China wants us to forget the horrors of Tiananmen as it rewrites its history | Hacker News Reader

China wants us to forget the horrors of Tiananmen as it rewrites its history

theguardian.com

43 pointsokket19 comments

Every country rewrites history continuously. Some just use softer ways to rewrite dominant historical narration then others.

> What is a nation? A group of people united in mistaken view about the past and hatred of their neighbours.

> Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_a_Nation%3F

Oddly this was accessible from mainland without VPN. Wonder how long this will last?

If they don't want remembered for atrocities in the past, maybe they shouldn't keep doing them in the present (e.g. ethnic concentration camps).

Unlike "us", we never rewrote our history, right?

Any example of events 'us' is actively removing from history the same way China is doing with the the Tiananmen event ?

edit: I can think of the Armenian genocide but it's not yet dealt with the same diligence and tech level than the Tiananmen event is.

I'm neither the parent poster nor American, but from a Europeans perspective I'd say that America handles their censorship differently. Dissenters disappear in China. In America they're discredited and made into conspiracy theorist.

But nonetheless: the tiananmen square is quite unique in it's bloodiness.i know of nothing even remotely as bad as military personal killing unarmed civilians in the hundreds which mostly just try to flee.

Maybe The Bonus Army in 1932, though far less intensified in terms of casualties. Many labor movements and strikes in 19th and early 21th century also led to death of up to 100 by law enforcement, state troops or private guards hired by business owner. Most recent case I can think of is the Kent University Shooting in which national guard killed 4 students protesting Vietnam War. Some witnesses said these soliders was not self-defensing but deliberately shot at the crowd

Because no one cares to report anything else.

How is it unique in its bloodiness? You are rendering the human history a lovely picture of peace and kind. It may not be as nice as the Chinese government portrait it, and it may not be as bad as europeans portrait it either. There is nothing wrong with leaving it to the past and move one.

> How is it unique in its bloodiness? You are rendering the human history a lovely picture of peace and kind

Absolutely not. It's uniqueness comes from is bloodiness in the context of the situation.

Most crimes of that caliber happen by systematically alienating a people, 'legitimizing' these clearly inhumane actions in some way.

Take the Holocaust for example. Jews were portrayed as the source of all problems for years and subsequently slaughtered in the millions. Clearly inhumane and wrong... And way worse than the square was, but still a 'us vs them' situation.

On the square, you got the military doing a parade and civilians standing in the way in a demonstration. Their only crime was their unwillingness to let the parade continue. And the military opened fire on these people, because they were standing in the way and unwilling to leave

You don't think that such a situation is unique?

Communist military shoting workers - Berlin 1953, Gdansk 1970, Poznan 1956, Budapest 1956. Just out of top of my head. There were many more...

Communists are always down to this single argument at the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_protests_of_1970

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_protests_of_1956

But also this - Blair Mountain - one milion rounds fired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

>Any example of events 'us' is actively removing from history the same way China is doing with the the Tiananmen event ?

All kinds of events, from the Philippines war, to provoking Japan in WWII, to Mosaddegh, Vietnam atrocities, to the bloody US labour history, and so on [1].

Though in the US, as long as their importance is downplayed at official politics and the educational system, you can still let people talk and write books about those events, since nobody really cares. A lot of the suffering in those events happened to people outside the country anyway.

Whereas in China, talk about their things could seriously polarize people and have extended consequences (not just the CCP elites falling from grace, but also a hellish period of power struggles to fill the power vacuum, even a civil war).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...

> Though in the US, as long as their importance is downplayed at official politics and the educational system, you can still let people talk and write books about those events,

Which is a far cry from what China is doing regarding Tiananmen.

The same for Labour day.

>Which is a far cry from what China is doing regarding Tiananmen.

Well, that's because talking about those things in the use and people wont care anyway (it's not like they'll rebel against the government). Whereas talking about those things in China could create mayhem and turn the country into a chaos of civil war and power struggles as I wrote above. So the US can afford to be magnanimous about it. In areas where it wants to keep stuff secret, people exposing them have the fate of Snowden, Manning, Assange and co.

Labor Day is internationally on May 1st to commemorate Haymarket Masacre in Chicago 1886. Not in US however.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day

Not the same way, but this is a thread I stumbled upon the other day:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fakehistoryporn/comments/bm2ek3/the...

Instead of "active censorship", history gets rewritten much like our own memories, after all: we tend to keep the ones (or the viewpoints) we are more comfortable with. I don't even think there is a need for a concerted effort.

Interesting read, thanks.

You can show whether it's 'right' or not by providing some examples.

Your whataboutism isn't helping.

A, what once was called "pointing out the hypocrisy" is now called "whataboutism".

A perfect way for people living in glass houses to throw all the stones they like at others unharmed...

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