Oh, okay, so you’re pulling a disingenuous whataboutism for someone who wasn’t even being discussed.
I didn’t offer Adrian Zenz’s opinion for the same reason I wouldn’t have offered Saudi Arabia’s. You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia which is why I criticized you for doing so. I instead offered the opinion of David Brophy excoriating that piece of AI slopaganda but who you completely sidestepped because his article competently and credibly drags the Monthly Review one into the street and puts it out of its misery.
It’s actually kind of hilarious that you’re (unsurprisingly) doing one of the main things Brophy criticizes Prashad and Chak for in the debunk I seriously doubt you cared to read.
Edit: And by the way, just because I didn’t even think to earlier because I was more frustrated with your invoking someone never discussed here than I was with what he said: here’s the full context.
He was replying to Michael D. Swaine, who wrote:
Other than the fact that “he” alone did not do this, that many CN actually like greater surveillance, and that the camps are a gross overreaction to a real problem, no. But I was thinking more of the BRI nonsense, “quasi-emperor for life,” “play by its own rules,” MIC 2025, etc.
Zenz replied:
Many Germans liked Hitler’s control mechanisms. They reduced crime and rid society of unpopular minorities. @Dalzell60
You deliberately took this out of context. He’s literally using Hitler to describe how many people liking bigoted authoritarian measures doesn’t make it a good thing.
He’s still part of an expressly right-wing think tank, so I’m not suddenly endorsing things he’s written about China’s cultural genocide. What I am saying is that this is the dumbest possible way you could’ve smeared his credibility – by picking out a quote where he’s obviously and fully criticizing Hitler.
Coming into a comment thread that is calling out the manufacturing consent against Iran, and bleating “but Xinjiang!” is whataboutism if I’ve ever seen it.
And yes, you are parroting Zenz. He is the source of this myth - via countless western sources regurgitating the same claims he’s been making since 2018.
In March 2017, the Jamestown Foundation (Washington DC) published a three thousand-word report on “Xinjiang’s Rapidly Evolving Security State” written by Adrian Zenz and James Leibold.1 A few months later, the same writers published another report, this one slightly longer at nearly five thousand words, with the more aggressive title, “Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang.”2 At that time, there was not much interest in these stories. Zenz came from the Victims of Communism Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and funded by various right-wing sources, including the Heritage Foundation.
You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia
And, ya know, a plethora of others that you decided to ignore for some reason… Associating a large swath of Muslim and Arab nations with human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia really lets your racism show.
I was remarking on the credibility of your source; you were remarking on the credibility of someone never cited here. You decided to use the source in the first place and then defend it when called out; I immediately disavowed the one you tried to push on me.
Brophy goes over your exact type of asinine rhetoric that seeks to ascribe this only to right-wing think tanks.
But equally, the Left should not allow criticism of genocide claims to smuggle in an attitude of indifference to the human suffering that those claims point to—precisely what Prashad and Chak are trying to do. In their hands, talk of genocide is reduced to the work of a handful of individuals affiliated with right-wing think tanks, a move that allows them to focus on cultivating a sense that the entire Xinjiang issue is a construct of funding sources and self-interest. This will pass for “materialism” in some circles, but it is the sort of analysis that Gramsci had in mind when he complained of the reduction of Marxism to “economic superstition.” In such thinking, “‘Critical’ activity is reduced to the exposure of swindles, to creating scandals, and to prying into the pockets of public figures.”
Sadly, far too much of today’s China debate has this feel to it. Prashad and his co-thinkers are often enough on the receiving end themselves of critiques focusing on funding sources. It is a pity that instead of elevating the discussion above this level, they choose to descend to it.
The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.
By the time you’re splitting hairs over “well is it cultural genocide or just systemic crimes against humanity of a specific ethnic group designed to repress their culture [see section 4A: ‘Religious, cultural and linguistic identity and expression’])?”, then I have no respect for your denial.
There are 306 footnotes in that report, often with multiple sources each (this one included), and you managed to claim “this report is based on sources from Zenz” because there’s literally one footnote citing his work there. You literally just 'Ctrl+F’d “Zenz” and and then threw out the entire rest of the report because it was willing to so much as even describe the fact that he tried to estimate the figures absent official ones.
Said citations (in footnote 140; page 17) are used in discussing how: “55. In the absence of officially available data, other researchers have drawn on a combination of sources and data points to assess and estimate the extent of the affected population.” It’s literally just one of (I think) 42 other numbered points trying to discuss “Imprisonment and other forms of deprivation of liberty”. You skipped all of that because you wanted a “gotcha”.
the UN has always explicitly stopped short of calling the situation a genocide.
I’ll say what I said before about this: if you’re going to “um ackshually” a cultural genocide just because the UN calls it likely “crimes against humanity” and intricately discusses the extreme cultural destruction of Uyghurs but doesn’t formally call it a “genocide”, I have zero respect for your denialism.
Right back atcha
Oh, okay, so you’re pulling a disingenuous whataboutism for someone who wasn’t even being discussed.
I didn’t offer Adrian Zenz’s opinion for the same reason I wouldn’t have offered Saudi Arabia’s. You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia which is why I criticized you for doing so. I instead offered the opinion of David Brophy excoriating that piece of AI slopaganda but who you completely sidestepped because his article competently and credibly drags the Monthly Review one into the street and puts it out of its misery.
It’s actually kind of hilarious that you’re (unsurprisingly) doing one of the main things Brophy criticizes Prashad and Chak for in the debunk I seriously doubt you cared to read.
Edit: And by the way, just because I didn’t even think to earlier because I was more frustrated with your invoking someone never discussed here than I was with what he said: here’s the full context.
He was replying to Michael D. Swaine, who wrote:
Zenz replied:
You deliberately took this out of context. He’s literally using Hitler to describe how many people liking bigoted authoritarian measures doesn’t make it a good thing.
He’s still part of an expressly right-wing think tank, so I’m not suddenly endorsing things he’s written about China’s cultural genocide. What I am saying is that this is the dumbest possible way you could’ve smeared his credibility – by picking out a quote where he’s obviously and fully criticizing Hitler.
Coming into a comment thread that is calling out the manufacturing consent against Iran, and bleating “but Xinjiang!” is whataboutism if I’ve ever seen it.
And yes, you are parroting Zenz. He is the source of this myth - via countless western sources regurgitating the same claims he’s been making since 2018.
And, ya know, a plethora of others that you decided to ignore for some reason… Associating a large swath of Muslim and Arab nations with human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia really lets your racism show.
I was remarking on the credibility of your source; you were remarking on the credibility of someone never cited here. You decided to use the source in the first place and then defend it when called out; I immediately disavowed the one you tried to push on me.
Brophy goes over your exact type of asinine rhetoric that seeks to ascribe this only to right-wing think tanks.
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The report of the United Nations OHCHR?
By the time you’re splitting hairs over “well is it cultural genocide or just systemic crimes against humanity of a specific ethnic group designed to repress their culture [see section 4A: ‘Religious, cultural and linguistic identity and expression’])?”, then I have no respect for your denial.
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There are 306 footnotes in that report, often with multiple sources each (this one included), and you managed to claim “this report is based on sources from Zenz” because there’s literally one footnote citing his work there. You literally just 'Ctrl+F’d “Zenz” and and then threw out the entire rest of the report because it was willing to so much as even describe the fact that he tried to estimate the figures absent official ones.
Said citations (in footnote 140; page 17) are used in discussing how: “55. In the absence of officially available data, other researchers have drawn on a combination of sources and data points to assess and estimate the extent of the affected population.” It’s literally just one of (I think) 42 other numbered points trying to discuss “Imprisonment and other forms of deprivation of liberty”. You skipped all of that because you wanted a “gotcha”.
I’ll say what I said before about this: if you’re going to “um ackshually” a cultural genocide just because the UN calls it likely “crimes against humanity” and intricately discusses the extreme cultural destruction of Uyghurs but doesn’t formally call it a “genocide”, I have zero respect for your denialism.
Removed by mod