this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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If you want the end of capitalism you'll support whatever it realistically takes to dismantle it. And that won't exactly be an "open" or "transparent" process while it happens. Simply put, the collective force that replaces capitalism will have to coerce certain people into accepting the change, if nothing else but for the safety of that new administration (IE avoiding rightwing takeovers, legit sabotage, hatecrimes etc).
Just remember that about anticapitalism - whatever form it takes, it's no dinner party. Even after a revolution, certain people try to resist things they have no material reason to oppose. Those people are reactionary - directionless, even dangerous unless they're re-educated or have privileges restricted.
I appreciate that. It's not lost on me that a lot of communist regimes got really fucked up by trade embargos, sanctions, counter-intelligence campaigns, etc. Power is rarely ceded willingly, of course. However, my primary concern lies with improving the quality of life for everyone, or at least maximizing the well being of the population. Part of that equation, for my point of view, includes the ability for people to think and speak freely without fear of reprisal by the government. Say what you will, but I've hosted eight different exchange students, including one from Russia; none were concerned about answering questions about their home country except for the kid from Hong Kong. I asked them whether they identified as a citizen of Hong Kong or of China first, because I was hoping to get an irl sample for how Hong Kongers actually felt, but let them out of the question when I confirmed with them that that was a sensitive question.
If you're living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it's a capitalist's boot or a communist's boot?
Try looking at it from the point of view of the oppressed class who is benefiting from communist rule, and being harmed by capitalist rule, rather than from the point of view of the super rich people.
Unless I happen to be mistaken, poor people get the bullet, too. We just don't hear about it because they're not famous. I'm taking a wild guess here, but I suspect that the muslims in Xinjiang aren't exactly what you would typically think of as the capital owning class. You can't even (practically, I'm sure there's some loophole or asterisk here) be critical of the bad ideas of your government, just shut up and kill more sparrows. As far as I can tell, it's trading oppression for sparkling oppression.
Nobody has been killed in Xinjiang. There is a reason its original liars had to specify it was a "cultural genocide," which it isn't, either. Like the full break down?
Sure. I'd also appreciate some sources that would be considered reliable in the mainstream, but I won't ignore you if you don't have them.
I'm going to swing in and suggest reading/glancing over the Original Adrien Zenz report. Zenz is a fellow at the heritage fund and part of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Both notorious right-wing propaganda mills.
Nearly every article you have seen has either cited the original Zenz report, or a thinktank that cites said report. Often times if you dig into the funding schemes of those think tanks, you'll learn about all sorts of organizations explicitly tied to defense organizations. I saw one that was an Australian defense org funded by the US DoD.
Anyway, the original report focused on a possible cultural genocide. What this is referring to is the return of 1-2 child policies in China. Previously, these policies excluded most ethnic minorities within China, including the Uyghurs. With this new policy, this group would now be included in the 1-2 child restrictions.
Zenz extrapolated a slowed growth in Uyghur population, not reduction, or stall, but slowed. He concluded that these policies would result in a "Cultural Genocide", meaning an attempt to destroy the culture of the group, not the group itself. This does not make sense, as these were not hard targeted policies, but sweeping across the population.
The reeducation camps were something totally distinct from this report. Keep in mind that news media was using the report in order to call the reeducation camps essentially concentration camps.
Something that is often left out of the conversation is that Xinjiang has been host to many Muslim extremist terrorist attacks. The solutions that China chose may not have been the best, but if we're being honest with ourselves, are no worse than the immigrant camps at the US boarder. Except those are often privatized, profit centered, and have a constant stream of stories about neglect, abuse, and even forced sterilization. Most of the camps in Xinjiang have since been closed, as reported by AP.
I'm sorry I'm not providing sources here, I don't have my notes app set up on my current machine. below I'm going to give prompts to help you search.
Nearly any article will link to the zenz report if you follow citations well enough.
AP reported on the camps being closed.
In the US, Migrants were given hysterectomies without being told prior to the proceedure, often times they came to the doctor for other ails.
The burden of proof is on those who make accusations, it is not the responsibility of others to convince you of what isn't happening. Further, you may have heard the adage that an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, of which there is none and can therefore be dismissed. Even further, when we look at who stands to gain from such a narrative despite the lack of evidence, it follows that US imperial power and Sinophobia driven clickbait news corporations stand to gain monetary and political standing by publishing articles like this. This is the same tactic as the Holodomor myth (which is literally an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory made by nazi propagandists and pushed by nazi lover William Randolph Hurst)
However, I once had a similar outlook and needed to be convinced, so here's three sources. Also this.
From the AP source:
Bruh, she got invited to lake Lao Gai for talking about sales slowing down.
Uhhhh
There is no COVID in Ba Sing Se lol. Not gonna lie, I think Chinese propaganda picks some strange hills to die on, COVID is everywhere, but whatever, it's not genocide.
Well, I'm sure they got the real story, or else.
I'm thinking "you can't leave this shop" is probably an inelegance of translation, and she likely means that the seamstress can't leave the vicinity of the shop. Still, that's uh... Difficult to fathom being applied to "most" of an ethnic population.
Yes, the AP article talks about how the prison camps were closed and stuff, that's all well and good. The minders didn't show them any mass graves, so I suppose that in that regard, there is indeed evidence missing to support genocide. That said, it reminds me a lot of how the US and Canada dealt with native populations, minus the physical relocation. Had they had the same technological capacity as modern China, it seems quite likely to me that Andrew Jackson would have been equally as happy, uh, re-educating the first nations in the way we've seen here. I have limited time to respond, so I'll get to the other articles as I can, but I wonder about choosing this article to defend your position. This reads to me like they've quite finished with their most extreme measures, which, given the state of the present, must have been quite impressive. I always admired the work of the early communist party in fighting for the rights and freedoms of black people in the reconstruction period, it's disappointing to see Saturday morning cartoon bad guy behavior.
So where does it talk about killings in Xinjiang? Or are you trying to move the goal posts.
I mentioned that it doesn't talk about killings, but I also point out that the reporter's entire visit was tightly minded and regulated by party officials. I don't imagine that they were in a special hurry to show them so much as a carton of spoiled milk.
But you're still moving the goal posts. They didn't post the AP article because it's a credible source on events in Xinjiang (it isn't). They posted it to demonstrate that even sources extremely biased against China weren't going as far as making accusations of killings.
Yeah, okay, fair enough. I don't have the time or will to commit to digging into resources to support my counter claim, and I'll concede that I'm goalposting.
Well I appreciate the good faith there.
As to the other accusations about Xinjiang, that's a more complicated discussion. I don't think anybody is claiming that nothing dodgy was happening at all there, there was clearly some pretty heavy handed policing. Some people say it was justified to fight extremism; I don't agree with that, but I also think that the Western media's portrayal of it has been so cynical and exaggerated as to basically not resemble the truth at all.
brain_in_a_box did a great job explaining about the source, about how it was not chosen for being a good source. Rather is is "reliable in the mainsteam" (read: virulently racist fascist state department drivel) and is still walking back the claim of genocide (since none is occurring).
I will try not to waste your time, since you said you were low on time, but I want to talk about genocide claims for a second. A genocide is a very serious concept, it is a word reserved for the most atrocious acts of extermination like the holocaust. Calling something a genocide when it isn't one is therefore anti-Semitic (this is brought up in the Foreign Policy article I linked) along with being deeply disrespectful to other peoples who have suffered through a genocide. Of course, the American government and the press it uses as mouthpieces do not care about this disrespect. You should though. I encourage you not to believe anything you read in the news, especially unverified claims of genocide without significant evidence. This is true for any given article, the info you are reading is manipulated, and "reliable" sources are actually lies designed to make you support war, racism, police murder, and other crimes against people.
A YouTube link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:
Can you be serious for two fucking seconds? Jesus Christ liberalism is a terminal disease. Stop quoting a children's TV show and actually contend with real life.
Can you not think of any reason why the CPC in Xinjiang might be wary of weird AP reporters asking random people questions about covid and concentration camps on the streets? Have you literally not followed the RISE in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US? The accusations the US government flings at China every chance it gets?
do I come into your house and start throwing your plates on the ground? And then kick up a fuss when you ask me to stop? AP should be grateful they are allowed in Xinjiang, this isn't the century of humiliation anymore.
Uhh what? Use your words and stop acting like a child. China officially recognizes 56 ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs. They all form the Chinese nation. Chinese does not mean solely Han. You don't know anything about China, maybe that's why your only arguments are drivel pulled from literal fiction. China is literally called Zhongguo in Chinese, which means Central Country. Chinese is Zhongwen, "language of the middle [country]". What about these words gives you the impression of [Han] Chinese supremacy?
Literally no source outlet, western or otherwise, has made accusations of killings in Xinjiang. You can't just make up allegations whole cloth and then ask people to provide reliable sources to debunk them.
They offered to provide a break down.
Of what?
You can't be bothered to read the thread you're commenting on?
They offered to provide a breakdown of the situation in Xinjiang, and I accepted and also politely asked if they could also provide some sources along with it, so I wouldn't just have to rely on "trust me, bro". They were, of course, free to decline, but they were nice enough to provide some
And it was still wildly out of line for you to expect them to. You wouldn't have had to 'rely' on anything; You Were the One Making the Assertion
Oh, okay.
If your concern is quality of life, then you should be glad to know that all socialist countries, including of course the USSR and China, have radically improved the living standards for their massive citizenries in every metric that matters.
What use is being supposedly free to criticize the U.S. gov't when 1) every living standard is worse, 2) our education and media feed us so much lies we blame our woes on everybody BUT the gov't, or for the wrong reasons, 3) you secretly can't because if you effectively do so you will be blackbagged and disappeared or assassinated?
Your singular Hong Kong kid is not a representative of an entire country or even Hong Kong. Why was it sensitive? Because he feared CPC would come and turn him into meatloaf...or because he feared his parents would? In MY personal, anecdotal experience, fascist parents/grandparents are the greatest source of anticommunist fear.
These are all pretty good points. I'm trying to do better about regulating my social media time, so I'll use that opportunity to consider them. Thanks for the discussion.
This lib seems pretty cool
This is like the people who say "We're freer than the Chinese because I can call Trump a peepee poopoo pants on Twitter without being arrested!" when that doesn't actually do anything at all
but if you try and protest and change conditions materially and meaningfully, you can absolutely bet your ass you will be disappeared like the horror stories you find on reddit about "totalitarian regimes". The only reason why Americans don't think it doesn't happen in the West is either because it's so completely internalized that it becomes memeified ("Haha, I hope the FBI agent watching me through my camera is having a nice day!") or none of the media that they engage with reports on it.
IMO, this entire point is just a liberal ideological bludgeon, a condition that can be applied at-will to any government they want to criticize because no government will be good enough all of the time. it's one thing if you're an anarchist and oppose every government equally for not fulfilling that condition, that I can understand and respect, it's quite another when you're like "Oh, no, I hate authoritarianism! That's why we need to constantly criticize a country on the literal other side of the planet 99.7% of the time, and then only criticize our own country when somebody calls us out on it by saying 'Oh, yeah, America also does bad things too!'" Especially when America's role in the world for the last century at least, and more accurately really since its conception, has been a source of capitalist reaction across its whole hemisphere and later the whole planet, with hundreds upon hundreds of military bases and tens of millions directly and indirectly killed in wars. Criticizing, say, Cuba or DPRK for these sorts of things is effectively zooming in on a single corpse in righteous indignation while ignoring the seas of blood spilled by America behind you.
I mean, yeah, I am anti-authoritarian before anything else. That's basically where my problem with China, among many others, begins and ends. The US has a lot of big problems that need fixing immediately on that front, and that's without getting into the bodies under the front porch. We could go into that, if you like, I just didn't think it was particularly relevant at the moment.
Pick an AES state of your choosing. What is the minimum you think they would have to do to resist U.S./capitalist efforts to destroy it?
It's cute you think you would actually win the argument with the "bodies under the front porch" (in your words), considering how this whole thread has been going for you so far.
In this post: what you get when your brain attempts to synthesize the concept of socialism on top of its liberalism instead of trying to discard everything you know first (liberalism) and learning again from zero to grasp Marxism.
we must all kill the liberal part of our brain, every single day
That's exactly what it is! I really like the way you put that comrade. That connected some synapses for me lol
First you must empty your cup before it can be refilled. Otherwise you just make a mess.
"Does it really matter if I can expect to live to 75 instead of 30, if I can't call the president a doodoo head on social media?"
Yes, it matters a lot.
Another commenter shared an article by the AP where the reporter got to ask people in Xinjiang how things are. One lady at a shop casually mentioned that business was slowing and got talked to by a party minder. You can't even have idle chat without getting invited to camp. That's not quite the same thing as being able to talk shit on social media.
Source?
Also I give AP News zero credit when it comes to reporting on China.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9
Somebody used this source to help explain how there is no genocide in Xinjiang in this very thread.
No, they used it to explain that there's no killing. It also doesn't contain your claim that "You can't even have idle chat without getting invited to camp."
Okay, cards on the table, from my western perspective, being talked to by a party minder for mentioning that sales are slow is an experience I can't even fathom. For me, it seems so backwards, heavy handed, and draconian that framing it in terms of "being invited to camp" didn't seem like a big stretch.
Imagine if a Chinese of Russian documentary showed up in an area of the US that had recently suffered from instability or disruption - like after the George Floyd rights for example - do you really think that there would be nobody would keep an eye on them; no local government employees, no PR people, no local community groups?
If that Russian/Chinese team interviewed a local cashier, and then someone said something privatly to that cashier, and the the cashier then said 'no further comment', would you immediately frame that in your mind as "A party minder threatening to send them to Guantanamo Bay?" Because that's the same scenario that was described in the AP piece.
Speaking of the George Floyd protests, there were videos of "workers" "innocently" leaving a pickup truck full of bricks in an area that the protestors were going to be passing through the next day. Like just parking a pickup truck and removing the tarp to reveal the neatly stacked bricks below it.
OP (the one from lemm ee) is just showing his privilege every time he comments.