This shit has seriously gone on too long. People who continue to cling to the "10,000 dead crushed by tanks hosed i to the gutter" bs are cranks. It's jews control the banks, chemtrails, the earth is flat, the moon isn't real level of crank shit and unless you're feeling very indulgent and someone is asking in good faith it can be dismissed as equally serious to that kind of crank shit.

  • astreus@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 month ago

    My favourite bit is when Wikipedia itself is like "the 10,000 claim was made by one dude who basically instantly retracted it and claimed the still unplausibly high number of 2,000".

    Also, the Tank Man photographer talks about the protestors throwing molotov cocktails and beating police officers to death.

    And the whole "China pretends it didn't happen"...they have official death estimates. 300 people. The US have their own estimate. 900 people. But no matter the number, it was much fewer than the protest leaders had hoped for.

    To quote one of the protest leaders "What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes" - Chai Ling

    By the way, that person is alive and well running a firm that fires people for not praying at work.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      the protestors

      It needs to be made clear; The insurgents were a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the student movement, a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people out of hundreds of thousands of activists across the country. They were not at all representative of the '89 protest movement. Chai Ling wasn't a protest leader, she was just some CIA backed asshole and she and her goons bullied their way up to the PA and took it over. They did not represent the student movement or Tianamen Square. It must be stressed that the movement was mostly in opposition to Dengist market liberalization. Folks wanted to preserve communism against marketization of the economy. A secondary factor was a desire to create a more permissive social environment that reflected communist views of gender equality and allowed young people more freedom to express themsevles. Again, not because of government repression, but because they viewed contemporary chinese culture as very staid and conservative in a way that was not in line with their communist values.

      • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        It's always funny to fire back at Redditors that the vast majority of the protestors weren't mad about communism, they were mad that things weren't communist enough.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        1 month ago

        Wrong. They wanted freedom to wear jeans and buy 50 flavors of industrial sized mayonnaise

        • rio [none/use name]
          ·
          1 month ago

          The Tiananmen Square massacre didn’t happen because in reality David Hasselhof sang on the Berlin Wall and East Turkmenistan became free

    • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 month ago

      To quote one of the protest leaders "What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes" - Chai Ling

      By the way, that person is alive and well running a firm that fires people for not praying at work.

      Wait, you mean the ebil CCP didn't send her to a camp??

      • Sephitard9001 [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        Thank god the CIA stumbled upon her situation by happenstance and with no previous connections to her, managed to ferry her and her co-conspirators out of the country just in time after only having just heard of her plight 😌

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          If there's one thing America loves, it's immigrants seeking asylum

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        She, along with other Assets student leaders fled before the clash actually happened.

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
      ·
      1 month ago

      By the way, that person is alive and well running a firm that fires people for not praying at work.

      It's always the fucking Christians stalin-stressed

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 month ago

        Yeah she and her cronies were literally a CIA op. Like a "It's on the CIA website" CIA op.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        The army psyop unit released an edgy trailer for their unit, and there was a segment where the text says something like “we are behind it all” and it shows a montage of world conflicts, including the Tiananmen protests. Of course, that itself could be a psyop to make people paranoid, but it’s pretty obvious that competing superpowers would hop on each other’s conflicts.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      To quote one of the protest leaders "What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes" - Chai Ling

      This only works when the people also think it was unjustified.

      Every revolution in history has one of these instigating moments, including colour revolutions. Most recently Ukraine's moment in 2014 was the sussy sniper moment that has all kinds of evidence pointing towards far right shooters being involved and covered up. Even the February Revolution had a moment like this when the palace guard shot all the unarmed protestors.

      The key point is that it's unarmed protestors that didn't deserve it. When it's a situation where people understandable grit their teeth and say "yeaaaaaah but the protestors hung cops and burned them alive" yikes-1yikes-2yikes-3 it doesn't work.

      The people need to be enraged and believe the government NEEDS to be overthrown for it to work, if people think the protestors kinda brought it on themselves they don't enrage in the same way. The CIA and fascists pull these false flags off all the time, I can't think of a single incident in history where the left has.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        The USSR had ties with unions and communist parties and leftist terrorists. But I don’t think they ever planned any false flags to help those movements. Like the Italian militants supported by the USSR were doing bombings and killings in response to the mob and fascists who attacked first. I don’t think even westerners have claimed the USSR faked any terrorist threats to bolster their factions. “Whataboutism” is used by liberals to cry about leftists because all they had to do was put up a mirror. Not saying intelligence agencies never lie, but it seemed that spreading propaganda to a diverse country whose minorities suffer was sufficient

        But there have been some claims of false flags. For example, a KGB defector claiming that the KGB planted a story about the Vatican knowing about the holocaust and not doing anything about it.

      • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml
        ·
        1 month ago

        The people need to be enraged and believe the government NEEDS to be overthrown

        And like, the vast majority of people in China at that time had seen their life spans double and gone from living in old style rural farmhouses to communes and apartment complexes with a then-modern quality of life. It's no wonder that the majority of protestors were against Deng's liberalizations, they had lived the success of the Mao-era economy and didn't want to fuck things up - Chinese people alive now would probably go to bat to defend the Dengist economic system in a similar way if the CPC signaled massive reforms.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Chai Ling is great, there is a lot more from that interview where she just openly displays what an unhinged monster she is, like when she adds to that part that the students are stupid and unworthy of her sacrifice, which is why she plans to escape (and though she didn't leave quite as quickly as she seemed to plan, she did leave quickly enough that she wasn't around for when the "massacre" would have happened)

      Oh! And it's also important to note that it was her interviews with western outlets following fleeing the conflict that produced the "tanks mulching corpses" story

      • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml
        ·
        1 month ago

        Sounds to me like she was an early example of a Yeonmi Park, where you get famous for a thing that everyone is primed to hate and then every time you talk about it you have to one up the previous time you talked about it.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          YP is a refinement. Chai Ling was talking wild shit from the jump, YP escalated over time like you say.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        1 month ago

        It seems like she would’ve committed a student massacre herself if she had access to weapons lol.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      1 month ago

      By the way, that person is alive and well running a firm that fires people for not praying at work.

      Lmao. A perfect candidate for American citizenship.

    • xkyfal18@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 month ago

      lol Chai Ling, the famous empathetic and charismatic leader who was killed by the SeeSeePee!!!! Look up what she said about her fellow students,THE CCP AUTHORITARIAN BOTS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS!!!11!!11!

    • FreudianCafe@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 month ago

      Suppose it was 5000 deaths. You would still need to do it 200 times to match the amount of ppl usa killed in a single war.

    • D61 [any]
      ·
      1 month ago

      lenin-heisenberg Just say no to terrorism.

    • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      dutch redditor takes time away from busy blackface schedule to call out racism wholesome

      • Nakoichi [he/him]M
        ·
        1 month ago

        The only fun part about being a mod is seeing some of the asinine reports people make about hexbear posts.

        • carpoftruth [any, any]
          ·
          1 month ago

          Also going mad with power and forcing everyone to be trans, don't forget about that

              • Łumało [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
                ·
                1 month ago

                I'm being harrased for bein a :cissues: minority over here :cri:

                I'm going to complain about you :t34: :hexbear-trans: to my :lemmitor: friends for being such meanies :rage-cry:

                spoiler

                also why the fuck does disco basket have a similar face to me wtf

                  • Łumało [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 month ago

                    :hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans:

                    :hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans: :go-ahead:Oh god oh fuck please help me I'm being surrounded :hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans:

                    :hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::bridget-disco::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans::hexbear-trans:

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago
      1. Being mean to Redditors is anti-white racism, the worst kind of racism.
      2. It is batshit because it disagrees with what the average western treatboy idiot believes.
    • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 month ago

      If I had to take a guess based on my own past as a dumbass radlib who believed anti China bullshit I'd say he's trying to claim that by not listening to Chinese people who claim it happened we're ignoring their voices and that makes us racist against Chinese people even though he's the one who actually hates China

      See in his mind he thinks every single Chinese person who knows it didn't happen is brainwashed and they just don't know the truth so it's OK for him to not listen to any of them, also he believes that it's physically impossible for him to be racist by virtue of being a liberal

      So yeah, very tangled mess of brainworms but I think I sorted them out

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 month ago

          There's a legit thing where "smart" people can be more susceptible to confirmation bias because they're skilled at finding patterns in information, but that doesn't mean the pattern is necessary real or significant. "Intelligence" (i am skeptical of the concept of a single intelligence trait) doesn't necessarily protect you from weird cognitive stuff.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 month ago

        And the gotcha libs are like "i ran up to a random person in Beijing, shoved a microphone in their face, and started interogating them about 20th century politics! They got uncomfortable and left! That proves [fascist screeching]

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Over/under on how many Winnie the Pooh memes this guy has posted today?

    • sub_ubi@lemmy.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I thought this was a comment on the racist and batshit students https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_anti-African_protests which lead to the Tiananmen square protests!

      But no just a fedditor

    • Infamousblt [any]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Well see white people good and other people bad, it's actually literally that easy because that's what liberal democracy looks like smuglord

  • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    The only famous video/image 99.9% of all Americans see of it is tank man NOT getting run over by a tank, and even then so many of them will be like “um yeah you don’t want to know what happens after the video cuts off” but the full video DOESNT CUT OFF AND HE JUST WALKS AWAY UNHARMED.

    Meanwhile in America if you google “NYPD running over protestors” your results will be like:

    -NYPD running over protestors May 2024

    -NYPD running over protestors February 2024

    -NYPD running over protestors December 2023

    -NYPD running over protestors October 2023

    -NYPD running over protestors March 2023

    And so on and so on, and that’s just in one city

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      1 month ago

      The only famous video/image 99.9% of all Americans see of it is tank man NOT getting run over by a tank, and even then so many of them will be like “um yeah you don’t want to know what happens after the video cuts off” but the full video DOESNT CUT OFF AND HE JUST WALKS AWAY UNHARMED.

      The ones that have seen the full thing all say "but then he was disappeared afterwards" with no evidence and everyone just totally believes it because they just believe that's what China does.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        The guy gets escorted by what looks like bystanders concerned about his well-being. But if you ask redditors, they were undercover agents who took him to a black site to execute him even though he was just a guy coming home from shopping and not an activist lol. It’s the equivalent of an american cop killing a random student because he happened to stop by to ask a cop what the protests are about - which is more likely to happen than the tank man being killed

    • LaughingLion [any, any]
      ·
      1 month ago

      This is my go to for the power of propaganda but it only works in person. It's "Do you know what happened to the Tank Man at Tienanman Square?" People almost always answer that he was run over. The response is great because while we don't know exactly what happened to him we know one thing for certain; he was not run over. That's the one thing we can say for sure and its the one thing they believe happened through the power of propaganda.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      Yeah, a bunch of people run up and push him out of hte way of the tanks. And no one ever talks about how he climbed up on to the tank to have a chat with the tank commander, then climbed down, and absolutely nothing happened to him. Imagine climbing on to a cop MRAP or APC in the US.

      My headcannon is that the tank commander was his kid and he climbed up there to discuss what they were having for dinner.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        They tried to go around him multiple times, then when they realized he was just gonna block their way, they decided to stop so they wouldn’t accidentally crush him lol. That’s authoritarian.

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          There's a Parenti line something like "the evil 1984 authoritarian CCCP USSR... broke up without major bloodshed"

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            1 month ago

            Hah. That's true. Pretty much all of the millions of early deaths and all the suffering that occured during the destruction of the cccp was down to capitalist looting.

      • Nakoichi [he/him]M
        ·
        1 month ago

        Or if tou happened to be walking through the quad when the national guard opened fire on student demonstrators totally unprovoked as happened to that girl at Kent state

    • culpritus [any]
      ·
      1 month ago

      EV_Dabs supercut link anyone? I know the original uploads got deleted, but I though someone reuploaded them under a new account.

        • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          Eugene_V_Dabs was a poster here who did awesome short agitprop videos.

          One of the videos he published was a cops running over crowds supercut IIRC, probably what prompted the question.

        • culpritus [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          Sorry, I've seen a video linked here a few times that's pretty much exactly your comment, so I assumed you might have seen it too. I thought it was from a prolific user (Eugene_V_Dabs) that posted here a while back, but I don't see it in the linked archive (I may have overlooked it, the titles are not easy to parse for content).

          Hopefully I can find the link eventually, and I won't seem so weird.

    • mayo_cider [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      But it's different in nypd, the protesters caused a minor inconvenience so it's justified

    • coolusername@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 month ago

      Actual footage from Tiananmen square as covered by the CPC
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8dqOuHqcBQ
      https://youtu.be/7bl_cyYHwNQ
      Explanation of what happened https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/

      Translation of official government explanation
      https://www.mango-press.com/report-on-stopping-unrest-and-quelling-counter-revolutionary-riots/

      Tankman full vid
      https://youtu.be/GRb4VY2dU4c

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    Pretty much everything people believe about it isn't true, but nobody cares because it's aimed at bad country shrug-outta-hecks

    I'm still shocked they actually admitted Saddam's shredder wasn't real.

    • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      The fact that most Americans just assume tank man got run over and killed even after seeing part of the video of it is what genuinely drives me insane. Like the rest of the video is readily available bro you can see him walk away

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        That baffles me, because even when I was a turbolib I realized the whole point was that one guy was holding up the tanks. If they had just run him over, why would they have stopped?

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
        ·
        1 month ago

        They said Saddam owned a woodchipper or big shredder that he would throw dissidents in to execute them and destroy the body.

        • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          The moment I realized r/LateStageCapitalism had been ruined was when someone was unironically defending the Iraq War by referring to Saddam's shredder. In the old days that person would've been quickly banned.

        • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
          ·
          1 month ago

          Imagine being the über despot murder lord as was portrayed and still needing to hide the bodies.

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    I think one of the interesting things about Tinyman and the tankman picture in particular is the mass psychosis (sorry if there's a better non-ableist term I currently can't conjure it) that the man in the picture was ran over by the tank. It's a claim that can be categorically disproven by 15 seconds of video. But it contradicts the hegemonic narrative, so it's like the video isn't real, the vibes are more real than hard evidence that this man was allowed to just walk.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      This is potentially a good starting point for exposing the greater mythology about the event.

      Ask if the person you're speaking with thinks the tank man was ran over.

      1. If they say yes, pull up the video, and ask if that makes them wonder what else about the incident has been mythologized. If they can admit they bought some BS you can work with them, if they dig in ("oh I'm sure something sinister happened to him later") you're wasting your time.
      2. If they say no, ask why a column of tanks was so deferential with that one guy when the story goes that there was an unprompted slaughter going on elsewhere. You can talk about how the event escalated, who was escalating, etc.
    • Highalectical@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 month ago

      I've seen youtube comment sections where the full video is shown and people are like "ah, but the people who shooed him away from the tank were actually see see pee secret police in disguise".

        • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
          ·
          1 month ago

          We know basically nothing about him or the other civilians involved from what I understand.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            1 month ago

            Yeah, afaik Tank Man has never been identified.

            I wish I could speak Chinese because I'd love to know what Baidu think's about the annual Western June 4th Freakout.

            • QuietCupcake [any, they/them]
              ·
              1 month ago

              Yeah, afaik Tank Man has never been identified.

              Yep. PBS Frontline did an entire episode on the great mystery of "what happened to Tank Man" replete with cringe liberalisms like "what happened to the hOpE fOr dEmOcRaCy in China?!?" and how he "stood for the ordinary people!"

        • Highalectical@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          1 month ago

          I'm not sure. I thought they were random concerned bystanders. Regardless, libs jump to the least charitable interpretation whenever the subject is [insert bad country here].

    • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
      ·
      1 month ago

      mass psychosis (sorry if there's a better non-ableist term I currently can't conjure it) that the man in the picture was ran over by the tank.

      I feel like the term Mandela Effect would apply here.

      • Xx_Aru_xX [she/her]
        ·
        1 month ago

        and similar to the Mandela effect, it's Crakkkers not paying attention

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        Yeah it's somewhat similar. The mandela effect people love to cite evidence for their claims though (even if it's bunk evidence), in this case it is entirely 100% vibes based.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      Yeah, I don't think psychosis fits, because it's a propaganda thing not an individual loss of connection with reality, but I don't know what better term there is. Cultural delusion? It's wild.

    • coolusername@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 month ago

      Actual footage from Tiananmen square as covered by the CPC

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8dqOuHqcBQ

      https://youtu.be/7bl_cyYHwNQ

      Explanation of what happened

      https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/

      Translation of official government explanation

      https://www.mango-press.com/report-on-stopping-unrest-and-quelling-counter-revolutionary-riots/

      Tankman full vid

      https://youtu.be/GRb4VY2dU4c

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    If anyone wants a good example of this brainworm freshly-regurgitated by our .World friends: https://lemmy.world/comment/10437862

    Tankies, famous for pretending Tank Man media exists only in the form of one picture. Also one of them says "Peking" for some fucking reason.

    • Highalectical@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 month ago

      He had a comprehensive list of over 20 links prepared, with bangers like “Actually, the massacre wasn’t happening on Tiananmen Square, but next to it. Checkmate globalists”.

      Those crazy tankies and their well-sourced arguments!

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        1 month ago

        There was a “guide” on how to debate tankies on the neoliberal sub. Basically, a tankie will likely cite some author or newspaper article or academic or etc., but if you can’t find any information about that from the Wikipedia article of the related topic, then it’s best to assume the tankie is lying and wasting your time.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        Actually, the massacre wasn’t happening on Tiananmen Square, but next to it.

        I've seen this used as a gotcha -- most notably by the Columbia Journalism Review (lmao). Though correct, it's an extremely weak argument.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 month ago

          Even then they're still calling it a massacre. Like i am 100% certain some number of uninvolved civilians were deliberately shot and killed by pla troops who believed them to be insurgents, but as you drill down and drill down and drill down there's no moment where the pla fired en masse and indiscriminately on people

          Like, pure armchair general math, but from the pictures it looks like if the 280 number is accurate then probable 5-10% of the people killed were pla soldiers and cops. Which, like; i don't think that has happened in the us. I don't think there's ever been an incident in the us where 10% of the people killed during a protest were soldiers or cops. Like, idk, maybe yes? But that would be in a case where 1-3 cops where killed, idfk.

          Like, this isn't just a small amount of violence relative to the scope of the movement, it's a kind of violence that doesn't have clear parallels in the us. Right wing protestors attacked and killed an army troop convoy and then the military fought them and stopped the. This isn't kent state, where the army deliberately rolled up and killed a bunch of students, the armed pla troops came in specifically to stop the insurgents.

          • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            1 month ago

            Beijing Municipality has checked and double-checked all the figures from the Martial Law Command, the Public Security Ministry, the Chinese Red Cross, all institutions of higher education, and all major hospitals. These show that 241 people died. They included 23 officers and soldiers from the martial law troops and 218 civilians. The 23 military deaths included 10 from the PLA and 13 from the People’s Armed Police. The 218 civilians (Beijing residents, people from elsewhere, students, and rioters) included 36 students from Beijing universities and 15 people from outside Beijing. [29] [30]

            https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/#fn29

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
            ·
            1 month ago

            This isn't kent state, where the army deliberately rolled up and killed a bunch of students, the armed pla troops came in specifically to stop the insurgents.

            I think this way of framing it to libs -- a focus on the facts themselves, and how deadly violence by the protesters led to a deadly response -- is better than focusing on what is or isn't a "massacre." It's easy to get bogged down in semantics and hypotheticals when talking about if certain facts fit a definition. The facts themselves should take center stage, and keeping the discussion focused on them leads people to question whether "massacre" is fitting on their own.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              1 month ago

              I specifically use "insurgents" because that's what they were - cia backed insurgents trying to escalate who attacked unarmed soldiers and bured them alive. They weren't part of the protest movement, they were parasites trying to hijack it. The protest movement was mostly Maoist, like there were all kinds of issues being raised, but it was primarily a Maoist movement protesting Dengist market liberalization. The Insurgents weren'ty part of that.

              • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
                ·
                1 month ago

                That's a good point, too, though maybe something like "instigators" or "hijackers" would be even better. I'm trying to put on my lib hat to see what would cause unproductive debates over language, and "come on, there wasn't an insurgency" seems like an easy one to avoid.

                The George Floyd protests were also recent enough and popular enough to provide some good examples of how many protests don't involve everyone acting in lockstep, and their very nature invites all sorts of people to try and steer the crowd to their preferred ends.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Oh god this entire thread is full of gems

      These people are not socialists. It’s all just right wing agitprop. It’s extremely obvious.

      I assume hexbear is just the russian troll factory.

      I can read Russian and I sometimes read Russian media and it uses almost exactly the same topics for their people. There is a new one that they started to repeat recently and it’s that Zelensky is an illegitimate president, because his term has ened.

      It’s weird that those forums are in English, reading the insane takes and rhetoric. I also noticed many of the accounts are just prolific posters, making the community seem small to me. Also saw an account with a trans flag, which is surprising they would accommodate such a person or such a person would have those weird views on lemmygrad.

      The utility is that they use hexbear and .ml as intro exercises before they promote the trolls to Facebook or reddit.

      Last part is true and even more insane/sad because these people are all terminally online gossip mongers that Pol Pot would have immediately executed.

      You own a computer? You don’t work in the fields? You wear glasses?

      Yep, literally executed.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        Zelensky is an illegitimate president, because his term has ened.

        Isn't that like... The basics of how a democratic mandate works?

        Not that I've ever seen it as a topic here but still. If Rishi Sunak continues as president PM beyond his term time I'm calling him illegitimate. In fact I'm calling him illegitimate now and forever because we literally never got to vote for the fuck. He has/had no mandate.

        EDIT: Fuck me libs jump to the dumbest conclusions over the smallest shit.

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]
          ·
          1 month ago

          Term limits aren’t very indicative of democracy. If someone keeps requesting someone to lead beyond a nominal limit, is it not undemocratic to reject it? I still think a mental/age limit should be in place though.

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 month ago

            I still think a mental/age limit should be in place though.

            I think any functioning and sensible democracy would not require one. The problem that the US has with geriatrics is a problem of a malfunctioning bourgeoise-democracy. It's underperforming as a "democracy" even for the bourgeoise because of this.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              1 month ago

              The us has term limits specifically because what's his ass kept winning and wasn't fashy enough.

          • Dolores [love/loves]
            ·
            1 month ago

            Yea, I don't think you're front the UK

            doesn't seem like you are either

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 month ago

            Lmao I was running on 36 hours of being awake when I posted that. I currently reside in Woking if you're wondering, but only for 2 more weeks or I wouldn't be saying that here lmao.

            Also a mod over on /r/greenandpleasant, probably banned you at least once if this is the kind of conclusion you jump to over stupid shit.

      • fox [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 month ago

        There is a new one that they started to repeat recently and it’s that Zelensky is an illegitimate president, because his term has ened.

        Help me out what's it called when an elected official doesn't give up power after their term ends

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        Oh yeah, near the bottom some dumbass claims people here think the same of Mao, Pol Pot, and Putin!!

        • CarbonScored [any]
          ·
          1 month ago

          We're mainly just fans of leaders who wore a hat at least once shrug-outta-hecks I don't make the rules.

        • CarbonScored [any]
          ·
          1 month ago

          The scary concept is the idea that either Facebook or Reddit is a promotion!

          Xi please don't promote me just leave me as a lowly Hexbear-only peon xi-god-emperor

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 month ago

        If anyone still remembered the Brady Bunch I'd make a joke comparing the "Marsha Marsha Marsha!" line to "Russia russia russia!"

        Obsession with a plot!

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        There is a new one that they started to repeat recently and it’s that Zelensky is an illegitimate president, because his term has ened.

        Never seen this on here lol. But you’d think these dweebs would be hand wringing about term limits.

        Last part is true and even more insane/sad because these people are all terminally online gossip mongers that Pol Pot would have immediately executed.

        I love this because they somehow concluded we support Pol Pot and not that he was a US/China backed psychopath. They always talk about Pol Pot but they never talk about who kicked his ass and ended his genocide. It just stopped out of magic.

  • 2812481591 [any, it/its]
    ·
    1 month ago

    "He maybe wasn't ran over by a tank, but lets not discount the possibility that we actually universe shifted, and we're originally from a timeline where I was always correct. look up the Mandela effect."

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      We Mandela effected from the universe trampled the tanks! Wait i guess he did actually run over the tank.

  • CarbonScored [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    Pretty much all lib claims about it can be debunked by two minutes on Wikipedia, which is generally a pretty anti-China source itself. Goes to show they've done literally zero research.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 month ago

      Yeah. I got in to this with some people last year and I was like "Fucker even Wikipedia admits the truth now!". It's so frustrating.

  • Tripbin [none/use name]
    ·
    1 month ago

    I wish I still had the screenshot from a few years ago when they went really big on pushing against censorship by spamming the post and damn near everything on the front page was that pic and it stayed that way for days all while the comments were full of people saying reddit won't let you see this as it was damn near the only thing you could see on reddit. Now they repeat it every anniversary.

    What do we really expect from a site who's main protest against changes to it was spamming John Oliver memes and then wondering how they lost.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      1 month ago

      The top posts are still related to the protests or hong kong lol. China is doing a terrible job and their troll commander should be shot!

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    1 month ago

    It's truth or falsehood frankly does not matter to a lot of people who believe this. It confirms their world view and emotionally feels truer than the actual events themselves, which are well documented if they should care to know.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 month ago

        Lol and the concept of brainwashing was invented by the US because they needed to explain why US troops in Korea were defecting, and why defectors and captured soldiers were explaining the war crimes the US committed. "They were brainwashed!"

  • Crowtee_Robot [he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    The Tank Man was actually Bruce Banner and the "massacre" was an unfortunate Hulk rampage that the Chinese government covered up because S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't ready to reveal The Avengers to the world yet.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        One of them is the Mother of Champions, whose whole superpower is based on rapidly producing litters of super-strong expendable children. The team was created not to be offensive per se, but

      • Crowtee_Robot [he/him]
        ·
        1 month ago

        Socialist Red Guardsman believes he is the revolution, and has frequently broken his back to ensure that his teammates toe the party line with his endless rants and lectures.

        tequila-sunset

  • WilsonWilson [comrade/them, he/him]
    ·
    1 month ago

    So your friend got run over by a tank. Why should I care?

    I would have just moved out of the way easy peasy.

    When the tank police tell you to do something you should just comply like any law abiding citizen.

    Show

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      1 month ago

      trump-yassified YOULL GET MY GUNS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS OBUMMLER!!

      trump-drenched U-uh so-sowwy, officer!! I will bayonet this pregnant woman and her elderly mother!

  • homhom9000 [she/her]
    ·
    1 month ago

    "China is bad country that massacred people who wanted democracy. I also hope the police can shut down the encampments at universities because it's illegal"

    I wish liberals at least formed some type of ideology instead of regurgitate half baked ideas they heard somewhere.

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      They exist in a blissful eternal present where there is no context, no action and reaction, only the gentle lapping of waves and the shade of the coconut tree