This picture (among others) has been circulating around WeChat and other social media today.

Thousands of retirees protested in Hankou today, the second such protest since the one performed one week ago, over the government’s sudden and arbitrary reduction in health benefits.

You can tell this is a protest in China because of the violence as the authoritarian state grinds those who dare speak out against its policies under tank treads and truncheon blows in clouds of tear gas and worse.

Oddly missing from this picture, given the image people have of Chinese governance:

  • Tear gas.
  • Truncheons.
  • Tanks.

Oddly missing too from this picture for those who are familiar with protests of equivalent size in the USA or the UK or other such places:

  • Protestor violence.

You have to give credit to the survivors of the February 8th carnage. It must take some serious courage to come back a week later to be ground under tank treads and smashed under truncheon blows again.

  • @ttmrichterOP
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    21 year ago

    Which Parenti quote? Sounds like I need it in my arsenal.

    • diegeticscream[all]🔻
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      fedilink
      61 year ago

      "During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

      If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum."

      Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

      • @ttmrichterOP
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        61 year ago

        Ah. Kind of like how the Chinese now are on the one hand incredibly subtle with foresight making plans for decades ahead on how to attack the free world while on the other hand are bumbling idiots.

        Othering. It’s an ancient tactic.

    • @frippa
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      11 year ago

      The one about how if the soviet Union does something good is to “fool the West” and if it does something bad is because “they’re evil”