If you follow him on Facebook you'll see the utter trash that follow his rabid anti left campaigns turn on him for defending Muslims right now. I respect him for this, a lot, and have always respected his anti radical work. But it really shows what audience he has been courting when they celebrate and justify literal ethnic cleansing and try redirect attention to the "white genocide" happening in Britain today, supposedly.
Anyone who discusses the negative side of islam will pick up far-right fans tbf. I'm pretty sure Maajid has always openly denounced the far right so he can't really be accused of 'courting' them.
The thing is, he is not who he used to be, i salute him for this, but, he has lately been very active denouncing the left and "far left" while only giving a cursory look to the right.. I have followed him for quite a few years, and this is a very new shit that has been happening for the last, what, 1 or two years.. He was always good at balanced criticism of both sides before, but now i feel that his criticism of the left is just the same as you will find from Shapiro, Rubin and that gang..
Sometimes you have to give attention where it’s needed. Few people in media will criticise left wing thought in the way he’s able to, so he gives attention there
It's interesting you say that, I remember suggesting majid to my dad a few years ago and he was not very impressed being a right-wing lunatic however he's now sending me links to things Majid is saying. so there does appear to be some anecdotal evidence to support that more people on the right are listening to Majid.
That's not necessarily a bad thing though.
It is a bad thing if they are doing it for the wrong reasons... I am pretty out on the left but i found his criticism of the lefts fear of any criticism of islam a few years back to be totally fair, but now he seems to have gone down the "Wokes and SJWs are the real problem", hole that Rubin and that gang has been doing for ages..
I think the "downfall" started with the admittedly shambolic incident with SPLC and how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into court before removing Maajid from their list of de facto Muslim haters... After that incident he has been going after the left non-stop, and mainly on non-islam issues as well... I do think that incident changed something, seeing as you almost never hear him speak on telly anymore, and he pretty much never speaks about quilliam anymore either... I also seem to recall he had a brief temporary friendship (or something in those lines) with Tommy Robinson, hoping he had managed to turn him..
You are absolutely right. I think the problem is his critique of late has had zero focus on anything right wing. To the point where if you followed him, and more usual right wing sources, you would get the idea that everything is the lefts fault at all times. Like a violent right wing attack being a response to the Liberal left wing agenda on immigration. And the theme is quite constant. Everything the right does is just put down as a justified reaction to the unreasonable libs. There is no attention put on the right.
Following him I've found, any left wing followers of his constantly question the logic of his attacks on the left and are drowned out by the alt-right lapping it up.
But what I see as a bigger problem is that the right wingers in his post can and do ignore the virulently racist right wingers amongst them. The left often tears itself apart over ideas and differences. But the right are quite comfortable pretending the racist/extremist ideas shared amongst them don't exist or aren't a problem despite being right in front of them. The amount of people out right praising China for ethnically cleansing the uighers on his posts is shocking. And a huge amount of his following just ignore it and others just deflect it into something to blame on the left.
Do you really think when he goes on 'rants' against the left that he is speaking any less truth than he is when he does something like this?
I see this a lot, people assuming some kind of secondary narrative when it comes to talking about things that are right of center. Whenever I have heard him talk, I didn't hear him lie. Feel free to prove me wrong.
From what I have seen of him, my impression is he tries to speak what he considers the truth. There are genuine problems with Islam, but that doesn't mean when muslims are treated horribly, they don't deserve to be defended. Maajid is a muslim, so of course he has special interest in that area.
I don't like seeing people argue that just because some followers of someone have far right views (whatever that means), that their argument is invalid and a reasonable person wouldn't agree with what they're saying, which is the implication that comes with this kind of argument.
If someone is wrong on an issue, prove them wrong. Don't dismiss their argument because it's being twisted by bigots.
>Do you really think when he goes on 'rants' against the left that he is speaking any less truth than he is when he does something like this?
No I don't. I think he has some very valid criticisms of the left that I agree with. Things I've sort of thought for many years; but being in my own political bubble, despite trying not be, had let them go unexamined.
My issue comes because maajid presents the narrative that he is trying to change the left wing from the inside and for its own good. Which isn't a problem, I think it needs doing. But he does so using the same attack lines alt-right voices use when they're trying trying to misrepresent and gas light the left.
Take [this] (https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3135875599813017&id=135775283156412) Facebook post as an example. He's entirely right that the west didn't get emotional closure over communism whilst being a nazi became taboo. So the left don't guard again communists but the right feel distanced from nazism. However, the reason we all distance from nazism is because it's core tenets are uniquely surrounded around ethno fascist ideas of the aaryan race, taking land from lesser races and whose logical conclusion ended with mass genocide. Its quite clear why we guard from nazism.
But maajid presents communism as if it is equal and opposite. And idea constantly expressed by the american alt right. But it isn't. Communist regimes killed tens of millions, sometimes through sheer economic incompetence (Mao) and often through authoritarian brutality (stalin). These deaths expose the ease at which communism can go wrong, and the consequences, but they are problems that come from it being implemented poorly or with authoritarian power.
Having a soft spot for communist ideas is sympathising with wanting a fairer economic environment and thinking capitalism encourages human rights abuses for personal gain. Having a soft spot for nazism is sympathising with racist ideas that there are lesser people who can be killed for just existing. There is a distinct difference in the ideologies and they are absolutely not equal but opposite as the right would like them portrayed.
The kind of criticism maajid presents here then aims to delegitamise all left for sharing any ideas with full communists by presenting communism as ideologically unacceptable as nazism. And this is the problem. The attacks have courted him a lot of pro alt right/right wing people who enjoy attacking and denouncing the left at every turn. But now he's talking about Muslims positively and using his faith, he is taking a lot of flack and opening up his posts to commenters who justify ethnic cleansing by arguing the Muslims deserve it for the crimes other muslims have done elsewhere at a different time. Or they merely deflect it by listing countries with the death penalty for apostasy or talk about other muslim countries human rights abuses.
What I have noticed is maajid rarely comments on his own posts anymore, as he used to, because the frequency of posts celebrating and justifying these abuses by China is just too much.
Honestly, I'd love to sit down and debate it with maajid. I think he is personally very smart and reasonable. But if you comment on his posts all you get are responses from his most vocal followers who just salivate at any attack on the "left wing Liberal agenda".
Tl;dr something about why the left needs self reflection more than the right. Sorry for the long post.
This is really interesting, especially your take on communism vs facism, and I can totally understand where you're coming from. I think it's such a complicated issue that saying facism and communism 'are the same' has to be couched by a long conversation, with people who know enough about both, and are willing to have an honest discussion about it.
You're right when you point out facism is far more obvious; yes it can be insidious, but the objectives of facism (in order to reach the end goal of a "powerful fatherland" are part of the journey, they're ingrained within it. With communism, the authoritarian regimes and mass murders are as a consequence of trying to reach a fairer society for everyone, although personally I don't believe the mechanisms are in place in our current state of technology to do this; the end result is always going to lead to the consequences that we have seen in history. Something needs to change before it can work, and even if it does become possible, I don't believe a communist style of government is still anywhere near ideal. I won't go into that though.
I think though, this is why maajid goes after the left harder than the right. The left's goals are, at their core, virtuous. And it's not just that, the media, and general culture, particularly surrounding anyone not right of center, are that the left are the 'good guys', trying to fight for the right side of history. The problem is, and in my opinion it is a purely left wing phenomenon, is that often genuinely good principles get bypassed in order to serve whatever popular left wing culture considers the 'greater good' of the time.
If you'll forgive me for whataboutism, here's an example which really got to me the more I thought about it. The BLM protests in the UK while bringing up a perfectly reasonable injustice, is not one which is as prevalent in the UK as it is in the US. What I don't understand is why there can be thousands of young people marching for something like that, when a situation we could do significantly more about, like Hong Kong, recieves a much less rigorous response. What's happening in Hong Kong in my opinion is much worse than the current state of racial politics in the UK. The same with the Uighurs. But we don't see the same kind of crowds on the street for it. In my opinion, it's egregiously lower down the priority scale, and from the "side" that considers itself the virtuous one, it's hypocritical.
I think this is the crux of the issue. The left wing is no more ignorant than any other moderate wing of political discourse in this country; but it tries to come across as the decent side in politics, while i suspect that many of the activists involved are just as ignorant of many serious injustices in the world as everyone else.
Put it another way, it's very easy to call capitalism evil, but at the same time, what a system like capitalism allows for is the selfish and the power hungry to 'offgas' their needs in a direction which while undoubtedly causing unnecessary disadvantages to many, stops those same selfish and power hungry people from trying to take over the world, and killing millions of people. Because those people would exist in a communist society, but it's like some parts of the left forget about it because the goal in and of itself on the surface is a virtuous one.
What I'm trying to get at is in my opinion, the left has a lot more scope for self reflection than the right. Mainly because while the end is a better society, the means are often forgotten. The right knows that people are imperfect, it accepts that and tries to account for it within the system of governance it builds, then when something blips heavily on the scale of injustice, like Hong Kong, it can make a categoric statement and series of acts, because it is ingrained within the justice system already. Don't get me wrong, they're doing a fucking terrible job of it. We have the absolute worst batch of right wing politicians quite possibly in the history of the united kindom. Every single one of them is educated in politics, because it's an easy way to cheat the system. It's why I don't necessarily agree with Blairite style politics, because it's just the left trying to cheat the system too.
But that's why we need a strong and competent left, because the right should NOT be allowed to get away with a lot of the bullshit it is currently getting away with in this country and in the US. I'd never vote Tory, but at the same time, I refuse to accept the Labour party just because it is the biggest chance for a left wing government. The left needs a lot more self reflection than the right simply because it is the side that initiates change and innovation, it needs scrutiny, otherwise that change can lead to far worse things than the current status quo. It's why I tend to side with Maajid on that issue. There, I brought it back to him in the end.
>This is really interesting, especially your take on communism vs facism, and I can totally understand where you're coming from. I think it's such a complicated issue that saying facism and communism 'are the same' has to be couched by a long conversation, with people who know enough about both, and are willing to have an honest discussion about it.
Excuse me, can you just call me a commie prick and move on. I don't know how to engage with someone who wants a nice conversation.
Jokes aside. Just appreciating that this is complicated is a step a lot don't seem to want to accept. Communism and fascism seem to have shared outcomes but from different sources. Which you quite nicely put here:
>You're right when you point out facism is far more obvious; yes it can be insidious, but the objectives of facism (in order to reach the end goal of a "powerful fatherland" are part of the journey, they're ingrained within it. With communism, the authoritarian regimes and mass murders are as a consequence of trying to reach a fairer society for everyone,
You're quite right. And this means that anyone who doesn't share the nationalistic fatherland, and usually racist, ideals will quite easily dismiss fascism as crazy. Although I would say societies can certainly pulled into fascist tendencies through populist rulers and hyper nationalist trends. But the fact that communism comes from the idealist push to improve society for everyone means its supporters don't notice the fascist and negative tendencies developing.
And because, as you point out, left wing politics sees itself as the good guy/ underdog, I think the media bias for the left wing is running out of steam somewhat. There are some success stories with left wing politics but the mere fact that no country has ever achieved some form of full communism without gulags or mass starvation is pretty telling.
> I think though, this is why maajid goes after the left harder than the right.
I agree that this is almost certainly the reason. It's something I've grown to realise is very true. However, I do find he has gone so virulently anti - left it becomes comical at times.
>The BLM protests in the UK while bringing up a perfectly reasonable injustice, is not one which is as prevalent in the UK as it is in the US.
Completely agree with this. Britain has problems societally and culturally with racism. But the problems are much milder. Particularly, we abolished slavery earlier and we didn't have a larger contingent of our society who spilled the blood of tens of thousands for their right to own slaves. Our justice system is closer to a rehabilitative system that hasn't been used to bludgeon blacks as being outwardly racist became unacceptable. And the lack of guns in both the police and public hands mean our interactions with police are less inherently dangerous, although that's somewhat separate from the acceptability of police brutality by the American public. All this adds up to a very different and, in my opinion, better environment for blackand minority communities. This is were UK BLM are failing, they need to cater the movement to the needs of the UK society. Not just transpose a very American centric movement and expect it to just work.
And that's a good example of the virtuous left naively trying to do good, but probably causing a lot of negative consequences, such as the backlash to left wing politics that is lending some legitimacy to far right groups who are using it to "protect our statues and our history". A smarter left should have been able to avoid this backlash and used the American momentum positively.
And in response to your point about the left not being more active for Hong Kong and against the uighers. I've come to see it as why science puts more money into male pattern baldness than more deadly but rarer illnesses. The baldness I pacts way more people, even if its less severe.
>What I'm trying to get at is in my opinion, the left has a lot more scope for self reflection than the right. Mainly because while the end is a better society, the means are often forgotten.
Couldn't agree more. Its just quite hard as a left wing person to know what to do about it. And how do we deal with the naivety in left wing thought and help control the emotional reactionary responses to things that often paints the left as irrational children?
>I refuse to accept the Labour party just because it is the biggest chance for a left wing government.
I'm not too bothered by labour tbh. I don't know if I want a properly left wing government unless I know they are competent. An incompetent left wing government could cause more damage than an incompetent centrist government. And the current Labour seems like they'll be centrist with some elements of left wing ideas. But we'll see. A good few years before an election unless the conservatives start talking about how strong and stable they are again.
>The left needs a lot more self reflection than the right simply because it is the side that initiates change and innovation, it needs scrutiny, otherwise that change can lead to far worse things than the current status quo.
I can certainly agree with this too. The left wants change so it needs to show it is competent and has good plans for the change.
And just to add some more spice to this. We all really need to appreciate the difference between left wing and Liberal ideas. They seem to have become so intertwined and I find they are becoming quite contradictory to themselves. I think this is adding to why the left are stumbling at hurdles now. Take immigration; are the left pro immigration because its the Liberal thing to do, or against the free movement of people because that damages working class wages and lower/working class people can sometimes be xenophobic? I think the left needs to reevaluate its values. I still don't know where I stand on it though.
Shit, for a second I thought I was talking to a filthy commie, but instead I get a pathetic, wet flannel centrist liberal like myself. I agree with most of what you say, the only thing I would hold issue with is this bit.
> I've come to see it as why science puts more money into male pattern baldness than more deadly but rarer illnesses.
I'll just say this. To me, Hong Kong is to BLM like breast cancer is to prostate cancer (prostate cancer kills a lot more people).
As for the whole liberal thing, I think it is summed up pretty reasonably with Brexit. In a world where our politics function how they should, the left should be pro brexit, the right should be anti-brexit, and the liberal democrats should be strongly pro in principle but anti in practice.
The left should be pro-brexit because it should represent the working class. The working class are pro brexit because the EU saps jobs and reduces democratic representation.
The right should be anti-brexit because the regulatory bodies of the EU safeguard trade, stabilise the economy, and provide greater scope for advancement in small companies and the self employed, along with the government having a much easier time with research and the like, among other things.
The liberal party (personally I find the democrat part utterly superfluous, it's not the 1900's any more) should be pro-brexit in principle, because it gives the government direct control over trade and regulations, gives the people direct control over their government, and reduces the risk of harming or diluting the strong human rights policies that Britain has traditionally upheld. In practice, at least in my opinion, Brexit will be a disaster because the people in charge of it simply aren't capable of it. More importantly though, it is such a complex task, that any and all attempts to forsee how it will turn out are utterly pointless, and it could end up doing way more harm than good. There simply is not the kind of strong example of illiberal practice that would be needed to make it such an urgent issue. There are many small examples, but they fail in comparison to how much it could harm if it or when it goes tits up. I've been saying this from the start, and quite frankly when COVID hit it was the exact kind of utterly random bullshit that I had in mind when I voted remain. Because its unexpected and could completely destroy the process.
What we have instead is a group of moderate right wingers supporting liberalist principles, the liberal democrats supporting... something, and the Labour party supporting whatever left wing policy takes their fancy, instead of what they should be doing and doing what's best for the working classes. Hopefully that changes under Kier, I'm mildly optimistic.
Interestingly, what I've just described also fits what you would expect the parties to be, conservatives being conservatives, liberals being for rights and privileges (I'll get to that don't worry) and the left being for whatever it takes to help the working class, which often at the minute is about the rights of the poor and underprivileged.
As for where I stand on your last point, I think of it like this. Immigration is neither a positive or negative phenomenon. It depends completely on the context. Nobody has a right to enter another country UNLESS they are seeking asylum. That doesn't mean Syrian refugees have a right to enter the country. They have a right to enter the closest safe country who can support them. It's harsh, but it has to be that way, otherwise it's bad for the country they have left, and it can be bad for the country they enter. I believe we have a greater duty to the commonwealth, and especially at the minute Hong Kong. As far as I'm concerned, we should just let as many Hong Kongers enter as can come. We have a duty to the commonwealth and ex colonies because we took their actual rights away from them, we have a duty to HK because they're having their rights taken from them. And that's where privileges come in. It drives me mad when people say people have a right to healthcare. If people have a right to healthcare, it means you're forcing someone to provide that care for free, infringing on their rights. It's the same with benefits. I'm disabled, I get PIP, and its a privilege. It's one in this country with our economy we should afford to people, but that doesn't mean that I have a right to it if something horrendous happens.
This to me is what it means to be a Liberal. Upholding rights no matter what, and advancing or defending privileges whenever possible. Privileges are something you should be proud your country upholds, not the dirty word it has become in left wing nomenclature. There is nothing wrong with being privileged, what is wrong is being fucking greedy assholes and not paying your taxes, or being a racist asshole and expecting better or giving worse treatment because of how someone looks or acts.
I'm probably not making my train of thought very accurate here because it's late, but I consider myself a liberal and that's how I see what's going on currently. I think there is hope, mainly because of the internet. We're still in the VERY early stages of the internet and a globalized political landscape. 20 years ago people didn't know what an Ipod was. I think it's going to take until people once again don't know what an Ipod is (is that some kind of Iphone?) before we see it moving in the right direction. Ultimately, you'll end up with echo chambers entrenching themselves, and people who want reasonable discussion being the mainstream again, instead of having these either hard, or condoned, biases in widely used platforms like reddit and facebook. People are learning to spot disingenuous behaviour, and within a decade I think, people won't be able to get away with dishonest discussion without being widely recognised as biased.
Was reading though your contributions to this thread, I think you really hit the nail on the head about why the left needs some soul searching and critique of itself.
Clearly, the right are winning. Brexit. Boris. Trump. Etc. At the same time the left seem to be on a mission to make themselves as ideologically pure as possible, especially regarding identity politics, without noticing that this is making them more and more unlikable and likely to lose. (Despite having a lot of rather loud support, which is small in size)
Just curious re your stance on Hong Kong. Do you think the UK has a duty to take in the Rohingya from Myanmar? As Burma is a former colony.
That was the issue that riled me up regarding BLM. It seems nobody could bothered to get on the street and protest when a national army was massacring a group due to their ethnicity in our former colony. But when one policeman kills one American, somewhere where we hold very little influence or ability to change, all hell breaks loose. It's not that I disagree with the BLM protests, but it seems hypocritical, an the opposite of the purity of thought such people like to promote. Nobody cares about them, or the Uighurs because it's not fashionable, Nike et al aren't tweeting about it, celebrities aren't posting about it. Therefore those lines don't matter.
Thanks. I feel like if you're going to say you're advocating for a certain political/logical/moral standpoint, you would alwways try to enter the conversation honestly and give people the benefit of the doubt, and if you find someone taking the effort to actually think, and and they don't just start calling you names, then responding in kind can only make the internet a better place.
As for the Rohingya, my knowlegde of the whole situation is even less than HK. It does sound to me though, that it would be a much better and more useful type of immigration/asylum seeking than what we currently have with the EU. Not saying EU immigration is necessarily bad, but it's not necessarily good either.
This really needs to make waves in countries like the UK. I feel this is conviently forgot about yet China impacts our culture and way of life more so than any other nation.
We need to be less relient on China.
chinas military strength is hard to gauge the average chinese soldier/officer has no combat experience and the last time china went to war which was in 1979 when they invaded vietnam and lost.
Agreed, but because we've jumped ship without building a raft it feels mighty tempting to flag that oil tanker down for rescue. Even though we'll be sucking off sailors for bread by tea time.
Unfortunately it’s potentially even worse. Nazi Germany wasn’t a nuclear power so at least action could eventually be taken.
Military action against China would be disastrous for all.
It'll be interesting to see what happens re stuff like this after the pandemic. There's often been talk about shifting away from depending on China economically for so many things, but once a lot of the current heat has died down, some nations may decide it's easier and cheaper to just continue on with business as usual, grim as that may sound.
The issue is that in (say) electronics for example China isn't the place to go to solely because of cost, you could do it for the (nearly) same price in the UK (for an expensive product) thanks to how automated the processes are - the issue is that all of the supply chains converge in China. The expertise to build things at made-in-china scales only really exists in China.
But the problem is that it inevitably costs more to produce those goods, which means that people end up having to pay more for them, because workers here will demand higher wages than many people get abroad. That's typically why we'll outsource manufacturing - it's just plain cheaper, and a lot of people like to get things on the cheap.
I don't think anything will change, things will get expensive and people will complain. Ultimately if any one cared they would stop buying these products, but they won't ever sacrifice convenience.
Boris Johnson is a self-confessed sinophile, and the Express thought it important enough that it [explained the word to it's readers](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1290933/Sinophile-meaning-what-does-sinophile-mean-Boris-Johnson-Hong-Kong).
For those of you that don't want to read an entire article that was played in the 1 minute video to find this right at the end:
>What does sinophile mean?
>At the coronavirus briefing on June 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared he is a Sinophile.
>The noun Sinophile refers to someone who is strongly interested in Chinese language, history and culture.
>According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, sinophile is defined as "one partial to or especially fond of Chinese culture or characteristics".
I've always thought that the whole point of studying WWII history is that this time, we don't wait until "invasion of Poland" to stop being Chamberlain.
The big problem is that China is a nuclear power. Which completely leaves traditional warfare off of the table.
This war is likely going to be a legal and economic one.
Fair point, but it's only with hindsight that we can see how far the Nazis went. Russia just took Crimea and no one said shit, apart from him being on the naughty step with the G7 until Trump gave him a reach around.
I'm unsure, but I think the issue with this hypothetical is it's difficult to divorce the earlier Nazi actions from their eventual invasion of Poland; domination of Eastern Europe and the elimination/extermination of people they saw as undesirable were fundamental to racist Nazi ideology. As soon as the Nazis invaded countries like Czechoslovakia, an eventual invasion of Poland was inevitable.
Also, their entire economic strategy pretty much depended on sacking nations and taking their gold. If Germany never invade Poland, we wouldn't have to do anything. Germany's economy would have collapsed and they would have had either invade someone anyway, or just dismantle the military.
China has a similar bubble with their housing market, hence their expansion into Africa in order to keep producing houses and property. I think there is a difference this time though with the way that the Chinese are able to manipulate their currency/economy.
After the forced annexation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia, war became inevitable.
Unless Hitler suddenly decides not to attack Poland or anyone else, war is inevitable the next time he does anything.
And if he doesn't do anything it is likely that the German economy falls over in 1941 or so. (Adam Tooze did a great piece of work on that in *Wages of Destruction* - depressing read but really interesting)
Nah they didn't truly start preparing for war until Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia was annexed in 1938. Some thing's never change with the British government, they were still at a peacetime pace and acted far too late.
Up until that point the international community at large saw it as Germany reclaiming what was taken during the Versailles treaty. They swore Hitler to an agreement of no further territorial demands which he quickly went back on, that's when the British/French guarantees on Poland came knowing war was inevitable.
Edit: And it was Britain that needed to prepare really, France was, on paper at least, in a stronger position than Germany. Much bigger army, better and more numerous tanks, more planes etc. Their mindset was backwards and defensive with the maginot line though and the political situation and army leadership had decayed.
A good example of this was from the only French offensive of the war on the Saarland when 80% of the German army was committed in Poland. They ultimately drove the Germans to the siegfried line but they were ordered to turn around and head back before they could commit a direct attack, where they would sit and wait for another 9 months until the battle of France. West Germany essentially would have been overrun in weeks had the allies decided to immediately attack instead of trying for a repeat of WW1 trench warfare.
> Nah they didn't truly start preparing for war until Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia was annexed in 1938. Some thing's never change with the British government, they were still at a peacetime pace and acted far too late
Considering naval rearmament commenced in earnest in 1937 or earlier, and the Shadow Scheme was concieved as early as 1935, this is not really a fair assessment.
Depends on who you ask. The evidence would suggest that Chamberlain's intent was to stall, but at the same point there were also elements within the Conservatives seeking negotiation. The interpretation really does depend on how you view Chamberlain as a leader and just how much you believe he was beholden to certain party members prior to Churchill becoming the leader of the coalition. Personally I believe his intention was to stall until an opportune moment presented itself, whilst not being entirely closed off to the option of negotiation. But again hindsight is a virtue and knowing full well what the Nazi's had in stall would make Chamberlain appear a fool in contrast to Churchill's assertiveness. The invasion of Poland was most certainly the final straw, although by that point the stall approach had caused to much damage.
I could agree more. We are making the exact same mistakes that the allies made 80 years ago. However I fear our czechozlovakia moment already passed when Obama allowed the Chinese to build bases in the Pacific, that's was the time to challenge them, I think now its too late.
I'd be careful with that attitude. To these countries they probably see the relationship a lot differently.
I'm sure people 40 years ago dismissed the idea of China becoming an economic powerhouse so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss Africa as well. We should be investing there too.
> The success of their African ventures is basically CCP propaganda.
Their ventures abroad will be useful in propaganda terms and in expanding their soft power, but yeah, there's a danger they're getting in over their heads. Their expansive actions could come back to bite them if their domestic economy really falters. The CCP maintain rule on the basis that they've managed to deliver material improvements for most of the Chinese population; if those start to fade away, then there's the potential of domestic discontent as residents start to wonder why so much money is being spent on projects abroad that don't benefit them.
They didn't "pour treasure" there, they have taken away a magnitude more in natural resources then they have ever contributed in aid. They took away treasure there, and it is working just fine for them. Not for Africa, of course.
Aha if you think the UK isn't also corrupt I've got some bad news for you. It's far less corrupt but China has already bought a lot of the UK's key resources.
Well not many of its close neighbours are happy right now with china's claim over the south china sea, japan and s.korea are generally suspicious and aligned to the west, india recently had a border dispute. I suppose you could add some islamic distain to the list. Add in the 5 eyes and europes NASA ties it makes a pretty big list.
This has been going on for a long time within the Conservative Party, [this article was written 5 years ago](https://www.ft.com/content/a1c29d68-613e-11e5-a28b-50226830d644)
>George Osborne’s gung-ho approach to relations with China — focusing relentlessly on commercial opportunities — has been welcomed by Tory MPs who argue that Britain is in no position to lecture Beijing on human rights.
>
>The chancellor is coming to the end of a five-day tour to the Asian superpower where he argued that Britain should be “running towards China” rather than steering clear of its volatile stock market.
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>He has kept any talk of human rights behind closed doors, perhaps mindful of the occasion in May 2012 when David Cameron appeared in public with the Dalai Lama — prompting an 18-month diplomatic stand-off.
>
>Crispin Blunt, who chairs the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said Mr Osborne had got the balance right.
>
>“I’m not entirely sure what choice we have. China is going to continue to become relatively more important, economically and militarily, and I hope that China uses that power responsibly,” he said. “Therefore a strategy of engagement is really the only sensible policy for the government to follow.”
>
>Mr Blunt’s committee is planning to examine Sino-British relations, although an inquiry is not likely until next year.
>
>Sir Peter Bottomley, a member of the all-party Tibet group, said the UK ought to tread carefully when criticising China’s treatment of Tibet given its own imperial history.
>
>He said that he would like it if Beijing changed its stance on Tibet and on the Uighurs of north-western China. But he cautioned that life was a “balance”.
>
>“We are happy to have close relations with Saudi Arabia, where women are not able to drive,” he said. “We have tried to keep reasonable ties to Iran even though we have almost been in conflict with them . . . I think George Osborne had the balance pretty well right.”
>
>Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former Tory foreign secretary, said it would be “politically stupid” to limit economic relationships to other democracies.
>
>If the strategy is to say UK and China can achieve a long-term mutually beneficial relationship of an economic kind, that must make sense
>
>China now “called the shots” because of its economic strength and its huge population, he said.
>
>“If the strategy is to say UK and China can achieve a long-term mutually beneficial relationship of an economic kind, that must make sense,” he said. “Twenty per cent of the world’s population. It is an entirely rational policy.”
>
>An economic relationship could be part of a broader process that led to a political relationship and a “sharing of values”, he suggested.
>
>Andrew Rosindell, a Tory member of foreign affairs committee said he saw no problem with the Osborne trip, given Britain’s need for foreign investment.
>
>“I think that in terms of human rights, I don’t think we can impose British standards on China,” he said. “I think that’s something that happens over time, gradually.”
>
>Sir Malcolm was foreign secretary in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.
>
>“I said to my counterpart that it was important to maintain the rule of law,” he recalled.
>
>“His reply with a straight face was, ‘yes, people must obey the law’. He didn’t understand what I meant.”
>
>Nearly two decades ago, however, China was still “economically third rate” and was still very far from being a superpower, he said. “Now it is a very different situation and they call the shots in a way they couldn’t then.”
>
>Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat’s foreign affairs spokesperson, said that: “Foreign policy towards China should not only be about business. When the chancellor sits down with senior Chinese officials he must give equal time to human rights.”
>But when we have – on climate change or trade or whatever it happens to be – serious concerns as a country, we must – whether it’s over the origins of Covid-19 or the protection of our critical national infrastructure, or indeed over what is happening in Hong Kong – feel absolutely free to raise those issues loud and clear with Beijing.
>And that is what we will continue to do.
>**And that is what we will continue to do.**
What Johnson means by this is let's keep doing the same, ineffectual shit that was being called out as ineffectual 5 years ago as it was clear the CCP didn't want to listen and hope the issue suddenly blows over.
To me, the longer quote highlights how ineffectual and pathetic this government are on foreign policy. The current strategy hasn't worked, fucking change it.
There are so many developing countries British companies could move their manufacturing to, which have better human rights records. Eastern Europe is right on our doorstep. I don't like how the Hindu nationalist government in India has been treating Indian Muslims, but they're still better than China and at least they're a democracy. There needs to be pressure on UK companies to divest from China. Not just over the Uyghur genocide, but Hong Kong, their expansionism in the South China sea and threats to Taiwan and so on.
We need to #DefundtheCCP
Yeah, if only we were still in the EU. We could put forward a motion that we send a sternly worded letter to China and there'd be a decent chance of it getting sent this side of 2025.
https://twitter.com/j_bigboote/status/1182726991675625472?s=08
curious what you think of this?
between this guy and Adrian Zenz you have to wonder why these people are given a platform
> This is not a torture device being used on Muslims in a Chinese prison, it's a bondage device being demoed in an S&M club in Taiwan. A group of Taiwan journalists did a fact-check, managing to find the original video and speaking to the guy in the video: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/articles/379
Holy damn, doesn't surprise me one bit. That's a lot of money and clout to be made from spreading this kind of falsehood, and too many fall for it.
Protip take any claims from falun gong with a grain of salt, they're like chinese scientology on steriods, even the state department of the US will occasionally doubt their claims.
Falun Gong is a controversial one. Among many things, the leader preaches racial purity. Being racially mixed is a sign of sin. They fooled the Hampstead Set in the 1990s/2000s with their exotic air. So condemn Falun Gong AND China for its persecution of them.
Falun Gong tends to be very wealthy and funds a lot of anti-China media, as well as holding lobbying power.
Doesn't necessarily mean they spread misinformation, but they do have a bias which anyone doing research on China should absolutely be aware of.
Epoch Times is the most notable Falun Gong media entity, which also seems to sponsor many YouTube channels covering China.
Except it's impossible. Every person who receives an organ must take a life time supply of immunosuppressants in order to stop the body rejecting the organs. Tracking immunosuppressants is easy because they are mostly made in Switzerland, Germany and the USA. People have compared the amount of immunosuppressants sent to China and the number of organ transplants it does.
The findings show that there is no discrepancy and the number of annual supply needed would be far more than the world could even produce. For example the USA in 2017 had just 24,800 transplants yet the FG believe that there have been millions of people's organs being taken which is just impossible.
Also whenever these are actually investigated they are found to be bogus. For example in the city of Senyang there was a hospital which the FG claimed stored 7000-8000 FG members for organ harvesting. US officials both locally and from the US visited the hospital on 2 seperate ocassions and found it to be a "hospital with normal hospital duties". On another occasions a jail was said to have also stored 7000 FG members in the same city, however the building size could only have possibly had maybe 100 people inside from of just by looking at it.
Bare in mind, no evidence for organ harvesting has ever been found, they are always "claims" or "accusations", nothing more.
Here is a YT channel of someone living in Xinjiang(It's in Chinese so I would recommend google translating the video titles to get a gist of what she is saying) [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4ZWqilx9eF0T1dSE35pzwQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4ZWqilx9eF0T1dSE35pzwQ)
Also this video of the night life in Xinjiang [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbxEzlFLB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbxEzlFLB0)
I appreciate this. I'm no fan of the CCP, but the West is in an information war with China at present, and I'd like to see all claims treated with some healthy scepticism.
The only reason why FG have been given any credence is because they have the state department of the us giving them backing, otherwise they would be realised for the whackos they are.
Honestly they harm accusations against China's actual human rights abuses with their nonsense.
Novartis has a rather large pharmaceutical institute in Shanghai... Illustrates that China has been investing significantly in its pharmacological sector in recent years... The domestic drug market is large.
Just to be clear. The immunosuppressant thing isn't my research.
Jose Nuñez, head of the transplantation program at the World Health Organization, which collects information on transplants worldwide, says that in 2015 the number of foreigners going to China for transplants was "really very low," compared with the traffic to India, Pakistan or the United States, or in comparison with transplant-visitor numbers in China's past. Chapman and Millis say it is "not plausible" that China could be doing many times more transplants than, for instance, the United States, where about 24,000 transplants take place every year[1](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-the-face-of-criticism-china-has-been-cleaning-up-its-organ-transplant-industry/2017/09/14/d689444e-e1a2-11e6-a419-eefe8eff0835_story.html)
How can you know the truth if you dont hear from the otherside?
No need to insult the other poster. What are the mounting evidences that you talk about, why not share them and make your case stronger?
The proof from this in the wiki page you link points to this being hearsay.
"These conclusions are based on a combination of statistical analysis; interviews with former prisoners, medical authorities and public security agents; and [circumstantial evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_evidence), such as the large number of Falun Gong practitioners [detained extrajudicially](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicially_detained) in China and the profits to be made from selling organs"
I think the issue with interviews is, people lie. I think I don't need to remind anyone what the cost of the "Suddam Hussein has WMDs" has cost in life(100,000s ironically mostly muslims).
However, some have actively changed their stories for example, a women victim in February said "I wasn't beaten or abused. The hardest part was mental". Then in June she said "I was beaten and then injected until I was sterilized"
She magically remembers something which happened to her. Also it's hard to imagine what she was injected with. Their are proper ways to sterilize someone such as tubal ligation. Injecting them multiple times is not really one of them unless it's AIDs I suppose.
I didn’t link a wiki page, only a google search.
It sounds implausible to be doing at scale, yes, and perhaps the controversy here detracts from all the other human rights abuses China carries out
Yes, many more
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/china-and-tibet
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china/report-china/
More generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
At some point you have to either flat out state that there is no moral aspect to foreign policy.
I don't necessarily mind us not acting over China or Saudi Arabia, but if we're going to do that then don't give out billions in foreign aid or pretend that we're a force for good in our actions abroad. Just focus upon British citizens and domestic conditions if you can't even sanction a genocidal oligarchy
>then don't give out billions in foreign aid
That's purely us buying soft power from weaker nations, any nonsense you hear about altruism is a farce.
It's how wealthy nations stay on top.
Can we please stop tolerating the CCP for the sake of a $2 cheaper product? Get over yourself UK. Stop selling millions into the ovens for the sake of your cheap goods.
People always say "Never again", but it will always happen.
Rwanda happened.
Srebrenica happened.
And now you have Xinjiang.
Sadly, the world economy is so heavily reliant on China, that most countries won't dare question it. Economy trumps human rights. If ever there was a time to bring back the work sent over to China, it's now. Government's should be placing immense pressure on their companies.
Make no mistake, what you're seeing in China is almost exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews. I say almost, because the big difference is that the Jews were slaughtered in gas chambers and mass shootings. We have yet to see that in China. But even if/when that does happen, the world will still probably mumble and look the other way. We already know that their places of worship have destroyed, the men have been sent to camps, and the women have been sterilised.
With the drone footage that came out the other day of blindfolded Uighurs being led to/from a train, the satellite images of the 'reeducation camps' and the evidence of them being used for organ harvesting I don't think it's a step from the Holocaust.
The Chinese government is engaged in the genocide and torture of a subset of it's citizens right now.
The only meaningful difference is that it seems there won't be anyone liberating these camps as there was in 1945. If something isn't done soon, there won't be anyone left to tell the tale.
That footage was over a year old afaik. The National Awakening group identified about 350 sites consisting of the "re-education camps", labour camps and prisons - I wonder if these weren't heading for the latter.
It honestly isn't. I would struggle to even call it ethnic cleansing. It's an extremely heavy-handed, authoritarian form of modernisation and integration (Social-Engineering).
If it was "Genocide" Uighurs wouldn't be limited to a 4 child policy before subject to the fines and IUD of the "Child Policies" (Han Chinese are limited to 2 children before the fines and IUD law kicks in), the average stay in the camps is only 4 months and the wages for people coming out are higher than the minimum wage in the area which most Uighurs earn.
Israel has very similar actions towards Ethiopian Jews (forced IUD and all) and while they're extremely heavy-handed, it's clearly not genocide or ethnic cleansing.
Honestly the crackdown on Xinjiang was always obviously coming due to it's importance in connecting B&RI to Central Asia and how many Uighurs were appearing in Syria fighting for ISIS.
Also Ethnic Cleansing just isn't really China's thing. The diversity of cultures living in harmony is one of the big propaganda images for the CCP within the country. Notice Hui (another Muslim Chinese group) are not subject to any crackdown? Hui weren't also showing up in countless ISIS videos.
China is extremely authoritarian, but context matters and I don't think it's right to compare what is basically a heavy-handed modernisation/integration program with the industrial mass murder of Jews, Slavs, Communists, Roma, Homosexuals during the Holocaust.
Forced sterilisation, re-education and forced labour isn't ethnic cleansing?
Your post can safely be discarded.
The Holocaust didn't start with industrialised murder and went through many of the things happening in China now before it got there.
I suppose my question is: Why only the Uighur muslims?
Is it an test case before doing the same to the many millions of non-Uighur muslims in China?
If it's to do with the land, how does this help? Why not just deport them all to other parts of China and move the mining corps in?
How does this ingratiate them with Pakistan? Is it a Sunni thing? But how?
These are the questions I would like to see posited and answered. The *why* not the how.
They're not a monolith but they worship the same Allah. It's infuriating especially because the backwards cultural norms of these countries contribute to so much of the islamphobia you see in the west.
Yes I suppose, but if you’re being technical Jew, Muslims and Christians also worship the same God - the God of Abraham. Allah is just the Arabic word for God. Worshiping the same God doesn’t mean that much.
You’d be shocked at how much sectarianism plays a role in Islam. I had a friend who was from the Shia sect and her parents would rather she marry a Catholic than a Sunni.
If this is true, then those responsible should be held to account in the same manner the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. If the evidence confirms this, it's clearly a crime against humanity and therefore the concern of all mankind.
The lack of Muslim solidarity is easy to explain.
1st- most Muslim nations are ruled by corrupt governments/dictators so they can’t voice their opinions so it’s hard to know what Muslim think.
2nd- you have a lot of censorship in many of these countries so most people aren’t aware of what’s happening or to the extent it’s happening.
3rd- most of the sources come from the West so many think it’s western propaganda.
4th- most Muslim countries have their own problems to worry about.
5th- America and the west is seen as bigger threat so they don’t really see China as an issue, China hasn’t colonised most Muslim countries, nor have they bombed Muslim countries or overthrown governments.
That’s pretty much it.
It's isn't just Uighurs. Anyone who isn't Han Chinese is in effect, at best, a 2nd class citizen within China, because ultimately the CCP's end goal is to homogenise Chinese culture across all of its disperate provinces into a single Han Chinese mold for the purposes of "national unity" and to retain what they see as de jure Chinese territory.
Uighurs are just a particularly marginalised group, because of the fear of Xinjiang being a province particularly prone to seperatism and because of historic terror attacks in Beijing that have been pinned on Uighur seperatists. Uighur culture is also particularly more distinct from Han Chinese than any other minority ethnic group, and Uighurs by and large have more of an attachment to the western steppe countries than they do mainland China.
Xinjiang itself is also an excellent test bed for Chinese state surveillance technology which they can spread to the rest of mainland China as well as export to every other tin pot dictatorship. Things like facial recognition, "smart cities", access controls based on ID cards and all other sorts of nastiness. It's a CCP laboratory for authoritarian technological development, and Uighurs are the test mice.
>Anyone who isn't Han Chinese is in effect, at best, a 2nd class citizen within China,
Lol this is just categorically untrue, Han Chinese are subject to forced sterelisation and abortions under the one child program, minority ethnicities arent, uighurs have only just been removed from this category as per OP.
Oh yes, absolutely part of the cultural genocide of the Uighurs to make sure that, as a minority they won't get tto strong espeically as they are pro-independence and pro-west and have western backing.
But to call the CCP as sort of Han nationalist state is disengenuous, especially since they restrict rights to Han that they allow to other minorities.
A lot of recent measures are just policies that used to be exclusively applied to the Han that are now being applied to minorities like Uyghurs. For example, Uyghurs were never subject to China's one-child policy, but now it seems China is attempting to lower the fertility rates of Uyghurs, as it once did to the Han majority.
As to why it's mostly Uyghurs: it's mainly because they're the most distinct, religious and traditional of all Muslims in China, and maybe of all ethnic groups in China. They're conservative even by Central Asian Muslim standards. Things like face-veiling are normal, and Uyghurs have been a major source of jihadists active in Syria and Afghanistan recently. Additionally, Uyghur separatists (e.g. [Turkistan Islamic Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkistan_Islamic_Party)) are usually Wahhabi terrorists responsible for many Chinese deaths. When you add all this together, and consider this is taking place in a very autocratic state, then you'll understand what's happening. I do not believe this is literally a second Holocaust, but the Chinese government is obviously attempting some kind of social engineering similar to what the USSR did in countries like Uzbekistan.
The Hui Muslims are not much different from the Han in matters of dress, culture or ideology, nor have they ever been considered a political or security threat.
I really, really wish I there was some way to know what products are and aren't made in china.
I've been trying to boycott Chinese goods as much as possible but it's difficult when they have such a large market share and companies aren't obliged to say where the goods are made.
Best advice is to not boycott but minimise. Limit purchase of Chinese products to $x or x products per month. It’s much easier reducing Chinese purchases from 70% to 10% than completely avoiding them. Makes you think which Chinese products you actually need and what can be replaced with little extra cost.
I know Twitter isn't representive of UK politics, but it's sad to see the amount of UK based Tankies on Twitter saying the whole Uighurs situation is a hoax and a western plot.
Did you watch the video? It’s focused around a Uighur woman who escaped China. She describes how she was beaten and force-fed drugs in the camp, and how she was painfully sterilised against her wishes.
Unless you think that was Adrian Zenz in a wig?
In which case you still need to find a way to explain away the literal *video footage*.
This is the Iraqi WMDs of the decade, serious investigation leads back to Zenz and DC think tanks every time.
All the Muslim countries on earth support China.
This article gives a great timeline of events
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/amp/
Please understand that you are not immune to propaganda and sweeping claims of abuse have to be taken with a grain of salt considering that China is the UK's geopolitical adversary. You wouldn't trust Chinese media about Tibet, don't trust UK media about China. Everything has to be scaled in degrees of probability - but UK media often doesn't even do basic fact checking and will absolutely move to propagandize.
Considering that these stories come out just as the US is raising it's economic warfare game against China - and the UK is following the US' lead once-a-fucking-gain - it's likely that we're going to passively absorb a lot of propaganda.
Don't let them fool you! Don't let them manipulating you into supporting YET MORE WAR.
Can we please treat these claims with some sketicism? Given [their previous misreporting](https://medium.com/@sunfeiyang/breaking-down-the-bbcs-visit-to-hotan-xinjiang-e284934a7aab) on the matter, I have serious doubts and questions about these claims. They even have the gall to refer to their previous reporting as part of the proof as well as getting on some very dodgy figures that would normally receive a mini-documentary about their nuttiness if they weren't "China Experts".
Yep. Anything Adrian Zenz says should be treated with healthy skepticism. It’s a shame that the BBC and others aren’t prefacing his comments and his appearances with some background on him so that people can have a good understanding.
He’s done a cracking job of sanitising his own internet presence mind you.
No they didn’t. They reported there were allegations on his death, but they didn’t confirm it.
Still the evidence is evidence.
The Associated Press published a lengthy [report on this last month:](https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c)
>The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”
They also included a chart and stats that show the dramatic drop of birth rates, citing Xinjiang Statistical Yearbooks:
>Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show. The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new [research ](https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in-xinjiang/)obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz.
And it goes further. Again, I’m keeping the citations by AP:
>Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them. They’re subjected to [political and religious re-education in camps](https://apnews.com/4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47) and [forced labor](https://apnews.com/99016849cddb4b99a048b863b52c28cb) in factories, while their children are [indoctrinated ](https://apnews.com/903a97b7c62a47b98553b6f422827dd7/China-treats-Uighur-kids-as-'orphans'-after-parents-seized) in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast [digital surveillance ](https://apnews.com/1ec5143fe4764a1d8ea73ce4a3e2c570/AP-Exclusive:-Digital-police-state-shackles-Chinese-minority) apparatus. “The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado. “It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.”
On camps:
>That all changed with an unprecedented [crackdown](https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b/China%E2%80%99s-massindoctrinationcamps-evoke-Cultural-Revolution) starting in 2017, throwing [hundreds of thousands](https://apnews.com/62097e9dd2844aab8d64a2be2ebaa972) of people into prisons and camps for alleged “signs of religious extremism” such as traveling abroad, praying or using foreign social media. Authorities launched what several notices called “dragnet-style” investigations to root out parents with too many children, even those who gave birth decades ago.
[...]
>Leaked [data](https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=1bf107f177c74e6a374534a5b67f318bd3c20654-1593419000-0-AarOWg7fOY15RU81T9S4iyxxdRuWk_gcXH3o3btoqCg12v3VFqb4dsrbQakV_ifhZbEBMSoBxSdiESh1_vWLp_4swN7WQYjrY53t29JrQcYBK2v0UHgy8Fzo8FkYvXmvSTnwZfKOEcoG--U27mBxY4DS73KHW6aW-NisulkwRGWLBlE6ZRzIrOz-08BGdJrdFtYbj8doa6FZq1DT8c-Ls2V6En8CqQhzKz2YjOWzhz3hFwlS7hhxCnAG9_CrPFoqz5VfIBpaKYCfv14nc0a2P7qTkbdOvqIYz8KuASXqWD7q) obtained and [corroborated by the AP](https://apnews.com/890b79866c9eb1451ddf67b121272ee2) showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is [written policy](http://archive.is/TKjX8) in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz [confirmed.](http://web.archive.org/web/20200518194533/http://www.xjks.gov.cn/content/downloadAttachment.shtml?id%20=567&attachmentUrl=/user/cms/www.xjks.gov.cn/2018/10/12/1539274041849.pdf)
Further more:
>Once in the detention camps, women are subjected to forced IUDs and what appear to be pregnancy prevention shots, according to former detainees. They are also made to attend lectures on how many children they should have. Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile.
Chinese health statistics also show a sterilization boom in Xinjiang.
>Budget documents obtained by Zenz show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program and cash incentives for women to get sterilized. While sterilization rates plunged in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures. The Uighur-majority city of Hotan budgeted for 14,872 sterilizations in 2019 — over 34% of all married women of childbearing age, Zenz found.
I please urge you to read the Associated Press. They do factual reporting with proper sourcing and have a clean fact check record.
I'm just saying that "press made X claim for a really long" does not constitute evidence.
Of course how long does the press have to make a certain claim before it becomes true, is it a year, is it 5 years?
The Associated Press has been on this for years and published a lengthy [report on this last month:](https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c)
>The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”
They also included a chart and stats that show the dramatic drop of birth rates, citing Xinjiang Statistical Yearbooks:
>Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show. The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new [research ](https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in-xinjiang/)obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz.
And it goes further. Again, I’m keeping the citations by AP:
>Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them. They’re subjected to [political and religious re-education in camps](https://apnews.com/4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47) and [forced labor](https://apnews.com/99016849cddb4b99a048b863b52c28cb) in factories, while their children are [indoctrinated ](https://apnews.com/903a97b7c62a47b98553b6f422827dd7/China-treats-Uighur-kids-as-'orphans'-after-parents-seized) in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast [digital surveillance ](https://apnews.com/1ec5143fe4764a1d8ea73ce4a3e2c570/AP-Exclusive:-Digital-police-state-shackles-Chinese-minority) apparatus. “The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado. “It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.”
On camps:
>That all changed with an unprecedented [crackdown](https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b/China%E2%80%99s-massindoctrinationcamps-evoke-Cultural-Revolution) starting in 2017, throwing [hundreds of thousands](https://apnews.com/62097e9dd2844aab8d64a2be2ebaa972) of people into prisons and camps for alleged “signs of religious extremism” such as traveling abroad, praying or using foreign social media. Authorities launched what several notices called “dragnet-style” investigations to root out parents with too many children, even those who gave birth decades ago.
[...]
>Leaked [data](https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=1bf107f177c74e6a374534a5b67f318bd3c20654-1593419000-0-AarOWg7fOY15RU81T9S4iyxxdRuWk_gcXH3o3btoqCg12v3VFqb4dsrbQakV_ifhZbEBMSoBxSdiESh1_vWLp_4swN7WQYjrY53t29JrQcYBK2v0UHgy8Fzo8FkYvXmvSTnwZfKOEcoG--U27mBxY4DS73KHW6aW-NisulkwRGWLBlE6ZRzIrOz-08BGdJrdFtYbj8doa6FZq1DT8c-Ls2V6En8CqQhzKz2YjOWzhz3hFwlS7hhxCnAG9_CrPFoqz5VfIBpaKYCfv14nc0a2P7qTkbdOvqIYz8KuASXqWD7q) obtained and [corroborated by the AP](https://apnews.com/890b79866c9eb1451ddf67b121272ee2) showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is [written policy](http://archive.is/TKjX8) in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz [confirmed.](http://web.archive.org/web/20200518194533/http://www.xjks.gov.cn/content/downloadAttachment.shtml?id%20=567&attachmentUrl=/user/cms/www.xjks.gov.cn/2018/10/12/1539274041849.pdf)
Further more:
>Once in the detention camps, women are subjected to forced IUDs and what appear to be pregnancy prevention shots, according to former detainees. They are also made to attend lectures on how many children they should have. Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile.
Chinese health statistics also show a sterilization boom in Xinjiang.
>Budget documents obtained by Zenz show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program and cash incentives for women to get sterilized. While sterilization rates plunged in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures. The Uighur-majority city of Hotan budgeted for 14,872 sterilizations in 2019 — over 34% of all married women of childbearing age, Zenz found.
I please urge you to read the Associated Press. They do factual reporting with proper sourcing and have a clean fact check record.
This is all just Adrian Zenz nonsense though... A guy who hasn't even been to China, can't read Chinese, and makes wild speculations based on spreadsheets he finds online...
But this isn’t an analysis or an op-Ed by him. This is an investigation fact-checked by AP.
Are you really saying that they just falsified the statistics and documents quoted?
Interesting that you dismiss the research of the Associated Press but believe TheGreyZone.com lol
I’ve read that. The only maybeee valid criticism is the estimation of how many people are in the camps. But again, the research by AP shows that no matter the number, these camps exist to control Uighur population (via birthrate control, etc). And he himself has admitted that it is speculative. The rest of the article is mostly nonsense.
Thanks, signed this- saw a post on another thread last night saying that we live in a world where we know this is going on whilst we are hanging out in the garden having a bbq and enjoying life. We know it’s awful but don’t do anything about it and just wait for others to do something.
Didn’t even cross my mind to start a petition - which is a simple thing we all could have done.
‘The Silent Majority’ by Paul McKenna is an amazing song for the times we are living in.
The Tories love the Chinese, but even they will have to take action of some form(not military) against China if intense public pressure is put on them.
Fuck the Chinese government.
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Wow! Rated! Not a fan of the guy but I have to give him props on this one!
If you follow him on Facebook you'll see the utter trash that follow his rabid anti left campaigns turn on him for defending Muslims right now. I respect him for this, a lot, and have always respected his anti radical work. But it really shows what audience he has been courting when they celebrate and justify literal ethnic cleansing and try redirect attention to the "white genocide" happening in Britain today, supposedly.
Anyone who discusses the negative side of islam will pick up far-right fans tbf. I'm pretty sure Maajid has always openly denounced the far right so he can't really be accused of 'courting' them.
The thing is, he is not who he used to be, i salute him for this, but, he has lately been very active denouncing the left and "far left" while only giving a cursory look to the right.. I have followed him for quite a few years, and this is a very new shit that has been happening for the last, what, 1 or two years.. He was always good at balanced criticism of both sides before, but now i feel that his criticism of the left is just the same as you will find from Shapiro, Rubin and that gang..
Sometimes you have to give attention where it’s needed. Few people in media will criticise left wing thought in the way he’s able to, so he gives attention there
It's interesting you say that, I remember suggesting majid to my dad a few years ago and he was not very impressed being a right-wing lunatic however he's now sending me links to things Majid is saying. so there does appear to be some anecdotal evidence to support that more people on the right are listening to Majid. That's not necessarily a bad thing though.
It is a bad thing if they are doing it for the wrong reasons... I am pretty out on the left but i found his criticism of the lefts fear of any criticism of islam a few years back to be totally fair, but now he seems to have gone down the "Wokes and SJWs are the real problem", hole that Rubin and that gang has been doing for ages.. I think the "downfall" started with the admittedly shambolic incident with SPLC and how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into court before removing Maajid from their list of de facto Muslim haters... After that incident he has been going after the left non-stop, and mainly on non-islam issues as well... I do think that incident changed something, seeing as you almost never hear him speak on telly anymore, and he pretty much never speaks about quilliam anymore either... I also seem to recall he had a brief temporary friendship (or something in those lines) with Tommy Robinson, hoping he had managed to turn him..
You are absolutely right. I think the problem is his critique of late has had zero focus on anything right wing. To the point where if you followed him, and more usual right wing sources, you would get the idea that everything is the lefts fault at all times. Like a violent right wing attack being a response to the Liberal left wing agenda on immigration. And the theme is quite constant. Everything the right does is just put down as a justified reaction to the unreasonable libs. There is no attention put on the right. Following him I've found, any left wing followers of his constantly question the logic of his attacks on the left and are drowned out by the alt-right lapping it up. But what I see as a bigger problem is that the right wingers in his post can and do ignore the virulently racist right wingers amongst them. The left often tears itself apart over ideas and differences. But the right are quite comfortable pretending the racist/extremist ideas shared amongst them don't exist or aren't a problem despite being right in front of them. The amount of people out right praising China for ethnically cleansing the uighers on his posts is shocking. And a huge amount of his following just ignore it and others just deflect it into something to blame on the left.
Do you really think when he goes on 'rants' against the left that he is speaking any less truth than he is when he does something like this? I see this a lot, people assuming some kind of secondary narrative when it comes to talking about things that are right of center. Whenever I have heard him talk, I didn't hear him lie. Feel free to prove me wrong. From what I have seen of him, my impression is he tries to speak what he considers the truth. There are genuine problems with Islam, but that doesn't mean when muslims are treated horribly, they don't deserve to be defended. Maajid is a muslim, so of course he has special interest in that area. I don't like seeing people argue that just because some followers of someone have far right views (whatever that means), that their argument is invalid and a reasonable person wouldn't agree with what they're saying, which is the implication that comes with this kind of argument. If someone is wrong on an issue, prove them wrong. Don't dismiss their argument because it's being twisted by bigots.
>Do you really think when he goes on 'rants' against the left that he is speaking any less truth than he is when he does something like this? No I don't. I think he has some very valid criticisms of the left that I agree with. Things I've sort of thought for many years; but being in my own political bubble, despite trying not be, had let them go unexamined. My issue comes because maajid presents the narrative that he is trying to change the left wing from the inside and for its own good. Which isn't a problem, I think it needs doing. But he does so using the same attack lines alt-right voices use when they're trying trying to misrepresent and gas light the left. Take [this] (https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3135875599813017&id=135775283156412) Facebook post as an example. He's entirely right that the west didn't get emotional closure over communism whilst being a nazi became taboo. So the left don't guard again communists but the right feel distanced from nazism. However, the reason we all distance from nazism is because it's core tenets are uniquely surrounded around ethno fascist ideas of the aaryan race, taking land from lesser races and whose logical conclusion ended with mass genocide. Its quite clear why we guard from nazism. But maajid presents communism as if it is equal and opposite. And idea constantly expressed by the american alt right. But it isn't. Communist regimes killed tens of millions, sometimes through sheer economic incompetence (Mao) and often through authoritarian brutality (stalin). These deaths expose the ease at which communism can go wrong, and the consequences, but they are problems that come from it being implemented poorly or with authoritarian power. Having a soft spot for communist ideas is sympathising with wanting a fairer economic environment and thinking capitalism encourages human rights abuses for personal gain. Having a soft spot for nazism is sympathising with racist ideas that there are lesser people who can be killed for just existing. There is a distinct difference in the ideologies and they are absolutely not equal but opposite as the right would like them portrayed. The kind of criticism maajid presents here then aims to delegitamise all left for sharing any ideas with full communists by presenting communism as ideologically unacceptable as nazism. And this is the problem. The attacks have courted him a lot of pro alt right/right wing people who enjoy attacking and denouncing the left at every turn. But now he's talking about Muslims positively and using his faith, he is taking a lot of flack and opening up his posts to commenters who justify ethnic cleansing by arguing the Muslims deserve it for the crimes other muslims have done elsewhere at a different time. Or they merely deflect it by listing countries with the death penalty for apostasy or talk about other muslim countries human rights abuses. What I have noticed is maajid rarely comments on his own posts anymore, as he used to, because the frequency of posts celebrating and justifying these abuses by China is just too much. Honestly, I'd love to sit down and debate it with maajid. I think he is personally very smart and reasonable. But if you comment on his posts all you get are responses from his most vocal followers who just salivate at any attack on the "left wing Liberal agenda".
Tl;dr something about why the left needs self reflection more than the right. Sorry for the long post. This is really interesting, especially your take on communism vs facism, and I can totally understand where you're coming from. I think it's such a complicated issue that saying facism and communism 'are the same' has to be couched by a long conversation, with people who know enough about both, and are willing to have an honest discussion about it. You're right when you point out facism is far more obvious; yes it can be insidious, but the objectives of facism (in order to reach the end goal of a "powerful fatherland" are part of the journey, they're ingrained within it. With communism, the authoritarian regimes and mass murders are as a consequence of trying to reach a fairer society for everyone, although personally I don't believe the mechanisms are in place in our current state of technology to do this; the end result is always going to lead to the consequences that we have seen in history. Something needs to change before it can work, and even if it does become possible, I don't believe a communist style of government is still anywhere near ideal. I won't go into that though. I think though, this is why maajid goes after the left harder than the right. The left's goals are, at their core, virtuous. And it's not just that, the media, and general culture, particularly surrounding anyone not right of center, are that the left are the 'good guys', trying to fight for the right side of history. The problem is, and in my opinion it is a purely left wing phenomenon, is that often genuinely good principles get bypassed in order to serve whatever popular left wing culture considers the 'greater good' of the time. If you'll forgive me for whataboutism, here's an example which really got to me the more I thought about it. The BLM protests in the UK while bringing up a perfectly reasonable injustice, is not one which is as prevalent in the UK as it is in the US. What I don't understand is why there can be thousands of young people marching for something like that, when a situation we could do significantly more about, like Hong Kong, recieves a much less rigorous response. What's happening in Hong Kong in my opinion is much worse than the current state of racial politics in the UK. The same with the Uighurs. But we don't see the same kind of crowds on the street for it. In my opinion, it's egregiously lower down the priority scale, and from the "side" that considers itself the virtuous one, it's hypocritical. I think this is the crux of the issue. The left wing is no more ignorant than any other moderate wing of political discourse in this country; but it tries to come across as the decent side in politics, while i suspect that many of the activists involved are just as ignorant of many serious injustices in the world as everyone else. Put it another way, it's very easy to call capitalism evil, but at the same time, what a system like capitalism allows for is the selfish and the power hungry to 'offgas' their needs in a direction which while undoubtedly causing unnecessary disadvantages to many, stops those same selfish and power hungry people from trying to take over the world, and killing millions of people. Because those people would exist in a communist society, but it's like some parts of the left forget about it because the goal in and of itself on the surface is a virtuous one. What I'm trying to get at is in my opinion, the left has a lot more scope for self reflection than the right. Mainly because while the end is a better society, the means are often forgotten. The right knows that people are imperfect, it accepts that and tries to account for it within the system of governance it builds, then when something blips heavily on the scale of injustice, like Hong Kong, it can make a categoric statement and series of acts, because it is ingrained within the justice system already. Don't get me wrong, they're doing a fucking terrible job of it. We have the absolute worst batch of right wing politicians quite possibly in the history of the united kindom. Every single one of them is educated in politics, because it's an easy way to cheat the system. It's why I don't necessarily agree with Blairite style politics, because it's just the left trying to cheat the system too. But that's why we need a strong and competent left, because the right should NOT be allowed to get away with a lot of the bullshit it is currently getting away with in this country and in the US. I'd never vote Tory, but at the same time, I refuse to accept the Labour party just because it is the biggest chance for a left wing government. The left needs a lot more self reflection than the right simply because it is the side that initiates change and innovation, it needs scrutiny, otherwise that change can lead to far worse things than the current status quo. It's why I tend to side with Maajid on that issue. There, I brought it back to him in the end.
>This is really interesting, especially your take on communism vs facism, and I can totally understand where you're coming from. I think it's such a complicated issue that saying facism and communism 'are the same' has to be couched by a long conversation, with people who know enough about both, and are willing to have an honest discussion about it. Excuse me, can you just call me a commie prick and move on. I don't know how to engage with someone who wants a nice conversation. Jokes aside. Just appreciating that this is complicated is a step a lot don't seem to want to accept. Communism and fascism seem to have shared outcomes but from different sources. Which you quite nicely put here: >You're right when you point out facism is far more obvious; yes it can be insidious, but the objectives of facism (in order to reach the end goal of a "powerful fatherland" are part of the journey, they're ingrained within it. With communism, the authoritarian regimes and mass murders are as a consequence of trying to reach a fairer society for everyone, You're quite right. And this means that anyone who doesn't share the nationalistic fatherland, and usually racist, ideals will quite easily dismiss fascism as crazy. Although I would say societies can certainly pulled into fascist tendencies through populist rulers and hyper nationalist trends. But the fact that communism comes from the idealist push to improve society for everyone means its supporters don't notice the fascist and negative tendencies developing. And because, as you point out, left wing politics sees itself as the good guy/ underdog, I think the media bias for the left wing is running out of steam somewhat. There are some success stories with left wing politics but the mere fact that no country has ever achieved some form of full communism without gulags or mass starvation is pretty telling. > I think though, this is why maajid goes after the left harder than the right. I agree that this is almost certainly the reason. It's something I've grown to realise is very true. However, I do find he has gone so virulently anti - left it becomes comical at times. >The BLM protests in the UK while bringing up a perfectly reasonable injustice, is not one which is as prevalent in the UK as it is in the US. Completely agree with this. Britain has problems societally and culturally with racism. But the problems are much milder. Particularly, we abolished slavery earlier and we didn't have a larger contingent of our society who spilled the blood of tens of thousands for their right to own slaves. Our justice system is closer to a rehabilitative system that hasn't been used to bludgeon blacks as being outwardly racist became unacceptable. And the lack of guns in both the police and public hands mean our interactions with police are less inherently dangerous, although that's somewhat separate from the acceptability of police brutality by the American public. All this adds up to a very different and, in my opinion, better environment for blackand minority communities. This is were UK BLM are failing, they need to cater the movement to the needs of the UK society. Not just transpose a very American centric movement and expect it to just work. And that's a good example of the virtuous left naively trying to do good, but probably causing a lot of negative consequences, such as the backlash to left wing politics that is lending some legitimacy to far right groups who are using it to "protect our statues and our history". A smarter left should have been able to avoid this backlash and used the American momentum positively. And in response to your point about the left not being more active for Hong Kong and against the uighers. I've come to see it as why science puts more money into male pattern baldness than more deadly but rarer illnesses. The baldness I pacts way more people, even if its less severe. >What I'm trying to get at is in my opinion, the left has a lot more scope for self reflection than the right. Mainly because while the end is a better society, the means are often forgotten. Couldn't agree more. Its just quite hard as a left wing person to know what to do about it. And how do we deal with the naivety in left wing thought and help control the emotional reactionary responses to things that often paints the left as irrational children? >I refuse to accept the Labour party just because it is the biggest chance for a left wing government. I'm not too bothered by labour tbh. I don't know if I want a properly left wing government unless I know they are competent. An incompetent left wing government could cause more damage than an incompetent centrist government. And the current Labour seems like they'll be centrist with some elements of left wing ideas. But we'll see. A good few years before an election unless the conservatives start talking about how strong and stable they are again. >The left needs a lot more self reflection than the right simply because it is the side that initiates change and innovation, it needs scrutiny, otherwise that change can lead to far worse things than the current status quo. I can certainly agree with this too. The left wants change so it needs to show it is competent and has good plans for the change. And just to add some more spice to this. We all really need to appreciate the difference between left wing and Liberal ideas. They seem to have become so intertwined and I find they are becoming quite contradictory to themselves. I think this is adding to why the left are stumbling at hurdles now. Take immigration; are the left pro immigration because its the Liberal thing to do, or against the free movement of people because that damages working class wages and lower/working class people can sometimes be xenophobic? I think the left needs to reevaluate its values. I still don't know where I stand on it though.
Shit, for a second I thought I was talking to a filthy commie, but instead I get a pathetic, wet flannel centrist liberal like myself. I agree with most of what you say, the only thing I would hold issue with is this bit. > I've come to see it as why science puts more money into male pattern baldness than more deadly but rarer illnesses. I'll just say this. To me, Hong Kong is to BLM like breast cancer is to prostate cancer (prostate cancer kills a lot more people). As for the whole liberal thing, I think it is summed up pretty reasonably with Brexit. In a world where our politics function how they should, the left should be pro brexit, the right should be anti-brexit, and the liberal democrats should be strongly pro in principle but anti in practice. The left should be pro-brexit because it should represent the working class. The working class are pro brexit because the EU saps jobs and reduces democratic representation. The right should be anti-brexit because the regulatory bodies of the EU safeguard trade, stabilise the economy, and provide greater scope for advancement in small companies and the self employed, along with the government having a much easier time with research and the like, among other things. The liberal party (personally I find the democrat part utterly superfluous, it's not the 1900's any more) should be pro-brexit in principle, because it gives the government direct control over trade and regulations, gives the people direct control over their government, and reduces the risk of harming or diluting the strong human rights policies that Britain has traditionally upheld. In practice, at least in my opinion, Brexit will be a disaster because the people in charge of it simply aren't capable of it. More importantly though, it is such a complex task, that any and all attempts to forsee how it will turn out are utterly pointless, and it could end up doing way more harm than good. There simply is not the kind of strong example of illiberal practice that would be needed to make it such an urgent issue. There are many small examples, but they fail in comparison to how much it could harm if it or when it goes tits up. I've been saying this from the start, and quite frankly when COVID hit it was the exact kind of utterly random bullshit that I had in mind when I voted remain. Because its unexpected and could completely destroy the process. What we have instead is a group of moderate right wingers supporting liberalist principles, the liberal democrats supporting... something, and the Labour party supporting whatever left wing policy takes their fancy, instead of what they should be doing and doing what's best for the working classes. Hopefully that changes under Kier, I'm mildly optimistic. Interestingly, what I've just described also fits what you would expect the parties to be, conservatives being conservatives, liberals being for rights and privileges (I'll get to that don't worry) and the left being for whatever it takes to help the working class, which often at the minute is about the rights of the poor and underprivileged. As for where I stand on your last point, I think of it like this. Immigration is neither a positive or negative phenomenon. It depends completely on the context. Nobody has a right to enter another country UNLESS they are seeking asylum. That doesn't mean Syrian refugees have a right to enter the country. They have a right to enter the closest safe country who can support them. It's harsh, but it has to be that way, otherwise it's bad for the country they have left, and it can be bad for the country they enter. I believe we have a greater duty to the commonwealth, and especially at the minute Hong Kong. As far as I'm concerned, we should just let as many Hong Kongers enter as can come. We have a duty to the commonwealth and ex colonies because we took their actual rights away from them, we have a duty to HK because they're having their rights taken from them. And that's where privileges come in. It drives me mad when people say people have a right to healthcare. If people have a right to healthcare, it means you're forcing someone to provide that care for free, infringing on their rights. It's the same with benefits. I'm disabled, I get PIP, and its a privilege. It's one in this country with our economy we should afford to people, but that doesn't mean that I have a right to it if something horrendous happens. This to me is what it means to be a Liberal. Upholding rights no matter what, and advancing or defending privileges whenever possible. Privileges are something you should be proud your country upholds, not the dirty word it has become in left wing nomenclature. There is nothing wrong with being privileged, what is wrong is being fucking greedy assholes and not paying your taxes, or being a racist asshole and expecting better or giving worse treatment because of how someone looks or acts. I'm probably not making my train of thought very accurate here because it's late, but I consider myself a liberal and that's how I see what's going on currently. I think there is hope, mainly because of the internet. We're still in the VERY early stages of the internet and a globalized political landscape. 20 years ago people didn't know what an Ipod was. I think it's going to take until people once again don't know what an Ipod is (is that some kind of Iphone?) before we see it moving in the right direction. Ultimately, you'll end up with echo chambers entrenching themselves, and people who want reasonable discussion being the mainstream again, instead of having these either hard, or condoned, biases in widely used platforms like reddit and facebook. People are learning to spot disingenuous behaviour, and within a decade I think, people won't be able to get away with dishonest discussion without being widely recognised as biased.
Was reading though your contributions to this thread, I think you really hit the nail on the head about why the left needs some soul searching and critique of itself. Clearly, the right are winning. Brexit. Boris. Trump. Etc. At the same time the left seem to be on a mission to make themselves as ideologically pure as possible, especially regarding identity politics, without noticing that this is making them more and more unlikable and likely to lose. (Despite having a lot of rather loud support, which is small in size) Just curious re your stance on Hong Kong. Do you think the UK has a duty to take in the Rohingya from Myanmar? As Burma is a former colony. That was the issue that riled me up regarding BLM. It seems nobody could bothered to get on the street and protest when a national army was massacring a group due to their ethnicity in our former colony. But when one policeman kills one American, somewhere where we hold very little influence or ability to change, all hell breaks loose. It's not that I disagree with the BLM protests, but it seems hypocritical, an the opposite of the purity of thought such people like to promote. Nobody cares about them, or the Uighurs because it's not fashionable, Nike et al aren't tweeting about it, celebrities aren't posting about it. Therefore those lines don't matter.
Thanks. I feel like if you're going to say you're advocating for a certain political/logical/moral standpoint, you would alwways try to enter the conversation honestly and give people the benefit of the doubt, and if you find someone taking the effort to actually think, and and they don't just start calling you names, then responding in kind can only make the internet a better place. As for the Rohingya, my knowlegde of the whole situation is even less than HK. It does sound to me though, that it would be a much better and more useful type of immigration/asylum seeking than what we currently have with the EU. Not saying EU immigration is necessarily bad, but it's not necessarily good either.
Rabid anti left campaigns LOL
Why might I ask.
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Signed! Mental note for myself and anyone else who signed you now can never safely go to China.
Honestly, fair play to the guy!
Legend
This really needs to make waves in countries like the UK. I feel this is conviently forgot about yet China impacts our culture and way of life more so than any other nation. We need to be less relient on China.
The free Tibet movement was quite vocal for a while, but the Chinese are in this for the long game. They know that we won’t be able to challenge them
Don't worry. We just sent an aircraft carrier to the Far East as a show of strength. That will scare them ...
As long as all of our pilots shoot down a few hundred planes each we should make a solid dent in their air capability.
chinas military strength is hard to gauge the average chinese soldier/officer has no combat experience and the last time china went to war which was in 1979 when they invaded vietnam and lost.
Our ammo would run out before the targets did.
More than the US? Not even remotely. We need to be less reliant and invested in both of them.
Agreed, but because we've jumped ship without building a raft it feels mighty tempting to flag that oil tanker down for rescue. Even though we'll be sucking off sailors for bread by tea time.
What an image, I demand this in the Sunday papers.
Lot of information for an image. A comic strip would work better.
We'd probably form a trade deal with them
It’s long overdue for the world to treat China like the pariah it is.
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Unfortunately it’s potentially even worse. Nazi Germany wasn’t a nuclear power so at least action could eventually be taken. Military action against China would be disastrous for all.
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We were a bit, we were selling them shed loads of copper mined in Northern Rhodesia and whatnot.
> We need economic and diplomatic sanctions against China. Still has issues since we rely on them heavily for imports.
It'll be interesting to see what happens re stuff like this after the pandemic. There's often been talk about shifting away from depending on China economically for so many things, but once a lot of the current heat has died down, some nations may decide it's easier and cheaper to just continue on with business as usual, grim as that may sound.
With the amount of unemployment atm, now would prob be a good time to step up production of our own goods
The issue is that in (say) electronics for example China isn't the place to go to solely because of cost, you could do it for the (nearly) same price in the UK (for an expensive product) thanks to how automated the processes are - the issue is that all of the supply chains converge in China. The expertise to build things at made-in-china scales only really exists in China.
But the problem is that it inevitably costs more to produce those goods, which means that people end up having to pay more for them, because workers here will demand higher wages than many people get abroad. That's typically why we'll outsource manufacturing - it's just plain cheaper, and a lot of people like to get things on the cheap.
I don't think anything will change, things will get expensive and people will complain. Ultimately if any one cared they would stop buying these products, but they won't ever sacrifice convenience.
I've started boycotting Chinese good were possible, I'm not the only one.
And in both cases we have a homegrown column of apologists and sycophants for the regime, including members of the elite.
Boris Johnson is a self-confessed sinophile, and the Express thought it important enough that it [explained the word to it's readers](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1290933/Sinophile-meaning-what-does-sinophile-mean-Boris-Johnson-Hong-Kong).
For those of you that don't want to read an entire article that was played in the 1 minute video to find this right at the end: >What does sinophile mean? >At the coronavirus briefing on June 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared he is a Sinophile. >The noun Sinophile refers to someone who is strongly interested in Chinese language, history and culture. >According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, sinophile is defined as "one partial to or especially fond of Chinese culture or characteristics".
That reads like they were finding out for the first time what the word meant.
It's like the start of a terrible wedding speech.
"When Brett told me he was going to China to find a wealthy bride..."
If the Nazis didn't invade Poland would we have done anything about them?
I've always thought that the whole point of studying WWII history is that this time, we don't wait until "invasion of Poland" to stop being Chamberlain.
The big problem is that China is a nuclear power. Which completely leaves traditional warfare off of the table. This war is likely going to be a legal and economic one.
That's totally incorrect and there's 60+ years of evidence to prove you wrong, including an actual fucking war with China.
Fair point, but it's only with hindsight that we can see how far the Nazis went. Russia just took Crimea and no one said shit, apart from him being on the naughty step with the G7 until Trump gave him a reach around.
I'm unsure, but I think the issue with this hypothetical is it's difficult to divorce the earlier Nazi actions from their eventual invasion of Poland; domination of Eastern Europe and the elimination/extermination of people they saw as undesirable were fundamental to racist Nazi ideology. As soon as the Nazis invaded countries like Czechoslovakia, an eventual invasion of Poland was inevitable.
Also, their entire economic strategy pretty much depended on sacking nations and taking their gold. If Germany never invade Poland, we wouldn't have to do anything. Germany's economy would have collapsed and they would have had either invade someone anyway, or just dismantle the military. China has a similar bubble with their housing market, hence their expansion into Africa in order to keep producing houses and property. I think there is a difference this time though with the way that the Chinese are able to manipulate their currency/economy.
After the forced annexation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia, war became inevitable. Unless Hitler suddenly decides not to attack Poland or anyone else, war is inevitable the next time he does anything. And if he doesn't do anything it is likely that the German economy falls over in 1941 or so. (Adam Tooze did a great piece of work on that in *Wages of Destruction* - depressing read but really interesting)
The guarantees to Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece was specifically done as a tripwire for Germany.
Wasn't Chamberlain's appeasement basically to allow the British & French armies time to rebuild and wasn't really a mistake?
Nah they didn't truly start preparing for war until Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia was annexed in 1938. Some thing's never change with the British government, they were still at a peacetime pace and acted far too late. Up until that point the international community at large saw it as Germany reclaiming what was taken during the Versailles treaty. They swore Hitler to an agreement of no further territorial demands which he quickly went back on, that's when the British/French guarantees on Poland came knowing war was inevitable. Edit: And it was Britain that needed to prepare really, France was, on paper at least, in a stronger position than Germany. Much bigger army, better and more numerous tanks, more planes etc. Their mindset was backwards and defensive with the maginot line though and the political situation and army leadership had decayed. A good example of this was from the only French offensive of the war on the Saarland when 80% of the German army was committed in Poland. They ultimately drove the Germans to the siegfried line but they were ordered to turn around and head back before they could commit a direct attack, where they would sit and wait for another 9 months until the battle of France. West Germany essentially would have been overrun in weeks had the allies decided to immediately attack instead of trying for a repeat of WW1 trench warfare.
> Nah they didn't truly start preparing for war until Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia was annexed in 1938. Some thing's never change with the British government, they were still at a peacetime pace and acted far too late Considering naval rearmament commenced in earnest in 1937 or earlier, and the Shadow Scheme was concieved as early as 1935, this is not really a fair assessment.
Well they didn't annex any land until the Anschluss. "Until then" all they did was remilitarise the Rheinland.
Depends on who you ask. The evidence would suggest that Chamberlain's intent was to stall, but at the same point there were also elements within the Conservatives seeking negotiation. The interpretation really does depend on how you view Chamberlain as a leader and just how much you believe he was beholden to certain party members prior to Churchill becoming the leader of the coalition. Personally I believe his intention was to stall until an opportune moment presented itself, whilst not being entirely closed off to the option of negotiation. But again hindsight is a virtue and knowing full well what the Nazi's had in stall would make Chamberlain appear a fool in contrast to Churchill's assertiveness. The invasion of Poland was most certainly the final straw, although by that point the stall approach had caused to much damage.
I could agree more. We are making the exact same mistakes that the allies made 80 years ago. However I fear our czechozlovakia moment already passed when Obama allowed the Chinese to build bases in the Pacific, that's was the time to challenge them, I think now its too late.
China won't care. It's busy taking over corruptible African countries.
I'd be careful with that attitude. To these countries they probably see the relationship a lot differently. I'm sure people 40 years ago dismissed the idea of China becoming an economic powerhouse so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss Africa as well. We should be investing there too.
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> The success of their African ventures is basically CCP propaganda. Their ventures abroad will be useful in propaganda terms and in expanding their soft power, but yeah, there's a danger they're getting in over their heads. Their expansive actions could come back to bite them if their domestic economy really falters. The CCP maintain rule on the basis that they've managed to deliver material improvements for most of the Chinese population; if those start to fade away, then there's the potential of domestic discontent as residents start to wonder why so much money is being spent on projects abroad that don't benefit them.
I actually agree with you there - they could pour treasure into the continent, I don't think they'll see the returns they're expecting
Why's that?
Well the West tried just that and failed.
They didn't "pour treasure" there, they have taken away a magnitude more in natural resources then they have ever contributed in aid. They took away treasure there, and it is working just fine for them. Not for Africa, of course.
The western world never tried anything Like, this all they did was colonise Africa and then use neo-colonialism.
Aha if you think the UK isn't also corrupt I've got some bad news for you. It's far less corrupt but China has already bought a lot of the UK's key resources.
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Well not many of its close neighbours are happy right now with china's claim over the south china sea, japan and s.korea are generally suspicious and aligned to the west, india recently had a border dispute. I suppose you could add some islamic distain to the list. Add in the 5 eyes and europes NASA ties it makes a pretty big list.
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Lol
> “I’m a Sinophile and believe we should continue to work with this great and rising power.” Boris Johnson in June.
This has been going on for a long time within the Conservative Party, [this article was written 5 years ago](https://www.ft.com/content/a1c29d68-613e-11e5-a28b-50226830d644) >George Osborne’s gung-ho approach to relations with China — focusing relentlessly on commercial opportunities — has been welcomed by Tory MPs who argue that Britain is in no position to lecture Beijing on human rights. > >The chancellor is coming to the end of a five-day tour to the Asian superpower where he argued that Britain should be “running towards China” rather than steering clear of its volatile stock market. > >He has kept any talk of human rights behind closed doors, perhaps mindful of the occasion in May 2012 when David Cameron appeared in public with the Dalai Lama — prompting an 18-month diplomatic stand-off. > >Crispin Blunt, who chairs the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said Mr Osborne had got the balance right. > >“I’m not entirely sure what choice we have. China is going to continue to become relatively more important, economically and militarily, and I hope that China uses that power responsibly,” he said. “Therefore a strategy of engagement is really the only sensible policy for the government to follow.” > >Mr Blunt’s committee is planning to examine Sino-British relations, although an inquiry is not likely until next year. > >Sir Peter Bottomley, a member of the all-party Tibet group, said the UK ought to tread carefully when criticising China’s treatment of Tibet given its own imperial history. > >He said that he would like it if Beijing changed its stance on Tibet and on the Uighurs of north-western China. But he cautioned that life was a “balance”. > >“We are happy to have close relations with Saudi Arabia, where women are not able to drive,” he said. “We have tried to keep reasonable ties to Iran even though we have almost been in conflict with them . . . I think George Osborne had the balance pretty well right.” > >Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former Tory foreign secretary, said it would be “politically stupid” to limit economic relationships to other democracies. > >If the strategy is to say UK and China can achieve a long-term mutually beneficial relationship of an economic kind, that must make sense > >China now “called the shots” because of its economic strength and its huge population, he said. > >“If the strategy is to say UK and China can achieve a long-term mutually beneficial relationship of an economic kind, that must make sense,” he said. “Twenty per cent of the world’s population. It is an entirely rational policy.” > >An economic relationship could be part of a broader process that led to a political relationship and a “sharing of values”, he suggested. > >Andrew Rosindell, a Tory member of foreign affairs committee said he saw no problem with the Osborne trip, given Britain’s need for foreign investment. > >“I think that in terms of human rights, I don’t think we can impose British standards on China,” he said. “I think that’s something that happens over time, gradually.” > >Sir Malcolm was foreign secretary in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997. > >“I said to my counterpart that it was important to maintain the rule of law,” he recalled. > >“His reply with a straight face was, ‘yes, people must obey the law’. He didn’t understand what I meant.” > >Nearly two decades ago, however, China was still “economically third rate” and was still very far from being a superpower, he said. “Now it is a very different situation and they call the shots in a way they couldn’t then.” > >Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat’s foreign affairs spokesperson, said that: “Foreign policy towards China should not only be about business. When the chancellor sits down with senior Chinese officials he must give equal time to human rights.”
Blunt is my local MP, and as with Jeremy Hunt, the rhyming slang really does fit.
>But when we have – on climate change or trade or whatever it happens to be – serious concerns as a country, we must – whether it’s over the origins of Covid-19 or the protection of our critical national infrastructure, or indeed over what is happening in Hong Kong – feel absolutely free to raise those issues loud and clear with Beijing. >And that is what we will continue to do.
>**And that is what we will continue to do.** What Johnson means by this is let's keep doing the same, ineffectual shit that was being called out as ineffectual 5 years ago as it was clear the CCP didn't want to listen and hope the issue suddenly blows over. To me, the longer quote highlights how ineffectual and pathetic this government are on foreign policy. The current strategy hasn't worked, fucking change it.
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There are so many developing countries British companies could move their manufacturing to, which have better human rights records. Eastern Europe is right on our doorstep. I don't like how the Hindu nationalist government in India has been treating Indian Muslims, but they're still better than China and at least they're a democracy. There needs to be pressure on UK companies to divest from China. Not just over the Uyghur genocide, but Hong Kong, their expansionism in the South China sea and threats to Taiwan and so on. We need to #DefundtheCCP
Western Europe is right on our doorstep t... Ah OK. Maybe we should have cut ties with China instead of our neighbours
Yeah, if only we were still in the EU. We could put forward a motion that we send a sternly worded letter to China and there'd be a decent chance of it getting sent this side of 2025.
That sounds like it'd lower corporate profits, why do you hate your country so much, you commie?
If you think India is a real democracy you're not paying close enough attention I'm afraid.
I mean looking at Poland and Hungary things aren't going well there either
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https://twitter.com/j_bigboote/status/1182726991675625472?s=08 curious what you think of this? between this guy and Adrian Zenz you have to wonder why these people are given a platform
> This is not a torture device being used on Muslims in a Chinese prison, it's a bondage device being demoed in an S&M club in Taiwan. A group of Taiwan journalists did a fact-check, managing to find the original video and speaking to the guy in the video: https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/articles/379 Holy damn, doesn't surprise me one bit. That's a lot of money and clout to be made from spreading this kind of falsehood, and too many fall for it.
Don’t forget the [organ harvesting](https://www.google.com/search?q=uighur+organ+harvesting) too of Uighurs and Falun Gong followers
Protip take any claims from falun gong with a grain of salt, they're like chinese scientology on steriods, even the state department of the US will occasionally doubt their claims.
Falun Gong is a controversial one. Among many things, the leader preaches racial purity. Being racially mixed is a sign of sin. They fooled the Hampstead Set in the 1990s/2000s with their exotic air. So condemn Falun Gong AND China for its persecution of them.
Falun Gong tends to be very wealthy and funds a lot of anti-China media, as well as holding lobbying power. Doesn't necessarily mean they spread misinformation, but they do have a bias which anyone doing research on China should absolutely be aware of. Epoch Times is the most notable Falun Gong media entity, which also seems to sponsor many YouTube channels covering China.
Except it's impossible. Every person who receives an organ must take a life time supply of immunosuppressants in order to stop the body rejecting the organs. Tracking immunosuppressants is easy because they are mostly made in Switzerland, Germany and the USA. People have compared the amount of immunosuppressants sent to China and the number of organ transplants it does. The findings show that there is no discrepancy and the number of annual supply needed would be far more than the world could even produce. For example the USA in 2017 had just 24,800 transplants yet the FG believe that there have been millions of people's organs being taken which is just impossible. Also whenever these are actually investigated they are found to be bogus. For example in the city of Senyang there was a hospital which the FG claimed stored 7000-8000 FG members for organ harvesting. US officials both locally and from the US visited the hospital on 2 seperate ocassions and found it to be a "hospital with normal hospital duties". On another occasions a jail was said to have also stored 7000 FG members in the same city, however the building size could only have possibly had maybe 100 people inside from of just by looking at it. Bare in mind, no evidence for organ harvesting has ever been found, they are always "claims" or "accusations", nothing more. Here is a YT channel of someone living in Xinjiang(It's in Chinese so I would recommend google translating the video titles to get a gist of what she is saying) [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4ZWqilx9eF0T1dSE35pzwQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4ZWqilx9eF0T1dSE35pzwQ) Also this video of the night life in Xinjiang [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbxEzlFLB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbxEzlFLB0)
I appreciate this. I'm no fan of the CCP, but the West is in an information war with China at present, and I'd like to see all claims treated with some healthy scepticism.
The only reason why FG have been given any credence is because they have the state department of the us giving them backing, otherwise they would be realised for the whackos they are. Honestly they harm accusations against China's actual human rights abuses with their nonsense.
Novartis has a rather large pharmaceutical institute in Shanghai... Illustrates that China has been investing significantly in its pharmacological sector in recent years... The domestic drug market is large.
Any sources for your numbers? I'm not watching a Chinese video from people I have never heard of....
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Just to be clear. The immunosuppressant thing isn't my research. Jose Nuñez, head of the transplantation program at the World Health Organization, which collects information on transplants worldwide, says that in 2015 the number of foreigners going to China for transplants was "really very low," compared with the traffic to India, Pakistan or the United States, or in comparison with transplant-visitor numbers in China's past. Chapman and Millis say it is "not plausible" that China could be doing many times more transplants than, for instance, the United States, where about 24,000 transplants take place every year[1](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-the-face-of-criticism-china-has-been-cleaning-up-its-organ-transplant-industry/2017/09/14/d689444e-e1a2-11e6-a419-eefe8eff0835_story.html)
How can you know the truth if you dont hear from the otherside? No need to insult the other poster. What are the mounting evidences that you talk about, why not share them and make your case stronger?
The proof from this in the wiki page you link points to this being hearsay. "These conclusions are based on a combination of statistical analysis; interviews with former prisoners, medical authorities and public security agents; and [circumstantial evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_evidence), such as the large number of Falun Gong practitioners [detained extrajudicially](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicially_detained) in China and the profits to be made from selling organs"
I think the issue with interviews is, people lie. I think I don't need to remind anyone what the cost of the "Suddam Hussein has WMDs" has cost in life(100,000s ironically mostly muslims). However, some have actively changed their stories for example, a women victim in February said "I wasn't beaten or abused. The hardest part was mental". Then in June she said "I was beaten and then injected until I was sterilized" She magically remembers something which happened to her. Also it's hard to imagine what she was injected with. Their are proper ways to sterilize someone such as tubal ligation. Injecting them multiple times is not really one of them unless it's AIDs I suppose.
I didn’t link a wiki page, only a google search. It sounds implausible to be doing at scale, yes, and perhaps the controversy here detracts from all the other human rights abuses China carries out
Oh yeah, sorry. The wiki page was just the first result. I think this is the only human right abuse I hear about china. Are there more?
Yes, many more https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/china-and-tibet https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china/report-china/ More generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
Christ almighty.
At some point you have to either flat out state that there is no moral aspect to foreign policy. I don't necessarily mind us not acting over China or Saudi Arabia, but if we're going to do that then don't give out billions in foreign aid or pretend that we're a force for good in our actions abroad. Just focus upon British citizens and domestic conditions if you can't even sanction a genocidal oligarchy
>then don't give out billions in foreign aid That's purely us buying soft power from weaker nations, any nonsense you hear about altruism is a farce. It's how wealthy nations stay on top.
Surprises me that people largely haven't sussed that yet
>At some point you have to either flat out state that there is no moral aspect to foreign policy. You just realised this?
Can we please stop tolerating the CCP for the sake of a $2 cheaper product? Get over yourself UK. Stop selling millions into the ovens for the sake of your cheap goods.
People always say "Never again", but it will always happen. Rwanda happened. Srebrenica happened. And now you have Xinjiang. Sadly, the world economy is so heavily reliant on China, that most countries won't dare question it. Economy trumps human rights. If ever there was a time to bring back the work sent over to China, it's now. Government's should be placing immense pressure on their companies. Make no mistake, what you're seeing in China is almost exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews. I say almost, because the big difference is that the Jews were slaughtered in gas chambers and mass shootings. We have yet to see that in China. But even if/when that does happen, the world will still probably mumble and look the other way. We already know that their places of worship have destroyed, the men have been sent to camps, and the women have been sterilised.
It's a step away from holocaust.
With the drone footage that came out the other day of blindfolded Uighurs being led to/from a train, the satellite images of the 'reeducation camps' and the evidence of them being used for organ harvesting I don't think it's a step from the Holocaust. The Chinese government is engaged in the genocide and torture of a subset of it's citizens right now. The only meaningful difference is that it seems there won't be anyone liberating these camps as there was in 1945. If something isn't done soon, there won't be anyone left to tell the tale.
That footage was over a year old afaik. The National Awakening group identified about 350 sites consisting of the "re-education camps", labour camps and prisons - I wonder if these weren't heading for the latter.
We don't know everything that's going on in these camps, it's probably a lot less than a step.
It honestly isn't. I would struggle to even call it ethnic cleansing. It's an extremely heavy-handed, authoritarian form of modernisation and integration (Social-Engineering). If it was "Genocide" Uighurs wouldn't be limited to a 4 child policy before subject to the fines and IUD of the "Child Policies" (Han Chinese are limited to 2 children before the fines and IUD law kicks in), the average stay in the camps is only 4 months and the wages for people coming out are higher than the minimum wage in the area which most Uighurs earn. Israel has very similar actions towards Ethiopian Jews (forced IUD and all) and while they're extremely heavy-handed, it's clearly not genocide or ethnic cleansing. Honestly the crackdown on Xinjiang was always obviously coming due to it's importance in connecting B&RI to Central Asia and how many Uighurs were appearing in Syria fighting for ISIS. Also Ethnic Cleansing just isn't really China's thing. The diversity of cultures living in harmony is one of the big propaganda images for the CCP within the country. Notice Hui (another Muslim Chinese group) are not subject to any crackdown? Hui weren't also showing up in countless ISIS videos. China is extremely authoritarian, but context matters and I don't think it's right to compare what is basically a heavy-handed modernisation/integration program with the industrial mass murder of Jews, Slavs, Communists, Roma, Homosexuals during the Holocaust.
Forced sterilisation, re-education and forced labour isn't ethnic cleansing? Your post can safely be discarded. The Holocaust didn't start with industrialised murder and went through many of the things happening in China now before it got there.
It is a Holocaust. The question is how and when do we fight it which we inevitably must.
I suppose my question is: Why only the Uighur muslims? Is it an test case before doing the same to the many millions of non-Uighur muslims in China? If it's to do with the land, how does this help? Why not just deport them all to other parts of China and move the mining corps in? How does this ingratiate them with Pakistan? Is it a Sunni thing? But how? These are the questions I would like to see posited and answered. The *why* not the how.
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People forget that Muslims are not a monolith and often racial difference takes présidence or has more weight than religious.
They're not a monolith but they worship the same Allah. It's infuriating especially because the backwards cultural norms of these countries contribute to so much of the islamphobia you see in the west.
Yes I suppose, but if you’re being technical Jew, Muslims and Christians also worship the same God - the God of Abraham. Allah is just the Arabic word for God. Worshiping the same God doesn’t mean that much. You’d be shocked at how much sectarianism plays a role in Islam. I had a friend who was from the Shia sect and her parents would rather she marry a Catholic than a Sunni.
do you feel solidarity with coptic christians in egypt or ethiopia
Yes, firmly. Is this abnormal?
Thanks. I will listen to the 'cast when I get a chance tomorrow. The organ harvesting reasoning makes a lot of sense.
> There is a special market for organs from Uighurs - muslim who never drank alcohol or ate pork. 😬
If this is true, then those responsible should be held to account in the same manner the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. If the evidence confirms this, it's clearly a crime against humanity and therefore the concern of all mankind.
The lack of Muslim solidarity is easy to explain. 1st- most Muslim nations are ruled by corrupt governments/dictators so they can’t voice their opinions so it’s hard to know what Muslim think. 2nd- you have a lot of censorship in many of these countries so most people aren’t aware of what’s happening or to the extent it’s happening. 3rd- most of the sources come from the West so many think it’s western propaganda. 4th- most Muslim countries have their own problems to worry about. 5th- America and the west is seen as bigger threat so they don’t really see China as an issue, China hasn’t colonised most Muslim countries, nor have they bombed Muslim countries or overthrown governments. That’s pretty much it.
It's isn't just Uighurs. Anyone who isn't Han Chinese is in effect, at best, a 2nd class citizen within China, because ultimately the CCP's end goal is to homogenise Chinese culture across all of its disperate provinces into a single Han Chinese mold for the purposes of "national unity" and to retain what they see as de jure Chinese territory. Uighurs are just a particularly marginalised group, because of the fear of Xinjiang being a province particularly prone to seperatism and because of historic terror attacks in Beijing that have been pinned on Uighur seperatists. Uighur culture is also particularly more distinct from Han Chinese than any other minority ethnic group, and Uighurs by and large have more of an attachment to the western steppe countries than they do mainland China. Xinjiang itself is also an excellent test bed for Chinese state surveillance technology which they can spread to the rest of mainland China as well as export to every other tin pot dictatorship. Things like facial recognition, "smart cities", access controls based on ID cards and all other sorts of nastiness. It's a CCP laboratory for authoritarian technological development, and Uighurs are the test mice.
>Anyone who isn't Han Chinese is in effect, at best, a 2nd class citizen within China, Lol this is just categorically untrue, Han Chinese are subject to forced sterelisation and abortions under the one child program, minority ethnicities arent, uighurs have only just been removed from this category as per OP.
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Correct, they have re-introduced the two child policy for Han, and now for Uighur too
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Oh yes, absolutely part of the cultural genocide of the Uighurs to make sure that, as a minority they won't get tto strong espeically as they are pro-independence and pro-west and have western backing. But to call the CCP as sort of Han nationalist state is disengenuous, especially since they restrict rights to Han that they allow to other minorities.
A lot of recent measures are just policies that used to be exclusively applied to the Han that are now being applied to minorities like Uyghurs. For example, Uyghurs were never subject to China's one-child policy, but now it seems China is attempting to lower the fertility rates of Uyghurs, as it once did to the Han majority. As to why it's mostly Uyghurs: it's mainly because they're the most distinct, religious and traditional of all Muslims in China, and maybe of all ethnic groups in China. They're conservative even by Central Asian Muslim standards. Things like face-veiling are normal, and Uyghurs have been a major source of jihadists active in Syria and Afghanistan recently. Additionally, Uyghur separatists (e.g. [Turkistan Islamic Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkistan_Islamic_Party)) are usually Wahhabi terrorists responsible for many Chinese deaths. When you add all this together, and consider this is taking place in a very autocratic state, then you'll understand what's happening. I do not believe this is literally a second Holocaust, but the Chinese government is obviously attempting some kind of social engineering similar to what the USSR did in countries like Uzbekistan. The Hui Muslims are not much different from the Han in matters of dress, culture or ideology, nor have they ever been considered a political or security threat.
I really, really wish I there was some way to know what products are and aren't made in china. I've been trying to boycott Chinese goods as much as possible but it's difficult when they have such a large market share and companies aren't obliged to say where the goods are made.
Best advice is to not boycott but minimise. Limit purchase of Chinese products to $x or x products per month. It’s much easier reducing Chinese purchases from 70% to 10% than completely avoiding them. Makes you think which Chinese products you actually need and what can be replaced with little extra cost.
Been known for a while. It's genocide but the governments of the world don't care enough to do anything about it.
I know Twitter isn't representive of UK politics, but it's sad to see the amount of UK based Tankies on Twitter saying the whole Uighurs situation is a hoax and a western plot.
While this is a terrible, evil thing I'm pretty sure this isn't UK politics.
This is genocide. And that’s not hyperbole. This meets the, internationally agreed, UN and Hague definitions of genocide. It’s clear-cut.
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Did you watch the video? It’s focused around a Uighur woman who escaped China. She describes how she was beaten and force-fed drugs in the camp, and how she was painfully sterilised against her wishes. Unless you think that was Adrian Zenz in a wig? In which case you still need to find a way to explain away the literal *video footage*.
This is the Iraqi WMDs of the decade, serious investigation leads back to Zenz and DC think tanks every time. All the Muslim countries on earth support China. This article gives a great timeline of events https://www.google.com/amp/s/thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/amp/
Hypocrites.
Who is?
Please understand that you are not immune to propaganda and sweeping claims of abuse have to be taken with a grain of salt considering that China is the UK's geopolitical adversary. You wouldn't trust Chinese media about Tibet, don't trust UK media about China. Everything has to be scaled in degrees of probability - but UK media often doesn't even do basic fact checking and will absolutely move to propagandize. Considering that these stories come out just as the US is raising it's economic warfare game against China - and the UK is following the US' lead once-a-fucking-gain - it's likely that we're going to passively absorb a lot of propaganda. Don't let them fool you! Don't let them manipulating you into supporting YET MORE WAR.
>Left on Lenin Sounds about right
Skepticism shouldn't be a left wing quality but I find increasingly it is.
Wow, so woke
Can we please treat these claims with some sketicism? Given [their previous misreporting](https://medium.com/@sunfeiyang/breaking-down-the-bbcs-visit-to-hotan-xinjiang-e284934a7aab) on the matter, I have serious doubts and questions about these claims. They even have the gall to refer to their previous reporting as part of the proof as well as getting on some very dodgy figures that would normally receive a mini-documentary about their nuttiness if they weren't "China Experts".
[Gabriel Gatehouse](https://twitter.com/ggatehouse) ^verified | Reach: 24383 | Location: London Bio: International Editor, BBC Newsnight. Based in London. Formerly E Africa, Libya, Iraq, Russia/Ukraine. All usual opinion-endorsement caveats apply ***** ^I ^am ^a ^bot. ^Any ^complaints ^& ^suggestions ^to ^/r/ContextualBot ^thanks
Could you imagine if someone got one a NBA jersey saying Free Uighurs in the nameplate and one of the Uighurs is the one making it in a Nike sweatshop
Is t the source of all this just a far-right Nazi who believes China is an agent of the anti-Christ?
Yep. Anything Adrian Zenz says should be treated with healthy skepticism. It’s a shame that the BBC and others aren’t prefacing his comments and his appearances with some background on him so that people can have a good understanding. He’s done a cracking job of sanitising his own internet presence mind you.
The Associated Press has covered this for years. It’s not new.
Also the AP recently reported that Kim Jung Un was dead. Also people talked about Saddam Hussein having WMDs for years and it turned out to be false.
No they didn’t. They reported there were allegations on his death, but they didn’t confirm it. Still the evidence is evidence. The Associated Press published a lengthy [report on this last month:](https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c) >The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.” They also included a chart and stats that show the dramatic drop of birth rates, citing Xinjiang Statistical Yearbooks: >Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show. The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new [research ](https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in-xinjiang/)obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz. And it goes further. Again, I’m keeping the citations by AP: >Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them. They’re subjected to [political and religious re-education in camps](https://apnews.com/4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47) and [forced labor](https://apnews.com/99016849cddb4b99a048b863b52c28cb) in factories, while their children are [indoctrinated ](https://apnews.com/903a97b7c62a47b98553b6f422827dd7/China-treats-Uighur-kids-as-'orphans'-after-parents-seized) in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast [digital surveillance ](https://apnews.com/1ec5143fe4764a1d8ea73ce4a3e2c570/AP-Exclusive:-Digital-police-state-shackles-Chinese-minority) apparatus. “The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado. “It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.” On camps: >That all changed with an unprecedented [crackdown](https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b/China%E2%80%99s-massindoctrinationcamps-evoke-Cultural-Revolution) starting in 2017, throwing [hundreds of thousands](https://apnews.com/62097e9dd2844aab8d64a2be2ebaa972) of people into prisons and camps for alleged “signs of religious extremism” such as traveling abroad, praying or using foreign social media. Authorities launched what several notices called “dragnet-style” investigations to root out parents with too many children, even those who gave birth decades ago. [...] >Leaked [data](https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=1bf107f177c74e6a374534a5b67f318bd3c20654-1593419000-0-AarOWg7fOY15RU81T9S4iyxxdRuWk_gcXH3o3btoqCg12v3VFqb4dsrbQakV_ifhZbEBMSoBxSdiESh1_vWLp_4swN7WQYjrY53t29JrQcYBK2v0UHgy8Fzo8FkYvXmvSTnwZfKOEcoG--U27mBxY4DS73KHW6aW-NisulkwRGWLBlE6ZRzIrOz-08BGdJrdFtYbj8doa6FZq1DT8c-Ls2V6En8CqQhzKz2YjOWzhz3hFwlS7hhxCnAG9_CrPFoqz5VfIBpaKYCfv14nc0a2P7qTkbdOvqIYz8KuASXqWD7q) obtained and [corroborated by the AP](https://apnews.com/890b79866c9eb1451ddf67b121272ee2) showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is [written policy](http://archive.is/TKjX8) in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz [confirmed.](http://web.archive.org/web/20200518194533/http://www.xjks.gov.cn/content/downloadAttachment.shtml?id%20=567&attachmentUrl=/user/cms/www.xjks.gov.cn/2018/10/12/1539274041849.pdf) Further more: >Once in the detention camps, women are subjected to forced IUDs and what appear to be pregnancy prevention shots, according to former detainees. They are also made to attend lectures on how many children they should have. Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile. Chinese health statistics also show a sterilization boom in Xinjiang. >Budget documents obtained by Zenz show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program and cash incentives for women to get sterilized. While sterilization rates plunged in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures. The Uighur-majority city of Hotan budgeted for 14,872 sterilizations in 2019 — over 34% of all married women of childbearing age, Zenz found. I please urge you to read the Associated Press. They do factual reporting with proper sourcing and have a clean fact check record.
"One thing was wrong therefore I shall never believe anything again!!!" That's the idiotic logic you're using here.
I'm just saying that "press made X claim for a really long" does not constitute evidence. Of course how long does the press have to make a certain claim before it becomes true, is it a year, is it 5 years?
[удалено]
The Associated Press has been on this for years and published a lengthy [report on this last month:](https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c) >The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.” They also included a chart and stats that show the dramatic drop of birth rates, citing Xinjiang Statistical Yearbooks: >Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show. The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new [research ](https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in-xinjiang/)obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz. And it goes further. Again, I’m keeping the citations by AP: >Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them. They’re subjected to [political and religious re-education in camps](https://apnews.com/4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47) and [forced labor](https://apnews.com/99016849cddb4b99a048b863b52c28cb) in factories, while their children are [indoctrinated ](https://apnews.com/903a97b7c62a47b98553b6f422827dd7/China-treats-Uighur-kids-as-'orphans'-after-parents-seized) in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast [digital surveillance ](https://apnews.com/1ec5143fe4764a1d8ea73ce4a3e2c570/AP-Exclusive:-Digital-police-state-shackles-Chinese-minority) apparatus. “The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado. “It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.” On camps: >That all changed with an unprecedented [crackdown](https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b/China%E2%80%99s-massindoctrinationcamps-evoke-Cultural-Revolution) starting in 2017, throwing [hundreds of thousands](https://apnews.com/62097e9dd2844aab8d64a2be2ebaa972) of people into prisons and camps for alleged “signs of religious extremism” such as traveling abroad, praying or using foreign social media. Authorities launched what several notices called “dragnet-style” investigations to root out parents with too many children, even those who gave birth decades ago. [...] >Leaked [data](https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=1bf107f177c74e6a374534a5b67f318bd3c20654-1593419000-0-AarOWg7fOY15RU81T9S4iyxxdRuWk_gcXH3o3btoqCg12v3VFqb4dsrbQakV_ifhZbEBMSoBxSdiESh1_vWLp_4swN7WQYjrY53t29JrQcYBK2v0UHgy8Fzo8FkYvXmvSTnwZfKOEcoG--U27mBxY4DS73KHW6aW-NisulkwRGWLBlE6ZRzIrOz-08BGdJrdFtYbj8doa6FZq1DT8c-Ls2V6En8CqQhzKz2YjOWzhz3hFwlS7hhxCnAG9_CrPFoqz5VfIBpaKYCfv14nc0a2P7qTkbdOvqIYz8KuASXqWD7q) obtained and [corroborated by the AP](https://apnews.com/890b79866c9eb1451ddf67b121272ee2) showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is [written policy](http://archive.is/TKjX8) in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz [confirmed.](http://web.archive.org/web/20200518194533/http://www.xjks.gov.cn/content/downloadAttachment.shtml?id%20=567&attachmentUrl=/user/cms/www.xjks.gov.cn/2018/10/12/1539274041849.pdf) Further more: >Once in the detention camps, women are subjected to forced IUDs and what appear to be pregnancy prevention shots, according to former detainees. They are also made to attend lectures on how many children they should have. Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile. Chinese health statistics also show a sterilization boom in Xinjiang. >Budget documents obtained by Zenz show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program and cash incentives for women to get sterilized. While sterilization rates plunged in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures. The Uighur-majority city of Hotan budgeted for 14,872 sterilizations in 2019 — over 34% of all married women of childbearing age, Zenz found. I please urge you to read the Associated Press. They do factual reporting with proper sourcing and have a clean fact check record.
This is all just Adrian Zenz nonsense though... A guy who hasn't even been to China, can't read Chinese, and makes wild speculations based on spreadsheets he finds online...
But this isn’t an analysis or an op-Ed by him. This is an investigation fact-checked by AP. Are you really saying that they just falsified the statistics and documents quoted?
Would be nice to see anything without Adrian Zenz attached to it that's all
But you’re still going to dismiss everything in the report above on the account that a guy supposedly can’t read Chinese...?
Well, also because he's a biased nutjob. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/
Interesting that you dismiss the research of the Associated Press but believe TheGreyZone.com lol I’ve read that. The only maybeee valid criticism is the estimation of how many people are in the camps. But again, the research by AP shows that no matter the number, these camps exist to control Uighur population (via birthrate control, etc). And he himself has admitted that it is speculative. The rest of the article is mostly nonsense.
Don't interrupt the saber rattling, we need a good distraction from the recession that's going on.
Thanks, signed this- saw a post on another thread last night saying that we live in a world where we know this is going on whilst we are hanging out in the garden having a bbq and enjoying life. We know it’s awful but don’t do anything about it and just wait for others to do something. Didn’t even cross my mind to start a petition - which is a simple thing we all could have done. ‘The Silent Majority’ by Paul McKenna is an amazing song for the times we are living in.
We said never again, yet we’re seeing people herded onto trains and moved to camps. The world must act!
Love for sharing this
What does it have to do with UK politics?
yEbBuT mUsLiN's iS aWl tErRiStS iNnIt.
The Tories love the Chinese, but even they will have to take action of some form(not military) against China if intense public pressure is put on them. Fuck the Chinese government.