A year ago, I wrote a piece on Cake commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, which culminated in brutal violence towards the protestors by the People’s Republic of China. One year later and 31 years after the Tiananmen Square protests, the United States is in a state of unrest over the killing of George Floyd. I don’t need to rehash what happened to him.
Earlier this week, protestors were shoved out of the White House area so that Donald Trump could have a photo op in front of a church. The amount of force used to shove the protestors out of the way wasn’t to the same degree as what happened in China, but there was use of rubber bullets and tear gas to get the protestors out of the way. Protestors who were protesting peacefully.
It got me to thinking whether or not a Tiananmen Square situation could happen in the United States. It’s an uncomfortable question, but when we see peaceful protestors getting shot with rubber bullets and tear gas, isn’t that a step towards the type of authoritarianism we saw in Beijing?