Thank you, I really appreciate your thoughts on this matter.

Even you, when trying to be amicable with me, still use terms like “regime,” which essentially means “government I don’t like” with the way it gets used.

Not that it makes it alright, but English is my third language so sometimes I am not as careful when using loaded words. I assure you it’s unintentional, but as you say it may be a result of bias (bias is a weird thing in that it’s easy to spot in someone else).

I think I will need to think a bit further on the subject, so I will definitely have a look at it again with fresh eyes, but I thank you for challenging my assumptions and providing me with sources I had not previously seen. Even though I can’t say that I have changed my mind, at least you have made me reconsider it.

What’s bothering me a bit here, is that the official sources are demonstrably not telling the truth - and are actively opposing inquiries so that whatever truth may be gleaned is hard won. It’s perhaps not evidence in itself, but when a government it willfully hiding and obscuring something, that is highly suspect and doesn’t encourage confidence in what they do reveal.

Regarding tone, it may just be because it’s very difficult to convey over text (and I am just misinterpreting), but also that my short stint here has led me to believe that while I in theory share political views with socialists here, these so called “tankies” are also very confrontational and polemic for no apparent reason (apparent to me at least). Said differences interest me though, so I am trying to grasp just what it all boils down to and what if anything I can learn from it.

if anything you’ll benefit from me not going on for too long because I’m excited by ideas I’m discussing

Actually, I don’t really mind long winded tangents as long as they are interesting, funny or preferably both!

Either you mean to say that “Someone on the internet saying ‘Just trust me bro’” is not a good source

Pretty much this. “bro” science, lessons from the “school of hard knocks”, insane 4 hr yt videos with absolutely no source references and Twitter threads with wild statements corroborated by screenshots from some obscure source… I could go on but it seems you understand what I mean.

Even the journo who said 10k recanted!

Yes, 10k is inaccurate. At the same time though, you have the mayor of Beijing claiming 200, the Ministry of Public Security claiming 563, while hospital records show about 500 as a minimum baseline, so I guess as far as official sources go we can’t really trust them either. 2 600 seems like the best estimate based on what I have found, which is still a huge number if you ask me when compared to other protests of similar size in western countries, consider e.g. the frequently quite violent protests in Paris and how the police there doesn’t murder a few thousands just because the government doesn’t agree with the protests (apologies for the digression).

(you) agree that the HRIC isn’t a great source and are just providing those links for convenience, right?

Not familiar with HRIC, it was just the search results that came up and they seem to be based on the information provided by the first hand witnesses I mentioned.

While the image is full of pathos, it doesn’t seem to hold up. Perhaps I am misunderstanding something.

It’s quite possible that one person saw something another did not, or that they were not there at the same time. Just based on my experience in crowded places like concerts, having complete situational awareness is impossible, and I am sure that with just 5 deaths in a huge square filled with thousands of people at night time you would have a substantial number that did not see anything. Their deaths are still quite likely though, as there are multiple sources that back this up - see the ones I have referenced above if you have any doubt.

It’s also worth noting that the various armies called in acted quite differently from one another, since some were more or less local to the city and others were pulled from far away places, with no local attachments and with varying levels of sympathetic commanders - so it’s quite possible that some groups of soldiers would have acted compassionately while others would have been more keen to shoot first and ask questions later. This is also supported by the fighting and killing between the different armies, and could (in part) explain the differences between the eye witness reports.

I hope Youtube is acceptable when it’s for archival footage of a documentary and a news broadcast

It’s fine, I am not watching 3 hours of unsubstantiated claims but 6 minutes is alright.

It’s plain that some “protestors” (a tiny number within the larger movement) committed murder and desecrated the corpses before the government retaliated.

I don’t think it’s that plain. As mentioned, you have several elements all killing each other at various points:

• Violent elements among protestors
• Elements of the PLA sympathetic to protestors
• Elements of the PLA with a “strong political” sense, loyal to the regime

Within that, you have soldiers being suddenly surrounded and encouraged by protestors to rise up against their perceived tyrants, you have civilians witnessing the murder of their friends and you have soldiers fearing for their lives - soldiers I might add that might have had no freaking idea what is happening because up until that point they were happily living their lives as illiterate farmers and now suddenly there’s chaos and their commander is telling them to defend themselves and now everyone without a uniform starts looking like a threat.

So you see, I don’t think I can attribute a lot of confidence to reports claiming that the protestors started lynching soldiers which in turn made them open fire. I think it’a an order of magnitude more likely that things got out of hand after the first phase of the dispersal, people were then hurt and things escalated from there up until the point where you have civilians stringing up burnt corpses in the street, soldiers summarily executing protestors and tanks running over people.

Regardless, a command was centrally issued and the consequence was a slaughter. Responsibility for the murders falls on the government of the PRC in my opinion, mens rea and actus reus.

In order to have an actual conversation, I believe having a common understanding of the facts is a premise, agreed?

Firstly, the number of people who died has a 200-10 000 range.

Timothy Brook (referenced above) makes a good argument for 2 600, which matches the number the Chinese Red Cross gave multiple journalists at the time and so that is what I am most inclined to believe. The baseline is in any case higher than 200, because Beijing hospital records show 500 dead, which does not include any killings carried out on the street since they presumably did not die at the hospitals. It is also probably lower than 10 000, as you mentioned.

Secondly, the case of the 5 murdered people in the square itself. Wu Renhua, author/historian and Choi Shufen (who is the one quoted above by Hui) name these:

1. Cheng Renxing
2. Dai Jinping
3. Li Haocheng
4. Zhou Deping
5. Huang Xinhua (I could not find a link, possibly spelled)

* Wu R. 天安門血腥清場內幕 and 六四事件中的戒嚴部隊, both available on amazon

You are failing to follow the simple timeline

This is not intentional, any simple timeline is hard to follow since the events happened over an extended period of time, and there were presumably many interactions between goverment forces and protestors leading up to the events that happened on June 3-4. So far what I have read on the subject suggests that violence directed towards PLA may have been e.g. pelting by stones or similar in the week before June 4, however I have not seen good sources claiming civilians were actually killing and lynching soldiers at any time prior to when the massacre actually began. If you do have such sources, I am open to changing my mind, although I do not think Twitter threads or Youtube videos should be seen as good sources, and are not likely to change my mind.

This is disappointing, you seemed more interested in actual conversation before.

Comments like this are uncouth and unproductive. I don’t appreciate being talked down to, and I will do my best to return the favour if you can do the same for me.

The idea of violence being a categorical bad with “exceptions” where it is permissible due to some carveout is deontological reasoning that has no place in a materialist assessment.

I am pointing out what I have perceived as the general consensus among socialists that I interact with, not trying to make any assessment, immaterial or otherwise in the above comment.
In so far as exactly when violence is justified, I believe that it is highly contextual, and ought to be justifiable so as not to allow abuse of power.

This last point is also where I believe we disagree, because were it factually correct that the various violence-monopolies that you refer to always meted out justifiable violence in perfectly proportional portions in order to protect the proletariat or some other noble cause, I would perhaps consider it a fair point. However I don’t think having an “intelligence agency” with little to no oversight with a license to kill and abuse their own citizens results in the best end result for the citizenry, and frequently it seems that the most vulnerable citizens receive the hardest end of the stick.

This isn’t to say that I can’t agree with it in principle, only that whatever the Tiananmen square massacre was, it was a far cry from a being the proportional and justifiable response to an outside threat.

This is all glossing over the fact that the violence by the CPC was not directed at the civilian students – who it gave plenty of warning to evacuate – but to the militants who had already immolated and lynched unarmed soldiers who were supervising the protests.

If you already have your conclusion ready, finding evidence to support your position is not only very easy, it is inevitable. Just ask any flat-earther or holocaust-denier. While it’s most likely true that a lot of soldiers were killed, and that some were indeed lynched by civilians, it is an outright lie to claim that the troops were the peaceful victims of an enraged mob:

I fell as I ran, together with the students, for our lives. The troops always came up, chased and beat us; dispersed and hit with baton viciously the students who came before them, falling, crawling and running in panic. We didn’t dare to stay, being dealt blows while running. As I fell again, the troops came up and hit me twice. Luckily I was not injured, but it still hurt. They hit with all their might, with no sympathy. Many students are pushed down, hit to the point that their heads bled and the blood spilt onto me.

~ Hui, W. (2019). Ten Questions about June-4th

Furthermore, in the book Hui also mentions 5 protestors that were shot dead within the first phase of the Tiananmen square dispersal, all supported by evidence from verified sources. While 5 people dead is not a massacre (that happened later), it does show that the PLA were not simply some “unarmed soldiers supervising the protests”.

It’s difficult to understand the chaos and pandemonium of that event, where several elements of the army ended up fighting each other as well as protestors. u/SickHobbit on r/askhistorians sums up quite thoroughly here in this excellent response: Why were the 27th Army Group killing other Army Groups/Police at Tiananmen Square?

If you are interested in some actual academic sources on the topic, I would recommend these:

• Béja, Jean-Philippe. The impact of China’s 1989 Tiananmen massacre. 2010.
• Brook, Timothy. Quelling the people: The military suppression of the Beijing democracy movement. 1998.
• Lim, Louisa. The people’s republic of amnesia: Tiananmen revisited. 2014

While I have to admit that I’ve been frustrated by the tankies during my short stay on lemmy.ml, I don’t think that’s a fair representation of their views.

Most I believe seem frustrated by a western world that seem entirely too content in accepting a narrative heavily biased in favor of laissez-faire capitalism and right wing narratives, to the extent that it has blinded them to the cruelty of regimes in China and Russia.

I think that in order to foster a fruitful discussion here and avoid the trenches that often form between differing political views on the web, trying first to understand and empathise with an opposing view is crucial. It’s been a good heuristic for me at least, except in those cases where there is zero intention of even trying to understand each other (where just ignoring works well).

Considering that Reddit’s capitalist shenanigans is what brought redditors here, having socialist devs is not necessarily a bad thing.

You’d probably also be shocked at how many communists are strongly involved in FOSS development, and just how nice and great people they are on average.

In any case, don’t worry too much about it, their software is open source so if they suddenly turn evil, a fork is enough to fix it.

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:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/140daad/how_many_people_died_during_the_tiananmen_square/jmw0ns0/

Well sourced with actual recent publications and honest as to what the uncertainties are.

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.

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.

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.

Is this really true though? A neutral third party would not supply weapons or have any economic incentive to the outcome of the conflict, which China plainly does have. I’m not saying the US or really any NATO country is in a better position, however saying China is only interested in peace and are a neutral third party is disingenuous.

And as to what Blinken is saying, that’s something Ukraine has been saying since the invasion began. Sure it’s not his place, however if you interpret it charitably, it could also be construed as supporting the stance of your ally in the face of pressure towards an agreement they don’t really want.