cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25378355
“No bro you see no one was turned into gore paste IN the square itself, it was the SIDE streets, and besides, they should have Just Complied anyway, so it’s all Western lies”
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25378355
“No bro you see no one was turned into gore paste IN the square itself, it was the SIDE streets, and besides, they should have Just Complied anyway, so it’s all Western lies”
It is kinda weird. We don’t have any problems talking about our historical atrocities, unless your community is really, really conservative. I first learned about the Trail of Tears in elementary school, we even took a field trip to a historical location on it. That’s some heavy shit for a little kid. We didn’t go into all the gory details, but the wide scale of the suffering and betrayal we committed was covered.
Even into current events, American bombs falling on Gaza was a big deal.
I think there are many events in American history that could be analogous to Tiananmen.
Were you ever educated on the 1985 MOVE bombing? The destruction of black wall street? The house un-american activities committee? The battle of Blair Mountain?
Were you ever taught about any of the coups we did to overthrow democratic governments in latin america? The death squads we trained? The authoritarians and fascists we put into power, and the oppression and death they caused?
Or, in general, the 70-or-so countries we invaded since WWII? I think most Americans can only name Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam.
And that’s just the stuff I can name off the top of my head, I’m sure there are countless American atrocities that I am unaware of.
Personally, the American education system taught me none of that. Many of these subjects are not discussed in broad American culture.
Fun question for Americans: how much were you taught about the struggle for labor rights?
Late nineties Midwest public school: barely talked about, Henry Ford given credit for the 5 day work week. The many atrocities were never mentioned.
Early 1990s and my boarding school taught it but not the public school.
I actually got a somewhat decent education on it. Learned about unionization, the fight for weekends, battle of Blair Mountain, and the teacher even played “Solidarity Forever” in class.
I fully recognize my experience isn’t standard, though.
In school? Almost nothing. We learned a little bit about the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act as “part of the new deal” but like the gun battles fought at mines, railroads etc… not a peep.
I didn’t even know about the Bonus Army until yesterday.
You’re right those usually aren’t taught but that’s very different than denying they happened. Honestly, it’s more effective too probably. China denying it is part of why it keeps being brought up. They’re in too deep now, but if they had just said “yeah, it happened and it’s regretful” then people probably wouldn’t bring it up all the time.
That’s the thing, though: The Tiananmen riots are not a secret in China, and they are taught, while you have been mistaught by Western propaganda that they’re a secret in China. So this meme is ignorant nonsense that perpetuates the propaganda for free.
I learned about around half of that in junior high and high school. Where did you study? That has a lot to do with it, our education system is controlled at the local level by individual school boards.
So you were left ignorant of the other half of the atrocities I mentioned, just like we suspect Chinese citizens are ignorant of Tiananmen?
I went to high school in North Dakota btw.
North Dakota makes sense, that’s a fairly conservative region if I’m not mistaken. I’m from a more purple region.
I don’t expect everything to be covered in junior high or high school, there isn’t enough time in a general US history or world history class to focus on most details. They’re not US imperialism classes, they’re generalist with a lot of material worthy of time and attention. This is what more advanced studies are for.
This is entirely different from actively suppressing information. The information is available, even if teaching it to all teenagers is not mandatory. One thing is active suppression, another is prioritization of limited time.
Well I thought we were discussing education, but as far as information supression is concerned, I think both countries are heavily supresssing information, but the US method is simply much more effective.
Take for example an event similar in scale to the Tiananmen massacre, the Haditha massacre. The US military actively suppressed all info after it happened, classifying everything related to the killings. The only information from the state dept about this incident were leaks to the press downplaying the severity of the incident. Later, the DoD spends millions funding a Hollywood film to whitewash the incident, focusing on the perspective of the poor sad soldiers who did the massacre.
The result, I would argue, is that the Haditha massacre has been whitewashed, justified, and erased from history much more effectively than the Tiananmen massacre.
Yes, we are talking about education. You can receive education in all of these things in more advanced studies, it is available and anyone can choose it. This is because the information is not suppressed.
I’m unfamiliar with this PR campaign you’re discussing. Is this the film you’re talking about?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Haditha
If so, it’s British and you seem to have your facts incorrect. Though I do agree the DoD engages in domestic propaganda and is overly aggressive with classifying information, no question about that. This does not prevent any American from receiving an education that includes what is known of the real events, however.
Yes the British film Battle for Haditha received funding from the DoD’s Entertainment Media Office. It is difficult to find any military film that has not been funded in part by this propagada office.
I do have one fact incorrect though, they did not receive millions. It appears they received much less, although I couldnt find an exact number.
But here you are ignoring the thrust of my argument, that the insidious free market propaganda by the US is much more effective than the heavy handed authoritarian propaganda by China. Yes, you can go get an advanced degree and learn about Haditha freely, but that knowledge is effectively prevented from reaching the broader public.
You also said it was a Hollywood production.
I’m neutral on your overall argument, I think it’s a little frivolous. I don’t know of any way to accurately guage how effective CCP methods are, and I have no personal experience with living in China, so a comparison is impossible for me to make. Your opinion is noted, but it’s just a random opinion to me.
It not being taught is not quite the same as the outright denial / suppression that China does though.
Like there are only so many hours in the school day, you can’t teach literally every historical event.
Both US and China actively deny and suppress information. The Chinese method is more authoritarian, the US method is more effective.
I argue this point on another comment in this thread.
We don’t? Aren’t conservatives fighting hard to whitewash history, and aren’t they winning? Teaching the truth about historical racism is “Critical Race Theory.”
Yes, it is very much an ongoing battle, that’s for sure.
We also, for some fucking stupid reason, allowed Texas to be the arbiter of textbooks. Wtf.
Really? The censorship is nowhere near as bad as China. But there are so many things that just aren’t commonly taught that are atrocious. From the forced sterilisations of disabled people upto the 70s, to US war crimes against civilians, to things like COINTEL PRO.
Sure comparatively (US wise) far left communities seem to be aware of them, like on lemmy, but it’s nowhere in the mainstream US discourse.
Still happening, both in US and EU (couldn’t find a good source on the UK, though I don’t doubt it happens, instead have this horrible statistic Disabled people’s Covid-19 death rate as much as 11 times higher than non-disabled people because we’re not seen as worth saving), and certainly in most other countries too.
And this is just disabled people, Indigenous people (in Canada too, of course), immigrants in detention are still being forced/coerced sterilised, as well as several other marginalised groups targeted in different ways (like systemic racism that leads to higher mortality rates of Black birthing parent and babies during and after pregnancy, UK US Canada).
And to go back to what the op of the thread said, the Trail of Tears, is like the tiniest tip of a monstrous iceberg of ongoing genocide, and that monstrous iceberg is just one of many floating in the American ocean of white supremacist atrocity (and before the Americans get defensive, Yes, other countries do atrocities too, yes citizens there/here are also taught a whitewashed version of history that serves to maintain the state, you may not be alone, but you’re absolutely no better than anyone else).
Fucking hell what a saddening rabbit hole. Thanks for sending.
Proves the point of how erased this shit is!
Yeah, unfortunately I’ve been down it before, and the more you look, the worse it gets (I could have included so many more countries and atrocities, but it was too depressing to keep reading through these statistics)…
And you’re exactly right, it’s a reflection of just how much shit gets swept under the rug either by the establishment and its authorities because it reflects badly on them (and tor they don’t want to stop doing whatever horrible thing it is they’ve been getting away with), or by bigots in society who are either happy to remain ignorant, or worse, actively deny anything is happening because the existing structure gives them some level of comfort and privilege (which is of course one of the many ways those in power keep us divided to maintain said power).
The saying goes “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, which is precisely why we aren’t taught it properly (and some of it gets deliberately omitted or even erased).
We also had discussions on war crimes, though that wasn’t until high school.
This was before 9/11, so the War on Terror had not happened yet. It was mainly focused on Vietnam. We did learn about some of the covert stuff, but most of it was not covered.
I agree none of it is part of mainstream US discourse, but neither is the vast majority of the things covered in history class. This reflects American anti-intellectualism overall imo.
Yeah, there’s a difference between “information that is not discussed because you’ll get a visit from the cops” and “information that is not discussed because, though it’s freely available, people don’t care enough to learn it.”
And where did you learn that in China you’ll be visited by the cops?
You learned if from the very same Western cold war propaganda machine we’re talking about. And you accepted it as fact without a thought.
Just depends on the school I guess. We learned about the massacres of the natives, Vietnam war crimes, the Tuskegee study, etc. Those were off the top of my head but there were more.
Its a long list of atrocities and only so much that can fit into a curriculum. Also wildly different standards school to school. My public school in the North East was pretty good about it
The bigger point in the context of this thread, I think, is that none of that is suppressed information. It’s all on Wikipedia! It would be good for your country’s misdeeds to be at least briefly run over in high school, but to say the american government reacts to this kind of thing the same way that the Chinese gov’t does is whackadoodle.
I would say the South’s reactions to critical race theory and it’s own history is verging on information suppression. Still not as bad as explicit as the eula from a Chinese based company though.
How many Americans know about the Indonesian genocide?
History in British schools is often the civil war, often corn laws and the agricultural revolution, often Romans, but never Empire.