[adinobro]

Be aware that the famous "tank man" was not actually run over. You can see the rest of the video if you look online.

The CIA files have also been leaked which provides more information about that happened that day. As always the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle. Not as bad as the western media says it was but worse than the Chinese government admits.

I always find it weird that no one seems to care about the Nanjing massacre which was much bigger or that Tulsa massacre which most Americans seem to be unaware of...

[ddeck]

*>Be aware that the famous "tank man" was not actually run over. You can see the rest of the video if you look online.

I'm not sure how that is relevant and I believe the declassified material you are referring to was an NSA cable sent on the day of the event, when very little was known. Wikipedia has details on the various sources for anyone interested.

The Nanjing Massacre was a horrific incident and I would urge anyone visiting Nanjing to visit the memorial.

That said, one incident was a wartime civilian massacre from an invading army where that army has been defeated and is largely a different country now. The other was the killing of protesting civilians by their own government, which is still in power and broadly unchanged.

Given this, it's clear why one is more topical than the other

[adinobro]

Growing up I was taught about the "tank man" and that no one knew what happened after the photo and if he was run over or not ... a partial lie. We know that he was taken away by other civilians and wasn't run over.

I was never taught about the Nanjing massacre or Unit 731 but we spent a lot of time talking about Tiananmen square and Holocaust.

I now know that a lot of my education was biased and I assume other people are completely unaware. Most people I've talked to don't know about the rest of the video which is why I brought it up.

[cycrutchfield]

The identity and fate of Tank Man is generally unknown. If you have information to the contrary, please share it.

[adinobro]

When I was a young adult I found out there was a video BUT this is the only section they showed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4woMuFZAx88

Now I found out that the media has had this footage the whole time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk

My favourite part is the grandmother that comes up and tells him off for annoying the tank.

[cycrutchfield]

That's not really conclusive evidence that he wasn't identified by the government and rounded up later, though.

[Yolta]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protes...

Please do research before posting comments on a sensitive subject.

There was more to Tiananmen than Tank Man.

[maxton]

What is your goal in bringing up these unrelated massacres? Neither one is the same as the Tiananmen massacre, as in neither of those two cases was the government killing its own people in response to peaceful protest.

[nfoz]

> Be aware that the famous "tank man" was not actually run over.

I've never heard anyone say that he was.

[adinobro]

When I was at school I was told that all we had was this one photo and we didn't know what happened to him. I assume other people were told the same thing.

It turns out that there was a video that shows him being taken away by other civilians the whole time.

[i_am_nomad]

This might be the most transparent and desperate “whatabout” I have ever seen on Hacker News.

[cycrutchfield]

[flagged]

[dang]

This comment breaks the site guidelines. There's no reason to assume that adinobro is commenting in bad faith. It's far more likely that he or she simply has a different background than you, and therefore a different view.

Meanwhile, insinuations of disinformation, ill intent, shillage, spying, foreign agents, and all the rest of it, poison the well of this community. It's a big problem. Please don't do it again, regardless of how strongly you feel about some issue or country.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[adinobro]

Everything that I've read said that they did.

I was just told disinformation growing up along with virtually everyone I grew up with. Maybe your country was more honest about it but mine wasn't (Australia). Most people that I talk to still think he was run over.

I made the point because I assume other people don't know either...

[spacehunt]

I also grew up in Australia (Melbourne) in the 90s and whilst we were told at the time we don't know what happened to him -- and it's true, at the time we didn't know -- there were no assumptions made about his fate. In fact we were explicitly told not to make any assumptions without facts, as part of the lessons on how to consume news media.

The videos on him were released only much later on.

[adinobro]

I found out (as an adult) that the first 10 seconds of this video had been aired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4woMuFZAx88

My teacher should have known about it.

Now I found out that the media has had this footage the whole time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk but didn't air it.

I understand why. It was blatant propaganda from the west. It makes the story more interesting since people wonder if he was run over which was never stated but implied when I was told: "we don't know what happened after this photo was taken".

[cycrutchfield]

I mean, we do not know what happened to him after the photo was taken. He very well could have been rounded up later and executed.

Why are you assuming that it's propaganda? You are the only one in this thread who seems to have associated Tank Man with being run over. Nobody else thought that happened, because there was no footage of it. It's just you.

[adinobro]

Roughly 1,000 people died. The population of Beijing was roughly 10,000,000. Chances are he went home and was ignored since he wasn't a student protestor and was basically a nobody. The most boring answer is most likely to be true but no one ever says that. Everyone always says "maybe he was killed".

The reason why I call it propaganda is because it is. The photos and videos are true. But the media decided to just show a small clip of the footage to make it more dramatic and suppressed the whole clip for years. The whole clip is less dramatic. Basically the same as the 3rd example https://www.boredpanda.com/examples-media-truth-manipulation...

Look at all the videos for the 30-year anniversary. None of them use the full clip. All the ones I've seen either just include the photo or cut out as the 3rd tank roles to a stop.

I've become more disillusioned with the media the more I travel and experience news as it happens and see how biased it is.

[ianburrell]

"As far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square." But hundreds of people did die elsewhere in Beijing. https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananm...