• CitricBase@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    It’s possible English isn’t your first language? No worries.

    The word “vindicated” doesn’t mean “won in the end,” it means “they were right.” As in, justified in their demands, on the right side of history. Even of the protests I listed in my first comment, half of them didn’t actually win in the end (Vietnam, Occupy, Gaza, and arguably more).

    From Wikipedia:

    …(the Seven Demands) for the government:

    1. Affirm Hu Yaobang’s views on democracy and freedom as correct.
    2. Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalisation had been wrong.
    3. Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members.
    4. Allow privately run newspapers and stop press censorship.
    5. Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals’ pay.
    6. End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing.
    7. Provide objective coverage of students in official media.[84][83]

    I hope that you’d agree that the students were in the right, and that the oppressive CCP was in the wrong?

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 hours ago

      In Mainland China, most people don’t know about Tiananmen, the older people who heard about it didn’t know much unless they were in Beijing, my parents (in Guangdong province at the time) just think its some kids “causing trouble”.

      Most of the liberalizations goals failed, there is no free press. China is a State-Capitalist dictatorship.

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        5 hours ago

        Yes, I understand that. Perhaps I was not empathetic enough, I am sorry to hear that about your family being deceived, along with the rest of mainland China.

        The fact that the oppressive CCP won does not mean they were right. The world is not a Disney movie, the good guys don’t always win.

        “Vindicated” just means that the good guys were good. Whether or not they won.

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          4 hours ago

          Dictionary Definition:

          vindicate *verb*
          - 1 a: to free from allegation or blame
          - b (1): confirm, substantiate
          - (2): to provide justification or defense for : justify
          - c : to protect from attack or encroachment : defend
          - 2 : avenge
          - 3 : to maintain a right to
          - 4 obsolete : to set free : deliver
          

          https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vindicate

          So imagine a person defending against an assailant and inadvertently kills him.

          The polices comes and accuses the person for murder, but its self defence.

          So the man get convicted for murder.

          Sure, his family may believe him. Some friend may believe him. A rebel group might also believe him.

          But most people either don’t care or just believe what the police says.

          The man spends life in prison. And his identity, records, papers are all shredded.

          He may be in the right, but that’s not exactly being “vindicated”.

          Vindicated is:

          to free from allegation or blame

          Yea maybe in the west, but in Mainland China, it doesn’t exist. Those who witnessed it thinks it was a riot.

          Being “Vindicated” would be the CCP topples, and the new government shares the truth.