China is gonna be the wedge issue on lemmy as reddit libs join. We should really get out in front and address Uighur and Tiananmen stuff with effortposts now. (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by iie@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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hit the character limit

make sure to read sources before sharing them.

DO NOT COPY-PASTE THIS ON LEMMY LOL, THIS IS A BRAINSTORM FOR OUR USE

We should pool our sources and evidence in this thread so that people with approved lemmy accounts can start spreading it there.

Feel free to contribute lol, it's a lot of work for me to do on my own and I might miss stuff or make mistakes, although I'm gonna keep going help or no

I'll grab links in a second (and there are some good articles I'd like to find that gather lots of evidence in one place), but here's some stuff off the top of my head:

Wikileaks published a private diplomatic cable stating that no one was killed in the square itself, although a smaller number of people did die in clashes elsewhere in Beijing, consistent with China's own official account. (Here is the cable)
A spanish film crew was in the square all night and filmed crowds of people walking out of the square in the early morning, singing the Internationale. Two wounded people are shown among them, possibly people who had been brought to the red cross station in the square, but no gunshots are heard, no one is running, and there are no bodies. (courtesy of /u/robinn, here's footage of a Hong Kong news report that includes the spanish film crew footage)
two of the main organizers of the protest, Hou Dejian and Liu Xiaobo, state that no one died in the square, and call out other organizers for lying (courtesy of /u/GarbageShoot: interview where Hou Dejian, a Taiwanese national and one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests, says he was in the square all night and saw no one killed, and Liu Xiaobo agrees with him — and also courtesy of /u/robinn, here is a twitter thread covering testimony by various organizers, including Hou Dejian and Liu Xiaobo)
Numerous western media sources have stated that no massacre occurred in the square. (This article links to multiple western sources, including James Miles, attesting that no one died in the square. — be warned that this site also hosts some crank articles, you might want to focus on the sources)
various western massacre reports cite wildly different death figures, usually with little or no justification for the number
an attempt to collect all the names of the massacre victims ended early when they only found 155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Mothers
CIA and NED goons were known to be present in Beijing and involved in the protests. (Here is an article from the Vancouver Sun in 1992, showing western intelligence involvement was known in the west decades ago)
during most of the protest, protesters were calling for a return to stricter communism, not for liberal market reforms. These were Marxists. Their signs showed Marxist figures and slogans. (This article shows some images of the protesters displaying Marxist slogans and iconography and discusses it a bit — again, be warned that this site hosts some crank articles, so you might want to focus on the sources)
toward the end protest signs were suddenly in English
tank man: the guy survives and is led away by bystanders, and also the tanks in the video are leaving the square (you can see this in the uncropped footage) and it is broad daylight, whereas the main violence occurred at night (also, courtesy of /u/robinn again: China in 1989 for one man vs. the U.S. in 2020 for a whole crowd and courtesy of /u/LegaliiizeIt, another video in the same vein)
online photos of corpses were visibly taken elsewhere, not the square
the first violence was against troops, not civilians. On June 2, 1989, two days before the June 4 incident when the main violence occurred, multiple unarmed Chinese troops were burned alive and their corpses hung from nooses in public. ((CW: gore) courtesy of /u/robinn, here is a thread of photos showing dead and wounded troops, some being rescued by civilians. Multiple men were burned to death, others were beaten. Some protesters stole guns from the army and can be seen brandishing them.)
the violence against troops was uncharacteristic of the previous tone of interactions between troops and protesters in the preceding weeks. Troops and protesters had peacefully coexisted, singing songs and sharing food together. (Here's an article that goes into it a bit — again, be warned that this site hosts some crank articles, so you might want to focus on the sources)

I don't really have much off the top of my head for Uighur genocide stuff

libs should hear who Zens is
even the US State Department and the UN concede there is no mass killing in Xinjiang.
western intelligence has been stoking and funding islamic extremism in Xinjiang. There's that talk by some American general or colonel where he acknowledges this, and I think there are other sources online as well
/u/robinn made this card with lots of Uighur info
Qiaocollective is a good source on Xinjiang, courtesy of /u/BynarsAreOk

I'll stick articles down here, some of which aggregate lots of evidence in one place

How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning ...edgy-sounding title though

1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth

How Much Longer Do We Need to Propagate Lies About Tiananmen Square?

Tiananmen — The Big Lie

Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t

1989 Tiananmen Square "Student Massacre" was a hoax

The Truth Behind the Myth of the 'Tiananmen Square Massacre' - Opinion Piece By Dr. Dennis Etler

Notes for 30th Anniversary of TianAnMen Incident, courtesy of /u/GarbageShoot

Tiananmen Square Massacre – Facts, Fiction and Propaganda Lots of good images and western media quotes, but the site hosts some goofy articles so be careful citing it

Let’s talk about Tiananmen Square, 1989: My hearsay is better than your hearsay

Birth of a massacre myth, courtesy of /u/GarbageShoot

CBS news: There was no "Tiananmen Square Massacre", courtesy of /u/robinn

a NYT questioning the massacre, courtesy of /u/robinn and here's a pastebin rip

dessalines, a Lemmy dev, has a good socialism FAQ, including sections on Tiananmen, courtesy of /u/PorkrollPosadist

[link] [link] these two /r/ChangeMyView comments on China are great, courtesy of /u/geikei

[link] [link] [link] Some old hexbear threads, courtesy of /u/Finger

not China, but /u/robinn also made a carrd on the DPRK and linked a good twitter thread by ProleWiki

Comments in this thread to check out. I'll try to also add their info up here.

/u/robinn: https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3513792

/u/Awoo suggests keeping things short and digestible instead of posting long effortposts, since libs will just count on people not reading the whole thing and they will point at it and say "See? They deny the Uighur genocide" or "See, they deny Tiananmen" https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3514089

/u/GnastyGnuts has some great links but I hit char limit https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3514972

/u/Krause has more great links https://hexbear.net/comment/3529874

Lemmy posts and comments from us

by /u/GarbageShoot: https://lemmy.ml/comment/476526

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[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

These posts will just become the wedge issue itself. They will link to these posts and say "see, they deny uighur genocide" and "see, they deny tiananmen square". This will then be used to convince people either not to use lemmy at all or to defederate with every single left wing instance.

They will count on people not actually reading these posts, because the quantity of information you need to consume to understand the position held here is absolutely massive compared to the pre-programming that they already have which creates the massive emotional reaction in them.

What we need is to make shit as short and digestable as humanly possible.

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i just call them racist and their primary source is a german holocaust denier :shrug-outta-hecks:

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

Zenz? Holocaust denier?

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

yep

[-] Phish@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

God damn how did I not know that...

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Are you basing that on this or something more? https://twitter.com/Mango_Press_/status/1340072338893758465

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Idk what that says I don't have a twitter

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

https://i.imgur.com/wtubXZ4.png

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

thats at least one of the terrible things hes said :yea:

[-] Commiejones@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

The whole post should be this image with a brief explainer that the entirety of the accusations of genocide in China come from this man.

[-] robinn@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

Zenz is definitely homophobic and racist but do you have a source for holocaust denial?

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

That was specifically what I was asking for lol. I assume it's some comment he's made at some point? Best I can find is this: https://twitter.com/Mango_Press_/status/1340072338893758465

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[-] robinn@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly what happened here

User 1: It’s almost as if Chinese Imperialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing is still bad even if the West built its powerbase on Imperialism.

User 2: How many colonies does China have? How many countries has it invaded? How many wars has waged?

Fascists like you and followers of the capitalist death cult can only say this: Tibet, because they drove the feudal lords and dalai lama paedophiles; Taiwan, because the bourgeois dictatorship claimed that land as theirs, as if it isn’t historically all one China, a similar story with Malvinas, I guess you also think they belong to the British; Hong Kong, which was a British colony but for some twisted reason you think they should be it’s own thing, because again it historically has not belong to China; the Uyghur thing, which even Western sources deny and/or doubt of its veracity and which was propelled by a right-wing organisation pro US imperialism; and delirious ideas about China being “imperialist” in Africa or South America because it trades with them and builds infrastructure, instead of providing bogus “financial aids” which then end up in the hands of US puppets like you did in Argentina with IMF funds. So basically all of the “imperialism” you claim is China trying to recover its historical territories lost in the process of the proletarian revolution.

Meanwhile, I don’t see any of the likes of you denouncing the plethora of colonies Europe and the US has been having and continue having for centuries. Why are you no so openly in favour of a Hawai’ian independence movement but you are so fervently obsessed with China? I know why, because you have fascists freudian slips and you can’t even realise about it yourself, since you live surrounded by people who justify themselves, and you have never interacted with a person from the Global South that’s not a fascist. By the way, the things I’m telling you, this is not “tankie” stuff, I have Peronists friends, Trotskyists friends, and all over the spectrum in Argentina, and they all know what you people say is complete and utter disgusting, the thought that everyone agrees with this kind of thought is something only maintained in first world imperialist countries. Don’t fool yourself.

User 2: I'm not talking with someone who defends genocide

User 3: Yeah, don’t bother. Tankies are red fascists.

User 2: Yup, tankies are fascists under a new name.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Something along this conversation causes a "brain off" switch to trigger and they glaze over.

The information is good, absolutely fine. But we must find a way to make them actually take on board and absorb it. What they are doing is triggering a glaze-over switch that has somehow been programmed into them over years of propaganda and that switch causes the fallback to completely refusing to engage or absorb information. If they absorbed this information they would have to critically analyse the position they continually push, the issue is that they do not.

There is definitely a methodology for breaking this barrier as some of the people here were reached by it at some point along the way. The problem is that everyone who is eventually reached by this information seems unable to properly describe the exact method that broke through this barrier to reaching them.

Perhaps what we need is Chinese educational content that is completely separated from any political ideology? We can then point to this content, which is presented in a purely academic way, and show their position as being historically incorrect.

My take is that it's nationalism causing the problem. As soon as the nationalism trigger is set off in a person's brain they resort to pre-programmed defence mechanisms. As soon as it is made about colonialism or the US in the above conversation they resort to the defensive "west good" "china bad" mindset. Even in the so-called leftists (radlibs really but they wear black and call themselves anarchists) in some of these conversations they have a mindset of "the west is still better though so I side with the lesser evil". This mindset is a nationalist one in defence of the america empire or "international community".

[-] iie@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

lmao, I stand corrected. after seeing that 196 thread, you and axont are right, it's nationalism. it's fucking nationalism.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

It is and we need to revive internationalism with a righteous fury as a counter weight to it. I keep going over this subject again and again and again and I can not find a lower-level issue that needs dealing with, it's a primary core issue that we have very little effort going into countering. It's the primary source of A LOT of shit.

I just don't know how. I'm going to keep talking about it in the hope it spreads to some people who do know how to get that ball rolling. I feel like we probably need more people writing books about this shit to try and get it in front of some people that are good at getting that to happen. Or something. I don't know.

[-] iie@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

people need to spend time in social spaces where 1) internationalism is articulable and is the overall feeling, 2) nationalism is understood as a problem and people can recognize it and point it out, and 3) there are communists from around the world. Then hopefully the memes and discourse from there spread to shape norms elsewhere. And it's gotta be bigger than hexbear lol

[-] iie@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

They will count on people not actually reading these posts

That's a good point.

What we need is to make shit as short and digestible as humanly possible

Good idea. Punchy headlines linking elsewhere instead of effortposts maybe.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Effortposts are fine, but they need summaries, and the summaries need to be at the start and in a bulletpoint format with links for further reading.

I don't know if you ever saw the lib that got famous on /r/politics for their big link posts in comment sections but that seems to be a format that worked, digestable enough points with links for further reading to back it up. I can't remember that user's name right now though.

[-] robinn@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

Okay found out what Lemmy is and I hate it. Like wtf is this.

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)

The socialism understander has logged on. Wouldn't even know what to reply to this since it's literally nothing.

[-] Wheaties@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, and socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, not whatever the fuck they’re doing in China.

What would you have a hypothetical, newly socialist country do at this moment in the global economy? How would you go about increasing living conditions? How would you build your productive capacity? And, most critically, how would you do it without being overwhelmed by capitalist forces?

don't have a lemmy, someone feel free to use this

[-] zifnab25@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

:parenti: The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.

[-] geikei@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Also even if we take the "argument" at face value and consider that the people doing these gotchas usualy jerk off to co-ops being socialism or doing co-ops under capitalism being the road to that . Welp China has more co-ops and people working on them than the rest of the world combned. Im pretty sure the more chinese people are working just in agricultural co-ops or communal owned agricultural buisnesses than the entire combined population of all European social democracies lmao. Let alone in other sectors. And the rate of co-op establishment has accelerated a ton in the last decade. This breaks a lot of anti-chinese demsoc brains

[-] CARCOSA@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

this is a great idea, one for DPRK would be awesome too

@robinn also made this great DPRK carrd

https://dprkorea.carrd.co/

https://twitter.com/prolewiki/status/1666083354477993986

[-] PZK@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The main issue I find with trying to argue on this front is that it is a fight that isn't needed.

Anyone who is usually arguing this, is usually is coming from some country that has literally no moral high-horse to speak on these issues. Especially if they are American. The genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of Black people, or even contemporary imperialism.

Why are they not up in arms about the largest imprisoned population in the world? Why don't they take issue with the treatment of homeless people? Why don't they take issue with the US ongoing support of coups and invasions of other countries?

They turn a blind eye to these issues because it isn't about the issues at all. The reason they bring up the Tianamen square massacre and the Uighur genocide is because they want to attack communism. You only need to point this out to them when they get upset and try to dismiss other issues as "whataboutism". Strip their intent down to its naked truth and expose their virtue signaling with the overwhelming amount of active atrocities they don't seem to care about.

Being succinct and to the point about why they actually care about arguing these things, because I fucking promise you they don't give a shit about those people. They want communism to fail. Hell, just troll them and talk about the My Lai Massacre or Kent State.

The point I make using this avenue of argument is that if you try to argue "what actually happened" its just going to be your facts vs theirs. They are the ones creating a moral argument, so show them that even they don't believe what they are preaching.

[-] LaBellaLotta@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

It’s nice how you can tell someone is absolutely brain dead from their use of the word “Tankie”

Truly the definition of a meaningless and thought terminating cliche

[-] maccruiskeen@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

For some reason I thought the ml in lemmy.ml meant ml :ironicat:

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[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

The libs will just make their own instance called Lemmit or Reddy and refuse to federate with any instance where the general sentiment on China and Russia isn't "nuke them"

[-] familiar@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

They already have done that

[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

What is it so I know where to go to get the hot neolib goss?

[-] familiar@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Their instance is at hexbear.net

Jk, it's beehaw.org, but I suggest making an account on lemmy.ml and jumping in from there. Due to the federation you'll be able to see lefty stuff from lemmy.ml and other instances, as well as libby stuff from theirs.

[-] DiltoGeggins@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

I'm a noob here. did anyone die at tienaman square?

[-] iie@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No one died in the square itself. People did die in violent clashes elsewhere in the city, probably around 200 or so, mainly civilians but also troops. The first attacks were two days earlier, and were committed against troops. Multiple unarmed soldiers were burned alive and their corpses strung up from nooses. Other soldiers were beaten and lynched. Vehicles were molotov'd with people inside them.

I'm not sure which article I linked is the best one to start with, but this one seems alright (CW: death) https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/

[-] DiltoGeggins@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

thanks

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Very important point: the immolated and hanged soldiers were killed before the crackdown. The fires were the first serious attack and informed the rest of the event (throwing rocks at helmeted troops is whatever).

It's worth looking at some of the links, even if it's just the videos or something. Student leader Chai Ling's testimony about seeking to have some of her followers killed by the PLA is very informative.

[-] Trustmeitsnotabailou@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago

I think it's cute that you guys think that libs can be converted with logic and facts

[-] GaveUp@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was never a liberal, moreso just used to be an apolitical, non-brainwashed, non-bigoted person but I instantly got won over by MLs on reddit because of their logic and facts about the world around us

There are probably others like me there

[-] dumpster_dove@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

Effortposts were a big part of it for me.

[-] ToxicDivinity@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

some can, some can't. Did you come out of the womb as a leftist?

[-] meth_dragon@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

i was primed for communism my entire life but due to living in :amerikkka: i spent most of two decades thinking i was some esoteric sect of liberal until i picked up state and revolution

the more i learn, the more correct old me's assessment of my political inclination becomes