• soufatlantasanta [any]
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      4 years ago

      Yeah a lot of the defenses I've seen of their Uyghur stuff from hardcore MLs has been incredibly sus... like "they're not concentration camps but they are doing reeducation because there's a severe threat of radical Islamic terrorism" as if that wasn't the exact same justification neocons used to get us into the war in Iraq and contributed to extreme Islamophobia back home.

      Like yeah we both agree it's not concentration camps, China is mostly good, its existence is a net benefit for a multipolar world, and the hype on their misdeeds is overblown to promote Cold War 2.0 but no ML state should be promoting ethno-nationalism. That's fucked up and indefensible any way you choose. Yeah the US is by far even worse on this stuff but that shouldn't be an excuse not to examine China's policies more closely

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        no ML state should be promoting ethno-nationalism

        Ethno-nationalism is when you only let the main ethnic group to have one child while all other ethnic groups can have as many as they want.

      • emizeko [they/them]
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        4 years ago

        they are doing reeducation because there’s a severe threat of radical Islamic terrorism" as if that wasn’t the exact same justification neocons used to get us into the war in Iraq

        lol this is choice. drawing equivalence between a murderous invasion based on WMD lies that kills a million plus, and an education-based internal security response to western-backed terror. fucking amazing. yeah we all remember when the USA sent Timothy McVeigh to part-time vocational training right? or when the marines sent everyone in Fallujah to English school?

        no ML state should be promoting ethno-nationalism

        and they aren't, no part of the program (which ended last December) was doing that.

      • kristina [she/her]
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        4 years ago

        idk, i think individual racism is definitely a thing in china, but i kinda doubt things are occurring in any way that the west says it. the uighur autonomous region was once an independent soviet that chose to join with china rather than the USSR. they have their own governing body, are legitimately autonomous, and the police force and facilities are all locals. so, if this is a genocide, its being carried out on uighurs by uighurs.

        xinjiang borders afghanistan, which as you know has lots of terrorist groups with american funding in them. its only natural that theyd spill over the border. there were numerous terrorist attacks in xinjiang with casualties in the thousands. idk how youd even go about fixing such a nationalistic threat without improving material conditions, and that would be things like education, jobs, and infrastructure development. china built highspeed rail, much to their detriment, to xinjiang, so i think they're at least giving it a go. in fact i saw a video around 2016 about some american railmakers scoffing at the idea and saying that its so inefficient and unprofitable to do so.

        all in all? i'm just glad they aren't full on carpet bombing the region ala the west

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
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        4 years ago

        I may be a dunce, but from my readings of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, I gain no insights on how to navigate the whole Uyghur issue. I mean, clearly the situation is being smeared into an Iraq WMD 2.0 situation, but also it is clear there is more than nothing at the root of it. I'm certainly not the most well-read ML in the world, but from what I've read, it mostly revolves around epistemology and an orthodox application of dialectical materialism. Dogmatism is called out repeatedly throughout the ML literary canon. I think what happens is that online we attach the term "Tankie" to "dogmatist," and then we attach "ML" to "tankie," and from there we make huge generalizations which are easy for people to sockpuppet and reaffirm.