I've never seen this angle of Tiananmen Square's tankman before. Figured I would share.

Let them not be forgotten

This is a large album of images from the protests in Beijing in 1989. It gives the historical context for the events leading up to the "tank man" photo, and what happened after.

Warning: blood, gore, visible injuries, death

I uploaded this pictures in my old Xiaomi cloud account. It took almost 100 MB out of 5 GB free space. Other 4.9 GB is taken by Winnie the Pooh pictures and memes about Xi.
I'll never understand how the tankies can claim it never happened when there's so many pictures like this available.
- Even Lemmygrad says there were 300 deaths. I really can't find anyone saying it straight up didn't happen, not even the CPC itself. The closest is saying that the massacre happened outside the square, which seems more of a technicality that both "sides" rely on to pretend the other is making stuff up. Ie, Lemmygrad claiming others know nothing because there was no massacre on the square itself and it all happened outside, while others see that as outright denial.
  Lemmygrad also believes it was CIA-backed and turned a pro-Maoist, anti-Dengist protest into an anti-Maoist, anti-Dengist, pro-Liberal Democracy/Capitalist protest, which I would say ultimately doesn't change that protestors were murdered even if that was true.
  I think it's helpful to see what people are actually saying, you can better argue it to be an atrocity that way. For example, as above, even if it was steered in a different direction by western forces, it still had popular support and as such was still an unjust escalation of force into massacre.
  The massacre is undeniable.
- Interestingly, and having done a bit of extra reading, the current Western position is that the killings didn't actually happen in the square itself, but in the surrounding streets as the army was pushing through Beijing to reach Tiananmen Square. Some of the initial reports that came out were evidently erroneous. Again, that's internal communications in the USA acknowledging that. But still very awful and hundreds of people killed according to that version of events.

Thanks for sharing. Every time I see a picture of the Tiananmen Square massacre I get shivers. That man is one of the most amazing icons of resistance against oppression. I like to think of myself as brave but I'm genuinely skeptical if I'd have the courage to stand in front of a tank that way.

- Oh wow a .ml account denying Chinese atrocities how rare oh my gosh.
- Atrocity denial is not welcome here, and neither are the people who engage in it.
- Even the Chinese government says a couple hundred civilians died. "At the end of June 1989, the Chinese government said 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died. Other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands. In 2017, newly released UK documents revealed that a diplomatic cable from then British Ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, had said that 10,000 had died."
  I honestly don't know what your goal is with that post but I choose to believe the many sources (Chinese and international) that show a different history than what you'd have me believe. At least hundreds died with thousands more injured, and that's the low end of the estimates.
- Are you being paid, really fucking gullible, or just plain evil?
- https://tiananmen-trolls.doublethinklab.org/en/#
- Jfc, imagine loving the taste of boot this much... 🤮
- Hey! You're the same AH trying to get people to not vote Biden, because you're such an enlightened Democrat. Didn't take long for your true colors to start showing lol. Western narratives lol... Okay.
  Still not sure if your a Russian/Chinese national trying to act like an American, a piss poor troll, or just a truly uneducated bigot. What next mate, you want to start denying the Holocaust was real? 😂
- Go fuck yourself.
- Typical lies from Lemmy.ml.
- Can you imagine how funny it would be if anybody actually believed this take?

Thanks for this. China keeps trying to wipe away this event by having any image deleted. It needs to be reposted and seen often.

There are diplomatic cables from Australia and Britain about the massacre that have been declassified. Shit was fucked and I don't know if the cables are common knowledge. That article is a great read.
- Those cables have been proven to be full of shit. Go to Wikipedia and read the accounts of the survivors that were pulled out by the CIA in Operation yellowbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird if you want to piece together what happened from primary sources.

There's also this angle

And this - NSFL

Ya know I dont know if thats legit NSFL or if im just that desensitized to war photos. Maybe giving 12 year old me a book on the civil war that included post battle photos and sections from a contemporary medical book with photos from the mangled corpses wasnt the wisest move by my grandmother. But ya know what those photos do invoke within me absolute fucken rage.
- Removed by either automatic filter, .world mods/admins or .ee mods/admins.
- Uh oh, did they take it down?
That's a lot of bicycles!

Damn malicious AI image generators trying to tarnish the good name of the CCP. Smh. (/s)

Yeah, those horrible AI image generators of the late 80s look like garbage - most photos don't even have colour! /s

It's pretty amazing how they let that guy just harass a tank for several minutes and even climb on it, then just kinda let him be led away by bystanders.

For some reason growing up I think everyone assumed he got ran over or killed?

https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk

For some reason growing up I think everyone assumed he got ran over or killed?
Because hundreds if not thousands of others were (others have already linked the graphic content).
Also, seeing him being led away in this footage is zero evidence that he survived his protest (unsurprisingly, there is no documentation of him or what the government did to him, but considering what they did to others like him, there is very little room to doubt that he didn't make it).
- 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.
"Just harass a tank" XD

This man is a fucking hero and deserves to be recognized as such.

This was the photo in my local newspaper when it happened. Source: local paper boy. (Was greyscale)

I've seen lots of pictures of Hong Kong protests, and hear about rent protests in Beijing, but haven't seen many photos like this in Beijing proper in the 21st century. Are they that good at scrubbing the web, or did I just miss them?

China's internet is isolated from the rest of the world. We would be looking at a lot of content created from china if it wasn't like that.
The Tiananmen Square protest and massacre happened in 1989.
- Yes, that would be the 20th century.
- I think they're saying that, in the 21st century they haven't seen many pictures of the event. Not that they haven't seen pictures from the 21st century.

You never visited the Wikipedia page before?

The wikipedia page doesn't have any version of this image. Regardless, the most shared images are closer up and from the ground, showing about 5 tanks, not this version with 50 tanks. The image of him sitting in front of a few tanks was the most widely used I believe.
This is common
So is this
If I remember correctly, the version OP posted was newly found/released only a few years ago. E: this is what I was thinking of.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
I imagine most people don't visit that page. It's totally normal.
What is Wikipedia?
i assumed it was a meme post until i looked at the community name

Isn't this the classic photo?

I think the classic is the one where you see only 3 tanks.
- So it is this, just cropped. Or really another pic with wider view?

All of those tanks are just on patriotic vacation. There is no other reason for them to be there.

Funny you say that, because a ton of military equipment circles the place like every year.

That's odd, because that's the photo I immediately think of when the massacre is brought up. I thought it was really well-known.

Most people think of this one
- That's almost exactly the same angle as the one OP posted lol

Is that a picture of John Cena and Drax?

No.

Claims this is propaganda
Refuses to elaborate
Wow this really convinced me.
Get out of here with the CCP version. As if anyone believes your shit. And learn to spell, bot. Lemmy.ml isn't lemmygrad's alt account, noooo.
"The US version" being the version the entire rest of the world and anyone who isn't a delusional bootlicker who stans authoritarianism says is true?
So what happened then?
- 'on this site, in 1989, nothing happened'
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/ns95id/beijing_june_5th_tank_man_stopping_tanks_from/
  If you want to read the other side of the story
  Notably the mod posted a cbs link that says the reporter never saw any bodies because the military arrested him and held him captive. But the mod doesn’t quote the part of the article where the reporter says people were definitely killed
  But there's no question many people were killed by the army that night around Tiananmen Square, and on the way to it — mostly in the western part of Beijing. Maybe, for some, comfort can be taken in the fact that the government denies that, too.

No, just a less popular angle
- Also a video at this link. The man moves to stay in front of the tank and even climbs on top of it. Eventually some folks on foot come and guide/force him out of the way.
What part looks AI at all?
- Its really not about if this person thinks the pic is AI. They're using the term to muddy the waters around a historical fact because they deepthroat the ccp's dick.
- https://lemmy.world/comment/9364561
- Spez probably thought of the possibility of new angles of historic events being generated by AI, but lacked the technical knowledge to realize the technology is not to the point where it becomes indifferentiable.