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I've never seen this angle of Tiananmen Square's tankman before. Figured I would share.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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I'll play devil's advocate - the photographs don't seem to show evidence of thousands dying, or even hundreds necessarily. Dozens, absolutely. I doubt we'll ever know the actual numbers, though. Clearly something awful happened.
Edit: I mean, they really don't... and if they "only" ran over fifty civilians with tanks I think we can still consider that an unforgivable example of state violence. It's not as if the Kent State shootings were okay because they only killed four people.
I'm just saying, I don't feel the photographic record is a particularly robust source when it comes to supporting those higher claims. That doesn't mean it didn't happen that way, just that the pictures are inadequate to prove that.
Devil's one of the most powerful countries in the world, with people on this platform regularly repeating its propaganda, including in this thread.
Not sure the devil needs an advocate in this case.
It always does, imo. Most of the time devil’s advocate isn’t meant to actually “defend” anything, but to find flaws/imperfections in your logic so you can adjust it and when you have to argue with an actual ~~Xi bootlicker~~ “devil”, they’ll have less ammo to refute your point.
Not always. Sometimes it's just amplifying the devil's arguments by repetition. Time and place, and all that jazz.
The initial exaggeration was probably unintentional, due to second-hand eyewitness testimony getting relayed as fact in the middle of the chaos. But it was later used to pretend nothing happened, which clearly isn't the case. My girlfriend is Chinese and has no idea anything ever happened in Tiananmen Square: she didn't even know that date was censored online, so whatever they're doing is working very well.
Weird saying when you think about it that way.
There are photos of dozens dead and tossed to the side like a garbage bag, both on the streets and in hospitals. Do you seriously think that's the sort of thing which happens when only a few people died?
I don't claim a strong position. I suppose if I had to say, I believe the estimates of between 2-800 dead, mostly in the streets surrounding Tiananmen Square, with a dozen or so police lynchings amongst that number. But it would be weird for me to be overly attached to that as an opinion, as the evidence is unclear. I think Beijing hospital records suggest about 400, so that seems like a safe lower estimate.
That'd be the 400 they managed to find with their bodies in a good enough condition to identify. Have you seen the literal human paste?
Yes, it's a reasonable minimum estimate. What is it that you're disagreeing with? I've certainly seen all the pictures. But have a read about the declassified diplomatic cables, it's interesting. Notably, the mountains of flesh being burned with flamethrowers probably didn't happen. I have no stake in that, it's the current position held by the US Government. What happened is still monstrous.