In Episode 126 [9] of the CounterVortex podcast [10], Bill Weinberg marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square [26] massacre of June 4, 1989—"6-4 [11]," as it is known in China, or "63+1" or "65-1," in a game of keeping ahead of online censors [12]. With the massacre commemoration first exiled from Beijing to Hong Kong [13], it has now been exiled from Hong Kong to New York City [14] as police-state measures [15] are extended from the mainland. But China's official denialism about the massacre extends even to the US, where both the sectarian left [16] and "paleoconservatives [17]" echo Beijing's revisionist line. Both regime proponents and detractors [18] share the consensus that the massacre and subsequent wave of repression across China was a "red terror," carried out as it was by a "Communist Party." A case can be made, however, that it was actually a "white terror," enforcing China's capitalist conversion. The recent crackdown on dissident workers [19] and Marxist student activists [20] in China—complete with extrajudicial "disappearances [21]"—reveals "Xi Jinping Thought [22]" to be (like Putinism and Trumpism) an updated variant of fascism [23]. Listen on SoundCloud [9] or via Patreon [24].
Books discussed: Voices from Tiananmen Square: Beijing Spring and the Democracy Movement [27] by Mok Chiu Yu et al, eds.; The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 [28] by William Hinton
Production by Chris Rywalt [29]
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