10 June 2009

An alternative view of the Tiananmen Square incident

While most of the websites I visited this past week offered a brief tribute to the events in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago, one columnist presented a radically different view. Justin Raimondo writes for Antiwar.com and is often brutally outspoken about matters that others treat with caution or deference. Here are excerpts from his essay on June 8:

To begin with, what was the uprising about? What demands were the students – and most of them were indeed students, rather than ordinary workers and peasants – intent on pursuing to the end? The initial protests were over reductions in student subsidies. As an economizing measure, the government decided to drastically cut student allowances, while China’s generous foreign scholarship program, which enabled many students from Africa to study in Chinese universities, was continued, in spite of the cutbacks.

This outraged the fiercely nationalistic Chinese students, who, in the winter of 1988, used it as an excuse to rampage through the living quarters of African students, injuring 13. What began as a lynching miraculously turned into a "human rights" protest, as 3,000 demonstrators showed up in Nanjing, where slogans such as "Kill the black devils!" mingled with demands for "political reform."

From Nanjing, where the movement originated, anti-African demonstrations spread to other cities, notably Shanghai and Beijing. A major motivation behind the demonstrations was apparently the success African students had with Chinese women. That the anti-African riots were the prelude to the Tiananmen protests, the spark that started a roaring fire in the center of Beijing, was evidenced in the slogans and banners raised by the students in the square, such as "”No Offend Chinese Women” [sic]...

Gathered together in Tiananmen Square were all those elements who were dissatisfied with the Chinese status quo and who had some special cause – reductions in student subsidies, the lack of free speech, "preferential" treatment for foreigners, the suppression of cults such as Falun Gong, the increasingly pro-market orientation of the Chinese Communist Party (which had recently voted to allow big businessmen to become members), the absence of democratic elections, Africans hitting on "their" women, etc., etc. Western reporters edited out those grievances that didn’t fit their narrative, and television coverage focused on the most dramatic visual in sight, the statue of the "goddess of liberty" that arose in the square.

The rest, as they say, is history – except that it isn’t.

As Western commentators, including the American secretary of state, weigh in on the occasion of this anniversary, none have so far mentioned the initial reaction of the Chinese government. To hear them tell it, the students gathered in Tiananmen and the regime promptly marched in, crushed the rebels, and forbade forever more any discussion of what occurred.

This is complete nonsense. To begin with, the reaction from the government was initially support for the students, as indicated in the state-controlled news media, which ran front-page stories praising them as heroes and patriots – and this went on for weeks.

Much more at the link, especially re why the demonstration resulted in violence. I have no expertise in this area or regarding this event, and have no idea whether Raimondo is justified in his view or not. I offer the excerpt and the link as a thought-provoking variance from what most blogs posted this week.

7 comments:

  1. I have no expertise regarding Tienanmen Square either, but I do know Justin Raimondo is a conspiracy theorist who, among other claims, has published a book maintaining that Israel's Mossad knew about 9/11 in advance and didn't tell us. I'd be really skeptical of what he has to say on almost any topic.

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  2. Have you read Raimondo's book? I doubt it. If you had, you'd know that he merely cites a four-part Fox News documentary that quotes law enforcement officials as saying that Israeli intelligence was tracking the 9/11 terrorists. He also cites pieces in Salon, Die Zeit, and a variety of "mainstream" sources that all point to the same conclusion.

    And as to why this disqualifies him from commenting on the Tiananmen Square incident, or any other subject, is a mystery to me. The smear-and-fear technique you employ is illogical -- and un-American.

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  3. Un-American, cool. Always wondered what that meant.

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  4. Writing about Mossad knowing about 9/11 in advance is hardly evidence of a journalist to be skeptical of. The Dancing Israelis of 9/11 clearly had fore-knowledge, and Mossad agents had lived in Florida next to hijackers as they took flight lessons.

    It's not antisemitic or subversive to say that; it's just an admission that Israeli intelligence services know a lot more about middle east terrorists than the U.S. does.

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  5. Hmm, I don't believe I said it disqualified him from commenting on anything. That's not what "skeptical" means.

    All I'm saying is that I wouldn't take just his word for it, any more than I'd take the word of anyone who indulged in a lot of conspiracy theorizing. Sometimes conspiracies are real, but you want a lot of evidence from lots of sources to confirm them.

    Also, while it's fine for Mossad to be tracking terrorists and to know more about them than we do, it would not be fine for them to have known in advance of the 9/11 attacks and not given us a warning, which is what Raimondi suggests happened.

    (BTW, I think there are many questions still to be answered about 9/11; and I'm not a big fan of Israel.)

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  6. I found this interesting enough to investigate further.

    It appears to me Mr. Raimondo seems to be stitching facts together in a unique way to support his particular position by focusing on one small group of protesters at Tienanmen Square. Though he mentions correctly there were many different groups protesting, his emphasis would lead many to the incorrect conclusion the PRIMARY reason for the protests was anti-African sentiment. By far the largest group of protesters was not related to that reason at all.

    In fact, most protests on this subject occurred 6 months earlier and involved an incident where a group of African students was accused of not being punished for an attack on Chinese students at a dormitory party at Hehai University.

    Tienanmen Square protests started out as a protest by students and intellectuals who believed government reforms hadn't gone far enough. As the protests grew, many others with different causes to promote, joined in. Interestingly enough, while many were protesting political reforms which they felt hadn't gone far enough, others at the square were protesting that those same reforms had gone TOO far.

    Still, there was a current of anti-foreigner sentiment, which I had been unaware of, and has not been emphasized by the media. While this was interesting, it does not excuse the behavior of the government during the protests, and afterward, as they continue to suppress the facts and rewrite history to this day.

    http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Tiananmen:Square:protests:of:1989.html

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  7. I read the Wikipedia article on Tiananmen, then reread the Raimondo piece. I realized its purpose wasn't to reveal startling new info about Tiananmen, but rather to use what most Americans don't know about Tiananmen to bash Hillary Clinton, suggesting that her recent statement on the anniversary was somehow ignorant and inappropriate.

    It wasn't; he just tried to make it sound as if it was. Most of what he said about Tiananmen appears to have come directly from the Wikipedia article. I'd bet my firstborn that Hillary could outwonk Raimondo by a mile with her knowledge of those events.

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