I bet this logic trap goes hard if you’re a fucking moron. To spring it: No, I don’t support Jan 6 insurgents.
I am against any lethal action by governments towards their own citizens. And I don’t support murder or overthrowing governments by force either. So I don’t support insurgents trying to depose governments violently, and also I don’t support police killing people. The ideal situation would be to identify and arrest rioters. Which is, as it turned out, exactly what the US did until the new administration took over.
The idea that rioters attacking and beating people to death should be reasonably countered with expanding bullets, that poles and firebombs are reasonably opposed by rifles, frankly puts you in some sorry moral company. You should take a hard look at yourself if that’s the kind of behavior you condone from a government, under any circumstance. Professional soldiers and law enforcement don’t kill civilians.
You edited your post so I’ll reply again: The test, which America and China both repeatedly fail, is having professional law enforcement and soldiers kill their own citizens. This is one of the most utter, final failures of government. There are plenty of options besides killing people, and when you take up arms and swear oaths to protect your country, and then kill citizens of your own country, you break your oath.
Your argument fails because there’s no need to actually intercede and halt protests. In the case of the pro-democracy movement crushed by the PLA in June 1989, martial law and attacks on protesters had begun en masse 2 weeks before the massacre. There was a steady escalation of violence leading up to the riots in early june. So the idea that the protestors “struck first” (even if that is a justification, which it isn’t, is false. The facts, which aren’t in dispute, were that the anti-corruption policies implemented to answer the complaints of the protestors were well-received, and further reforms were desired by everyone, not just the student protestors. Everyone except the local officials who were at risk of losing their positions by a government overhaul from authoritarianism to democracy.
The protest could have continued to be disrupted the way they already were before the massacre:
Instead, even though 300,000 people were protesting that period, the actions of an interim commander who acted on poor discipline and leadership, directly lead to at least hundreds, and possibly thousands, of his own people, in a small section of the city. That is a spectacular failure, and the end of a certain degree of human autonomy in China.
This is coming from someone who actually thinks China is leading the world in many ways. I do genuinely believe that China is actually less corrupt than many other nations, and the high degree of social cohesion in-country is something that gives them strength. Like I said in my first post: lots to admire, but this ain’t it.