Additional reading:
BBC Reporters, CBS News, and New York Times reporter who were actually in the city the day it happened who report mainstream news got it all wrong. BBC Source | CBS Source | NYTimes Source
Readings into what happened with the protests:
https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen
https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt-2/
It’s crazy how the initial meaning of the photo has been so mutilated up to now. To my knowledge the entire point of the photo was to show the compassion for life felt by two people on opposite sides of a gun. The tank’s refusal to kill the man representative of a positive aspect of humanity during conflict.
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.