we know people are not forced into labor. we know that there are no forced sterilizations
we know that hundreds of people have been murdered over the years by Uyghur extremists in Xinjiang
are you saying this isn't evidence of the existence of a militant group?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Kashgar_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2014_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2014_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkistan_Islamic_Party
"The TIP are believed to have links to al-Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,[235] and the Pakistani Taliban"
"The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is an Islamic extremist terrorist organisation seeking the expulsion of China from "East Turkestan".[230] Since its emergence in 2007 it has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks,"
France also has been dealing with a spate of beheadings and terrorist knife attacks recently, and France also has re-education camps for terrorists in their country
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/france-fights-terror-with-re-education-camps-plan-7wg9vrrgd
PRC is not jailing anyone, unless they're convicted criminals of course. And the vocation training centres are voluntary to join in Xinjiang
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/7/30/china-most-people-in-xinjiang-camps-have-returned-to-society
this situation has been defused by CPC's actions & the will of the Xinjiang people to move past the extremism & backwardness and into the more integrated future
Sounds like you're the one in denial lol
did you know that the US also kept Uyghurs in Guantanamo as suspected terrorists?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay
Uyghur spooks were also used to torture other Muslim detainees under American custody, except America did all of this in contravention of international law & human rights observations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushan_Abbas
Uyghurs are now moving away from that precipice of radicalism & accepting a better deal from the PRC to receive uplift & social & economic development
Congrats, you've addressed everything except what they said, this is remarkable.
(Also lol at simping Macron because he's repressing muslims too, very cool and normal)
the only difference is that France doesn't have the support of most Muslim nations whereas PRC does, because France's situation is only obliquely comparable
OIC supports PRC here
agreed. people forget the insane number of Uyghur fighters who volunteered for isis. the real question for leftists is how we choose to respond.
my take away on this nation-wide struggle session is that literally not a single western nation has the legitimacy to act as a defender of the islamic faith. US based liberals currently see the DOD and their intelligence agencies as fighters of humanitarianism. the Iraq war and all the brutal sanctions that came before it were merely a bump in the road for them.
a part of the reason why this is such an effective tactic is liberals seem to have their trust in the war ministries restored after 5 years of russian concpiracy theories. today they once again think they're a force for good.
all this shit is gonna result in is a cold war.
China is not the enemy is all that I can say. They are a nation that is in the process of figuring it out whereas the western world is in the thick of an ideology that became redundant two centuries ago.
actually it's cynical & not reflective of the facts on the ground to compare Black America's plight with that of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. I would really say it's the exact opposite
Uyghurs have always had autonomy & legally recognized protected status & statehood in PRC, something Black Americans still yearn for in their country
Black Americans in certain poor & deindustrialized areas do not have any such prospects, whereas Uyghurs voluntarily join these vocational training centres & are given uplift and are integrated into the economy & society
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2019/08/512399/uyghurs-freely-join-re-education-camps
Black people in many areas in the US actually face far worse demonstrable discrimination & violence by the state than any Uyghur
US does need to focus on its own problems, I agree
which means we should probably stop trying to make a boogieman out of PRC offering development to historically underdeveloped areas
I don't think it's true either way, because US intelligence also claimed just the other day that no genocide is occurring in PRC
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/
But again, all of this is assuming that knee-jerk subconscious reactions & bone-deep Sinophobia aren't the real underpinnings to most of this media barrage in the West
The semantically & factually correct statement would read, "Black America on a normal day faces far worse discrimination & systemic violence than any Uyghur in Xinjiang"
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I would rather make concise true statements than to clumsily expand & corrupt the commonly accepted meaning of these words and equate the two situations... PRC & USA's social & economic situations & history are not to be equated
I don't need to disarm your talking point, I am just pointing out how cynically it's constructed. If you are at all trying to say that PRC's development & outreach in Xinjiang is comparable to how police treat Black Americans in the US, then it's not a true or semantically correct statement
There is no challenge. The truth doesn't really need our opinions or our imprecise syntactic constructions
The liberal talking point doesn't have any facts to stand on lol. So all we really need is to point out circa 2014 liberal media coverage of murders & extremist unrest in Xinjiang, and the rest should follow logically
No, it's not up to Marxists to fundamentally change people, all Marxists can do is clarify the conditions that exist & offer alternative analyses & historical context... hopefully point out contradictions & correcting the revolutionary line along the way. People still have to be willing to disengage with liberal & imperialist propaganda, and revolutionary conditions still have to present themselves. Marxists do not create revolution or class consciousness, these are things that take shape regardless of Marxian analysis, they are objective
Marx says that the point is to change the world. I think changing people is far less straightforward than that
You're right that facts do not care about liberals' feelings, but that's sort of the point of this whole exchange
Yes, we can't fundamentally change people on this metaphysical or spiritual plane, we can only offer clarification of the really existing situation & historical context. There is still "free will" here& usually people in the West will cling to "China bad" or "Russia bad" regardless of the truth
What we should do is engage them in peaceful discourse, and when that fails, we write them a strongly worded letter. They won't be able to recover from that!
Could also shove some pamphlets in their mailbox about the dangers of isolation and extremism. Folks I think we nailed it
Having laws is also a massive campaign of detention, you're just repeating blood libels
Okay, but like, the Jacobin tweet is accurate, isn't it?
Xinjiang is materially important for China and BRI, and Islamic terrorism is a tool the US uses for geopolitical reasons. So, in the name of combating Islamic extremism, CPC is trying to centralize its hold on Xinjiang and that has resulted in harassment and detention of the Uighur population.
What they're doing isn't a genocide. But the response is far out of proportion for the level of Islamic terrorist activity that is actually present.
That language would be over the top in a straight to video sci-fi thriller never mind a supposedly lefty magazine.
> We need to actively decouple the Xinjiang issue from the pursuit of Western interests in Asia, and provide it with a different framing, one that speaks in universal terms of a rejection of racism and discrimination.
This is the key, I think, to understanding Jacobin's perspective.
They do talk about US interests in the region and the hypocrisy of the West.
Writing to the US ambassador in Beijing, he [Rubio] asked him to look into the issue because the “crackdown in the XUAR touches on a range of interests critical to US efforts to secure a free and open Indo-Pacific region.” Rubio is now spearheading an effort to ramp-up pressure on China across the board, a push that follows on the heels of Washington’s most hawkish foreign-policy statements on China since it officially recognized the People’s Republic in 1979.
There’s no point talking about holding China to international norms when those norms don’t exist. Reading Jim Wolfreys’s recent book on France, it’s not hard to see similarities with the measures being implemented in Xinjiang: bans on forms of veiling, citizens encouraged to look out for signs of radicalization as innocuous as someone changing their eating habits. Many of these PRC citizens have mixed feelings about an issue like Xinjiang: they recognize that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping might be heavy-handed but think he’s right about Western meddling in China’s affairs.
But, in the end, they want people to not view what is happening from a geopolitical/economic lens and think more in terms of the actual in-the-moment human cost. When viewed from that perspective, yeah, what is happening to Uighurs is bad and they don't deserve it. But, at the same time, Jacobin doesn't really provide any solution. They don't talk about how to influence US policy so that we can actually decouple the Xinjiang issue from the pursuit of Western interests in Asia. They just say that we should. I don't know if this is because they are idealistic or naive or what.
https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/chinese-salafism-and-the-saudi-connection/
https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/china-muslims-work-change-perceptions-after-knife-attacks
even back in 2014 there was an acknowledgment in VOA & Diplomat of Saudi & Western imperalist-funded Muslim extremism destroying lives & causing terror to unfold in PRC. But only since then has the narrative changed & extremism is now downplayed in the west.
If jacobin didn't have a prior pattern of pro-imperialist takes this would maybe be a valid point
its easy to shit on every publication that exists in america at this point in time, but the jacobin is just about the only one that isn't hot garbage. give them a break.
they have writers that are all over the place ideologically. at this point they have way more marxists contributors then liberals. that's a trend that's been going in the right direction as of late.
I don't think Jacobin is pro-imperialist. They are more utopian, I guess? But, like, feel free to give me examples. I'm not a regular reader.
Xinjiang is a complex issue with many competing interests. It's hard to say anything about it that can't be used for imperialist ends. Like, even if you declare full sympathy to the CPC in its mission to secure its territories and ensure its economic independence, the imperialists can just use you to push for a new Cold War.
This isn't what Jacobin does, though, so that's not really relevant. Skimming the article, it felt they wanted to criticize China's handling of Xinjiang and the Uighur without trying to provide any support to the US right-wing who they called out. I don't think they succeeded, though.
I'm sorry, but can you honestly read this paragraph and claim they're attempting nuance to avoid feeding an imperialist line?
In the name of combating Islamic extremism, the party has embarked on a massive campaign of detention and indoctrination of ethnic minorities. Its goal is to eradicate all possibility of opposition here once and for all and turn this huge territory into a stable platform from which to extend its Belt and Road Initiative and dominate Central Asia.
In the name of implies that's not why they're doing what Jacobin alleges and have a more sinister reason.
Detention and indoctrination of ethnic minorities makes it sound completely indiscriminate and as though it's all ethnic minorities as part of some sort of racial supremacy.
Eradicate all possibility of opposition here once and for all is deliberately using the language of total extermination and totalitarianism regimes to the degree that it would be over the top for an 80s movie Nazi.
You simply do not reach that level of hyperbole and incredibly specific language by mistake. Debate the merits of China's actions by all means but the language used in this article would be extreme even for a neo-con rag.
If the above is true, how is it not a cultural genocide? I'm failing to see the difference fundamentally between this everything done to idk something like schools doing the same to first nations people in Canada?
This isn't bad faith, I've been trying to educate myself and still don't understand why any comrade supports this, even knowing that any brutality is at least the exception?
Reaching across the aisle means... Someone responding to their tweet?
