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)

[–] GarbageShootAlt@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All states are fundamentally violent, what are you imagining to be a "decent" country where there is no violence by the state?

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a difference between a country that has a monopoly on violence and can use that for enforcement, compared to a state that responds to people just making their voices heard with cannons and guns. A cat nipping my fingers is annoying. A lion gnawing my head off is deadly.

[–] GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The crackdown wasn't against the peaceful protestors who they let just kind of do their thing under supervision for somewhere around 6 weeks despite it basically being the equivalent of the section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. The CPC became less friendly as it became aware of NED bullshit and, critically, unarmed soldiers being immolated and lynched by militants who were using naive protestors as cover. The CPC nonetheless gave everyone some time to clear out (I forget the time table but I think it was 24 - 72 hours) and even once it was over the deadline they didn't just start blasting.

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem with this is that we don't really know if it's true. It's the CPC's official story, but they've created an atmosphere so hostile to truth or transparency that it's not trustworthy.

[–] GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

See, this is a sort of epistemic nihilism that is used for question-begging the western narrative. I give you a counterproposition and you say "Well the CPC is so untrustworthy that we just can't know that that's true!"

Which part do you doubt? That the protest had been going on for many weeks? We have contemporaneous reports. That the CPC wasn't very hostile to the protestors for most of that period? We have footage of the protestors and unarmed soldiers coexisting -- sometimes even having something of a fun time together, each group singing songs!

We have photographs of the lynched corpses, with the protestors idly looking on (because what else could they do?). We have contemporaneous reporting on the CPC setting a deadline for the square to be fled. We have footage of one of the more radical student leaders, Chai Ling, saying that she will deliberately direct her clique to stay (even as she flees) so that they will shed blood.

We have a smaller amount of footage of the night itself, but that tells us many things. For example, there was a protestor (not a student) who was on a high-profile hunger strike. He negotiated the peaceful evacuation of a group of students who didn't quite realize what they were signing up for by staying. We also have some distant footage of the fighting in the surrounding area (because the square itself didn't see violence, as even western journalists confirmed).

The 1984 narrative Reddit spoonfeeds people is incredibly flimsy, even if all you do is look at reporting from Brits, Americans, and Germans.

Speaking of, have you ever watched the full Tank Man video? You can find it on Youtube quite easily. If you haven't seen it, please do me a favor and predict what happens and write it down for yourself -- no need to show anyone else, myself included. Then, watch what happens and compare that to your guess. I think you will find it to be an interesting exercise.

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