Also the British story is literally that the square is so clean because the tanks just ran over people so many times that they turned into goop and were hosed down into the sewers, and presumably then they just hosed down the tanks also without any trace left.
Edit: Also theres no sign of water on the tanks or square the very morning after because the Chinese CCP are just that tricky and sneaky.
The more I deal with liberals, the more I think this essay is right:
Let us look at a specific example. A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.
What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.
It doesn't help at all that the definition of "Genocide" has become so muddied as to be almost a liability rather than a useful term. China detaining Uighurs (often spuriously) suspected of extremism and making them sing patriotic songs is genocide. Russia invading Ukraine is genocide... somehow. I honestly don't know what Libs think Russia is doing that is genocide because I got sick of listening to them ages ago. The 1932 famine is genocide, and even if you finally get them to admit that it wasn't intentional and there were many factors that combined to lead to the deaths, and that the Soviets did, eventually, badly, try to provide relief, they'll still say it was genocide because the word is just vibes now.
And most of them here "Genocide" once and assume that China is feeding Uighurs in to a giant wood-chipper. Like, don't get me worng, China's treatment of Uighurs a few years ago when their counter-terror operation was going was unfair and clearly in violation of western concepts of civil rights, but what provably happened is that people were arrested, held in detention for a few months (and made to sing dumb patriotic songs for reasons i can't fathom), and then released. I'm sure that caused a lot of hardship and upset, but it's so far from genocide that the accusation is farcical. And the actual goal of the government; Quashing Salafist infiltration and terrorism in the region, is never mentioned or considered because that would require evaluating it against the west's "Kill em all and let god sort them out" approach to counter terrorism.
Same with Ukraine. People act like Russia is rounding up Ukrainian's and feeding them in to wood chippers. There was all that totally fabricated BS about mobile crematoriums early in the war, reporting that Putin was going to destroy Ukrainian people and culture. They presented the massacre of civilians at Bucha as part of a systematic program of extermination, even after it turned out that most of those people were probably killed unintentionally by shrapnel from air bursting artillery (not excusing this, it just wasn't part of any official or unofficial program of mass killing). When in reality the RF was shockingly restrained in it's attacks on infrastructure and places with a high likelihood of civilian casualties for months and months in to the war. The US's approarch to shock and awe warfare is to flatten everything and destroy as much infrastructure as possible on day one, while the RF spent months carefully avoiding damage to the infrastructure that Ukrainians relied on. And forgive me for being an optimist and believing in humanity, but the only reason I can see for that restraint is that they didn't want to cause unneccesary suffering and hardship for Ukrainian civilians. That might have been hard headed pragmatism; Don't antagonize people who might form an insurgency against you, but it also might just be, you know... Russia and Ukraine are deeply interconnected nations and cultures that had a friendly relationship with borders that were basically a formality for nearly a century, and this ultra-nationalist Nazi turn only really took power in 2014.
Also the British story is literally that the square is so clean because the tanks just ran over people so many times that they turned into goop and were hosed down into the sewers, and presumably then they just hosed down the tanks also without any trace left.
Edit: Also theres no sign of water on the tanks or square the very morning after because the Chinese CCP are just that tricky and sneaky.
That's such a shaky lie and yet so many repeat it without thinking twice
The more I deal with liberals, the more I think this essay is right:
It doesn't help at all that the definition of "Genocide" has become so muddied as to be almost a liability rather than a useful term. China detaining Uighurs (often spuriously) suspected of extremism and making them sing patriotic songs is genocide. Russia invading Ukraine is genocide... somehow. I honestly don't know what Libs think Russia is doing that is genocide because I got sick of listening to them ages ago. The 1932 famine is genocide, and even if you finally get them to admit that it wasn't intentional and there were many factors that combined to lead to the deaths, and that the Soviets did, eventually, badly, try to provide relief, they'll still say it was genocide because the word is just vibes now.
And most of them here "Genocide" once and assume that China is feeding Uighurs in to a giant wood-chipper. Like, don't get me worng, China's treatment of Uighurs a few years ago when their counter-terror operation was going was unfair and clearly in violation of western concepts of civil rights, but what provably happened is that people were arrested, held in detention for a few months (and made to sing dumb patriotic songs for reasons i can't fathom), and then released. I'm sure that caused a lot of hardship and upset, but it's so far from genocide that the accusation is farcical. And the actual goal of the government; Quashing Salafist infiltration and terrorism in the region, is never mentioned or considered because that would require evaluating it against the west's "Kill em all and let god sort them out" approach to counter terrorism.
Same with Ukraine. People act like Russia is rounding up Ukrainian's and feeding them in to wood chippers. There was all that totally fabricated BS about mobile crematoriums early in the war, reporting that Putin was going to destroy Ukrainian people and culture. They presented the massacre of civilians at Bucha as part of a systematic program of extermination, even after it turned out that most of those people were probably killed unintentionally by shrapnel from air bursting artillery (not excusing this, it just wasn't part of any official or unofficial program of mass killing). When in reality the RF was shockingly restrained in it's attacks on infrastructure and places with a high likelihood of civilian casualties for months and months in to the war. The US's approarch to shock and awe warfare is to flatten everything and destroy as much infrastructure as possible on day one, while the RF spent months carefully avoiding damage to the infrastructure that Ukrainians relied on. And forgive me for being an optimist and believing in humanity, but the only reason I can see for that restraint is that they didn't want to cause unneccesary suffering and hardship for Ukrainian civilians. That might have been hard headed pragmatism; Don't antagonize people who might form an insurgency against you, but it also might just be, you know... Russia and Ukraine are deeply interconnected nations and cultures that had a friendly relationship with borders that were basically a formality for nearly a century, and this ultra-nationalist Nazi turn only really took power in 2014.
And ignoring the fact of active genocides going on within their own societies, and in many cases with their enthusiastic support.
They've mostly never seen any counter-narratives.