I have a lot of very left-leaning friends (although most of them are still liberals, which I am not of course pls believe me) and they're all heavily anti-China.
Occasionally I push back on this and they always bring up the Uyghur "genocide". As a German person, I feel insanely uncomfortable claiming that there is not actually a genocide happening. And like, as a matter of fact, I don't know what the truth, but at the same time I don't feel comfortable just letting US propaganda go uncontested.
I am compiling my own list of sources but I would greatly appreciate help on this, please give me the clearest sources and arguments you have, because this is an important topic to me.
Just saying "RFA and Adrian Zenz bad" isn't very convincing, not even to myself, the best I have is the letter by the Muslim nations.
Then they just respond "that's whataboutism." What's the response to that?
Look, they'll have a bunch of dumb pacifier responses to ease the break with their propaganda regardless of what you say, that is unavoidable when arguing against the dominant ideology. If you don't point out their horseshit and just go with criticizing sources they'll probably call you David Duke and say you're as bad as any holocaust denier. It's inevitable when you're arguing from a position of weakness. No argument is perfect because these people didn't reason themselves into this belief in the first place, they just took whatever nonsense they were fed at face value.
All I'm pointing out is that sometimes these smug assholes can be knocked off balance when you point out their hypocrisies, and when they start having to explain themselves it opens up discussion a bit more. Not all cases but it can be useful.
Yeah good point. I think the best tactic there is to get ahead of it before they do. Something like, "before you say 'it's whataboutism,' consider we know for certain that the US kills more muslims than is even claimed against China. Under Obama, 90% of drone strike victims were not the intended target. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_Papers "
Yeah it's another instance of, if you're a socialist you have to be an expert and know everything about history, economics, foreign policy, etc while they can get by farting out half considered bullshit and suffer zero consequences for it.
Yeah the funniest/saddest response is "read a history book."
"It's hypocrisy."