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according to shitjustworks, we're genocide denialists (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Tachanka@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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https://sh.itjust.works/post/4274675

To this I say, no. As a community, we do not deny proven genocides, like the holocaust, or the genocide against indigenous Americans by various European colonizers, or the genocide against the Congolese by Belgium, or the Bengal famine that was carried out by the British empire. In fact, denying those genocides will get you banned, here. However: we are also aware of a tendency of nations to project their crimes onto others, and to manufacture atrocity propaganda to justify overthrowing or destroying rival governments... like Libya in 2011:

From Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad (a great book I highly recommend)

A post from Michael Parenti regarding the destruction of Libya by NATO-backed reactionaries

A headline shortly after Libya's destruction by NATO-backed reactionaries

The US government has been reenacting the fable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and has been cynically leveraging the very serious accusation of genocide against its geopolitical enemies. This is the source of skepticism on Xinjiang. And this is not a new strategy, yes, the Holodomor, which everyone in the US has been taught to take seriously lately, is a nazi fabrication first spread to the United States in the works of Robert Conquest. Why would the USSR deliberately starve a fellow socialist Republic? Why would Stalin, a Georgian, have some kind of Russian chauvinist grudge against Ukrainians? Why would Lenin (Donbass), Stalin (Lviv), and Khruschev (Crimea) all expand the territory of the Ukrainian SSR while also trying to kill off the people inside of it? Why would the USSR ethnically cleanse Ukrainains while simultaneously sending food aid to the starving British colony in Bengal? Natural famines and crop failures were spun by the nazis into atrocity propaganda. Also, a state does not have to be perfect to be defended against false accuations. I think China is far from perfect, but the burden of proof is on the United States to prove its accusations (which have changed in scope several times) regarding Xinjiang. Delegations from Muslim majority nations visiting Xinjiang do not agree with the United States that there is a genocide of the Uyghur people. There is however an attempt to reeducate extremist groups like ETIM. Reeducating extremists might seem a harsh government policy, but I assure you it is a better way of dealing with religious fundamentalism than drone striking weddings or air striking hospitals like the USA did in Afghanistan.

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[-] pooh@hexbear.net 101 points 1 year ago

Just going to throw out that the tankies at the... uhhh... US STATE DEPARTMENT have also said officially that there isn't evidence for genocide in Xinjiang: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/

If anyone calls you a genocide denier, throw out this one and see out they respond. smuglord

[-] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 50 points 1 year ago

I've already seen they say. To any lazy libs out there here are some canned responses

The genocide is real but:

the US doesn't want to hinder trade relations with China
it's happening all across China so it's less of a targeted thing and more of a general oppression thing
China is super duper sneaky about it so we can't gather enough substantive evidence to bring to court
there's some technicality that precludes it from being legally official even though it fits the common definition (that's the argument your link is going with)

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Literally just the other day saw a video of like dozens of uighur kids running around the city in kashgar. If an active genocide was happening how on earth would the parents think it's safe for so many of their kids to run around unsupervised outside?

Also one of the kids invited the camera lady to their house and their place was both nicer than the camera lady's and my own place lol, I felt a degree of jealousy

[-] Averagemaoist@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago

I have a friend who is Jewish and lived in Berlin 1944. Her mother has a famous actress with political connections, her family was discriminated against but not shipped off to camps.

Anti China Uighur stuff is racist bullshit, but seeing kids outside would not disapprove a repressive government program targeting a single group.

[-] JuneFall@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The Berlin 1944 argument is not that good.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvvb7n02

With good connections you typically had ways to pass as being non Jewish in public life (or till you were assigned another status). All people over 15 had to have IDs, for Jewish kids this was often the case even when they were younger than 15. So open play by Jewish kids was virtually non existent in 1944 in Berlin.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/berlin

Beginning in 1942, Jews were deported from Berlin directly to the killing centers, primarily to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1943, most of the staff of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, the central Jewish representative organization, was deported to Theresienstadt. All Jewish organizations and offices were disbanded. The majority of the remaining Jews in Berlin were deported by the end of April 1943.

More than 60,000 Jews were deported from Berlin:

more than 10,000 to the ghettos in eastern Europe about 15,000 to Theresienstadt and more than 35,000 to the killing centers in occupied Poland.

Hundreds of Jews committed suicide rather than submit to the deportations. Thousands of Jews remained in Berlin, mostly those who had gone into hiding and also part-Jews and Jews with a non-Jewish spouse, who were initially excluded from deportation. Almost all of those deported were killed.

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/untergetaucht-in-berlin-wir-waren-freiwild-3597964.html

Von über 5000 Juden, die in Berlin nach 1939 in den Untergrund gingen, überlebten nur 1800, darunter die Familie Segal. Der Aufwand, den sie betrieb, ist herausragend – und zugleich exemplarisch.

Out of 5000 Jews who lived in Berlin after 1939 in the underground only 1800 survived