- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
Basic image analysis like this should have been done ages ago, but libs don't care about the truth just blind propagandizing
I was honestly so surprised myself when I realized that the supposed most famous picture of the massacre didn't show a single dead body. Just makes you think about how easily can falsehood be used for propaganda.
One of the first casualties of the whole protest was an unarmed PLA officer that was tied to a bus by the protestors and burnt alive. Then mocked and photographed. They never share that photo around though.
Westerners refuse to believe that about half the fatalities were PLA members because in their countries, the police would never be unarmed, never abandon their equipment, never hesitate to kill in retaliation.
Westerners also don't pity the murdered PLA officers because they view them the same as their own police: violent people that eagerly abuse their power.
I think that's the most eye-opening thing about this "massacre"
if this had happened in the US, the streets would have run with rivers of blood. It would've been utterly brutal. And the US would be the one rewriting history to try and pretend it never happened. It's always projection.
Yeah so much western propaganda is essentially just accusing this or that country of being like the USA. I genuinely don't understand why it's so effective
Because the other half of the propaganda is convincing people that the USA isn't like the USA. No idea how that one works so well either thought.
The same reason why slave-ocrats said that enslaved people liked to be enslaved, but were in constant fear of revolts. They live in fear of being treated like they've treated others.
And they've been taught that history is over, there's no alternative, which means other places must be exactly like the US. It's inconceivable that other places could be run differently even while those places are thought of as other.
It's even worse, they automatically assume those places must be worse. So if US politicians are being unaccountable corrupted bureocrats, the others must be complete tyrants, if US police is murdering and brutalizing people left and right in the open without any repercussion, the others must be worse than gestapo, and so on and on.
Thanks for the essay! I just finished it, it's some of the most pointed and relevant stuff I've read in a long while. I especially liked this bit towards the end:
When we proudly assert that we are for the individual over the collective, we’re essentially saying that some people count as people, and some don’t. At the heart of liberalism lies dehumanization; we should not forget that slave ownership was one of the original “individual rights” that was so fiercely fought for by American revolutionaries.
Therein the arguments against socialist states. Every death under socialism is a failure of the government, because it dared to try to solve problems collectively. Under capitalism, deaths are due to the individual’s failures, and therefore no one’s responsibility.
Also it's hilarious how the author thought to compare Marx with Tupac
It works because America's propaganda regime is so hegemonic and overwhelming that the vast majority of Americans assume everywhere else is just like america - All cops are violent, all soldiers are used for foreign wars of aggression, all politicians are corrupt and believe in nothing. The idea of a political leader who acts from firmly held convictions, wants to help people, and is uninterested in using their position for wealth and power simply isn't something that exists in the average American's conceptual framework of reality. They readily believe so much propaganda because in many ways the propaganda simply tells them that other places are just like the US they experience every day.
Definitely. Americans in particular are surrounded by media that affirms and reaffirms their supposed greatness, but libs across the west believe similar stuff and it's not just because they're in an echo chamber. emizeko shared this article that goes into another aspect of liberal myth making: westerners agree with this shit because they want to.
Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live.
I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy.
I think everyone is well aware of how little change they can truly effect within liberal democracy. How much carnage their governments cause at home and abroad. What happens to people who protest... Accepting that all the people our government subjugates deserve it brings a sort of comfort. Pride, even.
I do disagree with the article somewhat. Though it is probably more splitting hairs than anything else.
From my point of view it seems less that they want to believe it, and more that they aren't given the tools to properly analyze it. They are given fiction as their "tool" for understanding the world, and when the propaganda resembles their fiction, they don't question it because it matches their toolset.
Of course, there's still no excuse for not breaking out of that pattern and refusing to learn more. I agree with the article there. I'd say almost everyone here did at some point, even under awful circumstances where it would've been much easier to just "switch off" and remain content. Though intellectual laziness is one of the biggest virtues in the west.
That's true. Though being politically illiterate doesn't explain why libs are so incurious, to the point of dismissing evidence before even looking at it. Their ignorance is willful to an extent because they know on some level that they benefit materially from playing along. Or if they don't benefit, then they can at least avoid getting punished for rocking the boat.
Yeah, I can't ascribe much agency or self awareness to the us burgerosie. I'll grant that most of them have normal human faculties but the ones i interact with are profoundly ignorant and incurious to the point where they might as well be ayerdales for all the intellectual function they utilize
Everyone here knows that there's a threshold where the US will explode in to armed conflict. There are 800,000 cops in this country and every one of them is a psychopathic fascist champing for a chance to spill innocent blood.
It's harrowing trying to do street marches with Libs who are too ignorant and foolish to understand how dangerous the cops are. Trying to save them from themselves is not fun.
Imagine if BLM protestors had tied an unarmed, out of uniform, cop to a bus and burnt them alive what the libs would be screaming for. They would want outright slaughter.
I think they were strung up after they were immolated, and the fire was so effective because it was a petrol bomb (which was likely sourced from a certain oil-obsessed freedom country)
My understanding that in the initial ambush firebombs were thrown in to PLA troop trucks and in to the open hatches of APCs, and the troops inside had no warning and no real chance to escape.
During the New York Draft Riots, the New York Times machine gunned protestors.
In authoritarian America, citizens aren't taught the history of the New York Draft Riots and anyone who googles 紐約徵兵暴動 gets disappeared by their secret police! 😱😱
Word. Kent state? Armed National Guard goons in full battle rattle with bayonets fixed fired 7.62mm rifles point blank in to students. Tianemen? The majority of the PLA soldiers in the square didn't have any weapons of any kind what so ever. They didn't have batons. They didn't have helmets. They were just wearing their uniforms and basically standing there. It was a show of force, certainly, but unlike anything I can think of in Western political history.
Not true, they do ... And they claim that it's another instance of SeePeePee violence ...
Let me see if I can find the libbed up reddit thread where I saw it:
ShowNot as upvoted as I remember, the post is a Midjourney selfie from tank man.
I don't think it's fair to group the insurgents who attacked the PLA in with the protestors. The vast, vast majority of the protestors were peaceful throughout and never had any interest or intent of instigating a violent conflict with the CPC. The insurgents who ambushed the PLA were a very small group of people who did not reflect the interests of the greater protest movement.
I didn't know there was a video of tank man until like two years ago. It was always shown as an image with the implication he was then killed
i distinctly remember being 'informed' that "right after this photo, he was disappeared by the secret police and never seen or heard from again!"
Yea that was the version I was "taught", that no one knows who is is or what happened to him and obviously that means the communist party disappeared him
Western media loves to talk about disappearances because you can say anyone has "disappeared" if they've just been out of the public eye for a bit. The audience is led to believe the implication that they were killed or imprisoned at some black site, but since the source never actually said that they technically didn't say anything false, even if they were perfectly fine the whole time.
Anybody remember that tennis player, Peng Shuai? I had a lib I know irl hit me with it as evidence that China was disappearing dissidents. I mentioned the above to him, and then, sure enough, she got Juche necromancy-ed.
Meanwhile, in America, where the cops kick your door down at 3am and your family doesn't have any idea where you've gone or what happened to you...
Not to mention the literally millions of undocumented people who get kidnapped and shipped somewhere. Even the government admits it doesn't know what happens to some of them.
When really he was just some guy and it was 1989 so it's not like there was social media or anything to identify him.
"whenever tank man isn't on screen, all the other characters should be asking, 'where's tank man?'" but genuinely
Yeah, a bunch of people grabbed him and were like "Dude there is literally shooting a few blocks from here get out of the way of the tanks and get to cover". But they were just people, not evil SEE SEE PEE death spies.
ummm nice try tankie scum but i've seen video footage of the evil dick sucking dungeons of the orient, i know what you communist monsters did to that poor hero
I remember being sat in my classroom as a primary school kid with my teacher showing us that photo on the newspaper days after the event and him telling us to think about what happened to that poor brave man.
what happened to that poor brave man.
He probably went home to clean up, and later hooked up with some PLA Chad for a romantic dinner. When he climbed on the tank for a chat he was actually exchanging numbers.
My theory, based on the fact that he had a shopping bag, was that the dude in the tank was his son:
"Hey, didn't I tell you grandma and grandpa are coming over tonight?"
"Uh, yeah dad, could we talk about this later?"
"No. And do you remember how I specifically asked you to pick up some lettuce and tomatoes on the way to work?"
"Uh, dad, we're kind of holding up traffic here... WHAT THE HELL, DAD PLEASE GET OFF THE TANK, PLEASE, YOU'RE EMBARASSING ME"
Tank Man was later given a medal for Most Epic Dad Moment
Aww, that would be so romantic
Guy buying groceries seeks Lt. tank commander for romantic candlelit dinner to discuss merits of Deng's reforms in light of the student protest movement
Let's supposed it was done: (I don't know if anyone did or didn't)
Who would have broadcasted or platformed it?
Oh it has been. Libs simply don't care. They have a religious conviction that communism bad and they'll interpret any information to support that conviction, and dismiss anything that contradicts it. Parenti's "Non-falsifiable orthodoxy" is a great term for how they think.
You don't get it! Deng flattened all the people with his fat cheeks, then inflated everyone back up, then cleaned up the blood and viscera but not the bodies!
I believe there's actually video footage of tank man climbing up on the tank, conversing with the tank commander, and then getting down and walking away.
I'm told that many people were lying prone because there was machine gun fire from the battle between the PLA and the insurgents several blocks away.
The only reason whitey even gives a shit about these dead chinese people is that they hate china so much. After all, half of them are still secretly jerking themselves off at the thought of millions of chinese farmers dying due to the Three Gorges Dam going broke.
Same can be applied to Xinjiang propaganda. "Oh, the State Department now cares about Muslim lives?"
The US led war on terror killed more Muslims than exist in Xinjiang
Yea lol, i don't think i've ever heard a liberal even mention the student massacre in Mexico in the late 60s. They don't give a shit, they just use it as a justification for their hatred.
Muricans; TIANAMEN SEESEEPEE 10,000 dead tank jelly gutters!
Also Muricans: What do you mean Indonesia slaughtered half a million innocent people with the knowledge and support of the US government? What do you means the US and Saudi conspired to kill hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in a campaign of naked and uncomplicated genocide? What do you mean the South Korean forces murdered tens of thousands of innocent people using a pretense of communism? That's all bullshit I would have heard about that and anyway they weren't white so I don't care.
I like that we have/need new books to re-report information that was widely known decades ago because of how easy it is to sell propaganda to the west. We have actual documentaries, made by the west at the time of Tiananmen, that completely contradicts the massacre narrative that was invented years later. lol. Libs really will believe anything as long as it comes from the mouth of some oligarch backed talking head.
The key reason this kind of lazy propaganda works is because people want to believe it. It leverages the latent racism and capitalist realism people have internalized living in decaying western societies. The idea that a country that doesn't follow liberal ideology could be more successful is a complete anathema to these people.
Indeed. "The west is the best" is the prevailing thought in the zeitgeist of the west. So as bad as things can be in the west, at least they are still "the best." But if other nations actually practice "freedom and liberty" better than they do, despite not screaming about how "free" they are all the time, it calls the whole western narrative into question. And causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. And people in the west are not given the tools they need to deal with that, so they just lash out and get angry, or find an easy excuse to ignore it.
The massacre false narrative was invented basically at the same time as the actual events of the 4th/5th took place, you can see foreign diplomatic actors who were there talk about how "others" are saying there was machine gun fire on crowds while they themselves saw no such thing.
Edit: Someone else posted one of the leaks I was thinking of: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
Have you seen that chart that tracks how Americans went from credditing the USSR for making the greatest sacrifice in WWII and contributing the most to victory in 1946, to completely removing the Soviet contribution from the picture by the 80s? It's really sad. The Red Army deserves better.
Libs will probably lose their minds if they can't make jokes about Tiananmen Square.
Aww my kitty was named Tinyman (pronounced like a Jewish surname). I've never seen that word outside of reference to my kitty.
Thread I wrote about Tiananmen: https://twitter.com/prolewiki/status/1666492127730098208 (Thread reader link due to Musk fuckery on twitter)
CIA-funded leader Chai Ling crying crocodile tears hoping students will be shot while she herself deadpan says she'll be out of the country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5__ESiklA1A. She was later extradited by the CIA during Operation Yellowbird and now lives in the USA.
It was not fabricated, it was exaggerated. Clashes occurred around Beijing and bloodshed was real. Most of them were Maoists clashing with pro market reform government.
Nobody is denying bloodshed. There absolutely were violent protests outside the square. The claim in question is that the military gunned down thousands of peaceful protesters in the square, which so far as I know is a claim that's exclusively made by people who were not there.
Even that is giving too much credit to the US government narrative.
There literally are all the US mainstream news outlets like CBS News who actually had reporters there at the time: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/
Also from classified US communications with assets on the ground: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
Funniest thing is that "tank man" photo idiots spam on Reddit all the time. Most people in the west don't realize there is video of it, that the guy didn't get run over. Furthermore they assume he was blocking tanks heading towards the square, infact those tanks were at the time headed away from the square to avoid engaging with armed agitators (people with guns and grenades that had killed police) in a crowded environment. Dude was trying to make them go back.
The deaths that day were people who got gunned down by the "protestors" or the police who were killed when the "protestors" threw grenades (military ordnance) into police vehicles. People that were armed by the CIA as part of a color revolution operation, one that failed because it didn't actually have any support and more importantly because the PLA commander on the scene ordered his units to leave the area rather than responding in kind. The only actual protestors that day were communists having labor protests happening nearby and not the dancing libertine youth acting as the face of the US color revolution operation involving armed groups trying unsuccessfully to provoke the PLA soliders into responding to deadly attacks with deadly force in a crowded urban environment.
My personal opinion on the matter isn't that much different from yours (the biggest reason being that the media blitz about the massacre seemed preplanned... It just didn't go according to plan). The problem is that I can't prove anything, so it's all conjecture. So I typically leave that out. It's already a sensitive enough subject.
My understanding is that after the initial ambush of unarmed PLA soldiers armed PLA units were eventually able to get to the area and engage the insurgents in combat, and that the deaths were a mix of PLA soldiers and insurgents, with probably some innocent bystanders because war is hell no matter how you try to prevent civilian casualties.
On balance, it would be fair to say that while thousands of protestors were most likely not gunned down in the square itself, hundreds were being gunned down around it. So there was a massacre by the PLA, it just didn't happen in the square itself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
https://archive.is/20191208232045/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/13/world/turmoil-china-tiananmen-crackdown-student-s-account-questioned-major-points.html
https://earnshaw.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story
If they were just protestors, why were they gunned down while the ones in the square could all be cleared out with no fatalities? Did the people who incinerated soldiers and strung up their burnt corpses leave peacefully beforehand?
Because the PLA forced themselves through several blockades before they were able to reach the square. It was at these blockades that the strongest resistance was met, and where the majority of the killing occurred.
We don't know for sure, but the order seems to be that [the PLA] have to get [to the square] by midnight. So by 10:00 p.m. they're getting desperate. They cannot fight their way through thousands of people with riot shields and billy clubs, so each of these columns coming into the city starts radioing into headquarters, asking for permission to go ahead at any cost. Finally that permission starts coming down sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.
The first rounds of fire catch everybody by surprise. The people in the streets don't expect this to happen. There are a couple of hospitals right near Muxidi, and the casualties start showing up within 10 or 15 minutes of the first round of gunfire. The casualties run very high because people didn't expect to be shot at with live ammunition. When they start firing, people say, "Oh, it's rubber bullets." Even after it becomes clear, even after they realize that the army is going to go ahead at any cost, people still pour into the streets. This is the amazing thing: People were just so angry, so furious at what was happening in their city that they were not going to step back and let the army do what it was doing. This is why the casualties from Muxidi on east towards Tiananmen Square were so high. This is the major military confrontation of the evening.
That account as-presented leaves out the immolating of unarmed soldiers via petrol bombs, which seems necessarily to distort their evaluations of why people behaved how they did. iirc some "protestors" also took the liberty of seizing weapons from an APC that had a catastrophic failure and killed the soldiers inside, and this was still before the crackdown. Remember, a number of soldiers also died, they had to have been killed somehow (though one was killed by friendly fire and like 6 or 7 by the accident I mentioned).
if new yorkers burned some nypd officers to death and then a bunch of people were killed I'd be on the people's side
not taking a grand stand on the events I don't know shit about fuck and don't rightly care honestly
The NYPD are a bunch of jackbooted thugs of a white supremacist administration under the thinnest veneer of "justice". Equivocating between them and the PLA is absurd.
again not taking a real stance just saying a thing I noticed, Death to America of course
“As far as I was concerned,” he said, “anybody who’d stand against the cops was all right with me, and that’s why I stayed in…Every time you turn around the cops were pulling some outrage or another.”
https://www.villagepreservation.org/2022/06/13/dave-van-ronk-ally-at-the-stonewall-uprising/
Remember that picture of 50,000 uniformed fascists taking over part of the city in a show of force allegedly for a funeral because some pig got got?
That said, my understanding is that relations between the PLA soldiers and the students were positive throughout. Almost all the PLA soldiers in the square had no weapons, including no batons or riot helmets. I believe there were some riot units present but they were a small number relative to the overall PLA presence. There are stories of the PLA soldiers and students singing songs and sharing food. It's important to remember that most of the students in the square were advocating for a return to Communist economics from the Dengist market liberalization. From what I understand the CPC didn't really know what to do with them because they didn't want to start a confrontation with people demanding more communism, and that's largely why the event was almost entirely peaceful.
Thousands of completely unarmed PLA troops had already been in the square for days. This is nonsense. There's pictures of them chilling with the students.
So there was a massacre by the PLA, it just didn’t happen in the square itself.
Current research by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation suggests that the massacre occured in the same place Sadaam Hussein would later store his nonexistant WMDs.
I don't think violent protests is an appropriate description. From what I understand armed insurgents ambushed and killed unarmed PLA soldiers and there was a running street battle as armed PLA units tried to get to the area to combat them.
most of them by the time the actual violent clashes happened certainly werent maoists. Yeah there was a significant % of the protestors that were coming from the left of the CPC but you have to remember that the unrest span month(s) and many cities. In Tainanmen by that point in the movement and leading to that the make up of those that stayed and engaged in lynchings and clashes with the PLA and police was solidly "pro-democracy/free-s[peech/liberalism" youth. Also western intelligence focus and assets had already zeroed in in Beijing and those elements after smelling blood from the more organic initial country wide unrest.
My understanding is that that is not the case at all, and that the CIA backed "liberal democracy" gang was a very small number of people who bullied their way in to control of the PA system and never had much support from the students. My understanding is that when the PLA finally made an ultimatum to leave almost all the students joined hands and walked out of the square peacefully. I believe there was some confrontation between PLA soldiers in riot gear and students, but it was relatively minor and confined to small areas of the square. It's hared to overstate that what happened bears no relationship at all to the western narrative.
for a breakdown of this topic in particular, also see this, particularly section 3 for any liberals reading this
(the book is also available on libgen.is as a PDF and EPUB)
~let me put this here real quick~ *removed externally hosted image*
Shouldn't even take a book to come to that conclusion, honestly. Frankly, I doubt anyone who is entrenteched in the propaganda around the event would change their mind no matter how much evidence you show them. For them, China is bad, so everything else must follow from that.
Even western media, at the time of the event, said that basically nothing happened in the square. It wasn't until they realised that didn't line up with the US position that they changed their line, but you can find old articles (including first hand accounts from diplomats in the area) that say there wasn't much.
I don't think anyone denies that some violence occured in the city as a whole, though it was very often levied the opposite way of popular portrayal. Especially because a lot of the PLA that were initially deployed were not even armed.
Sorry for the shitpost reply, but, lol no shit.
Edit: just wait till you find out about what Gaddafi actually did and how the USG used him as a virtual supervillain to fund our adventures in the Levant. The USG and their mouthpieces always lie.
I'm bowing out y'all, it was fun. Definitely will be looking into this event and checking some references people pointed me to.
Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy. In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence for effective persuasion. You behave like Chinese state apologists to most people.
Now maybe you're right, TBH I can't claim to know for certain, but if you actually want to convince people you need to do more than point to documents I have no more reason to believe than the pictures and documents I've already seen. Why should I believe your sources vs what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn't agree with you? Especially when it seems apparent that current Chinese leadership has an obvious authoritarian quality and ends justify the means type of attitude. You may deny this but all it takes for me to believe it is to see the fear in the faces of Chinese people when asked certain questions.
Very well said. I forget that one can already be on the defensive when engaging due to poor faith arguments or extraordinary claims which seem so obvious by others but which still need hard evidence to believe rather than gestures and seemingly innocuous phrasing.
I would say the more extraordinary of these claims is the one believed by a tiny subset of the western world (at least when these claims are made in the western world).
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
Demanding evidence and the writing off evidence as "auth-communist propaganda" is just declaring your prejudice correct with an extra step. Shall we say that internal memos of the US government are "auth-communist propaganda" too?
Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
It's interesting because you seem to have still inherited your beliefs from the state you decry and corporate media.
Define "Authoritarian" in any kind of useful way challenge level: Impossible.
The united states has the world's largest prison population by both total incarcerated and percentage of the total population. People from the US calling any other country authoritarian is fucking hilarious, and should make it clear how little meaning the word actually has in common usage.
Um acktually tankies, don't you know I hate the US too?
Anyway, back to my angry ranting about China's authoritarianism using US state department propaganda about them.
I never claimed the U.S. wasn't authoritarian. I think the U.S. is in fact extremely authoritarian, maybe even on the same level as China.
I think the U.S. is in fact extremely authoritarian, maybe even on the same level as China.
And yet you believe everything 1 tells you about the other. I wonder white
I'm just going to paste the entirety of On Authority by Engels here, I know you don't read theory but at least try
A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.
Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?
Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.
Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.
Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?
But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
Yeah, that "it's just like religion" argument really is a blast from the past. As in, edgy atheist spaces c. 2010.
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
I'm going to send you an emoji of a pig pooping on his own balls. I'm not sure if emojis are transfered properly through another federated instance, so if it doesn't work please send me a message so we can fix it.
No ML denies that China is 'authoritarian'. They argue that all states are.
Almost everything Marxists say is poorly understood by their detractors and framed in a negative light in one way or another.
what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn’t agree with you?
This makes it seem as though you haven't read the literature and arguments of either side. If that's the case you shouldn't be coming to any conclusions at all, especially to dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox. By definition, the counter narrative is going to sound unorthodox in light of the orthodox claims. The correct approach is to read the source and judge it on its own merit and in light of other known facts.
"No investigation, no right to speak"
-a quote from an EVIL AUTHORITARIAN!
Same energy as saying that Soviets 'pressed' women into science careers in the same era as liberals were paying Nazi fashion designers (Dior) to design clothes for women (the 'new look') that made working almost impossible, so as to force them back into the home after their taste of (relative) freedom during the war years.
(To be fair to Dior, his sister was based and he apparently named a perfume after her but my source for this is rather cleansing (Wikipedia) so who knows how true that is.)
This makes it seem as though you haven’t read the literature and arguments of either side.
Correct, I have not studied this event.
If that’s the case you shouldn’t be coming to any conclusions at all
You'll notice I didn't come to a conclusion.
dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox.
Your position is in fact unorthodox in my culture (U.S.) -- that's what I'm saying. If you have a non-standard position, if you actually want to convince people you need to make the information accessible and give people a reason why they should believe it over their normally acceptable sources. Making fun of them is probably counter-productive (even if it is fun).
You're proudly proclaiming that you know little about the subject? Yet you still felt like joining in, because...?
Not to mention the fact that you're essentially asking that people chew up this complex topic and regurgitate a dumbed down version... because you're a yank and being uneducated is part of your "culture"?
You can read, and you have a mind, it's up to you to put those two things together to inform yourself and form opinions.
because you’re a yank and being uneducated is part of your “culture”?
Why did you paraphrase culture, it's true 😬
Anti-intellectualism and proud ignorance is one of the cornerstones of American culture.
Nope, I'm assuming y'all want to get people on your side right? I was just giving an example of what people outside of your bubble see when they see posts like this. No need to get your panties in a bunch.
To clarify for some of us that don't understand, are you saying the poster is sealioning or engaging in bad faith? I haven't ever seen this word and I'm not sure if there's some specific reference I am not getting.
Thats what I'm saying yeah, just trying not to let my undergrad zoology go to waste
I avoided plant bio and animal bio for as long as I could. I have to take them soon, wish me luck!
Rare to see an anarchist one. Though I'm guessing this one is "anarchist" because they have a Rage Against the Machine tattoo and went to a BLM protest once (But left early because some of the other protesters made them feel uncomfortable.)
"In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim" is a conclusion. If you publicly claim that something happened, you should be prepared to provide some kind of evidence, even if it's flimsy. If you're actually willing to learn, read section 3 of this article
Your position is in fact unorthodox in my culture (U.S.) -- that's what I'm saying.
In Nazi Germany in 1944, I think it would be regarded as an unorthodox position that Jews aren't specifically inclined towards greed and evil conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race. By your epistemology, wouldn't it be true that the person defending the Jews is the one that has the burden of proof and not the people who cling to antisemitic conspiracy theories?
Correct, I have not studied this event.
To paraphrase comrade Mao; no investigation, no right to speak
To be clear, I'm not speaking of this event, I never made any claims of knowledge about this event.
you're just loudly denouncing everyone who has investigated the event in question as wrong because they go against your (admittedly) ignorant view of reality
you actually want to convince people you need to make the information accessible and give people a reason why they should believe it over their normally acceptable sources. Making fun of them is probably counter-productive (even if it is fun).
Says an "anarchist"
On a post
About a book
That's is literally the source of the information in which you say we should be proving.
You not only have no right to complain about being made fun of and harassed but deserve it. lol
Do you expect everyone to read your book? How credible is this author? What about this book makes a true understanding of the events accessible rather than just being another person voicing their opinion of evidence the choose to accept?
this is pure JAQing off. you'd have answers to your questions if you spent more time investigating and less time regurgitating state department propaganda
expecting everyone to do the work for you because you're too lazy is
shit
We always do the work for them anyway and it's still not enough to permeate the thick lib brain barrier.
y'all are doing god's work out there comrade. even if no known substance can pierce their ultradense skulls you might still catch someone who can be saved, and that's worthwhile
bro, just go read the book, or at least parts of it and skim for quotes to smack us down with, if its really that flimsy fucking get us for it!
"I could beat you up if I wanted to but I don't so I won't waaaaaaaa"
Could you do me a favor and kindly add this to your reading list?
If I had a sufficiently powerful laser I could point it at one of the retroreflectors they put up there and get a reflection back, there is actual proof, and the fact that the Soviets even acknowledged it says a lot about its veracity. Do you think that just because some of the stuff that the US says is true that I'm to take the other things at face value without proof? If NBC cites CBS cites AP cites Reuters cites CBS cites NBC... am I supposed to just be like oh well there's a lot of citations so clearly it must be true? Please try to challenge this "west good by default" mindset that you have, it clouds your judgment.
Oh, good response. I should keep this in mind in the future when people try to call us "conspiracy theorists." Establishing that we believe in things that have evidence behind them, and don't just say everything the US says is a lie.
Many leftists conspiracy theories are just "Yeah, the US toppled this government and slaughtered a huge number of people. Here's the CIA written article on the CIA website where they admit to it".
I guess that's why people never listen to us. Our conspiracy theories are boring. They're all "shady government agents doing exactly what you'd expect them to do."
We don't get any fun stuff like secret cabals or lizard people or hologram moons. It's all just real world espionage shit, which is much less fun and exciting than James Bond.
Just came from a forum thread where OP was like "i don't want to be a conspiracist but I think tech companies are working together to suppress tech workers!" And I had to be all yeah bruh they go caught ten years ago and had to pay some fines and pinky promoise not to get caught again. Shit's exhausting I hate it here I wanna go live in Tamriel.
Of course they did! They bought them from the French and used them with the knowledge and support of the US in the Iran-Iraq war!
They didn't have any weapons of mass destruction in 2003, of course.
This is all silly! The moon landings were faked. They had Kubrick film it! Of course Kubrick being Kubrick he insisted on filming on location...
My favorite "The moon landings were faked" is the old 90s game Battlezone. In Battlezone the moon landings really happened... but they were a cover up because the US sent a secret army of advanced hover-tanks to the moon to gather a nigh-magical unobtanium resource as part of their solar-system spanning secret war with the Soviets. In the first cut-scene the camera pulls back from the Apollo site to show the secret high tech US army base. It was a fun game. Shame about the anti-communsit brainworms. A hybrid FPS/RTS vehicle sim. Cool concept, if a little clunky.
all it takes for me to believe it is to see the fear in the faces of Chinese people when asked certain questions.
The "I talked to one person so now I'm an expert on the situation" school of historical anyalysis.
I too would be scared talking to a patchouli oil scented, dreadlocked white boy anarchist.
If some tourist also asked me about some shootout that happened in my country I would bail ASAP too. Serial killer shit lol who begins a convo with "so what about that time yall killed students"
Imagining a scenario where a Chinese tourist randomly brings up the Columbine massacre while they're visiting
"Hey, what do you think about the 2020 antifa uprising where the antifa burned all America's cities down and executed white parents and small business owners?"
"I think you're a cop".
My understanding is that most people in China don't really care about the 1989 unrest and are perplexed as to why westerners make such a huge deal of it.
The country that says Iraq had WMD said China did a thing that wouldn't make any sense for them to do. That is the extraordinary claim. Why do you feel that a claim made by the US, who has only ever lied to you, is a reasonable starting point?
Do you think the U.S lies a whole bunch but other countries don't lie or only a little?
I think the US verifiably lies more than other countries, and has international publishing efforts that make it harder for other countries to lie like we do. Being the hegemony and the long time sole superpower does put you in unique positions
extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence
All it takes to prove that the massacre did happen is evidence. Where is this extraordinary evidence?
Proving that something doesn't exist is much harder. There was a liberal in here earlier though that was also saying that we're a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I gave him links, you can see them below. First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre. This includes a CBS reporter and a Latin American diplomat.
First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre.
In the square itself, maybe, but all eyewitnesses agree that the PLA shot and killed many hundreds of protesters in Beijing during the protests, which had been (until that point) largely peaceful.
So while you at the author of this article might be correct to say that there was no actual massacre in Tiananmen Square itself, there certainly was a massacre going on around it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
https://earnshaw.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story
https://apnews.com/article/4d3bc613370f4f1d97bf841d1ef5ef6c
https://earnshaw.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story
correct me if I'm wrong, but skimming through this drivel, I'm left with the impression that the author never actually saw anyone get shot
That was my analysis as well. It's really hard to tell where his seething hatred for China (and really all of Asia) ends and the truth begins. There's very little actual substance.
This line cracked me up:
Asians have an incredible and perplexing capacity to absorb monstrous events and get on with life anyway
Gold star for you! This is significantly better than the usual nonsense that's pushed. But after having claimed a massacre for so long, this still seems like damage control to me.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you? Or do you think that the CPC account of the situation might be closer to reality? They claim that after the protest was broken up, some violent instigators began attacking the military in the area around the square. And yes, hundreds died, and many of them were soldiers.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you?
Yes, they do. The term "massacre" doesn't necessarily imply that the protestors didn't fight back after the PLA started killing them.
I might suggest you read this then. It's by a reporter for the Washington Post, who was in the city reporting on it at the time.
There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant.
Again, the reporter's point is not that "there was no massacre"; it just didn't happen in the square.
Yep. Even after being forced to admit that he made it up, he's still reporting about things he admits he never saw. Which I have to admit, is a pretty bold move.
So you initially linked it as a source and now you've realized what it actually says, it's unreliable and worthless?
Seems par for the course around here, tbh.
I'm really confused by this one. He admitted he lied, and so did many of his colleagues. But you believe that he's still telling the truth about the massacre?
Look, we don't know exactly what happened there that night. But it's clear that the west lied through their teeth about the entire thing, and the lies are self perpetuating at this point. China's story seems to check out. You HAVE to see that.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China's evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about? This is 100% pure propaganda, and it's mostly, perhaps entirely untrue.
It's hard to know exactly what happened, of course, but the facts of the matter are that even the CCP themselves acknowledged the fact that hundreds died and all the Western journalists who were there confirmed that the PLA shot and killed hundreds of protestors.
Also, while it's true that Western journalists may have been biased, it's also certainly true that China's authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth either, especially if they were responsible for the deaths of many civilians.
While the extent of the massacre in Beijing may be contested, it seems incontrovertible that it did occur.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China’s evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about?
Asides from the fact that this is classic whataboutism, you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians.
It is perfectly possible to deplore both massacres, in Beijing and in Mai Lai. This is not a simple zero sum contest between China and the US where one must be the good guy and the other the bad guy.
you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians
It's not portrayed at all. Every year you'll see articles about Tiananmen Square in corporate media -- My Lai (or any of a dozen similar U.S. atrocities) are left to history classes.
Where it is convienently left out that the only extraodinary thing about My Lai was that it got out. The US armed forces are animals.
you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians
That's the thing, I've lived in the US my whole life, and the My Lai Massacre isn't portrayed at all. Like our genocides in Korea and Indonesia, we simply don't talk about it. I was already a socialist when I learned that America invaded Russia in 1918, even joining forces with Imperial Japan to do so. Every subsequent piece of our history I've learned, every incomprehensibly vast crime, has served more and more to put our programmed greivances against the PRC in perspective: clashes are bad, people dying is bad, but to claim that it's somehow a vast and unprecedented sin is a sick joke coming from the country that did the Tuskegee experiments and the Iraq War.
This is not to say "China is infallible and perfect", because it's still a state, and all states operate at least a little bit in the realm of Bad Shit. What I am saying is that the US is incapable of not lying through it's bloodstained teeth, and the 20th century alone shows that it is not to be trusted with anything whatsoever.
It's incredible how much becoming a communist is filling in the missing gaps of history that liberal society just conveniently left out.
I'm about done discussing this with you, as you already seem to have a reasonable amount of facts.
But your insistence that China fired upon peaceful protests based on "China’s authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth " is absolutely insane and not at all fact based. There's zero evidence to support that. The PLA must really be bad at massacres if they allowed that many of their vehicles and personnel to be killed by unarmed civilians.
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation.
I have done nothing of the sort. I've addressed every topic. I'm inquiring further about why this one particular event is of such importance in showing how evil China is, while things like this are just one of those things. The fact that this keeps popping up every single year and actual American massacres are barely mentioned should indicate to you that the people running the propaganda machine really want you to hate China.
They've shown themselves very willing to twist the truth, but you still insist that the core claim is true, no matter what. The clear use of this as propaganda should lead you to question it.
But I doubt that any further conversation will be productive. You have the basic facts correct, which is better than most. Many people did die that night. Many of them soldiers. The fighting happened in many separate locations away from the square. Those are the facts. If you extrapolate a massacre out of that, there's no facts I can draw upon to argue with you, other than repeating that the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Also, for reference, here are photos from a massacre that actually did happen.
Never noticed that the upper estimate is almost twice the body count of the June 4th incident.
Why would I believe your sources over others? Especially when there are what appear to most people to be pictures of the Chinese state using lethal military force against protesters and dead bodes on the ground. Are these fake pictures?
Again, fantastical claims. Where are these pictures?
Edit: I love that this is the second person to come in here who gives us shit for being conspiracy theorists, disregards first hand eyewitness accounts, and runs away when pressed for evidence. Murder trials in the US must work very differently than I've been led to believe.
You mean thr picture of a few people lying on the ground clearly alive near a bunch of what are quite clearly bicycles?
Do you believe we went to the moon? If so why? If not why?
Do you believe human caused climate change is a thing? Why?
You're believing somebody, why do you believe those people?
Do you believe in Last Thursdayism? I choose not to because reality has no meaning that way and the consequences are still the same.
Do you believe in your own birth? After all, you couldn’t possibly remember it. How do you know aliens didn’t just materialize you out of nothing? Again, I choose not to subscribe to the alien-materialization theory because there’s a much better hypothesis that seems to make a lot more sense.
Do you believe your eyes and ears, or has
the party
already commanded you to disregard their evidence?
Show
Honestly, you want a simple, widely accepted, heavily west-biased source? Literally just read the wikipedia article.
"[CBS and WP journalists] could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square"
"cables from the United States embassy in Beijing agreed there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square"
Nobody here is denying there were protests, or that a limited number people died in clashes with police across the country. But literally no reputed source, western lib or otherwise, claims that the government was out in Tianenmen killing civilians in major numbers.
I have only seen what is common of Americans to see, just like 911. Do you think 911 happened? I've been there, was there no twin towers ever? They're not there now. I haven't seen any special highly credible documents about that either, but I'm pretty sure it happened (who did is another question).
Of course 9/11 happened.
who did is another question
Interesting…
Communism evolved in to the Xeelee, killed everyone in the universe, and then went back in time to the beginning of the universe again to kill everyone in the univserse again 69 times! Checkmate, socialists!
It's a clickbaity title, and it's disappointing to see people engaging with it on the grounds of contrarianism, I guess.
The truth is (which I would assume/hope many here agree with) is that the violence associated with the protests was very real. It was , however, greatly exaggerated by western media in many cases. This has been known for decades, I'm not sure what this book offers that would change that at this point (no, I'm not going to read the article)
Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy.
It only sounds crazy if you assume you cannot possibly be a victim of a propaganda campaign, which I get it it's uncomfortable to think about but consider it and do your own research.