This is purely a rant because I don’t want to end up writing an effort post about this topic.
Every year, we see Westerners posting about the “Tiananmen Square Massacre” across social media. Their devotion to “fighting the oppressive Chinese government” is like fucking clockwork. It’s so reliable that if you wanted to, you can prepare posts and comments to counter their narratives months before each June 4th. The western narrative has been debunked thoroughly even by Western sources.
But the point of this post isn’t to complain about the twisting of events, but the glaring contradiction that is their relative (or absolute) lack of posts about events outside of China that were equally or even more brutal than they claim June 4th was.
Why is that?
Why aren’t they posting as regularly about the genocide of indigenous people in their own countries? Why aren’t they posting so frequently about the massacres in Jakarta? Why aren’t they posting as regularly about the bombing of Nagasaki or Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Dresden or Yemen or Iraq of Afghanistan or Syria? Why aren’t they posting each year about the famines Britain engineered in India and other countries? Why don’t I see yearly posts about the Nanjing Massacre? That also occurred in China. Why don’t I see the same reminders about the transatlantic slave trade?
The governments that perpetrated (and in some cases, continue) many of these atrocities still exist and are still oppressing the people who were targeted during these events. This is why they say they target China, right?
Hell, the Holocaust and the subsequent resurgence of facism sees less attention from Westerners than the June 4th incident these days.
The reason for this disparity is that these people don’t actually give a shit whether the Chinese people are oppressed. When they say “I hate the Chinese government, but I don’t hate the Chinese people,” they don’t give a shit whether the Chinese people support and continue to build their current government. It’s not about supporting others, it’s about asserting the dominance and righteousness of the Western world. Not only can they not empathize with those outside the West, they put immense effort into doing the opposite.
It’s about convincing themselves that they live in a just society and that, despite how badly they are oppressed, they could always be worse off. It’s racist, but that racism serves a purpose: it is the copium that keeps them convinced that it’s ok to be oppressed by their own governments.
I don’t rant because I expect the sinophobic propaganda to disappear. I rant because I’m tired of the racism. I rant because I’m tired of the ignorance. I rant because all I want is to see people show others a bit of empathy, to show a little skepticism when they are told others are evil, a little curiosity about the other’s point of view, but I’m constantly disappointed.
Rant over. Thanks for listening.
Look, I really think it’s just trolling. It’s a way to stick it to the government. People who post about Tiananmen Square are imagining some short, angry, middle-aged and balding party official with high blood pressure exasperatedly trying to censor/lecture the fucking internet, and only because they can’t send police to their door or mail a citation or whatever. It only gets reposted so much because it allegedly pisses the party off so much and they supposedly try so hard to take down copypasta about it. If it didn’t get a reaction, nobody would care. It’s a bit like the Streisand effect in that regard.
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Because I don’t actually know if that’s a meme or if the Chinese Communist party really is this insane and high strung that they think they’re going to fight the Streisand effect and win.
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Tbf, it’s well known that the CPC does censor their citizens’ internet access. If the US has glowies on virtually every social platform, it’s really not that much of a stretch to think that China has them, too.
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i have a somewhat reputable source here, do you think if you did watch it or engage with it, it changes your view in anyway?
it’s from cbs news: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tank-man-photographer-reflects-on-30-years-since-tiananmen-square/
I watched the video, can I ask which view you were intending to have challenged?
Because I more or less agree with the photographer that the Chinese govt should probably just move on, the only reason anybody cares anymore is because it gets a reaction. They’re feeding the trolls by reacting. If they don’t want to deal with it, the best thing to do is to achieve some level of acceptance and stop giving it the time of day, imo. I think that’s internet 101 for anyone, really.
Pretty sure it’s the Chinese government and people that have moved on, it’s people in the West who haven’t. It’s not a Streisand effect so much as it is an obsession for these people. No one is trying to cover up the event, there’s just a very vocal group of people who remind us of the event and spread misinformation about it every year.
Well, it costs you guys nothing to ignore them, then. Eventually, it’ll get old and the circle jerk will run out of steam. Do not feed the trolls.
You’re them
Don’t think I’ve ever seen trolls ask to be ignored, but okay.
I’m sure some are just trolling, but I hear a lot of this spoken earnestly offline.
I think you’re definitely right about the posts getting attention. Regardless of negative attention, I think the positive interactions will keep them coming in every year.
Ding ding ding, that’s Xi
🤡