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?
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.
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 it was only one of many protests that caused civil unrest throughout the entire country (ie it was much bigger than just tiananmen square).
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 those protests.
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 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.
ever heard of the “special relationship” between the two countries that enable them to work together in arenas like this one and usaid literally funded several foreign “media” agencies like the guardian before trump shuttered it.
Ever heard that if you swapped Lenin for Trump and the West with the deep state. You’d be indistinguishable from a magat. There’s no such thing as perfect governance. Not in the United States, UK, and certainly not in China.
This need to turn every failing for your in group into a conspiracy theory against them. is the signature of a weak mind not concerned with facts or truth.
The United States literally has been in war with the UK at times. Admittedly, it’s been a while. They’ve never been an indivisible unit. And right or wrong the UK had a front row seat to watch the goings on in China for many decades from Hong Kong.
If China wanted to be taken seriously, perhaps they shouldn’t “checks notes” imprison a journalists for talking to a diplomat. Or generally assign government minders, to control what journalist have access to. Perhaps especially, they should be more open to foreign press. Then it wouldn’t always be the CCP’s position and everyone else’s. But who am I kidding. Of course, it’s everyone else’s fault. The entire world all in on a deep state plot to make you look bad.
that magat characterization makes sense if you were aware that magats perceive the world through intentional misinformation that’s perpetually reinforced in the west by the likes of fox news (for red maga) and the likes of the state department (for blue maga).
also any conspiracy theory is not necessary when the accusations have been confirmed multiple times during congressional hearings by the likes of the state state department and it’s ngo’s when they publicly admitted (on the record btw) that they intentionally peddled propaganda to the public.
your centuries old examples of us-uk belligerence feels cherry picked when better examples like the suez canal incident makes it clear who’s calling the shots.
the us hegemony takes the cake when it comes to journalism when you consider that its proxy in the middle east alone has literally bombed to death more journalists that china could ever fantasize about and the likes of julian assange, francesca albanese, or any of the 9 icc judges can attest how much impactful sanctions are than government minders.
the only fault lies with the american government and the people who believe what they say when the american government has publicly admitted themselves that they’ve intentional misinformed the public; this fact alone make red maga more less culpable for the world’s woes than the liberals.
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.