Except you brought up the release of classified documents, not discussing something that happened out in the open, in front of the media. Tiananmen Square is not like Snowden leaking documents. What is more comparable is the Kent State massacre. However, that was immediately everywhere, and no one went to prison for reporting it. Where as you can still go to prison over publicly discussing Tiananmen today.

Is it bad that that whistle blowers, working government intelligence, are treated as criminals? Yes, yes it is. The fact that this is the whataboutism you jump to, for discussing Tiananmen Square, rather than Kent State, is telling though. You can't match the reaction to the similar crime. You have to select a completely different government crime to have a similar reaction. Now tell me, how does China treat people who whistle blow government secrets?

[–] InternetCitizen2 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not sure what I am what aboutism here.

If you do anything that threatens the powerful in the USA you will be cracked down on just as hard. Your example, Edward Snowden, or even the union wars in Appalachia. All are just as forgotten in US public mind as Tianman Square.

All things that had the chance of prompting real change and our government squashed it just as hard.

[–] Jiggle_Physics 1 points 2 months ago

Yes, I know, I am aware of what the US does that is bad, and why. You are responding to a thread that originated from a post about Tiananmen Square, and then a whataboutism response focused on the US. Your continued commenting on things the US did bad are just additives to that. Instead of discussing the wrongs brought up by the post, you are choosing to simply go "but the US did bad too!" Hell you could even have discussed how the constant pushing of Tiananmen, to the point where it is now meme status, and the consequences of it, and you would have added value to the conversation. Instead you choose to simply bring up bad things the US did, that a lot more people are aware of, than your comments lead me to believe you realize.

So if the subject of Tiananmen Square, where the CCP shot, and drove tanks over, student protesters, in public, while various media watched, then instead of allowing the conversation about it to be had, cut off any public discussion of the event, outright denies it happened, and imprisons, and worse, people, to this day, over talking about it, and your response is to talk about a situation where someone leaked classified intelligence documentation, and was treated a criminal for it, instead of something similar to the subject at hand, Tiananmen, like the Kent State masscre, what is the point? Seriously, other than someone said something bad about China, thus I am going to say something bad about the US, what did you intend to do? We all know the US does awful shit, all the time. Make a post about Snowden, there are tons of them on Lemmy. It is a subject spoken of regularly. On those threads we shit on the US for it. Do you go on them and bring up bad things China has done? Do you only do it to defend non-western countries, or, at least, just to divert attention to the evils of the west instead of the subject at hand?

The west does horrific things, and, surprise, so does everyone fucking else. China has a horrific history of inhumanity, and, if not for the US founded, NATO super structure, that gives its military physical reach everywhere on the globe, China, and other BRICS countries would be doing the same, had they the money. Russia, the R in BRICS, is unquestionably in an active attempt to colonize other countries, namely Ukraine. China is pushing its borders as hard as it can, and I do not just mean with places the UN says it owns, but are autonomous, like Taiwan. Whataboutisms are simply diversionary tactics, and not actual rebuttals to anything.