Edit: YouTube link if Vimeo gives you issues
Just a reminder: yesterday (June 4 2024) marked the 35 year anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
Some relevant links:
- Associated Press: Silence and heavy security in China and Hong Kong mark 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown
- Hong Kong Free Press: In Pictures: Hong Kong’s US, EU consulates mark Tiananmen crackdown anniversary with candles
- Al Jazeera: Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te says Tiananmen ‘will not disappear in torrent of history’
I always assumed that tank man got ran over since I’ve only seen images.
That’s a common tool of propaganda. If you lie outright, you can get caught, and the audience may not believe you in the first place. The real trick is to leave gaps for the audience to fill in with their imagination, and if you’re doing it skillfully, they’ll end up not only believing what you want them to, but also thinking it was their idea all along. I’ve even seen the video cut to show the tank moving in the man’s direction, and then cut away before it stops, creating the impression that the full video would show him getting run over and is not included because it would be too graphic - for example, 3:14 in this bizarre psyop recruitment ad.
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone imply that he’s important because he’s a martyr, it’s the fact he believes in his cause strongly enough and he was brave enough to stare down inevitable death and force the other guy to blink that’s so memorable about that image (at least for me and those I’ve spoken to about it)
The psyops propaganda you posted is definitely cringe af but it seems to clearly show the tank turning in the clip, calling it a clear example of misleading people into thinking he was killed is a pretty big stretch imo
Was anyone else told/under the assumption this guy got run over? Wild.
I remember the video from the next day and a lot of people were run over. All of the acts of that part of history get conflated in memory. That’s why it’s good to have video and good to have professional historians.
Link? I’ve never seen this.
I don’t have a link right now. I literally remember seeing it on the television on the nightly news in the United States.
That is definitely not true! The killing that did happen was in the streets surrounding Tiananmen Square. This is now the official USA position, and recently declassified diplomatic cables confirm that the initial reports were incorrect.
How does that change things, exactly?
Only that while an atrocity clearly occurred, you’re one of many with false memories about the event. It’s a clear example of the propagation of a false narrative and it’s okay to acknowledge that. People are literally swearing they saw footage which doesn’t exist, and their response is “so what it I’m completely wrong, China is still bad”. At the very least, that’s interesting.
What false narrative?? I’ve never heard anyone claim that all the violence and killing happened only directly on the square, what a bizarre counter claim that changes nothing lol
