I’m struggling to see what revelation you’ve identified here that is so scandalous. Yes, the Chinese government killed several hundred Chinese civilians surrounding the Tiananmen Square in the 1989 protests. Has anyone claimed otherwise?

Your original claim was that the man pictured in the OP in front of the tanks was executed. That claims remains as baseless as China overseas.

I think there’s an interesting parallel between the overall political configuration in Iran, with the hardliners being generally older, more socially conservative, but resolute in their opposition to collaboration with the US/Israel and the liberal reformers being significantly to the right but also more socially liberal and capable of capturing the youth, and China post Cultural Revolution. You have this big problem where the people who have the most sensible reading of the general situation and understand the reason why their system is set up the way it is are unequipped to be flexible to meet the needs of the current moment (hardline Maoists in China, the conservative anti-imperialists in Iran), but even the more strategically minded of the right wing camp fail to understand that they’d be setting their country on a path to be looted by Western capital.

Now, in China I think there was a positive resolution in the form of Reform and Opening Up which managed to thread the needle between creating a way to bolster Chinese people’s wealth via integration, but not hollowing the country out for western investors. I think it’s unlikely that something so positive could come out of the current situation in Iran even in the best case. I don’t think there’s gonna be a lot of people on Hexbear who hope to see these protests topple the regime, anyway, but I’d like to hear some measured reasoning from someone who is rooting for that outcome for reasons that are a bit deeper than reflexive support of anyone who has a vaguely progressive slogan.

The noteworthy thing for me isn’t so much the ratio (I think 1 slop to 1 kino ratio is totally fine; I went thru all the movies I saw over the past year and my own ratio is roughly 1 slop for every 3 or 4 not slop, but if I say that someone who is 1/4 as snobby as me is the baseline then 1:1 is fine) but the rather small number. If you watch 1000 movies in a year then yeah, >60% slop makes total sense. But I was seriously asking myself why someone who only treats themselves to 10 movies in a year is making themselves sit through 6.

That’s fair, I’m sorry if I sound judgemental. I get very frustrated at my friends who have gone to the movies to watch stuff like Madame Web when we talk about wanting to get into more movies that we know we’ll probably enjoy.

If you’re gonna watch only 10 movies in one year, why watch 6 slop movies?

https://youtu.be/GRb4VY2dU4c

Yeah that’s definitely consistent with the behavior shown on this thread. People deploy arguments that I can’t imagine are actually supposed to be persuasive because they have absolutely 0 convincing content behind them. It feels almost as if they’re only doing it for the performance of arguing, not for the prospect of arriving at a better understanding of something or convincing someone else.

Why say this when you could scroll for half a second and see the other guy saying the same thing getting dogpiled?

Another View of Tiananmen | Redsails (Sun Feiyang, Roderic Day)

This article’s great because it’s aimed at people that probably are already vaguely familiar with the narrative of there being a massacre being BS but shows a lot more information that will be interesting to leftists who want to learn more about China and Reform and Opening Up era.

They even ask rhetorical questions as if to suggest a specific argument that they don’t want to make outright, but then never have the courtesy to type out the argument they wanted to make once their questions are answered. Like, they asked “So China and Russia aren’t authoritarianisms? [sic]” implying that they do think China and Russia are authoritarian, but when faced with a counterargument they don’t try to explain why the thing they believe stands up against that counterargument and make the implicit thing from the question explicit; instead they just start mocking the interlocutor without offering any response or counterargument. So exhausting and annoying.

Buddy, you don’t get to say things like “despite the condescension” when you came in here suggesting that we should take a fantasy you made up in your head seriously as if that was a matter of historical record.

And it’s not like you deserve it, but here’s an essay from a Chinese scholar and a Canadian-Peruvian Marxist synthesizing together a few dozen first hand accounts and historical documents/articles about the event.

This particular exchange will live in my head rent free forever.

Presents basic argument

Receives basic response justified by very simple theory

Goes on rant about how the concept of even having political theory at all is bad and limits your perspective

Academics hate this one simple trick to never having to read anything: have you considered that thinking about things ahead of time and writing down your observations is tyranny?

I’m guessing you believe there were thousands killed in the protests. I’ll allow that, it’s hard to tell exactly what happened in Beijing over 30 years ago.

I wouldn’t go that far. No contemporary sources claim thousands were killed and it’s hard to see how that’s possible. The actual sources that were present at the time are consistent with the official claims of several hundred dead but no more than 1000.

Even in the Gwangju Uprising only 165 people were massacred, and that was a proper contemporaneous massacre (as opposed to the skirmishes around Tiananmen Square in June 1989 where the protesters were firing back).

They acknowledged that the video shows the guy was able to leave unharmed.

It’s absolutely wild that I’ve seen 2 other struggle sessions over the past few days where people keep insisting he was run over or executed when presented with evidence to the contrary.

https://hexbear.net/comment/6791928

https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/comments/1q925hu/why_does_western_media_never_show_the_full_tank/nysnaeu/?context=3

Look I already replied but it would mean a lot to me if you could explain what the point of leaving these 2 comments was. Are you trying to convince anyone by saying what you imagined happened with literally 0 evidence? Are you just performing something where you get to interact with people and contradict them just to feel smarter? Like what was the plan here?

I think they’re suggesting that the government then extrajudicially executed the tank man.

One would wonder what the government would stand to gain from killing a nameless man who stood in front of some tanks, delaying them for a few seconds. Wanted to stop him from standing in front of more tanks?

I don’t even think rumors had to be involved here. Projection is so strong they may have actually convinced themselves that they’ve seen footage of the guy getting killed. I literally was talking with someone who claimed they saw the guy get run over IN REAL TIME just 2 weeks ago.

I think she started HRT.