this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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I used to think people talking about "horseshoe theory" were all bullshitters. Because I had never seen people on the left unironically doing anything close to what the right does.
Then I saw the tankies on Lemmy. I'm still a proud leftist, but geez nothing has made me question that stance more than seeing how fervently the tankies deny genocides and defend aggressive warmongering—as long as the country perpetrating it is one that calls itself "communist", or is a successor to one that used to call itself communist. Exactly the same way the right and centre-left do regarding Israel's genocides. Lemmy's tankies are way more similar to the nazis of other social media than any other group around.
Which scares me a little as someone who basically completely agrees with them on economic issues.
wait did they deny the real ones or the made up ones?
Tankies on Lemmy like to pretend China isn't committing genocide against Uyghurs.
bud im going to sincerely tell you to re-evaluate this take. i don’t have the time to deconstruct it for ya, but the “uyghur genocide” claims are basically an astroturfed campaign by an evangelical christo-fascist named Adrian Zenz.
his offensive bullshit got amplified by the US because they're ramping up for a second cold war with China. there’s a lot you can be critical about with China if you want, but you should base it in reality.
i believe you’re leftist, you just have a bit more deprogramming to do when it comes to imperialism. that’s the hardest part for a lot of Americans since you’re trapped in the belly of the war beast.
you already got a lot of the way there by supporting Palestinian liberation. You don’t have to take my word for it either, just dig into some other sources about this topic.
@[email protected] is there any megathread resource on hexbear that debunks Zenz & his awful false genocide conspiracy theories?
On hexbear? I don't think so, lemmygrad has one though: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/216267?scrollToComments=true
I also strongly recommend https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang as another option.
There were also a number of extremely large google docs projects but I don't have links to them, others might.
Then you should take that time. Because
needs damn citation. Especially in the face of these:
Counterterrorism and Preventive Repression: China's Changing Strategy in Xinjiang
Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang
The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention
If you're claiming these are false, invented or otherwise untrue, you need damn good evidence.
Really? A No True Scotsman is really bad style.
Zenz posting
ASPI
NTS is close to the opposite of what you are talking about. Asserting that words have definitions is not, in fact, a fallscy.
Yes, because Zenz is definitely the only reason anyone knows about the genocide. There totally aren't actual Uyghurs who have told their own stories or anything like that.
Nice try, but nope. I haven't exactly been subtle either. Actually wait, not even nice try, because the correct answer is literally my instance.
Yeah, US imperialism, and western imperialism more broadly, is bad. That isn't relevant here though, because we're talking about a genocide China is committing against a minority population within their own borders.
(You could maybe have made something at least appearing to be a valid argument about imperialism if we were instead talking about Russia's unprovoked aggression against another country, which I know tankies also like to defend. But that's not where we're at right now.)
If you call yourself a leftist, try reflecting a bit on what that actually means to you. Because to me, it means desiring equality and opposing social hierarchy. And restricting people's ability to express their culture; stealing children away from their parents, preventing people from leaving your country to reconnect with their relatives. These are all very much not in line with leftist ideals. Defending a country that calls itself communist just because that's in its name, without reflecting on how well they actually live up to those values, is pretty poor leftism in my view.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart
Just because someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Do you think cops ever lie when they testify?
yeah, we’re not gonna agree on this and i don’t feel like spending time on a debate, especially since you’re downplaying american imperialism. have a good day, peace.