Al Jazeera is a terrible for you, but a great example for my point. It never mentions things critical of Qatar ever. It’s good for news about other stuff, like Palestine, which the US media is likewise horrible about covering. It’s why nobody here knew about the situation there until October 7th.

The US is not allowing criticism of Palestine. Not sure if you’ve seen the stuff happening in college campuses, job applications, the DNC where they didn’t allow a speaker, even local elections where foreign policy shouldn’t matter, etc. And it’s only going to get worse according to the 2025 plan, where it details additional attempts to shut it down. It’s also been downplaying other stuff in schools, such as the negative parts of slavery, Jim Crow, basically everything bad the US has ever done. The problem with our education system is that it depends a lot on which state, city, and even school you are from (private or public, charter or not, etc.).

The whole conflict about critical race theory and the Moms for Liberty stuff is all about them trying to roll these things back.

I agree their censorship is too high in China, though, but I think it’s a result of siege theory. Essentially they’ve seen the US do a million coup attempts and color revolutions in other countries, often successful, and so you if you’re a third world country you basically need a tight control of your press and elections if you want to resist US control. And I doubt seeing us fall to propaganda in the US from billionaire backed media organizations and foreign countries is going to encourage them to not censor though. Unfortunately, if anything, it will do the opposite.

Tank man stood in front of the tank on June 5th, the massacre happened on June 4th.

They’re always combined together. They’re considered part of the same event.

What was that again about me making shit up? It sounds to me like you’re getting high off you’re own supply.

Journalistic and diplomatic testimony at the time confirms this. It’s pretty accepted by people who were there, including Western journalists. This is one example of a journalist there for the Washington Post at the time who later wrote a piece regretting writing their article in such a way that contributed to the myth that people died in the square.

Lol you really had to do mental gymnastics to come up with any examples at all. I mean you had to go all the back to 1791 to the Whiskey Rebellion (if we’re going back that far then look up the Taiping Rebellion) to find something and then used the Waco Seige of the Branch Davidians cult as an example. The only relevant example you have is the Kent state shooting, and even that’s from 1970 and only 4 people were killed. Even then, I’m honest enough to acknowledge that this event was indeed bad and should be condemned.

I gave more recent examples too. The only reason I went back that far is to show that the US has been shooting at its citizens from the beginning. Keep in mind, China is a lot newer of a country than the US, so it feels fitting. When cou tries are newer, they are a lot more vulnerable to different conflicts and, sadly, these things can result as different factions fight it out. It’s only been around since about the 50’s. And 1970 isn’t that much older than 1989. You act like it’s ancient history.

Highly debatable. Mao has a very good case to top Hitler. He killed way more people and he was just as ruthless. Mao tops Hitler as the worst dictator of the 20th century.

Once again, Mao didn’t kill more than Hitler. Famines are not the same as purposeful targeted genocides. If you want, we can say that US Presidents are worse than both if you add every death resulting from every war, and every post-war famine, civil war, etc that the US has been involved with. You’d add up basically every death from everything that’s happened in all of South America and the Middle-East since the 50’s in there.

Not to mention that the numbers you quoted aren’t reliable. Their sources are dubious and usually CIA funded. Deng’s numbers are a bit more realistic at 16.5 million but still most likely exaggerated because of the downplaying of Mao’s legacy they were doing at the time, like you mentioned. US numbers are usually wild guesses and extrapolations.

And of course they still hail him as a hero. Even if policy-wise he wasn’t the best, he was still a great and successful revolutionary who freed them from an oppressive monarchy, brought them socialism, cut poverty, increased life expectancy, reduced mortality, increased the spread of education and healthcare, and led them on the path to where they are now as an extremely successful country. And yes, they were increasing life expectancy even while he was in charge.

And yes, the US is worse today. They are enabling a genocide. That’s basically the checkmate of atrocities.

Its not a competition, but the point is that these statements and propaganda always start as a way to encourage war and conflict with other countries. Every single time. It’s why China doesn’t celebrate the Kent massacre every year or the Civil War, or things like that that the US does. They don’t have military bases all over the world and aren’t constantly invading and occupying other countries, so they don’t really need the excuse to drum up propaganda as an excuse for war. And while China has a lot of negative points, that’s what makes the US worse that people in it don’t understand: it’s inperialistic nature.

Come back to me when you have an example of the federal government giving direct orders to massacre anything that moves during a massive civilian protest (pro tip: you can’t).

You can’t just make up shit. The soldiers weren’t given orders to “murder anyone that moves” or else the tank would’ve run that guy over. Where did you get that? They just looked at each other for awhile. I don’t think anyone even died in Tiannamen Square itself. Battles happened in other parts of the city as soldiers defended themselves, though. It wasn’t peaceful like you said earlier, soldiers died. Not that I think every protest necessarily has to be, or should be, peaceful, but at least get the facts straight.

And of course similar things happened in the US. We bombed an apartment building. There was the Kent shootings, the Haymarket massacre, Whiskey Rebellion, the incident in Waco, the assassination of Fred Hampton, hell, cop shootings happen every year. Not to mention hundreds of years of slavery where who knows how many were killed.

And no, Mao is not worse than Hitler. Mismanagement leading to famines is bad and the Cultural Revolution went too far in some places, and China acknowledges those mistakes btw, but they don’t compare to the targeted genocides, holocaust, and wars of Hitler. And most of those things you said weren’t even Mao. Plus, the US has done all those things of illegally occupying places (that’s how we got a bunch of states like Hawaii or Texas, as well as territories later like the Philippines), we did more than re-education camps of Native Americans, we killed them all and are now helping Israel do their own genocide and occupation in the present day, we have basically taken over the sea in the whole world and kill people who don’t agree (like Yemeni civilians), and have military bases all over including places they don’t want us (like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba), and have massacred civilians protesting peacefully as I said above, and helped other countries do the same, and have people under-fed and poverty stricken in the richest nation in the world.

You say you acknowledge the bad the US has done and then ignore all of them to make it sound like China is the worst places to have ever existed, at the same time an ongoing genocide is happening facilitated by the US. All you’ve proved is you consume propaganda uncritically and without context.

The thing is, only the US and West do this shit of constantly complaining about other countries and celebrating their historical tragedies every year. And it’s not a coincidence that they’re also the countries to invade and constantly engage in imperialism all around the world the most, and have the capacity to, with hundreds of military bases around the world.

It’s such obvious propaganda against foreign enemies, especially ones we want to fight. You think it would make it super obvious how propagandized Americans are, but they don’t see the hypocrisy at all because of that very propaganda.

What would be the point in China bringing up the Haymarket massacre or Kent state every year? And for that matter, what’s the point in the US bringing up the Tiannamen Square every year?

Glass houses indeed.

Oh nice! Thanks!

Is yours one? I saw other people suggest Lemmy.zip, mander I think is one, and lemdr.oid or something like that.

The problem is that they tend to be smaller, which means harder to find.

This suuuucks. We need another big, general instance that doesn’t defed everyone. But I get it, being an admin sounds like a lot of work or I would do it lol. Plus I don’t have place for a server around here. Or do most admins just buy space from the cloud?

Reminds me of that great joke -

Holy shit actual media criticism and analysis on North Korea. Never thought I’d see this day.

The little clip with the meta-commentary on news stories commenting about them was hilarious yet insightful, so I definitely have to watch the full documentary they’re referencing (EDIT: especially if it’s just the 20 minute video you linked. That’s the full video? I thought I heard the word documentary so thought it would be longer).