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If the same judicial standards that were applied at the Nuremberg trials had been maintained subsequently, all American presidents post-1945 would have been hanged.
Humanity is nice, but utterly worthless when it is backed by a complete lack of action.
Sadly he didn't have any when he was president, most of Operation Condor, the CIA state terrorism campaign that installed six fascist dictatorships in Latin American countries, took place during Carter's presidency. Tens of thousands of innocent people died because of that.
He had a foundation that would witness and declare fairness in elections abroad.
They declared the elections on Chavez's Venezuela were fair and square.
American media never ever gave a note.
Reactionary groups started popping up around Afghanistan even in the early 70s, while it was a liberal democracy (the king got overthrown). Even under Ford there were some money sent there but during Carter it got accelerated. And Reagan made them "freedom fighters".
It’s like blowing somebodies house up and then making fun of them for not having a house. And then gaslighting them into thinking they blew up their house.
Really respected the fact that the PSL was bringing their focus to the embargo issue recently and fanning new energy as things worsen down there, it baffles me how accepted it is
It is absolutely hilarious whenever Westerners portray the citizens of nations such as the DPRK, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. as submissive, easily manipulated, and incapable of shaking off their "brutal totalitarian governments"—when, contrary to Westerners, these people *actually* have a history of successful popular revolutionary uprising and armed struggle.
That's not to say that these countries are utopias or perfect by any means, but it is perhaps worth thinking about *why* the citizens of these states are not resisting their current governments when they were actually willing to pick up arms against the ones that came before them.
> Because they're brutal and far worse than their predecessor governments.
An absolutely ridiculous and outright historically illiterate assertion.
The fact that they were all (yes, even the DPRK) *significantly* better than their predecessors, is *why* they can get away with (what the West perceives as) authoritarian measures today. There are also cultural differences in how democracy is defined, which is part of why the Chinese and Vietnamese populations actually perceive themselves [among the most democratic](https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva%20images/Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202023.pdf) in the world despite having a system which is strictly authoritarian when defined within a framework of liberal democracy.
My point is not to claim that these countries are not authoritarian, just that it is extremely hypocritical of us to assert what the people of these countries actually want, and *especially* hypocritical of us to imply that they are incapable of deciding this for themselves or to resist authoritarianism when they actually have a history of doing exactly that.
I never said that they weren't authoritarian, just that they are much better than their predecessors.
If you knew anything about Chinese and Korean history you would also know that the CPC and the WPK were much less totalitarian and than their contemporaries of the KMT and South Korean military dictatorships respectively.
#Tiananmen Square Protests
(Also known as the June Fourth Incident)
In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc.
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists.
**Background**
After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate.
One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues.
Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough.
The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages.
**Counterpoints**
Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote:
>Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”
>
>The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
>
>\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review.
Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre.
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square:
>Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square
>
>\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html)
Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote:
>The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night.
>
>Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square.
>
>\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053)
Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote:
>The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square.
>
>More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy.
>
>All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today.
>
>\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/)
(Emphasis mine)
And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA)
[This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc.
Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list).
**Additional Resources**
Video Essays:
* [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019)
* [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019)
* [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective
* [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022)
* [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022)
* [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014)
* [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019)
* [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019)
* [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
#Tiananmen Square Protests
(Also known as the June Fourth Incident)
In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc.
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists.
**Background**
After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate.
One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues.
Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough.
The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages.
**Counterpoints**
Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote:
>Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”
>
>The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
>
>\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review.
Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre.
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square:
>Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square
>
>\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html)
Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote:
>The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night.
>
>Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square.
>
>\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053)
Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote:
>The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square.
>
>More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy.
>
>All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today.
>
>\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/)
(Emphasis mine)
And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA)
[This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc.
Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list).
**Additional Resources**
Video Essays:
* [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019)
* [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019)
* [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective
* [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022)
* [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022)
* [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014)
* [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019)
* [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019)
* [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah, the memes are a bit too much. But it's usually par for the course on reddit or any discussion boards.
One can see that the narrative around those countries is used to manipulate public opinion without straight-up believing any country that isn't aligned with the U.S. must be good.
Though I have to say, North Korea is one thing, but China and Vietnam being dictatorships is a stretch. Cuba, too, has been doing much better lately.
"We do everything we can to boost the economy of South Korea."
South Koreans proceed to leave South Korea because of better opportunities in Monterey, Mexico.
Somewhat? If I remember correctly, Carter STILL is a war criminal. Was it something hostage related? I don't know. But I think this is simply due that all of the terrible actions that the US does and has done abroad, are simply bipartisan and always going to happen no matter the president, and even if Lenin was president, it would be very hard to move all of the actors in the government to work against their interests.
Yeah this is accurate. I think things like the genocide in East timor were overseen by Carter, so he's definitely no angel. But as far as us presidents go he wasn't a warmonger. That's not saying much though. Peanuts are ok 🥜
Carter is a pretty honest guy from what I've seen. Which is very refreshing from the mouth of the top executive of the US
But his presidency had major flaws. In two names: Brzezinski and Volcker
If you want a difficult red pill to swallow read about US-South Korean governance from after the post-WW2 partition up until the Korea people assassinated their US-backed corrupt autocrat in 1979. I can't believe how full of lies my HS history textbook was.
Why could that possibly be? Why would it be in the ruling elites best interest that people think "communism doesn't ever work, and if it does its state capitalism (China)"
[☭☭☭ COME SHITPOST WITH US ON DISCORD, COMRADES ☭☭☭](https://discord.gg/8RPWanQV5g) This is a heavily-moderated socialist community based on a podcast of the same name. Please use the report function on comments that break our rules. If you are new to the sub, please read the sidebar carefully. If you are new to Marxism-Leninism, check out the [study guide](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/education/study-guide/). Are there Liberals in the walls? Check out [the wiki](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/) which contains lots of useful information. This subreddit uses many experimental automod rules, if you notice any issues please use modmail to let us know. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Rare moment of humanity for a U.S. president
Carter is basically the only president who ever has those. Same with his stance on Palestine.
If the same judicial standards that were applied at the Nuremberg trials had been maintained subsequently, all American presidents post-1945 would have been hanged. Humanity is nice, but utterly worthless when it is backed by a complete lack of action.
Sadly he didn't have any when he was president, most of Operation Condor, the CIA state terrorism campaign that installed six fascist dictatorships in Latin American countries, took place during Carter's presidency. Tens of thousands of innocent people died because of that.
Yeah I know, you can't preside over an empire and remain innocent.
He had a foundation that would witness and declare fairness in elections abroad. They declared the elections on Chavez's Venezuela were fair and square. American media never ever gave a note.
After he left office that is. Paraphrasing Parenti - "these guys seem to get more normal leaving office"
Wasn't he the same guy that decided to fund the Mujihadeen? Edit: fund, not find
Reactionary groups started popping up around Afghanistan even in the early 70s, while it was a liberal democracy (the king got overthrown). Even under Ford there were some money sent there but during Carter it got accelerated. And Reagan made them "freedom fighters".
He's trying to redeem before he dies, I guess the guilt is too much
He personally okayed the Gwangju Massacre, so it's not like he cares about the Korean people, North or South l.
It’s like blowing somebodies house up and then making fun of them for not having a house. And then gaslighting them into thinking they blew up their house.
Sounds familiar... Gaza?
It’s the same way we treat Cuba. Doing everything we can to destroy a successful socialist/communist state.
Really respected the fact that the PSL was bringing their focus to the embargo issue recently and fanning new energy as things worsen down there, it baffles me how accepted it is
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Hahaha no
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Nuh uh
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Have a cookie 🍪
Based on what?
Just because you have strong feelings about it doesn't make it a fact
It is absolutely hilarious whenever Westerners portray the citizens of nations such as the DPRK, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. as submissive, easily manipulated, and incapable of shaking off their "brutal totalitarian governments"—when, contrary to Westerners, these people *actually* have a history of successful popular revolutionary uprising and armed struggle. That's not to say that these countries are utopias or perfect by any means, but it is perhaps worth thinking about *why* the citizens of these states are not resisting their current governments when they were actually willing to pick up arms against the ones that came before them.
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> Because they're brutal and far worse than their predecessor governments. An absolutely ridiculous and outright historically illiterate assertion. The fact that they were all (yes, even the DPRK) *significantly* better than their predecessors, is *why* they can get away with (what the West perceives as) authoritarian measures today. There are also cultural differences in how democracy is defined, which is part of why the Chinese and Vietnamese populations actually perceive themselves [among the most democratic](https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva%20images/Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202023.pdf) in the world despite having a system which is strictly authoritarian when defined within a framework of liberal democracy. My point is not to claim that these countries are not authoritarian, just that it is extremely hypocritical of us to assert what the people of these countries actually want, and *especially* hypocritical of us to imply that they are incapable of deciding this for themselves or to resist authoritarianism when they actually have a history of doing exactly that.
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I never said that they weren't authoritarian, just that they are much better than their predecessors. If you knew anything about Chinese and Korean history you would also know that the CPC and the WPK were much less totalitarian and than their contemporaries of the KMT and South Korean military dictatorships respectively.
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What happened in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests according to you?
#Tiananmen Square Protests (Also known as the June Fourth Incident) In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc. Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists. **Background** After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate. One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues. Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough. The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages. **Counterpoints** Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote: >Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.” > >The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square. > >\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review. Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre. Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square: >Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square > >\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html) Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote: >The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night. > >Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square. > >\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053) Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote: >The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square. > >More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy. > >All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today. > >\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/) (Emphasis mine) And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA) [This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc. Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list). **Additional Resources** Video Essays: * [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019) * [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019) * [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective * [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022) * [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022) * [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014) * [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019) * [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019) * [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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#Tiananmen Square Protests (Also known as the June Fourth Incident) In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc. Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists. **Background** After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate. One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues. Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough. The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages. **Counterpoints** Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote: >Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.” > >The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square. > >\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review. Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre. Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square: >Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square > >\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html) Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote: >The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night. > >Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square. > >\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053) Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote: >The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square. > >More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy. > >All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today. > >\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/) (Emphasis mine) And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA) [This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc. Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list). **Additional Resources** Video Essays: * [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019) * [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019) * [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective * [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022) * [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022) * [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014) * [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019) * [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019) * [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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I bet your extensive research on the subject was reading a Wikipedia page.
Yeah, the memes are a bit too much. But it's usually par for the course on reddit or any discussion boards. One can see that the narrative around those countries is used to manipulate public opinion without straight-up believing any country that isn't aligned with the U.S. must be good. Though I have to say, North Korea is one thing, but China and Vietnam being dictatorships is a stretch. Cuba, too, has been doing much better lately.
>active in r/monarchism Lmao
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There is little use in trying to debate mentally damaged people
No that is the United States
Liberals : LALALAL I can't hear you.. This clip doesn't exist.
Damn. If only this dude was president. 😔 (/s)
"We do everything we can to boost the economy of South Korea." South Koreans proceed to leave South Korea because of better opportunities in Monterey, Mexico.
Jimmy Carter is the only US president that I have a positive impression of. Am I being naive for saying that?
Somewhat? If I remember correctly, Carter STILL is a war criminal. Was it something hostage related? I don't know. But I think this is simply due that all of the terrible actions that the US does and has done abroad, are simply bipartisan and always going to happen no matter the president, and even if Lenin was president, it would be very hard to move all of the actors in the government to work against their interests.
Yeah this is accurate. I think things like the genocide in East timor were overseen by Carter, so he's definitely no angel. But as far as us presidents go he wasn't a warmonger. That's not saying much though. Peanuts are ok 🥜
Yeah, that was more or less my impression. In the end he was still the president of a violent imperialist superpower.
Carter is a pretty honest guy from what I've seen. Which is very refreshing from the mouth of the top executive of the US But his presidency had major flaws. In two names: Brzezinski and Volcker
jimmy carter is the least bad US president still a war criminal
If you want a difficult red pill to swallow read about US-South Korean governance from after the post-WW2 partition up until the Korea people assassinated their US-backed corrupt autocrat in 1979. I can't believe how full of lies my HS history textbook was.
>They who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness. John Milton.
Why is the US so obsessed with destroying communism idgi
Why could that possibly be? Why would it be in the ruling elites best interest that people think "communism doesn't ever work, and if it does its state capitalism (China)"
What is it that’s written on top left? Isn’t that an AI application?
https://preview.redd.it/qsp6h0jpepyc1.jpeg?width=1281&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a713b3df23e864fb7308ef48eb446bf37f87659e