• feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’ll play devil’s advocate - the photographs don’t seem to show evidence of thousands dying, or even hundreds necessarily. Dozens, absolutely. I doubt we’ll ever know the actual numbers, though. Clearly something awful happened.

    Edit: I mean, they really don’t… and if they “only” ran over fifty civilians with tanks I think we can still consider that an unforgivable example of state violence. It’s not as if the Kent State shootings were okay because they only killed four people.

    I’m just saying, I don’t feel the photographic record is a particularly robust source when it comes to supporting those higher claims. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen that way, just that the pictures are inadequate to prove that.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldM
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      7 months ago

      I’ll play devil’s advocate

      Devil’s one of the most powerful countries in the world, with people on this platform regularly repeating its propaganda, including in this thread.

      Not sure the devil needs an advocate in this case.

      • Syrc@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        It always does, imo. Most of the time devil’s advocate isn’t meant to actually “defend” anything, but to find flaws/imperfections in your logic so you can adjust it and when you have to argue with an actual Xi bootlicker “devil”, they’ll have less ammo to refute your point.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldM
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          7 months ago

          It always does, imo.

          Not always. Sometimes it’s just amplifying the devil’s arguments by repetition. Time and place, and all that jazz.

        • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          The initial exaggeration was probably unintentional, due to second-hand eyewitness testimony getting relayed as fact in the middle of the chaos. But it was later used to pretend nothing happened, which clearly isn’t the case. My girlfriend is Chinese and has no idea anything ever happened in Tiananmen Square: she didn’t even know that date was censored online, so whatever they’re doing is working very well.