episode-header-image

Sep 2021

1h 55m

89/ Tiananmen, Denialism and History (Wi...

About this episode

This is a conversation with Mia Wong, a writer and researcher with Cool Zone Media whose essay "When communists crushed the international workers’ movement" for Lausan was the subject of this conversation.

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Blog: https://thefirethisti.me

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Topics Discussed:

The Tiananmen massacre in its historical context
The meaning of Tiananmen
How we remember Tiananmen and what we erase
The before and the after
The cost of denialism
Tiananmen/Syria comparisons
Occupying the squares vs occupying the factories
On class identities
How could it have been different?
Aesthetics and politics
Burying the past
On tankies

Recommended Books:

Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia by Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber
Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil by Timothy Mitchell
Hatta Shūzō and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan by John Crump

+ I recommended Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan by Sho Konishi

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