We’re definitely not saying nobody died. The only disputes here are details of the event, location, and the cause of the conflict. The original narrative is that a bunch of unarmed students were massacred because “evil communists” inside the square. Whereas the correct narrative is that a series of issues led to protests that were coopted by people who sought to end the state altogether, and the foreign influence involved wanted a massacre to occur (hence the immediate media blitz). Protest leaders are on video directly saying this (but they won’t participate). What actually happened was that the protesters were intentionally riled up to the point of doing incredibly extreme things, the first casualty of the event was an unarmed PLA officer who was tied up, stabbed and burned alive, while another was hung. What later transpired was a series of battles between armed protesters and the state in many different streets across several miles.

None of this is to say that the event was not a tragedy. It certainly was. But if you understand it in its correct and truthful light these events are a quite different narrative to that pushed by the west for the purposes of anticommunism.

One of the biggest reasons this narrative is pushed is because this was the turning point, this was the moment that they thought China was going to go the same way as the USSR. But it didn’t. It was the time China came closest to an actual defeat by the capitalists. This enrages the liberals that understand this.