People are losing trust in mainstream media because of perceived biased coverage of the Gaza genocide. If that erosion of trust is real, why isn’t it prompting wider public re-examination of historical cover-ups and contested narratives — Watergate, Iran–Contra, Iraq, even shifting beliefs about who “beat” the Nazis? If we don’t question how past information was shaped, what’s the point of preserving evidence (e.g., Gaza genocide evidence recently removed from YouTube by Google)? Won’t this all be forgotten in a few years, the same way all those previous events are no longer discussed?
What’s stopping a sustained, constructive public inquiry into these parallels between past cover-ups and current information control? Where are good, constructive places to discuss these issues without falling into unproductive conspiracy spirals?
But you can bet we are going to keep discussing Tian’anmen Square instead of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Jeju Island massacre, Indonesian anti-communist purge, etc. It’s as if the average person believes anything so long as mainstream media says it.
Maybe I’m reading wrong, but your comment seems to imply that Tian’anmen Square was mainstream media lies?
There was political violence around Tian’anmen square on june 4th 1989 yes. This cannot be denied and no one is denying this, not even the CPC. The narrative around that political violence that we hear in the west is however, riddled with lies and intentional distortion for the purpose of propaganda. Here is a great video on the subject that is fully sourced if you are interested. Some of the source links are unfortunately 404s now, I’ll see if I can find the articles referenced and make a followup comment.
Edit: I have unfortunately found zero archives of the missing articles and my sleuthing skills are limited to searching the only 2 archive sites I know rn.
I did however find the wikileaks info that the telegraph article discusses
Yes Tiannenmen is pretty lied together. https://youtu.be/IqxU5RdI88M
Most USians believe there’s no censorship here while this video keeps getting removed.
That is the stance of the server that hosts this community. Make of that what you will. There’s a reason most avoid it.
And yet here you are 🤷
And?
verifiable american propaganda is a very difficult pill for westerners to swallow; so most, like you, don’t bother.
Not at all. As an American and a westerner who’s family has suffered at the hands of the government. That’s easy, though you may want to check your Anglophobia. Campism and hypocrisy is the hard bit to swallow. Where when two groups do similar things but one is accepted or at least excused because they’re “your” camp right or wrong.
i’m an anglophile and dispelling the western propaganda about tianamen square is only a 30 second google search away; but your comment makes it look like you’ve never bothered.
I gotta say, I’m curious what you mean by that.
i love british scifi, comedy, literature, and the lofty aspirations of og liberal thinkers from centuries past.
i think it’s a result of growing up inside the anglosphere.
If it’s all propaganda and nothing happened, then why the fuck is China so draconian about preventing any and all conversation about it?
I mean, if it was all made up lies, certainly they would want people talking about the truth of the matter, rather than banning and prosecuting anyone who dares mention that it was anything other than a normal day.
Now, some people might see this and easily be able to tell that something stinks and clearly there is something they are trying to cover up. We call this “Not having the critical thinking skills of a dead goldfish”
no one is immune to propaganda and both goebbels and bernays have demonstrated to the world how effectively critical thinking can be shaped through controlled narratives.
china exhibits draconian measures to issues like tiananmen because it was a genuine protest and DEEPLY inconvenient for the chinese government. it was only one of many protests that caused civil unrest throughout the entire country (ie it was much bigger than just tiananmen square) and they really don’t want a repeat of that violence.
in typical western fashion, the legacy media latched onto a kernel of truth and shaped the narrative of that a fledgling neoliberal democracy movement when the truth was that the protesters that pushed for such a thing were an overwhelmingly small minority when you consider the huge number of protestors taking to the streets during that time throughout the entire country.
china doesn’t have oligarchic ruling class solidarity like the united states or the rest of west does so it’s silencing of dissent is much more blunt and direct through government apparatuses where the western oligarchies prefers to employ significantly more subtle and easier to hide dissent silencing like deplatforming and sanctions against individuals like francesca albanese or 9 of the icc judges.
This is a really dumb perspective, in general. By that logic I could say, “If Holocaust denialism is so baseless, then why does it get censored so much? If there’s no truth to it, wouldn’t you want people talking about it?” No, it’s censored because it is baseless, because we don’t want people spreading around long debunked misinformation. Just because something is untrue doesn’t mean that people repeating it can’t create confusion, doubt, etc.
I mean, look at all the bullshit propaganda the right puts out, and because they have so much money backing it, strengthening their signal, it’s all some people ever hear, and if some spends thousands of hours watching Fox News, and the other side gets like 20 minutes once a year at Thanksgiving, which narrative they go with is going to have very little to do with what’s actually true.
That same far-right media sphere has spread out from the US to all sorts of small countries around the world. If you look at them, you’ll often find right-wingers in those countries screaming about shit that doesn’t even apply to their country, because it’s what this propaganda network told them to be mad about. I mean, fucking anti-mask protests in Japan, for example.
Regardless of your perspective on Tienanmen Square, this logic of, “If it’s not true then there’s no reason to censor it” doesn’t really hold up.
They don’t, they reference what they call the “June 4th incident” all the time when relevant. What they don’t allow is spreading the fictionalized version of events, ie tanks running over 10000 protestors in the square. They acknowledge the real events, which were riots around Beijing that were put down by the PLA, resulting in a few dozen deaths of officers and a few hundred rioters killed by the PLA. The west uses the atrocity propaganda of the former story to undermine the socialist project in the PRC.
No, not at all. For using “the West” as a crutch to deflect all blame from your in groups. There isn’t one China, much less one West. More than anything, though, it is a tongue in cheek nod to the servers favorite deflection. Sinophobia.
It’s also easy to find links to the United States or those in the West to exonerating themselves of things they’ve done. That doesn’t mean I believe them.
the difference is that sources defining the tiananmen protests as a massacre are funded by the state department (both directly and undirectly) which has a long, storied and undisputed history of peddling propaganda; including my government’s own public admissions of doing so.
Huh, today I learned that the US state department runs/funds the UK government and the BBC. Alternate reality history is fascinating.
Here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/tienanmen-square-142085625
Note that the sources in the description are mostly “mainstream” Western sources.
Also many of the sources are 404s, or seem to link to different articles, or actually don’t contradict the general narrative. Also some random guys patreon. Gotta say I’m convinced.