It’s really frustrating, I was talking to someone about how successful China has been in de-radicalization of reactionaries. But they responded to this by saying they’re only successful because, and I quote “put them all in concentration camps and killed them”

Has anyone here been successful in deprogramming people about this topic? If so any good sources I can use to dissuade them? I tried telling them that the UN report, if you read it, just says that there’s concerns about abuse by internment offcials, and there’s no evidence of genocide. But when I say this they just dismiss it as if the UN is controlled by the PRC. It’s like a religion to liberals to believe anything bad about China and can get really frustrating.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    My go to dunk is that there’s zero Muslim majority nation that has even produced a comment on the Uyghur thing. It’s 100% coming from Western nations with recent history of wars in the Middle East and Islamophobia.

    • cosecantphi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      And going this route, you find out whether your lib is a well meaning but politically naive potential comrade, or if they’re a racist, chauvinistic chud.

      On reddit you’ll probably mostly get the latter. The chuddier libs love falling over themselves to talk about how literally every single Muslim majority country is governed without the consent of its people by theocratic despots who are fully supported and propped up by Chinese bribes. Just wild conspiracy shit like this rehashing the oldest racist tropes in the book without the slightest hint of self awareness.

  • nohaybanda [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    These days I just give them the jagoff and tell them to shut up. Pretty much all of the Uyghur libs I know have been complete ass on Gaza and i have exactly zero patience for their fake tears.

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    Do a google image search with them for “Uyghur genocide.” There is absolutely nothing there, aside from a picture published by the Chinese government of some grumpy dudes sitting in a prison yard. Then compare this with an image search for Gaza. This worked with one lib I knew in the past. He doesn’t talk about the Uyghur genocide anymore. But he is still a fucking lib.

    There is also an uncut YouTube video out there of someone walking around Urumqi I think and just watching people speak Uyghur and chill out. Hardly seems genocidal.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Either China has the most sophisticated censorship apparatus ever conceived of where they can prevent any and all photos or videos from leaving the country…or there just isn’t an ethnic cleansing happening at all. It’s pretty hard for libs to believe in a genocide in China when you point to stuff coming out of Palestine. Even videos from Ukraine can be found of Russians doing awful shit (and vice versa). Or just Abu Ghraib.

      There’s always people whose conscious gets the better of them and will leak things like this happening. It happened during the Holocaust, Bosnian War, Rwandan genocide, etc. Of course, you get absolutely brainwormed libs who will say “because the Chinese are genetically prone to genocide and everything there is worse than 1986 holodoor.”

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    “put them all in concentration camps and killed them”

    At some point I feel like they’re self confessing their own thoughts about how to treat ethnic minorities and projecting onto china. You might have just been talking to a cryptofash.

    I’ve been successful since I’m also Muslim and I can accuse them of islamophobia and only caring about Muslims when it’s convenient in Xinjiang but “bad optics” in Palestine.

    How could there be a genocide if no one was killed?

    • SexMachineStalin [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      I’ve confronted this one guy a few years ago when he started to indirectly accuse me of shirk/takfiri because I openly state that I’m a communist and hold pro-China/CPC views. He very quickly went for the “Uyghur genocide” and got angry at me refuting it. My rationale was the high-sped rail connecting Xinjiang to the rest of China, the improving trends of quality-of-life statistics among Uyghurs (increased pay, employment, literacy rate, electrification, clean water, mechanized agriculture, dropping of infant mortality, reduction of poverty, etc.), videos of Xinjiang’s culture, both from people who actually visited and from GCTN, the fact that Uyghurs are also Chinese citizens, multiple other sources refuting claims of anything resembling a genocide and of course, literally that the claims originated from a certain German preacher who’s also a Nazi sympathizer. Or simply enough that I’m from a country whose former and current heads of state have very openly stated that “Western powers have no right to make claims of the rest of the world”. South Africa and Namibia have also praised China’s efforts in Xinjiang as recently as early 2024.

      I also did a little thought exercise and asked if it is “also” colonization for anyone to move from Berlin to Frankfurt, or from Tallinn to Narva. Easily answered no. Then of course the person in question still considers it colonization for someone to move from Guangzhou or Shanghai to Urumqi. The last question I asked if it is colonization for a person to move from say, Johannesburg to Cape Town - This was “difficult to answer”. Obviously it’s only “difficult” or “too political” because South Africa is no longer a West-aligned country.

      Also he supposedly delegitimized much of the Palestinian solidarity movements solely because it was spearheaded by the South African Communist Party over 20 years and many pro-Palestinian groups and individuals in South Africa of all faiths and backgrounds are active members of the SACP, or at least supportive of them. Oh, he definitely agrees that Shitrael is committing a genocide against Palestine, but presumably doesn’t like it when communists (especially South Africans) wave Palestinian flags in the streets.

      Funny that no one in South Africa ever called me “political” or “takfiri”.

      eu-cool qin-shi-huangdi-fireball

  • lil_tank [any, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Well it’s pretty simple, ask them if they trust the US after all they did to Muslims around the world. If they are “neither Washington nor Beijing” type leftists then you can have a constructive discussion and patiently explain your point of view and acknowledge theirs in good faith. If they do trust the US then they can’t be salvaged and just agree to disagree on believing anything coming from the western block

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          So no mention of the word genocide, and just concerns about possibly arbitrary detentions in 2017-2019, gotcha. Thanks a lot for the source. I wonder how people react to this when they can now see a patently open genocide on social media anytime they want.

          • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR

            Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible

            There are serious indications of violations of reproductive rights

            The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention… may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.

            Genocide is a fashionable term to throw around these days, and much argued over; but the UN report you all keep lauding doesn’t seem particularly flattering when actually read.

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              3 months ago

              The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention…

              Nice of you not following with the part where it says that the extent is unknown, and the report on forced medical treatment, poor conditions of detention and violations of reproductive rights, is based on anonymous interviews to a few tens of people, as is literally any source that makes these claims because there’s no other evidence to support those claims, despite it being 7 years since the beginning of the supposed atrocities. It brings nothing new to the table compared to the old Amnesty International report, based on the same methodology, proving further that no real findings have been made.

              Also, your comment of “genocide being a fashionable term these days” is absolutely crazy.

              • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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                3 months ago

                Do you mean the bit before where it says “2017-2019 and potentially thereafter”?

                Of course interviews are few and anonymous, and information is scarce: much of the premise of the report is that it’s hard to get access, and that anyone known to be giving testimony will be at risk of harm.

                What you are doing is interpreting based on the report, and on other evidence - but the discussion earlier and elsewhere in this thread is that the UN report itself goes against the genocide claim, and that people just don’t read it. But it seems to me, if one is to simply read it, it’s clear the UN believes there were, and probably still are, serious and systematic human rights violations against the Uighurs.

                As to ‘genocide’ as a term, I do think it’s fashionable - a buzz word - like ‘terrorism’, often bandied around when the author wants people to feel the thing is truly serious and unpardonable, but not always with good care as to the meaning. Hence it gets often argued about with respect to various events, even in cases when the main facts of the event is mostly undisputed.

                • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  3 months ago

                  Of course interviews are few and anonymous, and information is scarce

                  Funny how in the age of information we get daily videos of Palestinian children being bombed, but after seven years there’s not much in the way of actual demonstrable evidence other than anonymous reports. Fucking hell, what’s the racial divide in imprisoned population in the USA, with actually demonstrable systematic racially motivated police murders, and where’s the UN report on that.

  • Homme_Tanks [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    Maybe I’m actually crazy, but there was a time like a year or two ago when it seemed like the US actually gave up all pretenses and admitted it was bullshit? (edit:I should say it later seemed like this may have been reversed). I distinctly remember a collective cathartic sigh on then Twitter that the uyghur slander thing was FINALLY coming to an end. I definitely remember a NED tweet from well before then basically laying claim to supporting sowing extremism in the region, but I could also swear there was a major outlet expose (maybe multiple exposes) months later detailing all the state department bullshit surrounding the situation (e.g. deliberately mistranslating/mislabeling “job centres” to torture camps or something to that effect, and so on)

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    I go “how could you be worried about China at a time like this, with Saddam Hussein getting closer and closer to obtaining a nuke”

    To be less facetious, it’s easier now that we see what an actual genocide looks like in Palestine, you can just ask “If these impoverished people with unreliable communications to the outside world still have smartphones and internet, if they can upload their suffering despite every attempt to censor it, then where the fuck are all the horrifying gory videos from Xinjiang, a place that is not under seige or blockade? Don’t you think if such videos existed, we in Amerika would never hear the end of it?”

    And hey, if China is committing a genocide against Muslims, how come the US isn’t arming and supporting them?

  • ryepunk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    The really impressive thing is seeing gamers whip out the Uyghur genocide line to complain about not being allowed to make political discussion in their games.

    Yes china is so powerful that suddenly gamers will abandon their no politics talk when a Chinese developer asks to not discuss politics in their sponsorship deal. Something I’d imagine most developers/publishers put in and nobody cares. But suddenly china does it (not really because this is one developer from China) and well now we have to bring up the bad evil china genocide and Hong Kong and Taiwan and just reveal we have the intellectual depth of napkin soaked in our own piss.

    And the developer should be dragged for trying to hide their politics and their abuses to women in the studio, but of course gamers and libs cannot actually complain effectively because they only have blinders for china itself is bad.

    pronouns

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    believing propaganda

    propaganda doesn’t have to be false (even though it is in this case). the word has been loaded like this to imply that anything with a viewpoint to promote is false while pretending that mass media is objective when it promotes bourgeois viewpoints

  • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Is it safe to assume that this person also believes that Zion-occupied-Palestine is not suffering a NAT-involved genocide and that every toe stub in Ukraine since 1917 is genocide?

  • dkr567 [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    I’d just usually say somewhere in the line of “for a genocide, Urumqi or Kashgar sure has a lot of Uyghur language on their street signs/shops and just all around the city and its inhabitants are practicing their faith, culture and customs from all the vlogs I’ve seen on youtube.” I just think that if there was a “genocide”, it sure as hell is a terrible attempt if the goal was to eliminate a certain ethnic group so therefore, no genocide.

  • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Notify them that their own empire’s intelligence organisations don’t believe that, and ask them what evidence they have that the combined efforts of the CIA, NSA, FBI, MI5, and the other such organisations couldn’t uncover.

    • Speaker [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      My father was a Pentecostal Revivalist Hoxhaist, and I’ll be damned if my children aren’t educated in the snake bunker like I was.