Hey, tankies, decent countries don’t have to violently suppress their populations and then lie about it. Oh, and socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, not whatever the fuck they’re doing in China.
(inb4 people assuming I must support the US since I hate China)
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Don’t ever let anyone forget or brush under the rug the horrible acts that occurred in Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989.
https://www.history.com/topics/asian-history/tiananmen-square
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No thanks. I don’t give a fuck about getting ratio’d. Let the people decide. Assuming this platform ever gets more traction, which it seems to be doing, the vast majority of the people that come here won’t be tankies so… no, no I don’t think I will go somewhere else.
These people really want their echo chamber, not a good look for Lemmy imo
Indeed, the “they’re all a bunch of tankies over there” narrative is one of the more common objections I see to Lemmy when I mention it as a valid Reddit alternative over on Reddit. Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, mind you - we need non-tankies to balance things out. Here’s hoping that there’s enough new blood coming in anyway to manage that.
One of the main reasons I’ve switched over to feddit.de. Hope more instances have the sense to block servers that are openly pro-imperialism and pro-totalitarianism.
@gzrrt @xTechDeath Is it not better to have open dialogues with people who disagree with you, rather than blocking them?
If they’re interested in having good-faith discussions, sure.
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You can’t have good faith arguments with cult members, fascists, or tankies.
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@CrimsonOnoscopy Why not?
Why are you including me in your response to him? Did I say anything about blocking?
@xTechDeath Because you were in the above thread; probably just has something to do with how #Mastodon includes mentions in replies, I didn’t add or remove anyone to my responses here
echo chamber? youre the one echoing western corporate media narrative.
I have done no such thing lol. I’ve made two comments one making fun of the guy that said china isn’t part of world news and this one. Your comment trying to paint me in this light just reeks of desperation or the inability to read
I’m sorry let me clarify. By ‘you’ I mean the influx of users with a predominantly western liberal mindset.
So posting one article about china bad is an influx of new users with a predominantly western liberal mindset echoing the corporate media narrative. Seems like a bit of a reach.
If someone posted some bad shit about USA nobody would give af and would mostly agree, you just seem like you don’t want anything critical of china
Why make/go to another political echo chamber over potentially getting “ratio’d” (which is meaningless and doesnt say anything about one’s argument). Anyone has the right to post something no matter what people around think. Posting all this on an instance that would be INSTANTLY defederated by instances like lemmygrad is pointless and we’d just end up with less debate and more polarization.
I think that tankies, arguably, are hardly leftists at all.
Looking at the community, all I see is Red-Draped Reactionaries.
Nah, eventually they will be outnumbered an dislike to go beyond lemmygrad because they get endlessly shit on
Meanwhile in Taiwan, the island’s equivalent of the Tiananmen massacre from the KMT dictatorship (the 228 incident) has its own memorial park and museum.
No need for a self-inflicted legitimacy crisis when you respect your citizens’ basic rights.
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If you’re not Taiwanese yourself (i.e., one of the people who’s actually affected by what happens there), I definitely don’t care about your opinion on this topic.
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I’m not sure I understand China’s reactions here… if nothing happened, then why not just let them congregate and “remember” something that supposedly didn’t happen? What’s the harm? If they were blocking traffic or riots were involved, it would understandable to want to stop it, but if it’s peaceful, where’s the harm? Unless of course, something did happen that they want people to forget…
Doesn’t that make you more seriously consider that the CPC’s position on this issue has been misrepresented?
Wow. There’s a lot of CCP folks working the federated space.
One of the big instances, Lemmygrad, is basically dedicated to that crowd. If the influx of Reddit refugees doesn’t counterbalance them then at some point I’ll probably move to an instance that doesn’t federate with them.
I’ve already done the same, can recommend it
Could just block it, that way you don’t have to see it, and don’t have to start a new account.
Sure, though I like the idea of more explicitly supporting instances with better quality control.
Seems like there’s also no way around blocking individual users who openly support fascists.
Can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?
Wow a post on lemmy denouncing the CCPs actions instead of denying them or even trying to justify them? Thats rare
I plan on actively posting to counter the constant barrage of tankie propaganda that is very clearly an issue here. Misinformation is a very real issue that we face in our society and unless we actually do something about it, it will only continue to get worse.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Most people ‘vastly’ overestimate their ability to spot propaganda.
Why not post about the atrocities committed by the USA and their allies on their anniversaries then?
Might get exhausting posting every day.
Having been a life long socialist myself, it’s a bit mystifying to me how anyone can believe that the atrocities commited by the US somehow makes the PRC or Russia in any way deserving of praise.
For sure I’d like more people to call out the American genocide of its natives, or honor the heroes that fought for their emancipation during the time of chattel slavery.
But I’ll be damned if any of those atrocities will make me defend the human suffering caused by the Chinese or Russian regimes. To me, being a socialist means standing up for the little guy, judging a society by how we care for those who have the least. The only us vs them struggle there is, is the one between the working and the ruling class - not the one between east and west. Idolising Zedong only puts another Emperor on a pedestal. I say fuck them all, western or eastern rulers and billionaires, they’re the real enemies of a social and equal world.
There’s a propaganda push in the west to demonize China, with the obvious goal of creating consent for a potential war. Even the Trotskyists of wsws.org (which have no favorable view of China) usually defend China from fake or misleading shit. Repeating US propaganda uncritically, or even criticizing China for good reason without proper context, is helping the US propaganda machine bring us to the brink of annihilation.
It’s important to be truthful and fair, and not encourage sinophobia and war propaganda, so be careful when criticizing China.
Whether it’s China or really anything, I’d agree to being critical of any claims made without proper context, yet the context here is the massacre and subsequent cover-up perpetrated by the Chinese government following peaceful protests on the Tiananmen square.
Meeting that with whataboutisms and vague excuses is disrespectful towards the victims full stop.
Being a socialist should be easy, because truth is on our side. It should be easy to point to Tiananmen square and say “this is what happens when the ruling class feels threatened”, just like you can say the same thing when the US government busts their unions or murders their black citizens. Being an unquestioning supporter of either of these regimes is not what socialism is to me, and it never was. I just don’t understand how anyone can reconcile these opposing views in their heads.
Imagine there’s this guy at your work, who every day brings up some crime or another, but somehow the perpetrator is always black. So you tell him “Can you talk about something else?”, to which they get defensive and say “Why don’t you want to talk about this? Can’t we all agree that this is bad?”. If you let this situation go on for too long, you’ll soon find your workplace taken over by open racism, and everybody who’s uncomfortable with this is going to quit, reinforcing this trend.
This is what’s happening on almost all western social media, and society in general, regarding China. Open sinophobia, hate speech, and calls for violence.
That does explain the issue in a much more understandable way to me, and I thank you for not assuming I’m here just to argue.
I guess my slice of the social media “bubble” has always been more left leaning so I tend to see much more criticism of NATO and the US and haven’t really thought much about criticism of China since to me at least it has seemed fairly balanced or at least not too imbalanced.
Also, maybe read this thread on Twitter and also follow the sources there, as you seem to be under the false impression that the protests were entirely peaceful.
Threads on Twitter are usually not a very compelling source, I am not against changing my opinion if the evidence is compelling, but that was not it.
See for example how the question is answered over on r/askhistorians:
Well sourced with actual recent publications and honest as to what the uncertainties are.
Why, also, do you conflate violence against workers or minorities with violence against liberals (and people mislead and cynically used by said liberals). These are not the same thing, and no socialist I know is opposed to political violence in principle. And neither, by the way, are liberals. One of these things is clearly always wrong, the other is or is not, depending on the circumstances.
Most I know are generally opposed to violence, with some exceptions allowed for any revolution or class struggle.
When it comes to countries like the US or China, using violence in the form of the military or police against your own population is such a big difference in power that any violence ought to be as minimal as possible.
Using tanks and rifles against a group of civilians is so far beyond that, that it’s not within what I think any of the IRL socialists I know would deem appropriate or acceptable.
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Not sure I’ve seen many reports of the USA jailing or disappearing its own citizens when they dare speak up about said atrocities.
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You boys seem to have that handled.
@Senokir @Solaris1789 I hope they don’t ban you
If this community doesn’t welcome people who actively fight against misinformation then I am more than happy to be banned.
It is my understanding that that has been the case for a long time, yes. But I also hope that with the large influx of new users that we will overshadow any bad actors attempting to spread misinformation.
@Senokir @realcaseyrollins Yeah we should nuke Beijing.
Don’t bother posting if you have nothing interesting to contribute.
?
Did anyone here suggest that we do such a thing?
If this was reddit i’d be concerned but there isnt any censorship here i know of
@Solaris1789 Didn’t the #Lemmy software literally use to have a hardcoded blocklist of words it wouldn’t let you use?
By words you mean slurs?
@raresbears Yeah, although there were some other words that were banned as well IIRC
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Nice job trying to justify the Tiananmen Square massacre. Now can you justify the detention of 32 people and the restriction of the square itself which took place yesterday?
they’re not justifying it, they’re refuting it.
Shows both of those guys, including the “I have no desire to explain, trust me bro” one, never even read that.
I call bullshit on this view of the things. I have no desire to explain in detail but I lived in one of those countries and my dad was in front of those tanks.
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I mean he did give his dad as s source, that is a lot closer to s source you can get than what you can get a westerner
Bold claim. Evidence?
The specific incident as remembered by the director of the “Ziemowit” mine in Lędziny: https://noweinfo.pl/chcialem-ich-ratowac-jak-gornicy-kwk-ziemowit-sprzeciwili-sie-stanowi-wojennemu/ just days after they killed 9 people in a close by mine called “Wujciek” https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/aktualnosci/38063,Pacyfikacja-kopalni-Wujek-najwieksza-zbrodnia-stanu-wojennego.html
I’m interested in Marx ideas of communism and find them intriguing, but Stalin and Mao, fuck those guys, and the people who try to cover for them fuck you too, you are terrible assholes and you don’t deserve to be engaged with.
What are you talking about this is clearly not in china.
I replied to the guy who wanted evidence that my dad was in front of the communist tanks. I never said it was in China, I said I lived in one of those countries, which in this case was Poland. I thought this is Worldnews so we don’t only talk about China.
But Ok, for some reason it got deleted by the moderator. I see. I guess it’s best to block that instance from my side, my involvment doesn’t lead to anything here.
So your polish dad was in front of chinese tanks?
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an unknown number of deaths… yet calls it a massacre
It’s a large number, but it’s hard to tell how large because the CPC keeps that information tightly under wraps. The official statement claimed just 200, but recently declassified diplomatic cables from the UK give an estimate of 10,000 dead (source). The original source was inside China’s State Council. It’s important to remember that the actions taken that day were far from universally supported even inside the party. There was a massive purge afterward of officials that were deemed to be sympathetic to the protestors.
Edit: This estimate likely has fog of war issues itself, though, since it was sent so shortly after the massacre. Other estimates are far lower, but still much higher than the official figures. The CPC does not want to admit the extent that it screwed up and killed its own citizens.
10,000 is absurd and it’s a disgrace that the absolute bullshit reporting that some hack journos gave at the time is still treated credibly. Do you think there were machine guns on roofs and tanks deliberately pulping bodies, too?
That’s what I said in the edit. That said, the CPC really isn’t helping the situation. They have shown themselves to be highly untrustworthy when it comes to any level of transparency.
Citation: Other stories as-covered by western media. The CPC has censorship laws, but when they actually publish official statistics on something, those are pretty accurate. Their estimate on Tiananmen fatalities is much more like the statistics published by most journalists than the 10k number or even that hack’s revised 2k - 3k count, and their accounting of events is much more like the ones that have held up over time among western journalists (the square was cleared without killings, there weren’t machine guns on rooftops, most protestors left peacefully, there was no mulching of corpses, etc.)
There were many estimates from western press at the time that were in the realm of reason, those claiming it was a few hundred dead. There’s no excuse for the 10k guy unless you want to argue he suffers from hallucinations.
You’re essentially relying on cultural osmosis from the same culture that uncritically parrots the 10k figure and other such nonsense that you see spouted on Reddit. If you keep digging, eventually you will find that just about every story holding up that Ba Sing Se vibe is a fabrication.
There’s no excuse for the 10k guy unless you want to argue he suffers from hallucinations.
There’s a pretty good excuse. He was told a piece of information by a source
You’re essentially relying on cultural osmosis from the same culture that uncritically parrots the 10k figure and other such nonsense that you see spouted on Reddit.
I brought that specific one up because I found it first, but walked it back when I found out it was unreliable. But more broadly, I’m looking at hundreds of citizens being killed by their own government. In the US, the closest to that was race riots against Black people that ended a hundred years ago. We’re not censoring discussion of them and there are efforts to reconcile with the nation’s past, even if some dullards don’t want their precious feelings hurt.
There’s a pretty good excuse. He was told a piece of information by a source
Oh, “a source” gave him information that was completely incongruous with any observation made by people on the ground? It sure seems like using “a source” to launder absolute bullshit would be effective if it can merely be brushed off after the fact, so it’s a good thing western rags don’t do that constantly.
I brought that specific one up because I found it first, but walked it back when I found out it was unreliable
That’s the lovely thing about anglosphere propaganda, you don’t need to censor the truth (well, mostly) so long as you make your version of a story a thousand times more accessible than the other versions of that story.
But more broadly, I’m looking at hundreds of citizens being killed by their own government.
Remember the death total there includes soldiers, and we are talking about militants who killed unarmed soldiers clashing with the PLA, with students being deliberately driven into the crossfire by student leaders.
In the US, the closest to that was race riots against Black people that ended a hundred years ago.
If we mean “against their own citizens” then, uh, sure, I acknowledge that the types of conflict the US is involved in is very different from what China does. China fights off color revolutionaries domestically while the US kills millions abroad, an unknowable number of migrants, and is in a constant process of lynching black people and occasionally protestors to those lynchings.
We’re not censoring discussion of them
Are you kidding? There’ve been ongoing efforts for the country’s history to censor discussions even just of chattel slavery in schools, to say nothing about how talking about the summary executions otherwise referred to as “officer-involved shootings” are basically considered satanic CRT material and any attempt to call the no-note-“suicide”-by-hanging of BLM organizers a lynching when the cops say otherwise makes you a conspiracy theorist.
Can you imagine if this happened just once in China? An ethnic minority pretty much ritually murdered in the form of historic violence against that ethnicity, written off as “suicide” and brushed under the rug with no further contest, despite of protests from the victims’ parents that the thesis makes no sense.
and there are efforts to reconcile with the nation’s past
The current head of state, the leader of the so-called left wing party, is an unrepentant segregationist who justified his actions with a “states’ rights” argument as recently as, like, 2019 (and he just hasn’t been challenged on it since). Do you think the dashiki stunt helped us towards reconciliation? There is no effort to “reconcile” with shit. There’s an allowance for more black drone pilots, but reparations or even just basic restitution for the destruction and theft wrought on black communities is a pipe dream.
China teaches about the June 4th incident in its schools, it’s a matter of public knowledge, and claims to the contrary are made by ignorant redditors who read 1984 and just kind of imagine what China’s domestic policy is based on vibes.
