Jesus fucking christ. I watched this shit happen. I watched the uncut footage air. That man was fucking pissed. He kept blocking the tanks while absolutely losing his shit screaming at the tank. Neither of us was there so neither of us knows why or what he was screaming but it was most definitely a clear act of defiance. You cannot in any way say that he was asking them to "go back" and "stay involved".

Here is the footage.

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/450068672/video/a-lone-man-stops-a-convoy-of-tanks-during-the-tiananmen-square-protests-in-beijing-1989.mp4?s=mp4-640x640-gi&k=20&c=CCERCYPtGDpeNsNsDmVMA5LAovD-byP0E_f4d1oHzgA%3D

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 21 points 4 days ago

That’s just a shorter version of the video I posted. And I don’t think the full footage ever aired on TV, because it’s around ten or twenty minutes long, mostly of him on top of the tank having a conversation with the crew.