The redditor "Tienanmen Square massacre" narrative is flat earther levels of crank shit and needs to be recognized as such.
This shit has seriously gone on too long. People who continue to cling to the "10,000 dead crushed by tanks hosed i to the gutter" bs are cranks. It's jews control the banks, chemtrails, the earth is flat, the moon isn't real level of crank shit and unless you're feeling very indulgent and someone is asking in good faith it can be dismissed as equally serious to that kind of crank shit.
I think one of the interesting things about Tinyman and the tankman picture in particular is the mass psychosis (sorry if there's a better non-ableist term I currently can't conjure it) that the man in the picture was ran over by the tank. It's a claim that can be categorically disproven by 15 seconds of video. But it contradicts the hegemonic narrative, so it's like the video isn't real, the vibes are more real than hard evidence that this man was allowed to just walk.
This is potentially a good starting point for exposing the greater mythology about the event.
Ask if the person you're speaking with thinks the tank man was ran over.
If they say yes, pull up the video, and ask if that makes them wonder what else about the incident has been mythologized. If they can admit they bought some BS you can work with them, if they dig in ("oh I'm sure something sinister happened to him later") you're wasting your time.
If they say no, ask why a column of tanks was so deferential with that one guy when the story goes that there was an unprompted slaughter going on elsewhere. You can talk about how the event escalated, who was escalating, etc.
I've seen youtube comment sections where the full video is shown and people are like "ah, but the people who shooed him away from the tank were actually see see pee secret police in disguise".
Yep. PBS Frontline did an entire episode on the great mystery of "what happened to Tank Man" replete with cringe liberalisms like "what happened to the hOpE fOr dEmOcRaCy in China?!?" and how he "stood for the ordinary people!"
I'm not sure. I thought they were random concerned bystanders. Regardless, libs jump to the least charitable interpretation whenever the subject is [insert bad country here].
Yeah it's somewhat similar. The mandela effect people love to cite evidence for their claims though (even if it's bunk evidence), in this case it is entirely 100% vibes based.
Yeah, I don't think psychosis fits, because it's a propaganda thing not an individual loss of connection with reality, but I don't know what better term there is. Cultural delusion? It's wild.