this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Yes, I would like one, uhhh, high speed rail network with a side of, uhhh, universal healthcare, hold the genocide and secret police, please.
What genocide?
Do you know the actual truth of the Holodomor or Xinjiang? Are you willing to know?
Comrades who are jumping straight to retorting are unwittingly making it seem like, "well yes, there was a genocide, but it was worth it." Please do not allow any gap in our response that allows this interpretation. There has never been a genocide committed by a socialist country and we should make it clear we will not cede that atrociously false accusation.
Your contention is that Stalin committed no genocide? What do you call it, sparkling ethnic cleansing?
Do you call the Dust Bowl and Great Depression a genocide? Words have meaning.
You love to present overdramatic accusations when a famine occurs in a socialist country, and there’s usually only one big one.
Edit: If you’re talking about something else, please elaborate as to your specific allegation. ~~I asked you for a source earlier and you didn’t respond.~~
Edit 2: I stand corrected; I conflated you with a different user, but I’d still appreciate your source. Unfortunately, due to the lateness of this edit, the instance admins have already banned you, so I probably won’t find this out.
You didn't ask me for shit earlier. This is my first comment here.
The Dust Bowl and Great Depression is a thing that happened. What occurred in Stalin's reign is a pattern, that included famines. Were the famines specifically engineered to kill off specific groups? I don't know. But when you take a holistic view, and look at executions, gulag assignments, forced resettlement, deportations, and, yes, famines, there was very clearly a genocide under Stalin.
Millions of people died as a direct result of Stalin's policies and actions. I don't know if they were all with intent, but many definitely were.
I don't understand how anyone can defend Stalin. I guess people deny the Holocaust too, so there's that.
By trying to paint the Soviet Union as genocidal, you are denying the Holocaust. Simple as.
Woof, that's some leap.
Prisoners in the United States jumped from 120,284 in 1923 to 210,418 in 1933. (Source (p. 210))
Executions increased to 197, the highest number in US history, in 1935. (Source)
The U.S. forcibly deported one million of its own citizens to Mexico in the 1930s. Source
Since you’re probably using an intentionally ridiculous US estimate, I’ll use an intentionally ridiculous Russian estimate and say that seven million people died from the Great Depression. This Russian estimate uses the same intentionally ridiculous methodology of the U.S. one.
Put together, why isn’t this enough to declare that a genocide happened in the U.S.?
Nice whataboutism. But fuck it, I'll bite. A genocide has absolutely happened in the US, funny that you didn't hit on it.
Let's play a game. I'm going to call it, "can we agree on some basic facts?"
Stalin, through his policies and leadership, killed millions of Soviet citizens. True or false?
Apologies for the confusing wording above. That’s because I was comparing two similar events to see if you would call it a genocide when the U.S. did it. If you did, I’d question your definition of genocide, but at least accept you’re applying it consistently.
I absolutely agree with you on that basic fact — the US has engaged in countless successful genocides against indigenous peoples.
False.
First of all, to attribute deaths solely to one individual (even to Hitler) denies anyone else responsible of their free will in doing so.
@[email protected], would you mind holding this lib up to scrutiny since the one on Hexbear didn’t respond?
Fair, but this is just kind of a thing we do with language.
If we can't agree that millions of people in the USSR were killed, sent to gulags, and died of famine during Stalin's leadership, then I'm not sure there's anything worth discussing.
Similarly, the article you linked about 7 million US deaths in the great depression doesn't even take itself seriously. It's just trying to discredit counts for deaths in the Holodomor. I suspect you don't think that many people died as a result of the great depression, and, if you're not going to argue in good faith, then again I believe we are at an impasse.
Finally, there is no need for name-calling. While I do not consider "lib" nearly as much an insult as you likely intend it, I would still not categorize myself as such.
Can we agree that millions of people in the USA were killed, sent to gulags, and died of famine during FDR's leadership?
And do you think that people died during the Holodomor?
It's crazy - we all actually tend to agree on most things. We all sort of agree that the US government has committed atrocities, that wealth redistribution is what we should be striving for, that billionaires suck, that universal healthcare is good, all that good shit.
But they are stuck on the idea that their favorite governments can do no wrong.
“I agree that the U.S. is evil and has been the objective bad guy in every war it’s ever been in (and the US has almost never not been at war) but I believe the U.S. wholeheartedly in matters of foreign policy”
Of course they can do wrong. We acknowledge legitimate criticisms, but we’re going to refute slander against socialist governments.
If you compartmentalize counties in war to "good guys" and "bad guys", you're really going to claim that the US was the bad guy in WW2?
I apologize for the bad terminology, but I’ll stick with it to answer your question. Even in WW2, the Soviets were the “good guys” and the US only intervened when it was obvious the Soviets would win to stop a communist Europe.
Our secret police like the FBI? And our genocide like in North Korea?
Yes. The point of view here is anti-authoritarian.
There has been no genocide committed by a socialist country, no need to point out any of the dozens committed by the U.S. alone.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se
You only had to provide one example to disprove a claim of this sort, and you couldn’t do it?
I'm sure whatever I say you'll have some precooked answer, so I'd rather make a fun comparison
"I have no argument that you can't refute, so I'm just going to behave in bad faith"
yes, totally owned us by quoting a children's cartoon when prompted to give evidence for genocide, good job redditor.
Their secret police.
Our civilian police.
Their "authoritarianism".
Our law and order.
Their concentration camps.
Our massive prison industrial complex enforcing slave labour on minorities.
Also there's no proof of a genocide going on in China. The main proponent of the accusations is the Falun Gong and Adrian Zenz - a man on a divine mission to crush communism, who has made frequent and egregious "errors" in his translation and methodology.
On the other hand countries in the EU are funding refugee "camps" like that on Moria, with conditions so horrible people are fleeing daily, and the EU is funding border patrols in Turkey that make use of excessive force. These actions would by any fair definition be genocide.
Likewise the United States is far from innocent, both at the border with Mexico where there's many reports of militias hunting refugees, and in the large prison-industrial complex which houses the largest prisoner population in the world - a population that has an outsized number of minorities. These are worked to death. By any fair definition the US is carrying out a genocide.
However it is these countries' accusations we should somehow take seriously? Why? Why should we take What France claims China is doing at face value, when France itself is embroiled in colonial wars in Africa? What reason have these countries given us? The United States especially has a proven track record of lying in order to foment ill will against a geopolitical enemy.
No one disagrees that america had committed atrocities and generally sucks with its foreign policy. Most educated people in the US are happy to admit and fight for change within the government on that. It is not denied.
Has china allowed for international investigators to investigate the situation in Xinjiang?
You'd be surprised how many Yankee "leftists" aren't aware of basic stuff like the Radio Frees, the current indigenous genocide, school to prison pipeline, or the sanctions against the "authoritarian" AES countries (causing a lot of their real issues), among many others, and are very willing to side with their own meddling against countries that are actually trying something because they might be "not true socialism." Even if all accusations against Cuba or China (I don't know that much about Vietnam or DPRK) were correct, they'd still be the lesser evil by a long shot.
https://www.voanews.com/a/arab-league-visits-china-s-xinjiang-region-rejects-uyghur-genocide/7131285.html
There were other visits too, but NATO countries are mostly intentionally boycotting the investigation. I'm pretty sure any person who can do tourism in China can go there so long as they don't break laws. But I remember a recent article where NATO countries were advising against travelling there, for mysterious reasons.
Oh definitely. Education is important, and it is important to acknowledge the faults of your community. I make a point of being aware of the ugly parts of the past and present.
Regarding Xinjiang - Arab League nations have a huge financial interest in staying on China's good side. I worry that the billions of dollars of investment creates a conflict of interest. It makes it difficult to see them as trustworthy in this particular matter.
It also conflicts with the findings of the UN human rights office.
I recognize that this isn't the most solid evidence, but my local kabob shop owner is Uyghur from that area. They say they left before it became bad, but they have friends and family who are experiencing what the UN office is saying firsthand.
Secret police is what you call an intelligence agency of a country you don't like
Do you want the end of capitalism yes or no
Well that depends. A giant meteor will technically end capitalism. What's the point if we're not striving to improve everyone's quality of life?
If you want the end of capitalism you'll support whatever it realistically takes to dismantle it. And that won't exactly be an "open" or "transparent" process while it happens. Simply put, the collective force that replaces capitalism will have to coerce certain people into accepting the change, if nothing else but for the safety of that new administration (IE avoiding rightwing takeovers, legit sabotage, hatecrimes etc).
Just remember that about anticapitalism - whatever form it takes, it's no dinner party. Even after a revolution, certain people try to resist things they have no material reason to oppose. Those people are reactionary - directionless, even dangerous unless they're re-educated or have privileges restricted.
I appreciate that. It's not lost on me that a lot of communist regimes got really fucked up by trade embargos, sanctions, counter-intelligence campaigns, etc. Power is rarely ceded willingly, of course. However, my primary concern lies with improving the quality of life for everyone, or at least maximizing the well being of the population. Part of that equation, for my point of view, includes the ability for people to think and speak freely without fear of reprisal by the government. Say what you will, but I've hosted eight different exchange students, including one from Russia; none were concerned about answering questions about their home country except for the kid from Hong Kong. I asked them whether they identified as a citizen of Hong Kong or of China first, because I was hoping to get an irl sample for how Hong Kongers actually felt, but let them out of the question when I confirmed with them that that was a sensitive question.
If you're living with a boot on your throat, does the distinction really matter if it's a capitalist's boot or a communist's boot?
This is like the people who say "We're freer than the Chinese because I can call Trump a peepee poopoo pants on Twitter without being arrested!" when that doesn't actually do anything at all
but if you try and protest and change conditions materially and meaningfully, you can absolutely bet your ass you will be disappeared like the horror stories you find on reddit about "totalitarian regimes". The only reason why Americans don't think it doesn't happen in the West is either because it's so completely internalized that it becomes memeified ("Haha, I hope the FBI agent watching me through my camera is having a nice day!") or none of the media that they engage with reports on it.
IMO, this entire point is just a liberal ideological bludgeon, a condition that can be applied at-will to any government they want to criticize because no government will be good enough all of the time. it's one thing if you're an anarchist and oppose every government equally for not fulfilling that condition, that I can understand and respect, it's quite another when you're like "Oh, no, I hate authoritarianism! That's why we need to constantly criticize a country on the literal other side of the planet 99.7% of the time, and then only criticize our own country when somebody calls us out on it by saying 'Oh, yeah, America also does bad things too!'" Especially when America's role in the world for the last century at least, and more accurately really since its conception, has been a source of capitalist reaction across its whole hemisphere and later the whole planet, with hundreds upon hundreds of military bases and tens of millions directly and indirectly killed in wars. Criticizing, say, Cuba or DPRK for these sorts of things is effectively zooming in on a single corpse in righteous indignation while ignoring the seas of blood spilled by America behind you.
I mean, yeah, I am anti-authoritarian before anything else. That's basically where my problem with China, among many others, begins and ends. The US has a lot of big problems that need fixing immediately on that front, and that's without getting into the bodies under the front porch. We could go into that, if you like, I just didn't think it was particularly relevant at the moment.
It's cute you think you would actually win the argument with the "bodies under the front porch" (in your words), considering how this whole thread has been going for you so far.
Try looking at it from the point of view of the oppressed class who is benefiting from communist rule, and being harmed by capitalist rule, rather than from the point of view of the super rich people.
Unless I happen to be mistaken, poor people get the bullet, too. We just don't hear about it because they're not famous. I'm taking a wild guess here, but I suspect that the muslims in Xinjiang aren't exactly what you would typically think of as the capital owning class. You can't even (practically, I'm sure there's some loophole or asterisk here) be critical of the bad ideas of your government, just shut up and kill more sparrows. As far as I can tell, it's trading oppression for sparkling oppression.
Nobody has been killed in Xinjiang. There is a reason its original liars had to specify it was a "cultural genocide," which it isn't, either. Like the full break down?
Sure. I'd also appreciate some sources that would be considered reliable in the mainstream, but I won't ignore you if you don't have them.
The burden of proof is on those who make accusations, it is not the responsibility of others to convince you of what isn't happening. Further, you may have heard the adage that an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, of which there is none and can therefore be dismissed. Even further, when we look at who stands to gain from such a narrative despite the lack of evidence, it follows that US imperial power and Sinophobia driven clickbait news corporations stand to gain monetary and political standing by publishing articles like this. This is the same tactic as the Holodomor myth (which is literally an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory made by nazi propagandists and pushed by nazi lover William Randolph Hurst)
However, I once had a similar outlook and needed to be convinced, so here's three sources. Also this.
From the AP source:
Bruh, she got invited to lake Lao Gai for talking about sales slowing down.
Uhhhh
There is no COVID in Ba Sing Se lol. Not gonna lie, I think Chinese propaganda picks some strange hills to die on, COVID is everywhere, but whatever, it's not genocide.
Well, I'm sure they got the real story, or else.
I'm thinking "you can't leave this shop" is probably an inelegance of translation, and she likely means that the seamstress can't leave the vicinity of the shop. Still, that's uh... Difficult to fathom being applied to "most" of an ethnic population.
Yes, the AP article talks about how the prison camps were closed and stuff, that's all well and good. The minders didn't show them any mass graves, so I suppose that in that regard, there is indeed evidence missing to support genocide. That said, it reminds me a lot of how the US and Canada dealt with native populations, minus the physical relocation. Had they had the same technological capacity as modern China, it seems quite likely to me that Andrew Jackson would have been equally as happy, uh, re-educating the first nations in the way we've seen here. I have limited time to respond, so I'll get to the other articles as I can, but I wonder about choosing this article to defend your position. This reads to me like they've quite finished with their most extreme measures, which, given the state of the present, must have been quite impressive. I always admired the work of the early communist party in fighting for the rights and freedoms of black people in the reconstruction period, it's disappointing to see Saturday morning cartoon bad guy behavior.
Can you be serious for two fucking seconds? Jesus Christ liberalism is a terminal disease. Stop quoting a children's TV show and actually contend with real life.
Can you not think of any reason why the CPC in Xinjiang might be wary of weird AP reporters asking random people questions about covid and concentration camps on the streets? Have you literally not followed the RISE in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US? The accusations the US government flings at China every chance it gets?
do I come into your house and start throwing your plates on the ground? And then kick up a fuss when you ask me to stop? AP should be grateful they are allowed in Xinjiang, this isn't the century of humiliation anymore.
Uhh what? Use your words and stop acting like a child. China officially recognizes 56 ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs. They all form the Chinese nation. Chinese does not mean solely Han. You don't know anything about China, maybe that's why your only arguments are drivel pulled from literal fiction. China is literally called Zhongguo in Chinese, which means Central Country. Chinese is Zhongwen, "language of the middle [country]". What about these words gives you the impression of [Han] Chinese supremacy?
So where does it talk about killings in Xinjiang? Or are you trying to move the goal posts.
I mentioned that it doesn't talk about killings, but I also point out that the reporter's entire visit was tightly minded and regulated by party officials. I don't imagine that they were in a special hurry to show them so much as a carton of spoiled milk.
But you're still moving the goal posts. They didn't post the AP article because it's a credible source on events in Xinjiang (it isn't). They posted it to demonstrate that even sources extremely biased against China weren't going as far as making accusations of killings.
Yeah, okay, fair enough. I don't have the time or will to commit to digging into resources to support my counter claim, and I'll concede that I'm goalposting.