Regarding tone, it may just be because it's very difficult to convey over text (and I am just misinterpreting), but also that my short stint here has led me to believe that while I in theory share political views with socialists here, these so called "tankies" are also very confrontational and polemic for no apparent reason (apparent to me at least). Said differences interest me though, so I am trying to grasp just what it all boils down to and what if anything I can learn from it.
if anything you’ll benefit from me not going on for too long because I’m excited by ideas I’m discussing
Actually, I don't really mind long winded tangents as long as they are interesting, funny or preferably both!
Either you mean to say that “Someone on the internet saying ‘Just trust me bro’” is not a good source
Pretty much this. "bro" science, lessons from the "school of hard knocks", insane 4 hr yt videos with absolutely no source references and Twitter threads with wild statements corroborated by screenshots from some obscure source... I could go on but it seems you understand what I mean.
Even the journo who said 10k recanted!
Yes, 10k is inaccurate. At the same time though, you have the mayor of Beijing claiming 200, the Ministry of Public Security claiming 563, while hospital records show about 500 as a minimum baseline, so I guess as far as official sources go we can't really trust them either. 2 600 seems like the best estimate based on what I have found, which is still a huge number if you ask me when compared to other protests of similar size in western countries, consider e.g. the frequently quite violent protests in Paris and how the police there doesn't murder a few thousands just because the government doesn't agree with the protests (apologies for the digression).
(you) agree that the HRIC isn’t a great source and are just providing those links for convenience, right?
Not familiar with HRIC, it was just the search results that came up and they seem to be based on the information provided by the first hand witnesses I mentioned.
While the image is full of pathos, it doesn’t seem to hold up. Perhaps I am misunderstanding something.
It's quite possible that one person saw something another did not, or that they were not there at the same time. Just based on my experience in crowded places like concerts, having complete situational awareness is impossible, and I am sure that with just 5 deaths in a huge square filled with thousands of people at night time you would have a substantial number that did not see anything. Their deaths are still quite likely though, as there are multiple sources that back this up - see the ones I have referenced above if you have any doubt.
It's also worth noting that the various armies called in acted quite differently from one another, since some were more or less local to the city and others were pulled from far away places, with no local attachments and with varying levels of sympathetic commanders - so it's quite possible that some groups of soldiers would have acted compassionately while others would have been more keen to shoot first and ask questions later. This is also supported by the fighting and killing between the different armies, and could (in part) explain the differences between the eye witness reports.
I hope Youtube is acceptable when it’s for archival footage of a documentary and a news broadcast
It's fine, I am not watching 3 hours of unsubstantiated claims but 6 minutes is alright.
It’s plain that some “protestors” (a tiny number within the larger movement) committed murder and desecrated the corpses before the government retaliated.
I don't think it's that plain. As mentioned, you have several elements all killing each other at various points:
Violent elements among protestors
Elements of the PLA sympathetic to protestors
Elements of the PLA with a "strong political" sense, loyal to the regime
Within that, you have soldiers being suddenly surrounded and encouraged by protestors to rise up against their perceived tyrants, you have civilians witnessing the murder of their friends and you have soldiers fearing for their lives - soldiers I might add that might have had no freaking idea what is happening because up until that point they were happily living their lives as illiterate farmers and now suddenly there's chaos and their commander is telling them to defend themselves and now everyone without a uniform starts looking like a threat.
So you see, I don't think I can attribute a lot of confidence to reports claiming that the protestors started lynching soldiers which in turn made them open fire. I think it'a an order of magnitude more likely that things got out of hand after the first phase of the dispersal, people were then hurt and things escalated from there up until the point where you have civilians stringing up burnt corpses in the street, soldiers summarily executing protestors and tanks running over people.
Regardless, a command was centrally issued and the consequence was a slaughter. Responsibility for the murders falls on the government of the PRC in my opinion, mens rea and actus reus.