[firstOrder]

In the United States, poor and working people in Los Angeles performed similar actions around this time of year back in 1992. They were concerned with the brutality of the local police, and how the government was unaccountable for it. The US government sent the army and the Marines in and killed some people. This is also unknown to most students in the US nowadays. If it is brought up they say the people were thugs, rioters, gang members, criminals etc. It must have been a lot of criminals since it took thousands of heavily armed police, national guard and military to get back control.

[djrogers]

It is absolutely horrifying that you would compare the violent rioting, looting, arson, rape, and general mayhem of the '92 LA riots with the peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square.

Regardless of your opinion on the motives of the rioters, their 'tactics', the actions of the thousands of others who followed in their wake, and the geography involved (the riots covered over 32 miles in an area with several million residents) set the stage for a government response that included military forces. This was not the case in Tiananmen square where the demonstrators were a)peaceful and b)located in a relatively small area.

Your comparison shames the bravery of the '89 demonstrators, while at the same time drastically minimizing the horror of the response (both that day and after) by the Chinese military.

[firstOrder]

This person makes my point. As I said, American students are more apt to know about what happened longer ago and farther away in Beijing than what happened more recently and closer to home in Los Angeles. When and if it is brought up, the military being unleashed on the poor and working people of Los Angeles is defended, the civilian population is called criminals etc. This is a fairly normal reaction for a typical American professional.

As far as being "peaceful" in Tiananmen Square, policemen and soldiers were killed, vehicles were set on fire injuring and killing the occupants - there are plenty of pictures and videos of the violence the police and military faced when they tried to peacefully clear the square, as well as in other parts of the city.

[djrogers]

I was living in Los Angeles during the riots, and regardless of your revisionist history lessons, the people I saw raping, pillaging, and looting were not merely the 'poor and working people of Los Angeles' - they were criminals.

[firstOrder]

Here are some of those peaceful people you were talking about in Beijing - a soldier bloodied by the peaceful crowds beating, a soldier beaten to death by the peaceful crowd, a tank set on fire by the peaceful crowd etc. Glad they were peaceful and not violent criminals like in Los Angeles.

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi... http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi... http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/china060412/s_t29_...

[akfanta]

@djrogers

"It is absolutely horrifying that you would compare the violent rioting, looting, arson, rape, and general mayhem of the '92 LA riots with the peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square."

"I was living in Los Angeles during the riots"

did you live in Beijing during the Tiananmen event?

[khuey]

One key difference is that anyone in America can get on a computer and read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_American....

In fact, I wonder if there's some sort of perverse lesson here in the fact that this information is freely available in the US and yet still few people know about it.

[mercer]

I suppose that would be the 'Huxley argument' (http://cdn.visualnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/orwell-...).

I try to be hopeful and positive about the fact that we have unprecedented access to information. But both the behavior of those around me and, sadly, that of myself, indicates that more information does not make us more informed.

I try to counter my tendency to consume news from sources that I already agree with, for example, but it's a constant battle, because most of my news sources either use technology to filter for me (Zite, etc.), or rely on group processes where the group is very similar to myself (Hacker News, to a degree).

[afarrell]

Can you provide a source for your assertion that few people knew about these? These are ingrained in the popular culture.

"Can't we all get along?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sONfxPCTU0 "four dead in Ohio": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvg4n8Txgdc Perhaps Japanese internment is less well known, but I feel like I see it referenced at least once every 8 months or so. Also, have a rap song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJjo0BCbGo&feature=kp