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The John Batchelor Show

S8 Ep256: TIANANMEN SQUARE AND THE UNMASKING OF THE COMMUNIST PROJECT Colleague Professor Sean McMeekin. The conversation begins with the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, framed not as an anomaly but as the definitive "unmasking" of the communist regime. While the p

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

TIANANMEN SQUARE AND THE UNMASKING OF THE COMMUNIST PROJECT Colleague Professor Sean McMeekin. The conversation begins with the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, framed not as an anomaly but as the definitive "unmasking" of the communist regime. While the protests initially gathered to mourn reformer Hu Yaobangand coincided with Gorbachev's visit, the subsequent violence revealed that political brutality, rather than popular sovereignty, is the essence of the communist project. Professor McMeekin argues that Tiananmen stripped away the pretense of the "consent of the governed," proving the regime relied entirely on raw force. The discussion traces the origins of this ideology to Karl Marx, a Prussian philosopher influenced by Hegel. McMeekin posits that Marx was primarily a "wordsmith" who viewed history as an abstract binary struggle between oppressors and the oppressed, treating communism as a philosophical "word game" rather than serious economic theory. NUMBER 1
1945 MOSCOW

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0:34.9

This is CBS Eye on the World.

0:38.3

Here's John Batchelor.

0:41.3

This is CBS I on the World. I'm John Bachelor.

0:45.3

It is the spring of 1989, Beijing,

0:49.3

Tiananmen Square, a gathering of students that grows over several weeks, anticipating and then observing

0:58.0

the visit of the leader of the Soviet Union, a man named Gorbachev, making a call on the

1:05.0

Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, the CCP itself, led by a man named Geng Xiaoping. That meeting is a world-scale event.

1:15.4

Events in Europe have been changing the direction of communism, Marxist-Leninism, and the

1:22.6

TV cameras are invited into Beijing during that period of conversation, in some fashion, an alliance of two communist states that are changing their ways.

1:34.3

Deng Xiaoping is seen as a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev is seen as a reformer.

1:39.3

And gathering in the square are also TV reporters and radio reporters from around the world.

1:46.1

In other words, all attention.

1:48.4

And then is the death of a man named Yao Bang, Hu Yao Bang.

1:52.9

His death leads to outpouring of sympathy across the nation because he was seen as a reformer

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