs falling on Gaza was a big deal.
Really? The censorship is nowhere near as bad as China. But there are so many things that just aren’t commonly taught that are atrocious. From the forced sterilisations of disabled people upto the 70s, to US war crimes against civilians, to things like COINTEL PRO.
Sure comparatively (US wise) far left communities seem to be aware of them, like on lemmy, but it’s nowhere in the mainstream US discourse.
Just depends on the school I guess. We learned about the massacres of the natives, Vietnam war crimes, the Tuskegee study, etc. Those were off the top of my head but there were more.
From the forced sterilisations of disabled people upto the 70s,
Still happening, both in US and EU (couldn’t find a good source on the UK, though I don’t doubt it happens, instead have this horrible statistic Disabled people’s Covid-19 death rate as much as 11 times higher than non-disabled people because we’re not seen as worth saving), and certainly in most other countries too.
And this is just disabled people, Indigenous people (in Canada too, of course), immigrants in detention are still being forced/coerced sterilised, as well as several other marginalised groups targeted in different ways (like systemic racism that leads to higher mortality rates of Black birthing parent and babies during and after pregnancy, UK US Canada).
And to go back to what the op of the thread said, the Trail of Tears, is like the tiniest tip of a monstrous iceberg of ongoing genocide, and that monstrous iceberg is just one of many floating in the American ocean of white supremacist atrocity (and before the Americans get defensive, Yes, other countries do atrocities too, yes citizens there/here are also taught a whitewashed version of history that serves to maintain the state, you may not be alone, but you’re absolutely no better than anyone else).
Fucking hell what a depressing rabbit hole. Thanks for sending.
Proves the point of how erased this shit is!
Yeah, unfortunately I’ve been down it before, and the more you look, the worse it gets (I could have included so many more countries and atrocities, but it was too depressing to keep reading through these statistics)…
And you’re exactly right, it’s a reflection of just how much shit gets swept under the rug either by the establishment and its authorities because it reflects badly on them (and tor they don’t want to stop doing whatever horrible thing it is they’ve been getting away with), or by bigots in society who are either happy to remain ignorant, or worse, actively deny anything is happening because the existing structure gives them some level of comfort and privilege (which is of course one of the many ways those in power keep us divided to maintain said power).
The saying goes “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, which is precisely why we aren’t taught it properly (and some of it gets deliberately omitted or even erased).
Its a long list of atrocities and only so much that can fit into a curriculum. Also wildly different standards school to school. My public school in the North East was pretty good about it
The bigger point in the context of this thread, I think, is that none of that is suppressed information. It’s all on Wikipedia! It would be good for your country’s misdeeds to be at least briefly run over in high school, but to say the american government reacts to this kind of thing the same way that the Chinese gov’t does is whackadoodle.
I would say the South’s reactions to critical race theory and it’s own history is verging on information suppression. Still not as bad as explicit as the eula from a Chinese based company though.
That’s probably as close as we get, yeah. Florida is a shit hole.
We also had discussions on war crimes, though that wasn’t until high school.
This was before 9/11, so the War on Terror had not happened yet. It was mainly focused on Vietnam. We did learn about some of the covert stuff, but most of it was not covered.
I agree none of it is part of mainstream US discourse, but neither is the vast majority of the things covered in history class. This reflects American anti-intellectualism overall imo.
Yeah, there’s a difference between “information that is not discussed because you’ll get a visit from the cops” and “information that is not discussed because, though it’s freely available, people don’t care enough to learn it.”
And where did you learn that in China you’ll be visited by the cops?
You learned if from the very same Western cold war propaganda machine we’re talking about. And you accepted it as fact without a thought.
I think there are many events in American history that could be analogous to Tiananmen.
Were you ever educated on the 1985 MOVE bombing? The destruction of black wall street? The house un-american activities committee? The battle of Blair Mountain?
Were you ever taught about any of the coups we did to overthrow democratic governments in latin america? The death squads we trained? The authoritarians and fascists we put into power, and the oppression and death they caused?
Or, in general, the 70-or-so countries we invaded since WWII? I think most Americans can only name Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam.
And that’s just the stuff I can name off the top of my head, I’m sure there are countless American atrocities that I am unaware of.
Personally, the American education system taught me none of that. Many of these subjects are not discussed in broad American culture.
Fun question for Americans: how much were you taught about the struggle for labor rights?
In school? Almost nothing. We learned a little bit about the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act as “part of the new deal” but like the gun battles fought at mines, railroads etc… not a peep.
I actually got a somewhat decent education on it. Learned about unionization, the fight for weekends, battle of Blair Mountain, and the teacher even played “Solidarity Forever” in class.
I fully recognize my experience isn’t standard, though.
Late nineties Midwest public school: barely talked about, Henry Ford given credit for the 5 day work week. The many atrocities were never mentioned.
Early 1990s and my boarding school taught it but not the public school.
It not being taught is not quite the same as the outright denial / suppression that China does though.
Like there are only so many hours in the school day, you can’t teach literally every historical event.
Both US and China actively deny and suppress information. The Chinese method is more authoritarian, the US method is more effective.
I argue this point on another comment in this thread.
I didn’t even know about the Bonus Army until yesterday.
You’re right those usually aren’t taught but that’s very different than denying they happened. Honestly, it’s more effective too probably. China denying it is part of why it keeps being brought up. They’re in too deep now, but if they had just said “yeah, it happened and it’s regretful” then people probably wouldn’t bring it up all the time.
That’s the thing, though: The Tiananmen riots are not a secret in China, and they are taught, while you have been mistaught by Western propaganda that they’re a secret in China. So this meme is ignorant nonsense that perpetuates the propaganda for free.
I learned about around half of that in junior high and high school. Where did you study? That has a lot to do with it, our education system is controlled at the local level by individual school boards.
So you were left ignorant of the other half of the atrocities I mentioned, just like we suspect Chinese citizens are ignorant of Tiananmen?
I went to high school in North Dakota btw.
North Dakota makes sense, that’s a fairly conservative region if I’m not mistaken. I’m from a more purple region.
I don’t expect everything to be covered in junior high or high school, there isn’t enough time in a general US history or world history class to focus on most details. They’re not US imperialism classes, they’re generalist with a lot of material worthy of time and attention. This is what more advanced studies are for.
This is entirely different from actively suppressing information. The information is available, even if teaching it to all teenagers is not mandatory. One thing is active suppression, another is prioritization of limited time.
Well I thought we were discussing education, but as far as information supression is concerned, I think both countries are heavily supresssing information, but the US method is simply much more effective.
Take for example an event similar in scale to the Tiananmen massacre, the Haditha massacre. The US military actively suppressed all info after it happened, classifying everything related to the killings. The only information from the state dept about this incident were leaks to the press downplaying the severity of the incident. Later, the DoD spends millions funding a Hollywood film to whitewash the incident, focusing on the perspective of the poor sad soldiers who did the massacre.
The result, I would argue, is that the Haditha massacre has been whitewashed, justified, and erased from history much more effectively than the Tiananmen massacre.
Yes, we are talking about education. You can receive education in all of these things in more advanced studies, it is available and anyone can choose it. This is because the information is not suppressed.
I’m unfamiliar with this PR campaign you’re discussing. Is this the film you’re talking about?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Haditha
If so, it’s British and you seem to have your facts incorrect. Though I do agree the DoD engages in domestic propaganda and is overly aggressive with classifying information, no question about that. This does not prevent any American from receiving an education that includes what is known of the real events, however.
Yes the British film Battle for Haditha received funding from the DoD’s Entertainment Media Office. It is difficult to find any military film that has not been funded in part by this propagada office.
I do have one fact incorrect though, they did not receive millions. It appears they received much less, although I couldnt find an exact number.
But here you are ignoring the thrust of my argument, that the insidious free market propaganda by the US is much more effective than the heavy handed authoritarian propaganda by China. Yes, you can go get an advanced degree and learn about Haditha freely, but that knowledge is effectively prevented from reaching the broader public.
We don’t? Aren’t conservatives fighting hard to whitewash history, and aren’t they winning? Teaching the truth about historical racism is “Critical Race Theory.”
Yes, it is very much an ongoing battle, that’s for sure.
We also, for some fucking stupid reason, allowed Texas to be the arbiter of textbooks. Wtf.
History in British schools is often the civil war, often corn laws and the agricultural revolution, often Romans, but never Empire.
… really? Even we learn a fair bit about the British Empire, though I suppose Anglo-American history is somewhat intertwined, so it makes sense. We covered Magna Carta, 100 Years War, Henry VIII, then some British Empire. And the World Wars of course.
We don’t really go over the Commonwealth nations that much, but we definitely touch on Britain quite a lot. Though we did cover Indian Independence a little bit, Gandhi and all that, if memory serves.
Glazing over the largest empire ever created on our planet seems a little odd to me though, especially when its your own. That’d be like Greek kids not covering Alexander.
A little off topic, but Alexander was Macedonian.
Is it so hard to believe simultaneously (a) that a powerful, authoritarian state entity did a violent, fucked up thing that it doesn’t want people to know about and (b) that western media has a vested interest in making Chinese communism look bad so probably significantly exaggerated parts of their reporting of it? I don’t understand why this causes a whole fight every time. I’d argue most states have done something as terrible, if not more so, so why does this particular event need to be both attacked and defended so heavily?
Honestly, this.
Speaking as a “tankie,” people go too far if they deny that anything happened at all. It was a significant and controversial event, enough that Deng Xiaoping himself resigned over it. But what I don’t get is why people are so obsessed with it, when the shit that happened under Mao was way worse, and this happened so long ago. I think people are just uneducated and disinterested in Chinese history, so they’re vaguely aware of like to three events from it that they name-drop endlessly to own the tankies. It’s such a tiresome and repetitive subject, and the obsession shuts down more intelligent, nuanced discussion about China and global politics.
I’ll keep “obsessing”/highlighting over how a atrocious thing was done and then ignored after the fact. If this shit that happened in the middle of the main square in the capital for all the world to see isn’t fully recognised by the leadership and government what other potentially vastly more horrible things are being executed in their name elsewhere?
The answer is we don’t know and as long as what obviously happened isn’t fully acknowledged nowadays we have no reason to even give them any benefit of the doubt in any related matters based on anything they claim. That’s what is being "oppsessed"about.
what other potentially vastly more horrible things are being executed in their name elsewhere?
And so you speculate and assume the worst. It’s very easy to manipulate this perspective through propaganda, and the media does so all the time. Instead of saying things outright, which they might be held accountable for if the claims are later disproven, you’re led to fill in the gaps with your own imagination. So, a person is said to have “disappeared,” and you immediately think they’re in some black site, but if they reappear and it turns out they were fine all along, the media can say, “Well, we personally didn’t know where they were, and that’s all we actually said.”
Of course, there’s also stuff that the CIA covered up for decades, such as the 1953 Iranian coup. And most people are simply unaware of it because it’s never discussed in the news. I suppose it’s different in that it was done to a foreign country but I’m not sure that makes it better. In any case, they have the capability to do things like that without the public’s knowledge.
No doubt, any comparison between the two will be met with “whataboutism,” regardless of the relevance of the comparison. But shouldn’t we also say that it’s impossible to say what, “potentially vastly more horrible things are being executed in their name elsewhere” regarding the US?
The reason I think it is somewhat of a big deal is less the fact that it happened, but rather the fact that the Chinese government seems like it tries to hide it, or at least downplays it a lot.
Compare with Germany, where some of the most horrific events in history took place. But Germany acknowledges it and actively teaches people about how bad it was.
The current Chinese government still seems to be trying to cover up for the mistakes of a previous government. (At least, as far as I am aware)
That’s a fair point, but I think people are too attached to this 1984 idea of what dystopia looks like. Like, I’m free to criticize Mitch McConnell all I want, but if it has zero actual impact on his political power, then is it really anything more than jester’s privilege?
Of course, it’s a valid criticism, but is it enough to write off the whole country as a dystopia, rather than critically examining the positive and negative aspects together? Does censorship of a 40 year old event outweigh, for example, poverty alleviation?
Well first, the US political system is a total mess. In any good system the amount of criticism McConnell gets should impact him, thereby making the ability to criticise valuable.
But yes, I certainly don’t think that China is the dystopian nightmare that it is sometimes portrayed as, and it certainly does many things well. However covering up tragedies is still a point worth criticising, and any point worth criticising is worth criticising often (in the hopes that it might change one day).
And this goes for any country, good and bad (by whatever metric one might decide that with). We should praise the good aspects, while criticising the bad. And both aspects should be open to honest discussion.
That’s fair. But I’d rather focus on things in my own country where I (theoretically) have some say over what happens. The only means I have really over the Chinese government would be through the US government interfering. That’s not to say the affairs of other countries aren’t important to pay attention to and understand from an academic standpoint, but I don’t see how I’m supposed to effect change in China through criticism from abroad.
“Oh so bombing Hiroshima was okay?? Is that what you’re saying?? You know all that is American propaganda right?? I’m the most illiterate fuckwit incapable of understanding that two governments can be bad at the same time!!”
I’m just here to see the tankies flip out in the comments.
🍿
