That's quite a raging false equivalency. It's not clear exactly why the National Guard started shooting at Kent State, but there is no credible allegation that anyone ordered the shooting. In the aftermath, a federal commission was convened, and declared the shootings "unjustified" by the threat of violence to the guardsmen. (The protesters were violent--a few days before, they had set the campus ROTC building on fire.) Eight guardsmen, including all the ones believed to be responsible for the deaths, were indicted and tried. They were acquitted due to insufficient evidence of intent. The Supreme Court permitted civil suits against Ohio to go forward (the state ultimately settled). The incident led to the National Guard changing its crowd control policies. Today, Kent State is taught widely in schools and is recognized as a national tragedy.
Now, how many of these things apply to Tiananmen Square?
There’s a difference, namely that you can say “Kent State” and look it up online, read about it in textbooks, see the newspaper articles, and discuss it online without fear.
Try that with the Tiananmen Square massacre in China.
Another difference is that four civilians died in Kent state, while 1022 died in Tiananmen Square. That’s three orders of magnitude difference, and why Kent State is typically called “Kent State Shootings” while Tiananmen Square was a “Massacre”. In fact an order of magnitude more policemen and military died in Tiananmen than overall fatalities at Kent State.
They are not comparable. I’m fact more people died in Tiananmen than died protesting the entire Vietnam War in the US.
Kent state was tragic, but not only is it not subject to pervasive and draconian state censorship, it also was not explicitly ordered as an intentional massacre by the government. That particular distinction really does matter.
Your post places Kent State and Tiananmen in equivalent counterpoint without comment. That is a rhetorical device generally used to point out equivalencies.
As such, you are getting blasted, and rightly so.
People are finally becoming tired of the "false equivalency" and the "well, just pointing it out" as these are the tools of the propaganda arms of the Chinese, the Russians, and, yes, the US governments in order to manipulate social media sites and people are striking back when they occur.
I find this a very useful form of social vaccination that has taken far too long to take root.
> Your post places Kent State and Tiananmen in equivalent counterpoint without comment
It doesn't actually, if you'd read the thread. Maybe you missed the edit? He was replying to someone who stated that there are no such massacres in the US. He pointed one out. That is all.
Parent
> Edit: I feel like there is going to be what-about-tism responses. So, before you respond, ask yourself if you can criticize the Chinese government, protest against it and make a change in China. Last time that happened in Tiananmen square, there was massacre. That does not happen in US.
It’s still comparing the deaths of four people to the deaths of well over a thousand. On every level of the comparison it’s dishonest, from antecedent to impact to aftermath. There really is no comparison except thst both events are called “massacres” which really just tells you more about how many need to die at government hands in the US to achieve that status. If the government killed 1022 civilians in a comparable event in the US... honestly it’s hard to imagine. At the very least, it would be one of the most significant events of the century, and would be a lot more notorious than the already infamous Kent State shootings.
Equating Kent State with Tiananmen Square is very disingenuous. While the loss of life at Kent State (4 killed and several wounded) was reprehensible, it pales in comparison to the thousands killed and wounded in Tiananmen Square.
It's not even the same type of thing. When police react to violent protesters, there is the risk of people getting killed. Now, you can debate in any given situation whether enough was done to minimize risk--and that is exactly what happened after Kent State. A national commission declared it was unjustifiable to send guardsmen armed only with lethal weapons to control campus protests. But at bottom, the purpose of police is to use the State's monopoly on violence to maintain order, and that always carries the risk of people getting killed.
That is completely different from state-directed killings intended to suppress political dissent, which the government then covers up and nobody ever talks about.
Now, how many of these things apply to Tiananmen Square?