On 4/10/21 11:13 AM, Roger Kulp wrote:
This is ridiculous. Grayzone, PSL, Global Research, Consortium
News, RT.com, et al have constant reminders about the NED, the
CIA, and every other nefarious American imperialist institution
plotting to keep the natives restless in Xinjiang. If I had to
deal with forced assimilation in the name of Communism, you'd bet
that I'd be looking up the nearest anti-Communist. As for bad guys
supporting the Uighurs, keep in mind that Saudi Arabia has given
its blessing to Xi Jinping to keep the jihadi devils in line.
Louis, you are missing my point. I was specifically talking about the
Uhygur admiration for the state of Israel mentioned in this article.
Many on the wesrern left support both the Uhygurs, and the
Palestinians, seeing both groups as victims of anti-Islam setller
colonialism. Apparently there are many Uhygurs themselves, is it a
majority (?) , of Uhygurs who do not share this point of view. Doesn't
Israeli treatment of Palestinians also involve forced assimilation as
well?
Why is some intellectual consistency all around too much to ask for ?
Here's David Brophy on these questions. If you had read this, as you
claimed you did, you'd understand that David speaks for most on the left
on Uighur overtures to scumbags like Netanyahu or Marco Rubio. In fact,
David wrote a book on the need to oppose Sinophobia, especially in
Australia that is as bad as is in the USA. I wish you'd keep in mind
that your points have not only been addressed in the past, but repeatedly.
The Vicious Circle of Xinjiang Advocacy
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/05/xinjiang-uyghur-china-repression-surveillance-islamophobia>
The repression in Xinjiang is too intense to expect resistance to emerge
to the new policies any time soon. Nor should we anticipate inner-party
opposition to them in Beijing. Abroad, though, many ask what can be done
to help the Uyghurs. The Uyghur diaspora hasrallied
<http://www.euronews.com/2018/04/27/thousands-of-ethnic-uighurs-rally-outside-european-commission-against-china>around
the world recently. Journalists and scholars have madeadmirable efforts
<https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/05/an-entire-culture-is-being-criminalized-details-emerge-about-xinjiang-reeducation-camp-system/>to
bring to light the disturbing realities.
And last month in Washington, Senator Marco Rubio brought the Uyghur
question back into play in US China policy, by making avery public
intervention
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/congressional-leaders-urge-us-to-press-china-over-reports-of-mass-uighur-detentions/2018/04/05/9bd17c90-38b3-11e8-b57c-9445cc4dfa5e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.13311ff7feb1>surrounding
the reeducation camps, pointing specifically to the detention of family
members ofRadio Free Asia
<https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/reporters-relatives-03012018164751.html>journalists.
Some, possibly many Uyghurs, will welcome Rubio’s intervention. With
good reason, they see themselves as victims of Communism, caught as they
have been between two repressive mega-states that described themselves
as Communist. Much of the international left long endorsed the idea that
the Soviet Union and China were examples of living socialism, and
therefore to be defended at all costs. *Without any friends on the Left,
Uyghurs in exile have naturally tended to gravitate towards the
anticommunist right.*
The tragedy is that this has made it all too easy for Beijing to portray
Uyghur discontent as the product of a hostile Western conspiracy. This
is opportunistic and cynical, but unfortunately, it is persuasive to
some Chinese. There is a vicious circle here, one that only leads us
away from a just solution in Xinjiang. And as the Xinjiang question
comes to international prominence once again, it risks falling back into
this familiar rut.
Foreign governments naturally shouldn’t hesitate to criticize China’s
mistreatment of its minorities. But Rubio, predictably, went beyond
this, in explicitly linking the plight of the Uyghurs to US objectives
in Asia.Writing to the US ambassador
<https://www.cecc.gov/media-center/press-releases/chairs-urge-ambassador-branstad-to-prioritize-mass-detention-of-uyghurs>in
Beijing, he asked him to look into the issue because the “crackdown in
the XUAR touches on a range of interests critical to US efforts to
secure a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
Rubio is nowspearheading an effort
<http://freebeacon.com/national-security/house-probe-china-threat/>to
ramp-up pressure on China across the board, a push that follows on the
heels of Washington’s most hawkishforeign-policy statements
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/12/18/trumps-national-security-strategy-marks-a-hawkish-turn-on-china/?utm_term=.ee214042082e>on
China since it officially recognized the People’s Republic in 1979.
In the wider debate surrounding China’s rise, sometraditionally
progressive voices
<http://clivehamilton.com/chinese-communist-party-influence-why-the-critics-are-wrong/>now
believe we have no choice but to set aside our “knee-jerk
anti-Americanism” and embrace US global dominance. So objectionable is
China’s authoritarian system, they argue, that as its weight increases
in world affairs, we must unite to resist it.
But Western saber-rattling will not help anyone in Xinjiang. Linking the
injustices there directly to Washington’s bid to shore up a declining
hegemony in Asia will only strengthen the party’s resolve to clamp down,
meaning that Xinjiang’s reeducation camps could very quickly turn into
internment camps for the entire Uyghur population. It’s unthinkable what
an actual war might bring.
Meanwhile, some on the Left might be tempted to take the opposite
approach: to go quiet on China’s domestic policies and focus instead on
combatting our own militaristic tendencies. But to drop any criticism of
China would be to shirk a moral responsibility to speak out against
oppression and a political responsibility to find solutions to it.
Progressive acquiesce to the right-wing monopoly on the discourse around
Xinjiang is one of the reasons we got into this vicious circle in the
first place; we need to look for a way out of it.
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