Uyghur "Genocide" is so hardwired to people's brains, how do any of y'all try convince others that they're believing propaganda?
It's really frustrating, I was talking to someone about how successful China has been in de-radicalization of reactionaries. But they responded to this by saying they're only successful because, and I quote "put them all in concentration camps and killed them"
Has anyone here been successful in deprogramming people about this topic? If so any good sources I can use to dissuade them? I tried telling them that the UN report, if you read it, just says that there's concerns about abuse by internment offcials, and there's no evidence of genocide. But when I say this they just dismiss it as if the UN is controlled by the PRC. It's like a religion to liberals to believe anything bad about China and can get really frustrating.
My go to dunk is that there's zero Muslim majority nation that has even produced a comment on the Uyghur thing. It's 100% coming from Western nations with recent history of wars in the Middle East and Islamophobia.
These days I just give them the and tell them to shut up. Pretty much all of the Uyghur libs I know have been complete ass on Gaza and i have exactly zero patience for their fake tears.
People only ever bring up Xinjiang to dismiss China. It's nothing more than a trump card: "Oh, you think we should be less hostile toward China and listen to the Chinese? Uyghur genocide Taiwan independence Hong Kong protests Tiananmen square!!!"
You're never going to get through to people without confronting their chauvinism first because they can always pull another reason to hate China out of their ass. Part of that is investigating why they want to believe against China in the first place. Is it cope? Scapegoating? Plain racism?
Gonna take this opportunity to bounce an argument off of you folks.
This supposed Uyghur genocide seems to have zero confirmed martyrs. No one is confirmed to have died in this genocide. So I like to ask people to name one person who has died in this genocide and folks never have any answers.
Some people like to say that it is a cultural genocide. Even madempanada said this. One could argue that hypothetically you could culturally genocide a people without killing one of them. But reality does not turn out this way because it turns out that peoples are intimately linked with their cultures and they don't usually just accept their culture's erasure without fighting back. This often leads to violent encounters which leads to people dying. But the supposed Uyghur genocide does not have any incident like this.
Meanwhile actual cases of genocide always have confirmed reports of people dying during the struggle. Rohingyas in Myanmar, the Muslims in Kashmir and so on. Seems like the Uyghur are unique in the fact that they don't fight back and instead delegate their struggle to NGOs based in Washington lead by Guantanamo translators.
I go "how could you be worried about China at a time like this, with Saddam Hussein getting closer and closer to obtaining a nuke"
To be less facetious, it's easier now that we see what an actual genocide looks like in Palestine, you can just ask "If these impoverished people with unreliable communications to the outside world still have smartphones and internet, if they can upload their suffering despite every attempt to censor it, then where the fuck are all the horrifying gory videos from Xinjiang, a place that is not under seige or blockade? Don't you think if such videos existed, we in Amerika would never hear the end of it?"
And hey, if China is committing a genocide against Muslims, how come the US isn't arming and supporting them?
Maybe I'm actually crazy, but there was a time like a year or two ago when it seemed like the US actually gave up all pretenses and admitted it was bullshit? (edit:I should say it later seemed like this may have been reversed). I distinctly remember a collective cathartic sigh on then Twitter that the uyghur slander thing was FINALLY coming to an end. I definitely remember a NED tweet from well before then basically laying claim to supporting sowing extremism in the region, but I could also swear there was a major outlet expose (maybe multiple exposes) months later detailing all the state department bullshit surrounding the situation (e.g. deliberately mistranslating/mislabeling "job centres" to torture camps or something to that effect, and so on)
Do a google image search with them for “Uyghur genocide.” There is absolutely nothing there, aside from a picture published by the Chinese government of some grumpy dudes sitting in a prison yard. Then compare this with an image search for Gaza. This worked with one lib I knew in the past. He doesn’t talk about the Ughur genocide anymore. But he is still a fucking lib.
There is also an uncut YouTube video out there of someone walking around Urumqi I think and just watching people speak Uyghur and chill out. Hardly seems genocidal.
At this point, it's a distraction from the very real genocide that's going on in Gaza. Ask them:
Where are the fucking bodies? It takes like 2 minutes to find photos of piles of dead Palestinians exterminated by the IOF. You can easily find NSFL photos of Palestinian babies with their heads missing or Palestinian bodies with their viscera bursting out of their bodies because they were run over by an IOF tank. So where are the goddamn bodies?
Why has every single Uyghur separatist group support the Zionist entity that is currently committing genocide in Gaza? Why do you see every dipshit separatist with a stupid smile shaking hands with a Zionist freak? Every Muslim majority country supports China's claims while every Uyghur separatist groups suck up to the Zionists. When even comprador regimes like Egypt and Jordan keep up the flimsiest of appearances by rhetorically opposing the Zionist entity, these Uyghur separatist groups can't even offer the most token of opposition.
"put them all in concentration camps and killed them"
At some point I feel like they're self confessing their own thoughts about how to treat ethnic minorities and projecting onto china. You might have just been talking to a cryptofash.
I've been successful since I'm also Muslim and I can accuse them of islamophobia and only caring about Muslims when it's convenient in Xinjiang but "bad optics" in Palestine.
How could there be a genocide if no one was killed?
first you need to make sure they're actually able to be persuaded i.e. don't have material reasons for believing in this propaganda. imo https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ is required reading about this topic
propaganda doesn't have to be false (even though it is in this case). the word has been loaded like this to imply that anything with a viewpoint to promote is false while pretending that mass media is objective when it promotes bourgeois viewpoints
I tried telling them that the UN report, if you read it, just says that there’s concerns about abuse by internment offcials, and there’s no evidence of genocide. But when I say this they just dismiss it as if the UN is controlled by the PRC.
Schrodinger's rules based international order. When the UN announced the investigation and in the immediate aftermath of it, liberals praised it and held it up as evidence of how obvious China's crimes are. When you dig deeper than article headlines and read what they actually said, however, everybody knows they're in China's pocket and you can't trust a thing they say - just look at how often they condemn Israel!
Is it safe to assume that this person also believes that Zion-occupied-Palestine is not suffering a NAT-involved genocide and that every toe stub in Ukraine since 1917 is genocide?
Well it's pretty simple, ask them if they trust the US after all they did to Muslims around the world. If they are "neither Washington nor Beijing" type leftists then you can have a constructive discussion and patiently explain your point of view and acknowledge theirs in good faith. If they do trust the US then they can't be salvaged and just agree to disagree on believing anything coming from the western block
The really impressive thing is seeing gamers whip out the Uyghur genocide line to complain about not being allowed to make political discussion in their games.
Yes china is so powerful that suddenly gamers will abandon their no politics talk when a Chinese developer asks to not discuss politics in their sponsorship deal. Something I'd imagine most developers/publishers put in and nobody cares. But suddenly china does it (not really because this is one developer from China) and well now we have to bring up the bad evil china genocide and Hong Kong and Taiwan and just reveal we have the intellectual depth of napkin soaked in our own piss.
And the developer should be dragged for trying to hide their politics and their abuses to women in the studio, but of course gamers and libs cannot actually complain effectively because they only have blinders for china itself is bad.
I'd just usually say somewhere in the line of "for a genocide, Urumqi or Kashgar sure has a lot of Uyghur language on their street signs/shops and just all around the city and its inhabitants are practicing their faith, culture and customs from all the vlogs I've seen on youtube." I just think that if there was a "genocide", it sure as hell is a terrible attempt if the goal was to eliminate a certain ethnic group so therefore, no genocide.
Notify them that their own empire's intelligence organisations don't believe that, and ask them what evidence they have that the combined efforts of the CIA, NSA, FBI, MI5, and the other such organisations couldn't uncover.
You don't. There nobody reachable right now. Every ideology in the west has consolidated their base, everyone is going to the grave as whatever they currently are.
It depends on the person. Some people don't really pay attention to the news, were relatively young when some of this first came out, and some people are just sorta ambivalence about all the politics stuff, even if they see it. With them, I know I might have hope in explaining details.
If it's someone that's committed, but is still a bit of a civility lib, I just quickly mention the UN report that said there wasn't genocide, mention that there may still be issues, and then talk about how they shouldn't use that word too carelessly, because it lessens the impact of more "real" genocides. That should all happen in the span of less then a minute, and then I'll quickly change the subject or leave the conversation. Hopefully, they care enough about word choice that they stop using the word "genocide" (though often they'll call it something else that's also sort of wrong, but hopefully less wrong). Getting people to change the words they use is a very small step, but hopefully more steps in the right direction can follow.
And then there are some people where it's easier to just dodge the China topic. China hasn't been the main focus of the media for a while, so saying good things about China usually gets through, a lot of the anti-China libs of the 2010's are much more focused on the whole Ukraine and Russia ordeal. Saying good things about China and Xinjiang will probably get a lot less of a reaction than having a controversial opinion about Ukraine. I've never seen random people flying Uyghur supporting flags, but I've seen many, many Ukraine flags.
I thought we had an effort thread/post on this topic. If someone could link it, that would be great. So, I guess it depends on the person you’re talking to. If they’re just an average liberal and not someone you care about, I honestly wouldn’t even bother. But if they’re someone cool and you care about them, I’d probably slowly work my way toward this topic. There are lighter topics you can use to gradually deprogram liberals.
If you don’t have sources, why are you engaging in debate?
I don’t think China is straight up doing death camps. They have put them in "re-education centers" and there has been a significant drop in Uyghur birth rates.
The fact that Islamic countries haven’t spoken out could well be that they are also known for religious persecution. Turkey spoke out against China's treatment of Muslims in 2009 and got hit for it. To this day, China reminds them not to mention it. There’s a lot of money moving there plus the belts and roads initiative.
It’s not clear cut. We can’t definitively say that they aren’t abusing human rights. So, maybe we don’t make claims we can’t prove either?
Edit: I forgot to say it works both ways. If they’re making a claim, it should be on them to provide evidence too. So, ask for that.
Edit #2: or take advice from here and use straw man arguments, whataboutisms, and generally attack anyone that doesn’t 100% line up with your opinion.