what happened here?
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When did a convoy of tanks ever stop because of one person? I asked claude and it said there are no historical records on this, the only time a tank ever stopped was in this case.
claude previously said this was not a show of chinese mercy, but after pointing that out it said “hmm good point” lol
If it was so easy to stop tanks, there would be no wars, imagine if a single iraqi could stop the US invasion (or a single american citizen in Iraq), or if a single ukranian could stop russia, or even a single russian that is not ok with the war
Tank Man should be a symbol of how peaceful the Chinese are, no tanks from almost any other country would ever have stopped. Hell, in South America the military police drives over innocent people with their huge ass semi tank SUVs all the time.
I agree with the content of your post but the idea of having a political argument against a Shakespeare monkey is really funny.
Is this how people psychologically engaged with the internet previously? They just thought of it as a black box of “thoughts” that they’d interact with? Did people not realize there were/should be an actual human being behind the content of the words? I don’t get this appeal for chat bots, truly. What do people think language and conversation is FOR? It’s fundamentally social. Chat bots are like the masturbation of conversation. There’s no point other than self-pleasure if it’s not WITH another person, and while there’s nothing wrong with self-pleasure inherently, there is when people mistake it for the activity it mimics.
Maybe it could be helpful if the chat bots were truly intelligent and didn’t just hallucinate about history, science, math, or anything factual. If I had an oracle machine that could talk to me and have a deep conversation it’d probably be useful so I could learn a lot; but having a machine that’s correct 90% of the time and blatantly wrong 10% of the time is truly useless.
Okay sorry for not bowing down to you with the utmost civility, I see now the error of my ways in treating you with the same derision you treat us. I shall now serve you my liege, for you have been bamboozled! You see, the real tank man video is actually quite different those Evil tankies have deceived you
A man stopping tanks heading to massacre a student protest at Tiananmen Square.
Terminal_ERROR
You can see the square behind them, moron.
If the tanks are heading to a massacre, then why would they stop instead of rolling over that guy? Can you try making sense when you repeat propaganda?
They’re about to massacre a whole bunch of people indiscriminately but this one grocery shopper is off limits? They’re being really polite for soldiers that were ordered to put a demonstration down by any means necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk
aw they’re banned :(
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Wrong on a couple of counts. The tanks are leaving the square in this photo, and there wasn’t a massacre on the square. The hundreds that died that day did so in scattered areas across Beijing.
The person in this photo walks on top of the tank, talks to the driver, and then leaves.
Loud buzzing sound
WRONG
Why do the American police kill three people every day?
Lib alert!
Tankie
Yes, I support using tanks to crush CIA-backed uprisings.
Hey buddy, you can just scroll down and look at any of the dozens of sources that were linked on this thread that will disprove your historical revisionism. Or I guess you could use your time more wisely and play the 14th League game of the night, IDK, whatever floats your boat.
“Tankie”
Noun. Definition: Someone who would rather investigate an issue instead of talking about their ass.Seriously this is straight up the kind of thought terminating cliche you people accuse socialist countries of instilling in their people.
Historically illiterate and brainwashed lib
My god, this is still going?
How much of this thread have you read?
I’m glad you asked
Omg. You have it. I’ve been searching for this for so long. Thank you so much.
Canadians will deny this ever happened
Hey guys what’s going on here?
Best slop we’ve had in a while, I hope WhiskeyOaks starts another thread tomorrow so we can do this again.
What else is there to be curious about though? The holodomor?
The photo of the Chinese prisoners in blue?
The bikes in the street picture from Tiananmen Square maybe.
When @LiberalSocialist@hexbear.net permaleft, it created a void in our community that hadn’t been filled until now
AOC is doing what the unions asked her to
Power dynamo
This thread is great, I hope the libs at shit.just.works are gonna post it in their silly com dedicated to us.
On the offchance that you’re actually here in good faith. The pop history belief in the west is that a bunch of unarmed innocent protestors were brutally massacred inside the square, this is false and no deaths of protestors occurred in the square. What actually went down is protestors murdered two unarmed negotiators and burned them alive sparking off things turning nasty, a military column then got ransacked and some protestors armed themselves. What followed were dozens of hours of battles across different streets in which hundreds of PLA and armed protestors died. I could post images of these burned negotiators but I’ll leave that to you to look up, they’re not hard to find and I don’t think it adds value to a historic discussion to post the gore when what matters is the version of events.
I can do this two ways for you, I can show it with western liberal sources or I can show it with socialist sources. I’ll give you both.
The Telegraph lays it out pretty reasonably in this article in my opinion, and since it’s a right wing tory rag so I assume no liberals are gonna accuse it of it being “commie propaganda” lmao.
But don’t just take that as the only example. How about we also look back at old articles written at the time it actually occurred?
CBS NEWS: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square]”
BBC NEWS: “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square”
NY TIMES: In June 13, 1989, NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof – who was in Beijing at that time – wrote, “State television has even shown film of students marching peacefully away from the [Tiananmen] square shortly after dawn as proof that they [protesters] were not slaughtered.” In that article, he also debunked an unidentified student protester who had claimed in a sensational article that Chinese soldiers with machine guns simply mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square.
REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw was in the Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. He didn’t leave the square until the morning of June 4th. He wrote in his memoir that the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone (including himself) leave peacefully; and that nobody died in the square.
A Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Beijing (sent in July 1989) also reveals the eyewitness accounts of a Latin American diplomat and his wife: “They were able to enter and leave the [Tiananmen] square several times and were not harassed by troops. Remaining with students … until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings in the square or the monument.”
If instead of me using western major news sources to support my point you’d somehow still want this from my communist perspective. These three pieces are pretty good:
https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/
As for these tanks themselves. The video is of them leaving the square, and when held up like this I think they demonstrated a degree of restraint you wouldn’t see from any western military anywhere in the world.
Thank you for providing a legitimate, well thought out response instead of just reacting like so many others here. I’ll read through it all here in a bit.
Plenty of people initially responded with sources and thought out texts. You got negativity when you decided to ignore those, act as if you had not received them and then solely engage with low effort dunks like mine own. You are not owed respect, you earn it by being respectful
sorry but your post was the embodiment of the
/
archetype.If you wrote a polite question like “What happened in June 1989 in Tienanmen Square, is the tank man photo real?” or “What is the origin of this picture?” then you’d get a polite response.
No one is obligated to be nice to you if you’re not respectful back.
And yall don’t need to start every interaction by being a massive douchebag and acting like everyone is out get you. The actual language of my question is pretty innocuous (though, perhaps less so given the context of the instance, but still).
If I asked if it was real, I would get answers biased by belief in the events legitimacy. I’m also not going to ask what the origins are as I already know where the image comes from. By very purposely asking such a vague question, I’m openly inviting people answer with the information that they deem important to the context of this image. By asking in this way and in this instance specifically, I have the greatest chance to learn and stumble into some new information. As with all things, there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Did you really think saying “I’m curious, what happened here” wasn’t going to come off as smug and condescending? Did you really expect it to garner a civil and cordial response?
Like actually? What did you think our reaction would be? I have a hard time believing you didn’t think you were gonna “troll” us and when we mounted a better response than you thought you decided to get pissy and start moaning about civility.
I think they were “curious” about the kind of response they would get, rather than the event itself but seeing that there are valid responses that they cant just dismiss snidly and everyone thinks they’re stupid they have to coddle their bruised ego by pretending they were curious about the actual event all along. As in pretend to themselves mainly to protect against their hurt feelings.
It’s a punch to the ego to be laughed at by the people you thought you were smarter than and realising you actually have no clue about what you thought would be an easy dunk does hurt.
I’m going to troll the tankies with le tankman today 😆 wait why are they being hostile to me?? 😭
my buddy says you’re a pedophile and you say you’re not a pedophile. the truth is likely somewhere in the middle
actually thats ephebophiia
OP is about to explain that they went to Little Saint James but only for networking.
Unrelated but I always read your posts in the mighty monarchs voice and this one is really funny coming from The Monarch
I’m gonna start doing that now too lol
I’d never considered that that might be the case, but I find it delightful. Imagining it, it is a funny line. Sounds like something he’d say about another villain he’s being petty towards.
the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Typically untrue. The rest of your comment I agree with though, you do need to be aware that an instance like this is consistently trolled by
smuglord liberals so people are on guard and view vagueness as indicative of bad-faith participation. Given that most people don’t want to waste their time with someone they know is acting in bad-faith the result is hostility and easy cheap responses instead.Do you think the truth typically lies at the extremes of reason? In my experience Occams Razor holds in almost every situation, especially with controversial topics like this.
If you ever take a calculus or precalculus class, when you are testing for minima and maxima across a zone, you usually test the corners first. The wisdom therein is that you don’t know for sure whether you are starting out centered on the critical point.
It’s the same thing for politics. You can’t assume that the observable range is equidistant from The Truth in all directions. In many cases, you’re going to have an edge or a corner that is closest. Starting out by saying “we’re going to define truth simply by the average of the opinions that are out there” assumes that all perspectives are equally reasonable, that the average of the masses is always right, that it does not need to evolve, and that it is immune to manipulation. All of these assumptions are deeply wrong. Using this approach, you are always going to end up defining truth by the principles of strangers, instead of developing your own principles.
Well yes because the truth is the truth and our reason is Calvinball that changes over time and space. Scientific advancement always happens at the edge of knowledge and reason. That’s how it advances. You have to question the existing premise in order to move past it. You’re the one moving, not reality.
Occams Razor does not mean that the truth is always in the center of reason. It’s that all things being equal (aka equal evidence for all sides), the truth is the thing that requires the fewest assumptions. Your lack of awareness about the evidence (ie full video of Tienanmen Square) isn’t the thing that requires the least amount of assumptions. You’re just assuming you have all the information and acting on that. We’re not assuming the information, we have it. So ours requires one less assumption than you.
Do you think the truth typically lies at the extremes of reason?
yeah, pretty much always. What truth lied in the middle of the geocentrism debate? Does God exist or not? Can the truth be somewhere in the middle for any of the most important questions?
I like this line of thinking, but I’m having a hard time using it to understand the phenomenon of crop circles.
Explanation 1: it was a previously unknown spacefaring species that uses giant circles to communicate.
Explanation 2: it was a couple middle aged Brits with some boardsDoes Occam’s Razor say that it was a couple of aliens with some boards, or it was a previously unknown advanced civilization of middle-aged British men?
a previously unknown advanced civilization of middle-aged British men?
“Reason” isn’t something with extremes, normally. Events are events, the truth is in the evidence. Interpretations of the evidence can vary, but truth doesn’t vary. There’s nothing about being in the “middle” of two positions on what happened in a historical event that makes the median stance any more or less accurate than the stances themselves.
As an example, Iraq with WMD. The US line was that Iraq had WMD, the Iraqi line was that they didn’t. The Iraqi line was 100% correct and the US line was 100% fabrication.
But what if they 50% had them and 50% didn’t? Did you consider that?
20·1 day agoBut what if the extremes of reason are the start and the end, and the correct position is in the middle of that
Occam’s Razor has nothing to do with the truth being in the middle of two arbitrarily chosen positions you pseudointellectual lib.
You’re just throwing out phrases that you think make you sound smart.
Yeah I was willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt until this comment. Classic
brainworms
I know that 1+1=2 but some people think 1+1=3. So probably 1+1 is approximately 2.5 since objective truth usually lies somewhere between two ends huh.
Now you could say that you don’t know enough about math to know either way and that would be fine too, but then you shouldn’t have an opinion on it or say anything about math at all
Personally I believe that Neil Armstrong only made it halfway to the moon
He forgot to go pee first
Have you ever heard of the golden mean fallacy?
Invoking Occam’s Razor here is conflating neutrality with simplicity which is not always the case. Most political dichotomies of opinion are social constructions which themselves have bias. While there is a kernel of truth to “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” (you should try to get a complete picture before reaching a conclusion), applying it to already-biased dichotomies and then landing in the middle is going to result in you favoring the original bias present in the construction.
I would argue it does. One extreme wants to say; “Tienanmen Square was a horrible tragedy and China/ Communism is the evilest thing in the world”, likely not true, but also, neither China nor Communism have clean hands. The other extreme wants to say; “Nothing interesting happened with Tienanmen Square and the West/ Capitalism is the evilest thing in the world”, equally unlikely to be true, but also, neither the West or Communism have clean hands. In this case, Occam’s Razor implies that neither of these extremes is reasonable and that the true story is actually some composite of both. I’m not using Occam’s Razor as a form of neutrality, merely as a mechanism for determining when a reasonable conclusion can be made.
No I think that when multiple people are telling history there is usually one that is correct and it’s usually the ones that were actually physically present at the time it occurred.
There aren’t multiple liars, there are multiple liars and one person telling the truth. You aren’t seeking a “middle”, you’re seeking the person telling the truth. “The middle” would be incorrect as well, as it would be in-between the lie and the truth.
there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
middle of what? The middle of your ass you’re speaking out of?Gotem
go back to reddit
Just as an aside, without any further comment, it’s “Tiananmen”. Not tia-na-men, but tian-an-men.
Tian An Men.
Tinyman
It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean
The interaction did not start out at that point, it went there after you made it obvious you were not even going to watch the video of the event you talked about.
It’s being made clearer by you continually trying to rewrite the course of events.By very purposely asking such a vague question, I’m openly inviting people answer with the information that they deem important to the context of this image.
You do not openly invite to a discussion about an event by hiding your intentions, that is by it’s very nature not an open discussion. Vague questions and answers also only lead to a bad discussion. A discussion which also requires interaction from you, which you have failed to do several times. If you wish to see an example of an open discussion, then go to the thread I’ve linked you.
And now you are trying to save face, but t his too you’re unable to. Instead you make it all the more clearer you are acting in bad faith.
As with all things, there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
So you did know what was going on? Why did you ask what happened then? Also of course you’re an enlightened centrist. The truth does not lie in the middle when the tale is one of lies and propaganda by the west, as many people have given you resources to see. You making this statement once again makes it clear you’re not engaging with the arguments given to you.
you’re just being a dick
And?
Yes I am. What goes around comes around.
CW gore
Yes but the student rioters were fighting for Democracy.
Anyway, those J6 rioters should be shot
Your Amerikkkan stupidity has woken us up
It’s notable that Arthur Tsang Hin Wah, one of the two Tank Man photographers, was in the hotel to take the photo because he was beaten by students while taking photos on the 3rd.
hi curious, im sictransitgloria
Im so tired of libs thinking they’re clever/cute. Hey op!? When you’re actually curious, come on back. We’ll be ready to help when the veil falls off.
I very nearly thought this was a bit until I read the responses
Doubtless, you’ll go back to your main instance and report back that you learned a new perspective and weren’t permabanned for ‘just asking questions’. Im excited for your upcoming post on MoG summarizing your experience
Ethics in message board journalism
Lmao, are you the person from that blahaj thread who said they were “toying” with the idea of coming here to own us with a picture from 1989?
Have you watched the video?
EDIT: Your account age is exactly as old as this comment.
Lmao oh man that’s hilarious. Do they think we’ve never been hit with the tiny-man square thing before?
Watch out, he’s going to say Xinnie the Pooh next, that will really own us.
- “1984”
Heh -999 social credit score
jfc he’s from sh.itfor.brains
Its not them, that person has an account here and did post in the comments of a thread about that thread the other day and they seemed chill.I’m not talking about Khlo, the OP of the thread I linked, who does seem cool, I’m talking about this person
That self-superior, faux intellectual, pussyfooting tone is so unbearably cringe. Just toying with posting a certain controversial image, teehee wink wink hint hint
I just love the idea that in their heads, we had never seen this image before. Because China censored it. You know, like all those Reddit posts “the CCP doesn’t want you to see this image!”
Despite the fact we probably forget more about Tiananmen square every day than this dweeb has ever known.
I love the idea of this guy doing some ninja shit to discover the secrets of that fabled, mist-enveloped island known as Hexbear.
“I think they’re all tankies” — how did he figure that one out? We’ve been far too careless!
It’s giving Paul Blart
Imagine thinking tankies are pro-Trump.
Ah yes, we just adore the most capitalist man to ever exist.
Always a good sign when people can’t find actual things to criticise us for so they have to just make things up.
Pffft, I think you’re right. I will remove my own upvote from my own comment, that’s what I get for not looking closer.
No, you were just worried about a new user getting slandered, it’s totally understandable.
EDIT: and actually I went ahead and edited my other comment to make it more clear which individual from the linked thread I meant
lmao
Nice investigation skill, but sadly not me. Would’ve been a funny coincidence, though.
Also, yes I did watch the video.
Occams Razor says it was you though… I guess the answer must lie somewhere in the middle
I say is was you.
The truth is clearly in the middle, it was half you.
I don’t believe you.
Good for you
he says you’re a douche troll from an instance of losers. you say you are not. obviously, the truth lies in the middle of this frame that has been objectively constructed by the laws of reality according to the philosophy of Enlightened Centrism: you’re HALF a douche troll from an instance of losers.
and, statistically, we round up to the nearest integer so you are mathematically now proven to be a douche troll from an instance of losers.
Q.E.D.
The truth is always in the middle, so clearly it half wasn’t you and half was you.
It’s truly exhausting to see people still using the term “tankie” in 2025
mostly from so called “leftists” lol it’s so pathetic, anarcholibs and such hate “tankies” more than they hate imperialism and capitalism, it’s so disgusting
what happened here?
EVIL DEMON CCP BAD DANGEROUS NO FREE MARKET VERY BAD AUTHORITARIAN REPRESSION WHEN THEY USE STATE VIOLENCE COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED WHEN WEST USE STATE VIOLENCE
I bet there is a US base in whatever western shit hole you live in where they will shoot you dead with minimum hesitation if you so much as breathe in its direction, yet you couldn’t give any less of a fuck about it and would rather cry about muh evil Chyna etc.
I bet there is a US base in whatever western shit hole you live in where they will shoot you dead with minimum hesitation if you so much as breathe in its direction
Reminds me of the Boy Boy video where they try and get on that remote base in northern Australia
