All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Kirby101]

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims

The leaked papers offer a striking picture of how the hidden machinery of the Chinese state carried out the country’s most far-reaching internment campaign since the Mao era.

[PwrdOn]

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims

If you actually read the article, it lays out pretty clearly that these policies were a crackdown against Islamic radicals in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, and that while the policy was characteristically heavy-handed and cast a wide net, it was explicitly NOT a campaign of targeted ethnic repression:

In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China.

No one would argue that this was a kind or humane policy, but contrast that with "anti-terrorism" efforts elsewhere that generally involve killing large numbers of innocent civilians, stereotyping Muslims as irredeemably barbaric, and inciting the public into harassing and attacking them on the street, AND are so ineffective that if anything they actually make the problem worse by driving more young people into radical organizations.

It's interesting also to see the parallels between Xinjiang and how we talk about the problem of urban crime over here. It is generally agreed that much of the problem comes from how urban poverty tends to be concentrated into these racially homogenous minority ghettos, and that the solution is to invest in economic development, provide education and job training, and integrate ex-felons into mainstream society rather than returning them back to the environments that pushed them into criminality to begin with. I suppose then that for the sake of our human rights record, it's a good thing that the American government would never seriously commit to doing any of that.

[JackDaw]

People outside of Germany knew about the Anti-Semitism. They didn't know about the concentration camps or the extent of Germany's extermination of the Jews and other 'undesirable' minorities.

I think PwrdOn was suggesting that from the early 1930’s onwards, large sections of German society must have been aware of the significant persecution of Jewish people. It was around that time that laws were passed, for example, that all Jewish people were removed from public offices and professions. Civil servants, lawyers, teachers were sacked. School lessons taught that Jews were sub human.

Jewish businesses were boycotted. Many Jewish shops were vandalised.

All that was happening from 1933 onwards.

In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws removed many basic human rights. Jewish people could no longer be citizens. And marriage between Jewish people and other Germans became illegal.

In 1938 deportation began.

Throughout this period Jews were rounded up in their home towns and villages and ex-friends and neighbours encouraged to beat them up in public.

The knowledge that something profoundly evil was happening must have been widespread? (I’d argue not only in Germany itself but worldwide...as surely embassies were reporting back to their governments, and the laws passed were clearly public knowledge, and could have no acceptable use.)

[Kirby101]

If you actually read the article, it lays out pretty clearly that these policies were a crackdown against Islamic radicals in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, and that while the policy was characteristically heavy-handed and cast a wide net, it was explicitly NOT a campaign of targeted ethnic repression:



No one would argue that this was a kind or humane policy, but contrast that with "anti-terrorism" efforts elsewhere that generally involve killing large numbers of innocent civilians, stereotyping Muslims as irredeemably barbaric, and inciting the public into harassing and attacking them on the street, AND are so ineffective that if anything they actually make the problem worse by driving more young people into radical organizations.

It's interesting also to see the parallels between Xinjiang and how we talk about the problem of urban crime over here. It is generally agreed that much of the problem comes from how urban poverty tends to be concentrated into these racially homogenous minority ghettos, and that the solution is to invest in economic development, provide education and job training, and integrate ex-felons into mainstream society rather than returning them back to the environments that pushed them into criminality to begin with. I suppose then that for the sake of our human rights record, it's a good thing that the American government would never seriously commit to doing any of that.

Nah, don't buy the analogy. And again I can take yours and the Chinese Government's word that nothing bad is going on, or Human Rights, Watch, Amnesty International ....

[Gray Lensman]

I think PwrdOn was suggesting that from the early 1930’s onwards, large sections of German society must have been aware of the significant persecution of Jewish people. It was around that time that laws were passed, for example, that all Jewish people were removed from public offices and professions. Civil servants, lawyers, teachers were sacked. School lessons taught that Jews were sub human.

Jewish businesses were boycotted. Many Jewish shops were vandalised.

All that was happening from 1933 onwards.

In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws removed many basic human rights. Jewish people could no longer be citizens. And marriage between Jewish people and other Germans became illegal.

In 1938 deportation began.

Throughout this period Jews were rounded up in their home towns and villages and ex-friends and neighbours encouraged to beat them up in public.

The knowledge that something profoundly evil was happening must have been widespread? (I’d argue not only in Germany itself but worldwide...as surely embassies were reporting back to their governments, and the laws passed were clearly public knowledge, and could have no acceptable use.)

Othering combined with a slow but sure escalation can get people to agree with things they would never have contemplated a decade earlier, especially with the constant drumbeat of propaganda they were subjected to.

It's a very hard watch, but TimeGhost History has a WWII subseries titled War Against Humanity that goes into detail about how the Holocaust escalated into murder factories, in addition to devoting time to Soviet purges and reprisals, the Japanese internment camps in the US, the British targeting German civilians in bombing raids, and the brutality the Japanese forces were capable of. With more to come since they are covering stuff at the same pace at which it happened, and are only up to the end of March 1942.

[PwrdOn]

Nah, don't buy the analogy. And again I can take yours and the Chinese Government's word that nothing bad is going on, or Human Rights, Watch, Amnesty International ....

You can believe what you want. I just feel sorry for any Uyghurs who actually believed that their supposed advocates in the West really cared about them, pretty soon you all will have moved on to the next invented outrage, and they'll be left high and dry.

[CSTowle]

While I believe if you were to add up the harm done by each country to the world at large and to its citizens and compare the records of the US and China it would be a closer thing than would make most folks here comfortable, I also believe dismissing human rights violations and suppression of minorities (or even less well-connected members of the majority) by the Chinese government as Western propaganda because it deflects from our issues is a mistake. You can do two things at once, there's no reason to ignore one or the other. While I don't know that it rises to the level of genocide, I'd like to know more. That's hard when you have an authoritarian regime that suppresses information coming out.

As to what Germans knew and how they behaved, it's not an outlier of human behavior. Look at attacks on Asians today in America and other white-majority countries, or even just routine harassment, based in part on the unconfirmed rumor that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab. Imagine if we had a President (even more so than Trump and his use of phrases like "Kung Flu" to get cheap applause at his rallies) who actively sought to attack Asian-American citizens and actively blame them for the half a million dead Americans. What would that do to radicalize racists into pressuring politicians to "lock them up" again in Internment camps, or forced deportation? If Trump taught us anything it's that things we took as norms or unwritten rules are dangerously close to being discarded at the drop of a hat, if a leader or a movement has no respect for norms.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Way too much islamaphobia on this thread.

[PwrdOn]

While I believe if you were to add up the harm done by each country to the world at large and to its citizens and compare the records of the US and China it would be a closer thing than would make most folks here comfortable, I also believe dismissing human rights violations and suppression of minorities (or even less well-connected members of the majority) by the Chinese government as Western propaganda because it deflects from our issues is a mistake. You can do two things at once, there's no reason to ignore one or the other. While I don't know that it rises to the level of genocide, I'd like to know more. That's hard when you have an authoritarian regime that suppresses information coming out.

As to what Germans knew and how they behaved, it's not an outlier of human behavior. Look at attacks on Asians today in America and other white-majority countries, or even just routine harassment, based in part on the unconfirmed rumor that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab. Imagine if we had a President (even more so than Trump and his use of phrases like "Kung Flu" to get cheap applause at his rallies) who actively sought to attack Asian-American citizens and actively blame them for the half a million dead Americans. What would that do to radicalize racists into pressuring politicians to "lock them up" again in Internment camps, or forced deportation? If Trump taught us anything it's that things we took as norms or unwritten rules are dangerously close to being discarded at the drop of a hat, if a leader or a movement has no respect for norms.

Look I live in America as well and I cannot say definitively what is or isn't going on in Xinjiang. However, I think that history overwhelmingly shows that uninformed Western advocacy, no matter how well-intentioned, tends more often than not to do more harm to the people they supposedly are trying to help. A great example of this is in Myanmar, a country that not many people give much thought to but has been in the news a bit lately because of the recent coup. Without going too much into the details, the country has long been ruled by a military dictatorship but had recently transitioned toward democracy under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was feted the world over as a crusader for human rights. However, beginning in 2016, the military began a campaign against the Rohingya people in the border areas near Bangladesh, labeled by some as a genocide, and many people naturally expected Nobel Peace Prize winner and global icon Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out against this, completely ignoring the domestic political constraints she was under, being trapped between a military completely outside of her civilian government's control, and a largely unsympathetic public that considered the Rohingya to be unwanted illegal immigrants. So given the circumstances, she did what any leader would do and equivocated, talking about how there were atrocities committed by both sides and how there are human rights violations in every country, and of course, the self-anointed champions of human rights in the West completely tore her a new one over this, in a stroke dismantling all of the international goodwill she had built up over decades. Now fast forward to 2021, with her legitimacy essentially wrecked, the military decided to just go and take her out once and for all, and reimposed their own rule on the country. Predictably, this was met with massive protests, international condemnation, and calls for UN intervention, calling for the restoration of the same leader who was just thrown under the bus and declared a pariah just a few years back, and naturally little mention is made of the Rohingya anymore. Poor countries like Myanmar depend on international cooperation and goodwill to survive, yet when this is conditionally granted based on the whims of a few Western NGOs and activists who lack any real knowledge of the country and focus entirely on optics and crafting a marketable narrative, this just leads to chaos and instability, and you can find examples of this all over the world.

[Mister Mets]

If you actually read the article, it lays out pretty clearly that these policies were a crackdown against Islamic radicals in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, and that while the policy was characteristically heavy-handed and cast a wide net, it was explicitly NOT a campaign of targeted ethnic repression:



No one would argue that this was a kind or humane policy, but contrast that with "anti-terrorism" efforts elsewhere that generally involve killing large numbers of innocent civilians, stereotyping Muslims as irredeemably barbaric, and inciting the public into harassing and attacking them on the street, AND are so ineffective that if anything they actually make the problem worse by driving more young people into radical organizations.

It's interesting also to see the parallels between Xinjiang and how we talk about the problem of urban crime over here. It is generally agreed that much of the problem comes from how urban poverty tends to be concentrated into these racially homogenous minority ghettos, and that the solution is to invest in economic development, provide education and job training, and integrate ex-felons into mainstream society rather than returning them back to the environments that pushed them into criminality to begin with. I suppose then that for the sake of our human rights record, it's a good thing that the American government would never seriously commit to doing any of that.

The articles make it clear that the Chinese government says it's only a response to Islamic extremism, not that this is the actual reason for potential abuses. Spokespeople for governments can lie.

What are you talking about? Are you saying being married to Mitch had nothing to do with being Sec. of Labor under Bush or Sec of Trans under Trump? She was named Sec. of Transportation by Trump regardless of the obvious conflicts of interest.
She did help her families company while in office and should have been prosecuted.
https://www.courier-journal.com/stor...ll/6921349002/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/u...al-report.html

I think it's wrong to suggest that Chao was unqualified for the position, and only got it because of her spouse. The path from Deputy Secretary to Secretary in a later administration is rather common, and one we can see with several Biden administration officials(Former Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Former Deputy Attorney General Merrick Garland, Former Deputy HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.)

I'm sure Chao being McConnell's wife helped, but she had held significant posts before she ever met him.

The question of conflict of interest gets into interesting question about sexism, and the obligations of political spouses, who are often accomplished in their own right. Is it right to suggest that a woman be less ambitious in her professional life because of what her husband does?

The other stuff doesn't really deal with her qualifications. The report by the General Counsel for the Department of Transportation released earlier this month indicates there wasn't enough evidence for a formal investigation, let alone a prosecution.

https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/defaul...2021-03-02.pdf

[Kirby101]

I think it's wrong to suggest that Chao was unqualified for the position, and only got it because of her spouse.

That is a complete misdirection. I did not say she was unqualified, I said it was completely corrupt and she had grave conflicts of interest. This was born out by the Inspector General's investigations.
Of course almost all of Trump's appointees were corrupt and had conflicts of interest.

[JackDaw]

Othering combined with a slow but sure escalation can get people to agree with things they would never have contemplated a decade earlier, especially with the constant drumbeat of propaganda they were subjected to.

It's a very hard watch, but TimeGhost History has a WWII subseries titled War Against Humanity that goes into detail about how the Holocaust escalated into murder factories, in addition to devoting time to Soviet purges and reprisals, the Japanese internment camps in the US, the British targeting German civilians in bombing raids, and the brutality the Japanese forces were capable of. With more to come since they are covering stuff at the same pace at which it happened, and are only up to the end of March 1942.

Yes. So easy to gradually get “sucked in” step by step and the once unthinkable becomes the norm.

And it must be incredibly difficult to take a stand against your own government (any government) when you know there are going to be extremely dire personal consequences.

It takes an exceptional person to do that I think. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it myself.

[Kirby101]

Yes. So easy to gradually get “sucked in” step by step and the once unthinkable becomes the norm.

And it must be incredibly difficult to take a stand against your own government (any government) when you know there are going to be extremely dire personal consequences.

It takes an exceptional person to do that I think. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it myself.

One simply has too look with what has become acceptable to the GOP and their voters over the last 2 decades and specifically under Trump. No violation of basic human decency, no matter how large, was opposed.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

One simply has too look with what has become acceptable to the GOP and their voters over the last 2 decades and specifically under Trump. No violation of basic human decency, no matter how large, was opposed.

And one only wonders just how much worse things could've gotten if Trump won a second term.

[Kirby101]

And one only wonders just how much worse things could've gotten if Trump won a second term.