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Democracy vs Dictatorship
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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Have you seen the full tank man video?
1 second after the video ends, the person in the tank changes their mind and drives back to the square to unleash unlimited genocide on all the bicycles.
Yes. Do you know what happened after that video?
You certainly don't but you heard rumors that still confirm whatever bias you wanted to keep from before you knew a video was "hiding in plain sight."
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.
Mr. Deng and President Xi were in the closet making atrocities and I saw one of the atrocities and the atrocity looked at me.
I was there on the sidewalk when they ran over Tank Man. I spoke to him, he was flat like a pancake. I asked him what he wanted the world to know. He said, "I hate hexbear!" Then a PLA soldier came by with a spatula and carried him away.
By god. That's horrible. How big was the spatula? Did the Chinese steal Stalin's spoon technology, as they do all other technology, which they never innovate on, and make for really cheap?
Big cheap reverse engineered authoritarian spatula mythology is what western libs actually seem to believe.
Not exactly , and nor do you, but there's no reason to think he would be allowed to berate a tank commander for iirc ~15 minutes including climbing up on the tank, then be secretly killed later. You believe the CPC had no problem killing however many people openly in the streets, in front of foreign diplomats and journalists, but this one dude had to be spirited away and secretly murdered? Please use a little common sense. 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. You also believe I assume that those were peaceful protestors killed in cold blood. I don't know if you realise this but the events were documented by non-chinese sources including the Belgian ambassador to China - and the government knew that was going on at the time. What makes you think they suddenly became so squeamish around this one guy? Far more likely it's exactly what it looks like - he was led away by neighbours and the government just let sleeping dogs lie. There's nothing to be gained from going after him and no evidence that it happened.
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).
Yeah, I'm being generous to the liberal.
Don't be, liberals demand you "meet them halfway" but that never actually helps educate them, it only makes your position look more flimsy. Stick to the facts, never concede a fact to them, make sure they understand that reality is not multiple choice.
No one knows.
You simply have a fantasy that aligns with how you see the world - have declared that to be the absolute truth - and hold that anyone who doesn't also indulge in same fantasy for the same reason must be the enemy; pure evil. What a whimsical way for the human mind to work.
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
We were taught in school that the video ended with the guy standing there and that no other footage made it out of the evil dictatorship.
I only more recently learned the video goes on for some time
I just read some of the comments in the first thread you linked and whew. It’s just thoughtless lib regurgitation countered by pages of material analysis which elicit no response or the most milquetoast “interesting!” from people who will clearly never click a single resource linked
All I can say is, infinite flowers for the comrades posting on the frontlines of the war on brainworms
This particular exchange will live in my head rent free forever.
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?
Why do these people always have the same insufferable tone of “I refuse to engage with your arguments, not because I don’t understand them or don’t have anything meaningful to respond with, but because I am at a higher level of evolution than you simpletons. Having no opinions is the ultimate proof of intellectual rigour” grhshahhshd
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.
I’m pretty convinced that most of the worst internet behaviour is linked to poor dopamine regulation. They just want that sweet hit of satisfaction from the “gotcha” moment, the feeling of “winning” without having to expend any effort. When it’s called out they have nowhere to go other than trying to “win” again with a more extreme/absurd “gotcha”.
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.
Debatebro culture has a lot to answer for. And twitter, for that matter. Before that at least most political arguments online were somewhat long-form in my experience. (I grew up on the Gaiaonline “Extended Discussion” boards lmao.) Now it’s all about trying to shut it down as definitively as possible within an arbitrarily small character limit. Hexbear is genuinely the only place I see anyone engaging in lengthy discussion nowadays
Because they think intelligence and being a "good person" are inherent traits that they are born with, and the NPCs on the internet forum they are arguing with are just bad guys who need to be "beaten". They don't examine their own position and consider it because they don't have a position, they are just inherently correct.
rofl.. perfect libbrained response.. I, a man of culture, do not subscribe to any particular viewpoint at any given time as that would limit my mental gymnastics
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie. | Mango Press
not that I think you'll read it or even click on it, it's for other people who read this thread
I actually did click on it and start reading it, because this has been the most decent response in the thread so far (despite the condescension - the bar is pretty low, to be fair). The loaded language was already quite something. And I tried to find more information on the source. Well, the website doesn't exist anymore and I'm hard pressed to find any reliable information about it. So... Maybe not the most reliable source.
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.
And what was the reliable source where you got your current belief?
That was not the most decent answer, and you are a liar. Someone asked you why you believed he was killed, and you ignored it. Because you know the answer isn't a good one.
bourgeois media is filled with loaded language but it doesn't register to you because of your chauvinism
this piece in the Columbia Journalism Review by a western journalist who was there still has some of the liberal brainworms but solidly shows that the conventional narrative is bullshit:
The Myth of Tiananmen | Columbia Journalism Review
I look forward to hearing how a primary witness writing in CJR is unreliable
Right, all the media was ushered out so that they couldn't see the peaceful ending. Seems legit. But OK, let's assume it's the case. Whatever.
What are workers and passersby? Right, civilians.
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.
Siri, how many American civilians are killed by cops each year?
It's fine to hold China, an actual democratic state, to a higher standard than the US. If anything it makes China look bad that you're comparing them to the great satan.
I just think it's ridiculous that China-haters have to go back 30+ years to find one instance of the government doing something awful and in 🍔land we have little Tiannamen Squares on a daily basis.
even when that instance wasn't even remotely as bad as they pretend it was, and is nothing like what the US does on any given week
the piece links all of its sources
The man stoped the tanks and told them to go arrest the CIA backed protestors
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 think it's easy to get to that conclusion if you only have the image to go by and haven't researched more into what happened.
Good on china if they were lenient on the guy.
They acknowledged that the video shows the guy was able to leave unharmed.
Going to stop you right there. They did it because they needed a moment of individual brutality that makes the audience feel bad for the people the villains are oppressing, so it is satisfying when the heroes go in and stop the evil dictatorship at the end of the movie. I would've preferred if they showed a scene with tank man's loving family before he was brutally killed to inspire the good guys, but they probably had to leave that on the cutting room floor so the overall flow of the scene worked better.
I think she started HRT.
Do you have the blueprints for the time machine you used to go back to 1989 and stalk tank man and find out what happened? Why have you not shared this technology with the rest of the world?