Just in the past week when I pointed out how the guy never got run over, and that it was always deceptively presented in a a thread about video manipulation using AI creating false narratives I had a bunch of .worlders jumping down my throat.
At the time I had one claiming that it’s "just a symbol of defiance, nobody actually thinks that.
Then like a few days later in an entirely different thread I had someone make a “lemmy.ml admins support running over protestors with tanks” 🙃 I’m going to get whiplash
I like the way he ties it back to how the media is covering Gaza. The image of Tankman and his role as a propaganda symbol is genuinely fascinating to me.
Somehow… without ever showing it or even stating it as a direct lie: they actually created a mandela effect which has multiple generations of people convinced to this day that he was viciously turned into hamburger without a second thought despite having video showing the exact opposite. Of course if you call this out there will be apologists who say “lol, we never said he was run over” and indeed that’s technically true…but clearly the idea he was is so heavily implied in so much discourse around it. Its enough to send you down a dangerous rabbit hole wondering how much of what you just assume is true everyday is all manufactured. Keeps me up at night.
Alright i feel like I have a good handle on the left counter-narrative about Tiananmen. But I’ve also seen a lot of content, including from scholars who don’t seem to be knee-jerk anti-China, that says that a shameful atrocity was committed.
Can someone who knows more than me play Devil’s Advocate here? What nuance is missing from the left response to the standard lib narrative?
I’m sure that if the CPC could do it again, they would have handled it differently. I don’t think it’s a particularly proud moment, even if it wasn’t the 'massacre" it is portrayed as. The reason we can tell this is because they have clearly changed what their response to semi-large pro-colonialist Western-backed demonstrations are (see the Hong-Kong protests where there were only two confirmed deaths of protestors, which for the sake of argument we’ll attribute to the police).
For one, there is clearly a lot more pre-emptive work going on from a surveillance level that didn’t go on before, especially tracking guns, and two, they are getting pretty good at isolating protestor demands and accommodating demands that are considered ‘reasonable’ (ones that were considered an ongoing issue in the party already), which fractures the protest movement, mostly leaving the truly ideologically radical sections, of whom the Western-backed ones aren’t actually willing to risk their skins, since they can make money as anti-China grifters in Western academia and Western media. That just leaves the ultra-leftists, who are broadly unpopular (because they are considered too Western-brained) in China and therefore do not really have any leverage.
I haven’t watched it yet but let me guess, it was a conflict and not a massacre, and the weird lib thing about people being squished and washed down drains is just absolute nonsense and insanity. Death rolls are far smaller than usually implied by westerners because again it clearly was not a “massacre” and the protesters were killing military personnel and destroying vehicles so some deaths would be expected.
How’d I do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gtt2JxmQtg
Heres an ancient remanant of what libs used to think was a damning indictment of china. Before the myths about Tiananmen became parodies of themselves.
There is an interesting fact to note about chai ling, though i am speculating. When she did the interview and admitted she wanted to provoke a violent crackdown she is following the principles of non violence as espoused by eugene sharp. Some Anti-imperialists have accused the AEI of being a cia/State Dept. front that serves to foment revolutions in unfriendly countries since it has been funded by the NED.
What she said is still discrediting but there was a method to her madness.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
How do I expand and watch here so I don’t have youtube doing what it does best and suddenly deciding to recommend me a bunch of anti-China and chud videos
Anyways oooooh very spicy title, might get under the right peoples’ skins.
Use one of the frontends the bot left?
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Damn I apologize to the bot for always thinking “nerd” in my head whenever I see it post.
I never said it out loud, but I thought it.
