I hate formatting my comments like this, but in lieu of a theme I’m sort of forced.

who i think it’s fair to say have a history of being not the nicest

You think wrong. You’d have to establish why you believe that without resorting to tropes first.

I’m not sure if the claims of censorship regarding people talking about the Tiananmen square are true or not but I feel the evidence brought forward is quite compelling and should not be dismissed.

I’m quite curious what that evidence is. It’s true that the mention of the 4 June incident is suppressed on the anniversaries, but not on other days of the year and one glance at reddit or twitter should make why it’s suppressed abundantly clear. People gathering on social media to regurgitate what amounts to little more than hearsay.

Your approach makes me question what you actually know about the incident. Are you aware that the protests were going on for almost 2 months before it devolved, or that the army was sent without firearm long before 4 June? Did you read about what the “peaceful” protestors did before the fighting started? Mutilating people and setting them on fire isn’t associated with communist, whereas reactionaries have been known to do that in response to whatever perceived slight. Perhaps most importantly, are you aware that a bunch of the student leaders fled the country and are now living cushy lives in the US?

I think that’s the whole point of my argument here is that things are just not black and white. communists, as history has shown, can be horrible and manipulated by the draw of power as much as anyone. Don’t immediately take one route because it fits your personal narrative better,

This is also a trope. I hope you won’t be offended by my saying so but it’s your one of your last vestiges of liberalism trying to claw through by creating nuance where there isn’t much. Communist leaders are often accused of power hunger, how they sought to aggrandise themselves, empowered the party to their personal benefit and elevated their creatures disregarding the desires of the people or the party. The best remedy to this is to read their actions and their words.

I’d also like to reply to the norion that whatever we say here is said because it fits our narrative. Fact of the matter is that almost everyone here was once a liberal of whatever inclination. For a lot of us, learning that the USSR/PRC were anything less than hellholes or that Lenin/Kim/Stalin/Mao/Ho/Castro etc were decent people and good leaders. We were handed down all manner of liberal narratives and the facts we were provided with didn’t fit any of them. As such it would serve you best to do your investigation and bring whatever facts you believe folks aren’t informed of before making the implication that anyone follows the path of least ideological resistance.

They don’t censor it. They censor the wests made up narrative about it, which, if you actually read the other comments on this post you would understand.

More often than not when the US points fingers at others they’re just projecting.