Wikipedia agrees with the communists on that part:

Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the “hold-out” of students’ last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a “massacre” on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews[i] and CBS correspondent Richard Roth[j] reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square.

Student leader Chai Ling claimed in a speech broadcast on Hong Kong television that she witnessed tanks arrive at the square and crush students who were sleeping in their tents, and added that between 200 and 400 students died at the square.[269] Ling was joined by fellow student leader Wu’er Kaixi who said he had witnessed 200 students being cut down by gunfire; however, according to Mathews, it was later proven that he had already left the square several hours before the events he claimed to have happened.[212] Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and said that he did not see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated: “Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.”[270]

In 2009, human rights activist Robin Munro, stated that he was present during the clearance of Tiananmen Square and that, according to his account, there were ten Western reporters near the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the time. He also reported a Spanish television crew that recorded footage of the event. Munro disputed Wu’er Kaixi’s claims of mass killings inside the square, stating that he did not witness fighting there and instead observed students peacefully complying with the soldiers’ demands to leave the square in an orderly manner. He further noted that the Spanish TV crew reported not seeing killings within the square during the final clearance.[271][272]

In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing from the time of the events were leaked and published by WikiLeaks, all of which stated that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square itself.[195] Instead, they said Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Beijing outside the square, around Muxidi station, as they fought their way from the west towards the centre.[195] A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.[195][217]

It’s important that we take study of allegations like this seriously and don’t fall for bourgeois mythos.

I recommend the Tian’anmen Protests Reading List. It was far more muddy than a student protest. There were workers protesting Deng’s reforms, liberal students protesting the socialists system, and CIA-backed operatives sparking discontent. On the day of June 4th, riots around Beijing clashed with the PLA, while the square itself was later evacuated peacefully.

You don’t have to respond, but I’m not going to leave anti-communism hanging.

The fact that there was a famine in the 1930s in the Soviet Union is undeniable. The idea that it was deliberately steered or orchestrated by Stalin doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Once discovered that a famine was occuring, the soviets did what they could to prevent and alleviate it once it had started. The idea of an intentional famine is simply fringe among contemporary historians, same with claims of white genocide in South Africa. For example, serious bourgeois academic sources tend to say it was a failure of planning, rather than intentional and genocide. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:

[data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the ‘revolution from above,’ rather than of a ‘successful’ nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.

Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:

From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.

Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.

The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.

Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN

Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.

There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].

Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.

Comrade Kosior!

You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation in villages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?

Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.

Sincerely, J. Stalin

As for the idea that Stalin was a “totalitarian,” that isn’t an ideology. Stalin was a commited Marxist-Leninist that oversaw the world’s first socialist state in its most tumultuous period. The Soviet Union was democratically run, and Stalin himself was in the position he was because of his enormous popularity. From Anna Louise Strong’s This Soviet World, written in 1936:

The operation of Soviet democracy is thus so intimate, continuous and organic that the observer fresh from capitalist politics hardly recognizes it as government. Where is the debate? Who determines general policies? Can the people throw out the upper officials? Can they throw out Stalin? The Communist Party? The Soviet voter, when asked these last questions, replies in a puzzled way: “Why should we want to?” The questioner thinks he has been evaded. But all elections presuppose an existing economic system, which voting is powerless to change. Voters in America cannot change Rockefeller’s method of operating oil companies for private profit. Similarly no Soviet election raises the issue of returning public properties to private hands: this was settled by the Revolution, and forms the foundation beneath the whole government.

Barring that question, there is nothing whatever that Soviet voters cannot change. They actually do change thousands of officials at every election, and as their acquaintance with the wider problems of the country grows, the forms of democracy are being widened to include direct control of the highest officials. Stalin’s chief post is not in the government, but as general secretary of the Communist Party, which would certainly remove him if his policy and actions should ever discredit him with the people; at present he is by far the most popular man in the country. To throw out the Communist Party bodily would be to throw out all the leading and organizing elements in all factories, farms, schools and enterprises; it could clearly be done only by upheaval leading to chaos. But the citizens are constantly at work changing the very membership of the Party, any member of which may be “cleaned out” on protest of his non-Party associates that he is too dictatorial, too rough towards workers, or merely not a fit leader.[27]

Solidarity with the AES!

That headline…

Lemmy was made by communists, it shouldn’t be surprising that communists are here. Stalin was a much better leader than those that followed in the USSR. “Mass murderer” is also sensationalist, he wasn’t a monstrous butcher either.

It was George W. Bush that ruined the then blossoming Sunshine Policy, actually, after 9/11. From then on denuclearization has been off the table permanently. Trump meeting KJU during his first term was legitimately the best foreign policy the US has ever had with respect to Korea, which tells you that the bar is all the way down in hell.

Cuban exiles would come from various economic backgrounds, usually reflecting the emigration wave they were a part of. Many of the Cubans who would emigrate early were from the middle and upper class, but often brought very little with them when leaving Cuba.

Right there. I never denied that various groups also left Cuba, but we have to understand, the driving factor for why so many Cubans are far-right is that the major force that left Cuba were the exiles that fled socialism.

Or, are you saying that Cubans are genetically far-right, and that class has no impact? Why would Cuba itself remain socialist with popular support for the government then?

Why are Miami Cubans generally far-right, in your own terms?

Both the PRC and former USSR are/were socialist. Public ownership is/was the principal aspect of both economies, and the working classes control/ed the state. Private ownership in the PRC is only in secondary industries. Communism is a post-socialist society where all production and distribution has been collectivized, and class no longer exists. My comment applies to both the USSR and PRC, the state has to be accountable to the working classes, as it was in the USSR and is in the PRC.

No? I took several years of Spanish. I’m by no means fluent, but the idea that I’m inventing the concept of Cuban exiles requires no Spanish, just simple googling.

The major difference is that in socialism, the state is accountable to the working classes, as it has to be to actually function.

Or I understand that Cubans are not genetically far-right, and that the wealthy Cubans that fled socialism have a dominating presence within the Cuban diaspora. Cubans in Cuba have a word for these people: gusanos.

More than consumers, we are workers, and can shut society down by not working. Revolution also works.

Venezuela hasn’t been overthrown. The commune movement is still alive and well, and the reactionary elements still oppose the PSUV. It’s still an incomplete revolution, one with its hands tied and had to make concessions it did not want to. The Cuban revolution already succeeded, and thus has far more political stability.

No problem!

It’s not a 1 to 1, and the strait still provides a huge capacity for oil flow that pipelines do not have. Further still, the world is transitioning to solar (at greater and lesser rates), reducing the importance of pipelines anyways.

The point is that variations exist within classes, they aren’t rigid binary lines but instead a bimodal distribution.

As for removing class, by collectivizing all production and distribution. There’s no such thing as a “utopia of equity and friendship,” nor have socialist countries been ruled by dictators. The achievement of a classless society is one where all production and distribution is held in common through gradually appropriating property under a socialist government.

I said “generally,” not “every single Cuban in Miami is a slaver.” There are people that left because of economic hardship, not necessarily because they oppose socialism, but the reason so many Miami Cubans are far-right is because a great many of them did have ties to those slavers, gangsters, and plantation owners.

I don’t see how any of what you said invalidates what I said. I’m keeping it simple because this is Lemmy, and I’m not going to type out a summary of the entirety of Marxist theory on social class without reason. Of course workers can own some capital and the petite bourgeoisie exists, this has been known for centuries, and isn’t new. Complexity has increased, but that does not diminish the fact that society is generalized into capitalists and workers, even if subcategories exist.

Essentially, society has never been composed of people who only own capital and people who only sell their labor. This has also never been the Marxist position either, so you’re fighting a strawman neither of us believes.

No? Classes aren’t simply categories of people, they are social relations to ownership of the means of production and distribution. Socialism works, and is far more effective at meeting people’s needs than capitalism.