I don't to hand and it's really late here. I can try and look tomorrow if work isn't too busy. I have a feeling it's in an interview with people from the various groups that was in a non-English documentary, maybe Dutch. But I think I've read it too. I'll do my best so long as you don't mind waiting a while.
Tank man happened after much of the fighting and violence that had happened in the previous days (and nights especially) so the tanks were definitely there for pre-emptive defense/a threat to escalation.
Even western reporters like the BBC's John Simpson (very much part of the British establishment class then and now) reported at the time that there was violent clashes less in the square itself, but mostly in the side streets between armed protestors (many of whom have since admitted they were funded or straight up supplied with weapons by the US) and Chinese state police and military - with shooting on both sides plus a lot of beatings and firebombs from the insurrectionist elements.
John Simpson himself has told the story for decades of how he witnessed a smaller group amongst a bigger amount of protestors firebomb a military truck killing the driver. The passengers who jumped out were then set up and beaten to death or almost by the protestors. He apparently intervened, waving a stick/post and his press badge at them to try and drag one of thr badly beaten soldiers out of the mob. His reporting at the time and in recounting that story afterwards makes no secret of the fact that he saw those groups of protestors/insurrectionists as a murderous and bloodthirsty mob, not as peaceful protestors defending themselves. In recent years during the new cold War and red scare against China he's soften his criticism of the protestors and upped his anti-China rhetoric a bit, but has never disputed his original reporting or it's conclusions.
So there absolutely was violence and bloodshed. Innocent people on both sides were likely caught in it. But basically no one at the time, including explicitly pro-West, anti-China reporters, saw a one sided massacre of the state firing on peaceful crowds.
Similarly you can go and look up interviews with the Canadian photographer who took the famous tank man photo. Most of the more recent ones are him getting visibly annoyed at news presenters undermining his account by trying to force this fictional narrative that only came about many years later as anti-China propaganda. And like John Simpson, he's absolutely anti-China in general, but doesn't like that the risks he took for his reporting has been undermined by a sensationalist fiction.
Time passes but Russian soldiers somehow behave the same, as proven by the current conflict. So maybe there's more to it than just "armed conscripts", I don't know what it is exactly, but I do fully associate that with Russians. Feel free to call me racist for that
Ok, you're a racist.
I and others have responded in good faith and with actual information elsewhere in this thread, but having read this and some of your other comments we probably shouldn't have bothered. You lack any real understanding of any aspect of this conflict and you're clearly not open to learning anything because your thinking is clearly clouded by bigotry against a specific people. Until you move past that prejudice you're never going to open to anything that might counter it. I hope you do eventually, and not just for the sake of understanding this conflict.
There will be peace when Putin is dead and Russia withdrawals.
I'm not trying to be rude because your original question seemed to be asked in decent faith, but this is an absurdly simplistic and unrealistic view.
Do you actually think that if Putin had a heart attack tomorrow the war would end? This is war caused by over a decade of political decisions and serious material interests. No one in Putin's government, party, the media, or even the opposition would support a Russian surrender or peace agreement that doesn't maintain regions like the Donbas.
And beyond that, Russia has no incentive to withdraw prematurely but plenty of very serious reasons not to.
Real warfare isn't a bloody strategy game where you can park your units on some line somewhere as a phalanx to protect 'your land'. You do whatever you can to remove the enemy's ability to attack you and if they're not interested in negotiation, you try to take land / diminish their forces in order to force them to the table.
Your suggestion isn't remotely based in reality.
Even if that were true, the content of Hexbear isn't. Any time spent in thr news mega thread will show that we have comrades from the Balkans, South America, Africa, and from across thr world. And more importantly their perspectives and insights are valued and their posts are appreciated. So even if 80% of Hexbear's casual readership was American, isn't that a good dynamic - a site where the population of one of the most insular and propagandised countries on the planet is exposed to a truly international and diverse range of information and perspectives?
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I was going to make the same comment. What's lost in the distortion of image for propaganda, and even in the discussion of what really happened at Tiananmen is this:
It's an incredibly human moment. Amidst days of protests, lynchings, shootings, beatings, fire and violence two people had a conversation. We don't know what was said or who they were. They could have screamed insults at each other, pleaded to see each other's point of view, or just talked about crazy this had all gotten. But they had a conversation, as two people and the result was that everyone lived.