In Episode 126 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989—”6-4,” as it is known in China, or “63+1” or “65-1,” in a game of keeping ahead of online censors. With the massacre commemoration first exiled from Beijing to Hong Kong, it has now been exiled from Hong Kong to New York City as police-state measures are extended from the mainland. But China’s official denialism about the massacre extends even to the US, where both the sectarian left and “paleoconservatives” echo Beijing’s revisionist line. Both regime proponents and detractors 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 and Marxist student activists in China—complete with extrajudicial “disappearances“—reveals “Xi Jinping Thought” to be (like Putinism and Trumpism) an updated variant of fascism. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.
Books discussed: Voices from Tiananmen Square: Beijing Spring and the Democracy Movement by Mok Chiu Yu et al, eds.; The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 by William Hinton
Production by Chris Rywalt
We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon—or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 41 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 42!
Photo: The Village Sun
