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Liberal ‘Democracy’
The title of this chapter is a misnomer. There is nothing democratic about liberalism, or capitalism. By its very definition, capitalism cannot be democratic. It is a system that seeks to benefit the tiniest minority of a society—the bourgeoisie, the capital owning class—at the expense of the majority.
I often ask western liberals to define the term ‘democracy’. Every single time, without fail, I get a convoluted, hyper-specific answer that could only possibly apply to liberal democracies. Well, it’s a definition that could only apply to the western ideal of ‘liberal democracy’, which doesn’t actually exist anywhere on earth.
The actual definition is much simpler. We need only use the etymology of the word. ‘Democracy’ comes from the Greek words ‘demos’, meaning ‘people’, and ‘kratia’, meaning ‘rule’. Democracy means to rule by and for the people. All of the people. Not just the ones who run mega-corporations and purchase politicians.
By this simple definition, America is far from democratic. They maintain the illusion of democracy via the so-called two-party system. Even that, is a misnomer. There is one party in America: the Party of Capitalism. There are two flavors of it, the red kind and the blue kind. But don’t get it twisted, neither care about the interests or well-being of the working class.
The only actual, tangible difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that one doesn’t hide their hatred and disdain for the most marginalized people in society. Not only are they both capitalist, they’re both liberal; but again, just different flavors. The Democrats are social liberals, while the Republicans are classical liberals. While there can be some minor differences in domestic policy (none of which actually benefits the working class), the foreign policy of both of these liberal parties is essentially identical.
Bombing brown children in the Middle East is a bipartisan policy in America. Between 2001 and 2021, the US dropped an average of 46 bombs per day on the Middle East1. Of the victims of those 300,000+ bombs, up to 90% in some instances were not the intended target2. That campaign of death and destruction began with the 8 years of Republican President George W. Bush’s rule, increased 1000%3 through both of the Democrat President Barack Obama’s terms, and continued through Republican President Donald Trump’s first term. If that isn’t the perfect example of America’s foreign policy transcending party lines, proving they’re functionally the same, I don’t know what else could be.
Social liberals in America still cling to the absurd claim that Obama’s only controversy is that time he wore a tan suit and classical liberals got mad for some reason. He was a war criminal, as all American presidents have been. Obama authorized the bombing of an entire wedding party in Yemen4 and a Doctor’s Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan5, making him, surprisingly, the second Nobel Peace Prize Recipient to bomb another. Republican war criminal Henry Kissinger beat him to it when he authorized the bombing of a Red Cross hospital in Cambodia6.
The United States cares so little about democracy that, as William Blum states in the book America’s Deadliest Export, they have “endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected”, and “grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries”, and “attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders”, and “attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.” William Blum said that in 2013. These numbers have increased since.
Do the denizens of the Global South deserve democracy? Shouldn’t they get to vote to decide if it’ll be the red capitalists or the blue capitalists doing regime change in their country or dropping bombs on them? These parties clearly don’t exist to serve the interests of the working class of the world, but they don’t even serve the interests of the working class of America.
The entire legal system in America was designed only to serve the interests of capital. As an example, in the hypothetical (but all too common) example of a hungry person stealing a loaf of bread from a grocery store run by a corporation, which side does law enforcement take? Who gets to summon the police, the organization with a state monopoly on violence, to serve their will? The person made hungry because of the capitalist class hoarding resources and wealth, or the hoarders themselves?
Hunger is a problem all across the capitalist world. Yearly, we produce enough food to feed more than the entire population of Earth, yet one third of it goes to waste, while over half a billion people are undernourished7. These people don’t go hungry because of a scarcity of food, they go hungry because it isn’t profitable to feed them. When we talk about hunger in the world, most people will subconsciously form an image of a child starving in Africa. But this problem isn’t exclusive to the Global South, far from it.
In America, 1 in every 5 children are unsure where their next meal will come from8. That’s 14 million children, facing food insecurity. In America. The ‘land of the free’. Deaths from malnutrition in America have more than doubled just between 2018 and 20239. It’s actively getting worse, not better. Perhaps because the legal system in America exists to protect only the hoarders of food, and not the hungry?
Homelessness is criminalized in America. Sleeping on the street when you have no place to call your own can make you a target of police violence10. But why does homelessness even exist in a developed nation like America? Is it a shortage of housing? Nope. There is no scarcity in America, for housing or otherwise. There are an average of 28 vacant homes for every homeless person in America. In 2020 there were 580,000 homeless people and 16 million vacant homes.11
These homes are vacant not because no one wants to live in them, they’re vacant because housing is treated as a commodity, instead of as a human right, as it should be. Private individuals and corporations are allowed to speculate on housing, hoarding it in an attempt to profit off of the human need for shelter. Here’s another hypothetical for you: when a homeless person, needing shelter, squats in a vacant home owned by a bourgeois speculator, who does law enforcement side with?
Homelessness in America could be solved tomorrow. The only reason it isn’t is because it is used as a threat by the ruling class to keep workers in line. Workers are less likely to quit a horrible job because if they don’t find a new one fast enough they may become homeless. They’re less likely to join a union or withhold labor because if they get fired they may not be able to pay their rent. Maintaining a sizable homeless population that is subject to extreme state-backed violence is necessary to fuel capitalism.
It is not complex in any way, shape, or form. There is a simple solution; house the homeless. Seize any properties used for housing speculation. Put homeless people in them. Done. Problem solved. Anyone who tries to say that it isn’t that simple is lying. About half of the homeless population of America are employed, just not gainfully12. They work and earn income. They don’t have substance abuse or severe mental health problems. They simply don’t make enough money to house themselves because of scalpers artificially inflating housing prices. I was one of them. I used to live in my car.
That’s not to say that those living on the streets with mental health issues and/or substance abuse problems can’t be housed. They can. Just do it. You’ll also have to provide support for those issues they face, be it safe consumption sites, rehabilitation programs, healthcare, or whatever else. But of course, healthcare in America, just like food and shelter, is not treated as the human right that it should be. It is privatized and used as a vessel for private corporations to profit off of.
On December 4th, 2024, a folk hero with the same name as a video game character did a bit of adventurism on the streets of New York. His target? A health insurance CEO who became wealthy by denying health care access to the people who need it most. There’s a reason why the average American citizen refused to condemn this very illegal act13. It’s because almost half of all American adults have experienced first-hand the depravity of the for-profit health care industry in America14. Those who haven’t personally experienced it almost certainly know someone who has.
We can only hope that the positive public reaction to what would normally be considered a heinous, inexcusable act is evidence that Americans are starting to reject the very undemocratic system of capitalism. It’s ingrained into every fiber of our society, but that doesn’t mean it’s unassailable. All empires fall. The author Ursula K. Le Guin put it best when she said, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”15
This is a minor glimpse into how liberalism, capitalism, and America are not and cannot be democratic in the slightest. I could write an entire book just on that topic alone. But if a supposedly developed society that is in a position to become post-scarce refuses to guarantee to its population the three most important elements to human existence, that being food, shelter, and health care, then it would be absurd to call it democratic.
The only modern economic systems that can be considered democratic are of the leftist variety. For the purposes of this project, our definition of ‘leftism’ begins at anti-capitalism (as should everyone’s). Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, etc. These systems seek to abolish class distinctions and antagonisms and give actual political power to every single person living under them. They seek to guarantee access to that which humans need to survive. There is, however, a disturbing trend amongst those residing in the imperial core or it’s periphery to claim that ‘democracy’ is an antonym for ‘communism’ or ‘socialism’.
For example, in June of 2023, Reuters posted an article with the headline, “Theatre in democratic Taiwan stages Hong Kong play about Tiananmen square”16. This headline is perfectly crafted to hit almost every propaganda point that western media exploits when lying about China; it’s sort of beautiful in a way. Apparently, these Reuters journalists believe Taiwan is democratic. The same Taiwan that went through four decades of brutal martial law known as the ‘White Terror’, which still has ramifications for Taiwanese people to this day17. Taiwan didn’t even hold a single election until 1990, when they finally transitioned away from a military dictatorship, and somehow they’re ‘democratic’ compared to the People’s Republic of China. Western media organizations like Reuters refuse to even use the word ‘capitalist’ to describe places like Taiwan for some strange reason. They’re democratic, and China is totalitarian, or authoritarian, or autocratic, or whatever buzzword is currently trending.
According to western media, the CIA-backed attempted color revolution in June of 1989 was a ‘democracy movement’ against the supposed anti-democratic nature of communist China. This is absurd. The small portion of western-intelligence-backed infiltrators who, for instance, erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty called the, wait for it, ‘Goddess of Democracy’18, were not trying to turn China democratic. It already was (and still is, of course).
The western delusion about the Tiananmen Square ‘Massacre’, or as it’s called in China, the June 4 Incident, is the perfect example of what democracy is, and more importantly, what it isn’t. It can be explained simply enough through only the absurdity of the Goddess of Democracy monument, but of course we’ll go much deeper in depth. The monument was built in the week leading up to the June 4 ‘crackdown’. It was very obviously inspired by the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The same statue that was gifted to America by France in 1886 to celebrate, at least partly, the victory of the Union in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The beginning of America’s supposed multiracial democracy, perhaps? But slavery was only abolished in theory. In actuality, it was simply modernized into the prison system. The 13th amendment to the American Constitution banned slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.
After ‘freeing’ black Americans from slavers, the US government created laws and, for example, released drugs into black and brown communities19 to make up reasons to imprison black and brown people so that private corporations could exploit them for cheap (or free) labor20. This practice continues to this day. The Prison Industrial Complex in America is by far the most extensive in the entire world. Despite having only 5% of the world’s total population, the US has 25% of the world’s prison population21, meaning on average, they have 5 times more people incarcerated than the rest of the world. All of them, not just the black and brown inmates, can be used for slave labor, although black people are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of white people in America.
Isn’t that just a perfect allegory for the western misinformation around the Tiananmen Square protests? The western plants that co-opted a real movement built a monument based on a supposed symbol of ‘liberty’ from a state that only pretended to liberate their slave population? It also serves as an allegory for liberal democracy as a whole, since it is, as previously established, a facade. A farce.
Yes, in the 1980’s, in East Asia, a student-led pro-democracy protest was brutally cracked down upon by a fascist military. Up to 2000 peaceful protestors were massacred, brutally slaughtered for organizing against a military dictatorship. No, this didn’t happen in China. This happened in the Republic of Korea, or ‘south Korea’22.
Have you ever heard of this? If you live in the West, probably not. The Gwangju Massacre is somehow not common knowledge amongst Americans, despite the fact that it was the American president at the time, liberal darling Jimmy Carter, who authorized the deployment of troops to brutally crush this uprising23. The relationship between the US Empire and their vassal state on the Korean peninsula will be further explored later in this episode.
The title of the Wikipedia page for the Gwangju Massacre doesn’t call it that. It’s titled, “Gwangju Uprising”, even though the article itself mentions the word ‘massacre’ 33 times. Why is that? The Wikipedia article on the events of June 4 1989 in China is titled, “1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre”. The only one of these events which could reasonably be called a massacre based on available evidence isn’t one according to western-capitalist-biased Wikipedia, and the one which requires a full suspension of disbelief to consider it a ‘massacre’… is labelled as a massacre.
I apologize, dear reader, as we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. I may have lost you at some point there, especially if you’ve never questioned the western narrative on the events that unfolded in 1989 in and around Tiananmen Square. Let’s back it up, and start from the beginning.
What Massacre?
When one ascribes the mainstream perspective of the events of June 4 1989 to western intelligence lies, we are of course not denying that there was a student led movement that occupied Tiananmen Square, and we are of course not implying that every participant was sent there by western intelligence or even influenced by western intelligence, in fact, the vast majority weren’t.
The events began after the death of Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. The original protestors that began to occupy the Square in mid-April of 1989 (yes, two calendar months before the crackdown) were not fans of liberal democracy. They were mostly Maoists who believed that China was moving in the wrong direction, meaning they thought that China was moving too far towards liberalism due to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Far from western style ‘democracy’ advocates, as they are presented in the West.
This organic protest was of course co-opted by western intelligence. That’s what the CIA was created to do. They latch on to movements such as this and manipulate the discourse to fit their agenda. In this case, the US was beaming TV signals straight into China with Voice of America (VOA)24. They were broadcasting non-stop coverage of the protests, spreading blatant lies to sow discord and foment anger. VOA is, or perhaps more accurately was, an American state media organization funded by US Congress through the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). I say ‘was’ because President Trump is trying to defund VOA at time of writing. It’s unsure whether it will survive his presidency.
As Brian Becker of Liberation News states, “The Voice of America broadcasts to PLA units were filled with reports that some PLA units were firing on others and different units were loyal to the protestors and others with the government.”25 Not only was VOA trying to rile up the average Chinese citizen to participate in these protests, they were allegedly even trying to cause distrust amongst different People’s Liberation Army units.
Some of the protest leaders were hoping for violence to advance their ignoble cause. Such as Chai Ling, who, a week before the crackdown, admitted in an interview with the western journalist Philip Cunningham that, “What we are actually hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes.” When asked if she was going to stay in the Square herself, she replied, “No, I won’t.”26 At the end of the interview, she asked, “I hope you don't report what I've just said for the time being, okay?” Chai Ling was later extracted to America along with other protest leaders by western intelligence agencies (MI6, CIA) under ‘Operation Yellowbird’27.
The propaganda that was being spread by external forces and the protest leaders that had been planted on the scene culminated in a small sect of protestors blockading the roads leading to the Square and arming themselves with anything they could use as a weapon, including metal pipes and petrol bombs made from Coleman gas stoves that may have been provided by western intelligence28.
The most important date of this protest was not June 3rd or 4th. It was June 2nd, which western media never mentions. The events of June 2nd set everything in motion. On that day, unarmed PLA soldiers were dispatched to the Square to keep the peace. While some were trying to reach the Square through these blockades, they were set upon by the angry mob. Petrol bombs were used to destroy Armored Personnel Carriers and burn soldiers alive. Some were beaten to death by pipes. The dead, burned soldiers were hung from overpasses and destroyed trucks as a warning.29
It was this outbreak of violence from a small sect of rioters that caused Beijing to order the Square to be cleared on the night of June 3rd/4th. In the early morning hours of June 4th, the Square was cleared, without bloodshed. There was no ‘massacre’ in Tiananmen Square. There were, however, isolated skirmishes between armed protestors and PLA soldiers on the outskirts of the Square. It would be accurate to say that some of the young, inexperienced soldiers may have been a bit too trigger-happy when faced with rioters intent on burning them alive or shooting them with stolen weapons, but nothing that could reasonably be described as a ‘massacre’ occurred, either in the Square or on it’s periphery.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Western journalists who were on the scene that day confirm there was no massacre in the Square. Leaked CIA cables confirm it. Eyewitness accounts, at least the ones which haven’t been retracted or disproven, confirm it. We’ll go through every piece of available evidence one by one, but first, let’s take a look at how western mainstream media reports on it, even now, decades later.
In 2017, The Independent, a British news organization, reported on a leaked British diplomatic cable from Sir Alan Donald, the-then UK ambassador to China30. Yes, he was a British politician. This leaked cable makes the egregious claim that ‘at least’ 10,000 people died that night. The Independent article states that, “The ambassador said his account of the massacre of the night of 3-4 June was based on information from a source who had spoken to a “good friend” in China’s State Council”. A friend-of-a-friend type situation, two degrees removed. But don’t worry, Sir Alan claimed that his source “has previously proved reliable and was careful to separate fact from speculation and rumour.”
Sir Alan is (sorry, ‘was’, he kicked the bucket in 2018) a bit of a racist. He described the PLA troops as “60 per cent illiterate” and called them “primitives”. He said that “Students linked arms but were mown down. APCs then ran over the bodies time and time again to make, quote ‘pie’ unquote, and remains collected by bulldozer.” He continued to say, “Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains.” Well that’s awfully convenient, isn’t it? No proof of any killing since the ‘remains’ were washed down drains. Almost too good to be true.
But where did the 10,000 figure come from? The final sentence of Sir Alan’s cable states, “Minimum estimate of civilian dead 10,000.” He guessed. Based on what a totally reliable, definitely real, anonymous source told him. It is worth noting that this 10,000 figure is magnitudes higher than other western organizations reported, which typically placed the deaths at around 3,000. Neither of these numbers are true, of course. The actual death toll is likely in the low hundreds, with many, if not most, being PLA soldiers killed by rioters. Now, let’s compare and contrast the actual evidence and what this racist British politician’s friend of a friend told him.
American CBS correspondent Richard Roth was on the scene while the events unfolded31. He notes that, “troops began entering the square in force just before dawn -- silencing the public address system loudspeakers with a volley of gunfire.” Other western journalists erroneously reported that this volley of gunfire was from PLA soldiers firing on peaceful students, that’s a lie. Forty minutes after it was cleared, Mr. Roth was escorted through the length of the Square, and he states that, “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a "massacre" had recently occurred in that place.”
British Reuters correspondent Graham Earnshaw was also on the scene32. He spent the entire night within the Square, and reported nothing that would remotely suggest a massacre took place. He states that “Most of the killing did not take place on or near the Square, that is clear.” He notably did not claim to see the tanks rolling back and forth across protestors either, obviously. Because it never happened. But he did see a photo of a PLA soldier “hanging from a bus […] to the west of Tiananmen Square. The soldier’s body was burnt to a crisp. It was disgusting, and it was decided not to send it to subscribers.” Reuters hid this evidence.
British BBC correspondent James Miles was on the scene that night33. He states in no uncertain terms that “There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square” and that “The students who had told me and other journalists of a bloodbath on the square proved mistaken” and, that “Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops”. About the mistakenly reported killings in Tiananmen Square, he says, “There were probably few, if any.” No tank-induced protestor ‘pie’ reported by Mr. Miles.
A Spanish TVE television crew was on scene, recording the events of that night from the Square34. They captured none of Sir Alan’s claimed events from the British cable on film, they only recorded the Square being cleared without violence.
That isn’t the only leaked cable related to June 4th, 1989, though. Wikileaks released several leaked CIA cables in 2011 that disprove Sir Alan’s story35. These cables prove the US government knew there was no massacre in the Square that night, all the way back in 1989. Wikileaks cable 89BEIJING18828_a36 is a first hand account from a Latin American Diplomat named Carlos Gallo which states, “contrary to the experiences of most Americans on the Square, Gallo said that he essentially was allowed free passage around the Square, even when sighted by troops.” Gallo said that “he watched the military enter the Square and did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds.” He also said that “most of the troops which entered the Square were actually armed only with anti-riot gear—truncheons and wooden clubs”.
We also have declassified CIA cables, different from the ones released by Wikileaks. Cable 89BEIJIN01542437 features testimony from an unnamed Chinese-American journalist on the scene that night. The journalist claimed that, “The soldiers didn’t fire back at first and seemed astounded by the reception they were receiving”, about the barricades that protestors had set up to block PLA soldiers from reaching the Square. He saw “crowds attacking and apparently killing soldiers in a tank they had managed to stop” and “two soldiers roasted alive inside the APC and a third killed by a mob when he left the vehicle”.
Cable 89BEIJIN01543438 refers to the same Chinese-American journalist and the same APC incident, and states that, “The beating to death of a PLA soldier, who was in the first APC to enter Tiananmen Square, in full view of the other waiting PLA troops, appeared to have sparked the shooting that followed.”
The available evidence paints a much different story to the one common in western discourse. The PLA soldiers were blocked from entering the square after being given orders to clear it, and fired upon some of the students that tried to (or succeeded in) beating or burning them alive. An unfortunate situation, but clearly not a planned massacre.
You may have noticed that one important detail hasn’t been mentioned yet, and that’s for a specific reason. Tank Man. Along with the misappropriately-named Goddess of Democracy, Tank Man has become a symbol in the West of the fight for ‘democracy’ in China. We haven’t mentioned the anonymous gentleman who stood in front of a line of tanks yet, because it didn’t happen on June 4th. It happened on June 5th.
A disturbing amount of westerners don’t know that Tank Man is a video39. It’s also a photo, but the events depicted in the still image were simultaneously captured on video. There is much speculation in the West of the fate of Tank Man, with many claiming that he was almost certainly run over by tanks, especially if they had already run over countless other protestors and turned them into mush. Tank Man is noted as an example of the Mandela Effect40 because of how many people believe he was run over. Neither of those things happened, though. Tank Man survived. The video proves it.
From what we can see of Tank Man’s little adventure, we know that he did indeed block a line of tanks. The problem is, the tanks were trying to leave the Square. You can see the Square in the background of the video and the tanks are indisputably moving away from it. Could it be that Tank Man, the character used in the West as a symbol of resistance against state tyranny, actually wanted the tanks to remain in Tiananmen Square to keep protestors from resuming their occupation? Was he fed up with the almost two month long take-over of a very important, iconic area in Beijing, China’s capital? We’ll never know. Tank Man’s identity has never been revealed.
We do know that he lived, or at least, that he didn’t get run over by tanks. The video depicts him jumping on top of the lead tank and talking to the operators. He eventually hops off and is escorted away by some bystanders. Alive and well. Tank Man wasn’t run over by tanks, but the Goddess of Democracy statue was. It was knocked over by a tank and then crushed into pulp during the clearing of the Square.
Is that ironic? No. But the two most important symbols of the supposed ‘fight for democracy’ in China being complete shams certainly is. But that’s more or less what ‘democracy’ in America is. A sham. Again, almost every American thinks they know what happened on June 4th, 1989. But they have no idea what actually happened starting on May 18, 1980 in Gwangju, Korea, or their government’s involvement in it.
And not enough know about the massacres committed against American people, in America. Such as the Kent State Massacre in 1970, where the Ohio National Guard opened fire on peaceful anti-war protestors and murdered 4 of them. The BBC doesn’t call this a massacre, just a ‘shooting’41.
Or how about the 1985 Philadelphia MOVE Bombing42, where the Philadelphia Police Department dropped two bombs onto a house from a helicopter, causing a massive fire that ended up destroying 65 houses and killing 11 people, 5 of them children. Their target was an organization inspired by the Black Panthers, which is a black liberation movement whose leader, Fred Hampton, was assassinated by the FBI43. MOVE was classified as a terrorist organization by Pennsylvanian authorities and, after they refused to give up 4 of their members to police, their headquarters was bombed.
There are countless more examples of massacres—or uprisings being ended with violence—in America, like the Tulsa Race Massacre, Bonus Army, Battle of Blair Mountain, etc. American authorities have been crushing democratic movements since it’s inception, which, by the way, was predicated upon the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants of the land and the enslavement of Africans. Even in recent history, like in 2022 when President Biden blocked a rail strike44 just a few months before one of the worst rail disasters in American history45. A train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, releasing toxic chemicals into the air, soil, and waterways. Union leaders attributed this derailment to poor working conditions and other issues in the industry, which is precisely why rail workers voted to withhold labor. Even after this debacle, Biden referred to himself as the “Most pro-union president in American history”46. Sadly, he was still probably correct.
In addition to relentlessly whitewashing their own suppression of democratic movements, the American government and western media have frequently lied about the events of the June 4 Incident to try to prove that China is the undemocratic one in the situation, which is also quite ironic. Because, as I’ve alluded to before, China is indeed democratic, and has been since Mao’s communist forces beat Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists into submission and established the People’s Republic.
China, similarly to the USSR, the DPRK, and other Actually Existing Socialist (AES) states, utilize a system of democracy called ‘democratic centralism’. It is a consensus-based system of which government deputies participate in mass meetings to rigorously debate issues until a consensus is reached. The deputies are, of course, selected by the people via democratic means to represent them in government.
China’s system of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics (SWCC)47 is democratic from top to bottom. At the two lowest levels, universal direct suffrage by secret ballot is employed to elect deputies to village or township people’s congresses. Candidates are nominated by political parties, mass organizations, or groups of voters, and then they participate in mass elections to compete for seats.
The members of the local people’s congresses, which are, once again, directly elected by the entire population of China, hold indirect elections for the next highest level of government. At the Municipal, Provincial, and National levels, the lower level is responsible for electing deputies to the level above it. This system ensures expediency by not needing mass elections for every single seat in government, but also gives each individual Chinese citizen the ability to directly select their local representatives, the ones who affect their day-to-day lives the most.
This is vastly different to the so-called democracy in America. In China, there is no corporate lobbying; elections are publicly funded. There are no fake rivalries or attack ads between ‘competing’ parties. It is much more of a merit-based system, especially at the highest levels. China has more elections per year than any ‘liberal democracy’. It is constantly being improved, and never stagnates.
The main difference between China and America in this regard is that China readily admits to being a one-party state, but America pretends it isn’t. One party states aren’t inherently undemocratic, and multi-party states aren’t inherently democratic. The main role the Communist Party of China (CPC) plays within their system of democratic centralism is to ensure all elected deputies follow the ideals of socialism. But even then, there are 8 other ‘minor’ political parties in China aside from the CPC, and important decisions must be approved by all of them. Political scientist Eric Li put it best when he said, “In America, you can change the political parties but you can't change policies. In China, you can't change the party but you can change policies.”
Between 2003 and 2016, the Harvard Ash Center, yes, the American Ivy League school, conducted opinion polling amongst Chinese citizens48. They asked about the citizens’ satisfaction rates towards the different levels of government in their country. Perhaps surprisingly, to the Harvard researchers at least, they found that 95.5% of Chinese citizens are either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with their Central government. They specifically compared it to a similar poll of Americans that found that only 38% of them were satisfied with their federal government.
Since this is a western academic organization, and western academia was captured by imperialist interests ages ago49, they must find a way to spin this actual data into a negative. The Harvard Gazette posted an article analyzing and commenting on the data50, and that’s where the spin came in. Unfortunately it worked, as I have seen even pro-China people falling for it.
The Gazette article states,
“Compared to the relatively high satisfaction rates with Beijing, respondents held considerably less favorable views toward local government. At the township level, the lowest level of government surveyed, only 11.3 percent of respondents reported that they were “very satisfied.””
Now, why did they mention only the rate for the ‘very satisfied’ option here? They quoted the 95.5% statistic for the Central level, which includes both ‘very’ and ‘fairly’ satisfied. Why not mention it here? They go on to compare this to America again, stating that, “70 percent of U.S. respondents had a “great” or “fair” amount of trust in local government”. For the American statistic, they combined ‘great’ and ‘fair’, which is equivalent to ‘very’ and ‘fairly’.
The reason they didn’t include the ‘fairly satisfied’ data is because it’s over 50%51, putting the total for the two ‘satisfied’ options at just over 70%. The same as the rate for America. This is propaganda. This is a purposeful obfuscation of statistics; a lie by omission, which is what the West constantly does to demonize China. A 70% satisfaction rate is fantastic.
The fact that it’s lower than the rate of satisfaction for the Central level of government also proves that China’s system of direct and indirect elections works, since the roles that aren’t directly voted for by the entire population are the ones that have the highest satisfaction rates, and the lowest satisfaction rates apply to the level of government of which the average citizen has a direct say in. If they are dissatisfied with their local leadership, they can simply vote for someone else in the next election. Or campaign and run for a position themselves.
You would never know how democratic China actually is you only listened to mainstream western discourse on China’s system of governance, even from a reputable organization like Harvard. The capitalist ruling class doesn’t want you to know this. They thrive off of the purposeful ignorance of their population; if the people believe there is no better alternative to capitalism, they will begrudgingly accept it as a ‘lesser evil’. The average American doesn’t even know what they don’t know. This is by design.
Many Americans still think they were the good guys in the Korean War, trying to bring ‘democracy’ to the Korean people and fight off the ‘evil’ communists. That, is also a lie.
The Forgotten War
The Korean War isn’t colloquially referred to as the ‘Forgotten War’52 because it’s forgettable. It’s called that because America and the United Nations want you to forget what they did to the Korean people after World War II ended. The Korean peninsula was under a Japanese imperialist occupation for 4 decades before Japan surrendered and the occupation came to an end. The craziest thing about this time is that the Korean people, despite being occupied by a brutal foreign imperialist power that, among many other atrocities, used underage Korean girls as sex slaves53, the peninsula was still united.
Then, America nuked Japan twice. The first nuke they dropped on Hiroshima had two purposes, (1), to beat Japan into submission and end the war, and (2), to be able to claim victory before the Soviets could via the planned naval invasion of Hokkaido. But that’s the just the first nuke. The second one they dropped on Nagasaki was a message to the Soviets. It was as if to say, ‘There’s more where that came from’, since the Soviets had not produced a functional nuke by that time. Even while fighting the Axis, the U.S. was already planning its next war: the war against communism.
While America was able to take control of post-WWII Japan, allowing the Emperor to keep his throne (something the Soviets would have never done), the Korean peninsula suffered a different fate. Despite single-handedly liberating the peninsula, the Soviets couldn’t take control of it like the US did with Japan. Two major factors came in to play to cause the division of the Korean peninsula. The first was the aforementioned nuclear threat to the Soviets. The second was the fact that the UN at the time was controlled by the USA54.
For this reason, America was able to propose a division of the peninsula along the 38th parallel, and the Soviets had to go along with it because, again, they didn’t have nukes yet. It shouldn’t need to be mentioned, as obvious as it is, but the peninsula should have never been divided. The Korean people, now liberated from Japanese imperialism, should have been able to choose their new leadership and run their own country. You know, democracy. After all, unlike Japan and Germany, they weren’t the bad guys in the war. They were the victims.
That, however, would never fly with the US. Because they knew that if allowed to elect their own leader, the vast majority of Korean people would choose Kim Il Sung, or at the very least, a different communist. Kim Il Sung was already deeply respected for leading guerilla armies against the Japanese imperialists, and 77 percent of the Korean people supported socialism or communism, with only 14 percent supporting capitalism at the time55. America knew this, as they did the polling.
Not only did the US get to decide to divide the peninsula, splitting families apart56, they were also allowed to decide where the dividing line would be. They chose to draw a line perfectly across the 38th parallel, conveniently just North of the capital city, Seoul, and they claimed the south for themselves, which notably contained most of Korea’s arable land, as the northern half is mostly mountainous.
This line was meant to be temporary, at least on paper. The plan was to keep the peninsula divided until national elections could be called to select a leader for all of Korea. But it never happened, because of who the US chose to ‘temporarily’ control the South. They sent Syngman Rhee straight from Washington, DC to rule over the south with an iron fist. During his reign, south Korea was perpetually kept under martial law, and suspected communists and supporters of the north were brutalized.
The most prominent example of this would be the crushing of the Jeju Island Uprising. Jeju is a small island off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. The vast majority of the residents of the island were leftists57, and thus fiercely opposed the American occupation of the south, which included them. A large scale guerilla rebellion began, and was met with extreme brutality by Syngman Rhee’s forces. The violence was one-sided, with as many as 80,000 people exterminated and 40,000 forced to flee to Japan58. The population of the island at the time was about 300,000. By the way, similar to the Gwangju Massacre that was previously mentioned, Wikipedia’s article on this event does not refer to it as a massacre, it’s called the ‘Jeju Island Uprising’.
When faced with the realities of the Korean War and even the events that preceded it, the average westerner will brush off any condemnation of the many brutal massacres committed by Republic of Korea (ROK), American, or UN forces by implying that it was the DPRK’s fault because they ‘started the war’. But the Korean War did not begin in 1950 when Kim Il Sung’s troops crossed that imaginary line on the 38th parallel, the ‘temporary border’ drawn by America.
American military historian Alan R. Millett designates the Jeju Island Uprising as the start of the Korean War59. He seems to place blame on the guerillas themselves, and not Syngman Rhee’s forces that massacred them, but either way this still would not mean that the DPRK started the war, as none of the guerilla forces in the south had any affiliation with the DPRK, aside from receiving moral support60. The pre-eminent Korean War historian, Bruce Cumings, doesn’t blame either side for starting it, stating that:
“The Korean War did not begin on June 25, 1950, much special pleading and argument to the contrary. If it did not begin then, Kim Il Sung could not have “started” it then, either, but only at some earlier point. As we search backward for that point, we slowly grope toward the truth that civil wars do not start: they come. They originate in multiple causes, with blame enough to go around for everyone—and blame enough to include Americans who thoughtlessly divided Korea and then reestablished the colonial government machinery and the Koreans who served it.”61
If your only indicator of who began the war is which side crossed the imaginary border first, well, the DPRK still wouldn’t be to blame. Of the many border clashes that preceded June 25, 1950, the southern forces crossed the border first and more often. Syngman Rhee was desperate for a war, but he knew he needed support from American forces to stand any chance against Kim Il Sung’s army. The American government refused to assist Rhee if he invaded the north, so he had to provoke the north into attacking first62. He did this by crushing guerilla uprising after guerilla uprising and starting border clash after border clash, until Kim Il Sung finally sent a mass mobilization across the 38th parallel to attempt to liberate the Korean people from Rhee’s military dictatorship.
Speaking of parallels, you’ll find quite a few between the DPRK and Palestine, and conversely, the ROK and Israel. The latter two are colonial occupations that are considered justifiable in much of the West based on a very real history of persecution at the hands of an Axis power.
The Korean people were subjected to a brutal Japanese occupation, and the US took this as an opportunity to stake a claim in the peninsula and instigate a civil war. They justified their massacres against the Korean people on both sides of the peninsula by falsely claiming that communism is an evil that cannot spread.
The Jewish populations in Europe were subjected to a brutal genocide at the hands of the Nazis, and ethno-supremacist Zionists used this as justification to carve out part of Palestine, forcibly expelling many of the original inhabitants, and subjecting others to decades of apartheid, terror, and genocide. They justify their brutality by falsely claiming that Palestinians are Islamist terrorists who want to genocide the Jews again.
When the Korean People’s Army (KPA) of the DPRK couldn’t stand by and watch as the military dictatorship in the south slaughtered communists and communist sympathizers by the tens of thousands, they crossed the imaginary border drawn by the US to liberate them.
When Hamas militants couldn’t stand by and watch as their fellow Palestinians were brutalized and kept hostage in Israeli prisons with no due process63, they bulldozed through the open-air prison walls around Gaza and took hostages to use as bargaining chips to liberate them.
The US military, along with the ROK military and UN forces responded to the KPA mobilization by committing more massacres against the Korean people, including at No Gun Ri64, where US forces called for a strafing run on civilian refugees hiding under a bridge. US soldiers on the ground then hunted down the survivors and gunned down as many of them as they could as well. They ended up killing an estimated 400 people, many being women and children. For decades they blamed it on the KPA, until the truth came out.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)65, armed with US weapons, responded to the Hamas mobilization by committing more massacres against the Palestinian people, including the Flour Massacre66, where Palestinians, hungry from Israel’s starvation campaign against them67, flocked to receive food from some of the only aid trucks allowed into the Gaza Strip. The IDF indiscriminately fired upon these hungry civilians, including women and children, slaughtering over 100 of them. The Israeli government denies responsibility for this massacre to this day despite all available evidence proving their complicity68.
Before the KPA mobilization, ROK authorities in the south had been identifying anyone they considered too sympathetic to the DPRK or communism and forcing them into a re-education system called the Bodo League69. Two days after the KPA forces crossed that imaginary border, Syngman Rhee ordered the mass execution of most of them. Up to 200,000 people were slaughtered, mainly because of the political ideology they followed. They dug mass graves, lined people up outside of them, and shot them in the back of the head before burying them. Some were ‘buried’ at sea. Much of this was overseen by American officers70. It was, of course, blamed on the DPRK, until the truth came out later.
Prior to the Hamas mobilization on October 7th, 2023, Israel had been holding some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians they have imprisoned over time (many without even being charged with a crime) in a torture camp at Sde Teiman, a military base near the Gaza Strip. After the militants broke out of the Gaza Strip, Israel began rounding up more and more Palestinians, doubling the amount of them in Sde Teiman and ramping up hostilities against them. Former hostages that were held at Sde Teiman have testified that they were subjected to frequent acts of “severe, arbitrary violence” including sexual assault, starvation, and sleep deprivation, among many other acts of horror71.
We would, naturally, be remiss not to mention the most glaringly obvious similarity between America’s direct assaults against Koreans and proxy assaults against Palestinians.
Bombing campaigns.
Before delving into the details, it’s important to understand what actually happens when someone is killed by a bomb. Those of us living in the imperial core are so far removed, so insulated from these horrors that it can be hard to imagine how these instruments of death work. Some people believe that deaths by bombing are quick and painless. This couldn’t be further from the truth; it is an absolutely horrific way to die.
If a person is close enough to the blast, the first injury they will suffer will be burst eardrums. They will be hit with a shockwave that will rupture internal organs and cause brain trauma including concussion and hemorrhaging. Then the shrapnel and/or debris will hit, which will shred skin, muscles, and organs. While being torn apart by shrapnel, they will be thrown into walls, the ground, or whatever obstacles are nearby, often causing limb separation, broken bones, skull fractures, or spinal damage. The resulting fireball will cause up to third degree burns across the entire body that melts skin. If they somehow didn’t die by this point, they will probably suffocate to death from smoke or explosive gases.
People that are further away from the impact area will often suffer even more, because they are less likely to die quickly enough. They will be affected by some or many of the same injuries, but often will be buried in rubble and unable to receive aid. If they cannot be rescued in time, they will eventually succumb to these horrific injuries after hours or even days of suffering. The act of bombing a human being is a unique type of evil, different to even other forms of murder.
With that out of the way, let’s compare. After the KPA swept through much of the southern part of the Korean peninsula, winning many battles and liberating most of the population, the forces of the south secured a hail mary victory at Inchon which enabled them to push back the KPA all the way north, past the 38th parallel. China stepped in to help repel the invaders away from their border, and they managed to help the KPA push the southern forces back to the 38th parallel. The US had been bombing the north (and much of the south) for the entire time, but at this point, they went ‘scorched earth’.
US military officials eventually complained that they had no more targets left to bomb. They had destroyed up to 90% of the infrastructure in the north, leveled every single building over two stories tall, and specifically targeted dams to try to flood the small amount of arable land available in the north so that the Korean people would face famine and starve to death. Civilians had to hide underground in tunnels and caves to escape the relentless bombing. General Curtis ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay bragged about this, admitting that they killed around 20% of the population of the north, around 2 million people, most being civilians. Bruce Cumings described this bombing campaign as a “virtual holocaust”72.
If you’ve been following Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, you should understand the comparison here. Gaza was bombed on a fairly regular basis prior to the Hamas mobilization, but starting on October 7th, 2023, using mostly American-made bombs, Israel began a relentless assault on the people of Gaza, of which children make up about half of the population. This bombing is ongoing, with Israel slaughtering 50 Palestinians on the day of writing, so specific numbers will not be accurate, but analysts estimate somewhere between 60-80% of Gaza has been destroyed so far.
The death toll increases day-by-day and is exceedingly difficult to accurately track since Israel has bombed most, if not all of the agencies that would be able to count (or find, in the rubble) the dead. All major hospitals have been bombed73. It will take an estimated 15 years just to clear Gaza of rubble74. The current Israeli and US administrations have a ‘final solution’ for the Palestinians of Gaza, which is to make it so uninhabitable through bombing that Palestinians will have no choice but to leave, and have no right of return75. That is, by definition, ethnic cleansing76. An act of genocide.
It should be no surprise, based on their similar histories of being brutalized by puppets of America, that the DPRK and Palestine have a mutual respect for one another. The DPRK recognizes Palestine as the sole legitimate state in the historic Palestinian territories and does not recognize Israel at all, instead referring to it as an “imperialist satellite” of America. The DPRK has also helped arm militant groups in Palestine, including Hamas77. The ROK and Israel, on the other hand, support each other78.
Did America bring ‘democracy’ to the people of Korea? Did their vassal state in the Middle East bring ‘democracy’ to occupied Palestine? No, of course not. But, despite being bombed to glass by America and threatened for three quarters of a century thereafter, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is still, as the name implies, democratic. Of their own merit, of course, no thanks to America. Hopefully one day Palestinians will gain self-determination and be able to establish their own democratic state as well.
A common tactic used by western victims of imperial propaganda is to scoff at the implication that the DPRK is indeed democratic. They’ll compare them to the German Nazis for some reason, saying, for example, that claiming the DPRK is democratic because their name says so is like claiming the National Socialists were actually socialist. They’re half right, the Nazis were absolutely not socialist, but the only part of the Korean peninsula you could reasonably compare to Nazi Germany would be the ROK, as a vassal of the US Empire.
These confused people will vomit any number of buzzwords to try to describe the DPRK, like ‘hereditary monarchy’, ‘authoritarian’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘autocratic’, or ‘fascist’. But just like China, the DPRK employs the system of democratic centralism. Not to say that elections are required for a state to be democratic, but the DPRK does have them every 5 years anyways. Western media will baselessly claim that elections in the DPRK are rigged, but despite that, many people in the West don’t even know they hold elections at all. They do, and they aren’t ‘rigged’.
Elections in the DPRK are similar to elections in China, with one major difference: they are all technically ‘direct elections’. Whereas in China, the entire population only votes to elect deputies at the two lowest levels of government, in the DPRK the entire population votes for candidates at all levels of government79. They do so through direct suffrage with secret ballots. The headline of the BBC article for the 2019 election reads, “North Koreans vote in 'no-choice' parliamentary elections”80. This is a lie. Not having multiple candidates on a ballot doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice. Every DPRK citizen of legal voting age has a choice of who represents them in the Supreme People’s Assembly and also in local people’s assemblies.
The BBC can’t even get their own story straight. They say, “Once it's your turn, you receive a ballot paper with just one name on it. There's nothing to fill in, no boxes to tick. You take that paper and put it into the ballot box, which is located in the open.” But they also say, “There's also a voting booth where you could vote in private, but doing that would raise immediate suspicion, analysts say.” This doesn’t make sense. Where is the ballot box? Is it in the open or is it hidden? How would you vote in private if they claim that you don’t have to fill anything in? What would be the purpose of going to the voting booth?
BBC also says, “The Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) is a rubber-stamp body with no power.” Also a lie. The SPA is the highest organ of state power in the DPRK, as stated in Article 87 of their constitution81. They didn’t write a fake constitution just to fool westerners, or people who read the BBC, they simply don’t care about us that much.
The BBC at least admits there are multiple parties holding seats in the SPA, but they spin that in the worst way possible. “In practice, there is no difference between the three parties and they're all grouped together in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea [DFRK].” The DFRK is a coalition of all parties that hold seats in the SPA. They’re ‘grouped together’ to form a united front to interface with the foreign occupation in the southern half of the peninsula.
The article, which suspiciously has no by-line, opens by claiming that, “North Korea is an isolated state, ruled by the Kim family dynasty.” This is absurd, considering this article is about the Parliamentary elections in 2019. Kim Jong Un wasn’t in the running for any positions in this election. He ran for office a month later, in a different election. This is because Kim Jong Un isn’t part of the SPA, which, again, is the highest organ of state power. It would be pretty strange to make the claim that the ‘Kim family dynasty’ rules the DPRK then, wouldn’t it?
Kim Jong Un was elected for the position of President of the State Affairs Commission (SAC) in 2019. That’s his role in government. It’s completely separate from the SPA. Article 112 of the DPRK constitution says, “The State Affairs Commission is accountable to the Supreme People's Assembly.” If the body that Kim Jong Un is part of is accountable to the body that is designated as the highest organ of state power, then Kim Jong Un can’t be considered the most powerful person in the DPRK.
So who is? That would be Choe Ryong Hae, who is the Chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly. He’s also the First Vice President of the SAC, under Kim Jong Un. He holds the highest position in the highest organ of state power, but also serves in the SAC. This is of course not to say that Choe Ryong Hae is actually, secretly, the evil dictator that rules over the DPRK with an iron fist as western media claims about Kim Jong Un. There is no single ‘dictator’ in the DPRK. They have an entire democratic system of governance, elected by the people and serving their will.
The constitution goes so far as to specify that the President of the SAC (Kim Jong Un) cannot be “elected as a Deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly” in Article 101, but also that, “The President of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is elected at the Supreme People's Assembly according to the unanimous will of all the Korean people.” So how does it work? Why is there one name on the ballot?
The SPA holds mass meetings to deliberate and debate on who should be nominated for certain roles, such as Kim Jong Un’s position. This is a democratic process, as the Deputies in the SPA are all elected by the people. Once a nominee has been agreed upon, the entire voting-age population of the DPRK votes to affirm the nomination. Yes, they can of course vote no, but it is rare. The democratic process has already happened once a candidate has been nominated, but the voting process still takes place as an extra layer of security.
The ‘Supreme Leader’ designation has been a source of confusion, or outright falsehoods, in western discourse. It’s an honorary title that has historically only been given to members of the Kim family, although there are no laws or regulations in the DPRK that state that it must remain in the family. In and of itself it doesn’t mean much, at least in regards to the DPRK’s governance. Article 100 of the DPRK’s constitution states, “The President of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, who represents the State.” The Supreme Leader is the face of the nation, but not the most powerful person.
It’s important to note that all three members of the Kim family, all three Supreme Leaders, have held different roles in government, with varying amounts of power. Kim Il Sung was the President of the DPRK, and Kim Jong Il was the Chairman of the National Defense Commission. It is normal for developing states that have been victimized by imperialist pressure to have somewhat of a ‘cult of personality’ around important figures and even their families. The Supreme Leader gives the citizens of the DPRK a familiar, respected face to rally around.
Now for the most important question. If the BBC and other western institutions have lied to you about all of this, what else are they lying about?
Thanks for tuning in. More to come in Episode 2, subscribe to be notified:
https://www.salon.com/2022/01/11/the-us-drops-an-average-of-46-bombs-a-day-why-should-the-world-see-us-as-a-force-for-peace/
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/manhunting-in-the-hindu-kush/
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush
https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral/us-drone-attack-marriage-procession-yemen
https://www.msf.org/kunduz-hospital-attack-depth
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doctors-without-borders-bombing_n_5615690ce4b021e856d33d51
https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/is-there-global-food-shortage-whats-causing-hunger-famine-rising-food-costs-around-world/
https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunger-facts
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-04-13/deaths-from-malnutrition-have-more-than-doubled-in-the-u-s
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/28/nx-s1-4992010/supreme-court-homeless-punish-sleeping-encampments
https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/
https://endhomelessness.org/blog/employed-and-experiencing-homelessness-what-the-numbers-show/
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/united-healthcare-ceo-killing-poll
https://strengthenhealthcare.org/nearly-half-of-americans-received-medical-bills-that-should-have-been-covered-by-insurance/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3238058-we-live-in-capitalism-its-power-seems-inescapable-so-did
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/theatre-democratic-taiwan-stages-hong-kong-play-about-tiananmen-square-2023-06-03/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/30-years-after-end-martial-law-scars-taiwan-s-white-n725251
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/memories-of-a-goddess_b_211570
https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-web-report/american-history-race-and-prison
https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1873508048637136971.html
https://timshorrock.com/documents/
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/09/world/voice-of-america-beams-tv-signals-to-china.html
https://liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/
https://www.ft.com/content/4f970144-e658-11e3-9a20-00144feabdc0
“Who were these punks in shorts and sandals, carrying petrol bombs? Gasoline is tightly rationed, they could not come up with these things spontaneously. Who taught them to make bottle bombs and for whom were the incendiary devices intended?” https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1468&context=chinabeatarchive
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2021/06/the-tiananmen-square-massacrethe-one-sided-story/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tiananmen-square-massacre-death-toll-secret-cable-british-ambassador-1989-alan-donald-a8126461.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/
https://earnshaw.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/docs/doc14.pdf
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/docs/doc15.pdf
“Some say the unidentified man known as "Tank Man" was run over and killed” https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g28438966/mandela-effect-examples/
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240503-kent-state-university-1970-protests-that-shook-the-us
https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/c.php?g=1046409&p=7592859
https://www.history.com/articles/black-panther-fred-hampton-killing
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-signs-bill-block-us-railroad-strike-2022-12-02/
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/05/1228772709/east-palestine-train-derailment-norfolk-southern-lawsuit-epa
https://aflcio.org/statements/icymi-president-biden-im-most-pro-union-president-american-history-and-i-make-no
To learn about SWCC in greater detail, see: Boer, Roland. (2021). Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners
https://rajawali.hks.harvard.edu/resources/understanding-ccp-resilience-surveying-chinese-public-opinion-through-time/
For more information see: Parenti, Michael. (1986). Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
See Table 1 on pg 3: https://rajawali.hks.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/3/9089913/north-korea-us-war-crime
https://www.history.com/articles/comfort-women-japan-military-brothels-korea
Cumings, Bruce. (1997). Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History. pg 273
Kim, BJ. (2003). Paramilitary politics under the USAMGIK and the establishment of the Republic of Korea. Korea journal. 43. pg 299-300.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/748985/south-korea-number-alive-and-dead-families-divided-by-korean-war/
Cumings, Bruce. (1997). Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History. pg 283-284
Cumings, Bruce. (2010). The Korean War: A History. pg 124
Tucker, Spencer. (2016). The Roots and Consequences of 20th-Century Warfare. pg 463
Cumings, Bruce. (1997). Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History. pg 321
Ibid. pg 311
Ibid. pg 323-332
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-many-palestinians-detention-and-available-swap
https://asiasociety.org/education/massacre-nogun-ri
Although the author believes ‘Israeli Defense Forces’ is a misnomer and that it would be more accurate to call it the ‘Israeli Occupation Forces’, the initialism ‘IDF’ will be used to avoid any potential confusion.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/3/5/the-blood-was-everywhere-inside-israels-flour-massacre-in-gaza
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6207/New-evidence-confirms-Israel%E2%80%99s-full-involvement-in-%E2%80%98Flour-Massacre%E2%80%99-of-starving-Palestinian-civilians
http://www.busanbiennale2022.org/en/learn/buoys/national-guidence-of-alliance-bodo-league
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/721616.stm
https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell_summary_eng.pdf
See Chapter 5, Collision: Cumings, Bruce. (1997). Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr7l123zy5o
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/15/clearing-gaza-of-almost-40m-tonnes-of-war-rubble-will-take-years-says-un
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/27/gaza-two-rights-return
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule129
https://www.nknews.org/2014/06/how-north-korea-has-been-arming-palestinian-militants-for-decades/
https://new.embassies.gov.il/seoul/en/the-embassy/bilateral-relations
http://www.asgp.info/Resources/Data/Documents/CJOZSZTEPVVOCWJVUPPZVWPAPUOFGF.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47492747
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Socialist_Constitution_of_the_Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea_(2023)