Do you ever get tired of well intentioned people in your life still parroting imperialist/capitalist propaganda (ex: Uyghur Genocide)
Do you ever get tired of well intentioned people in your life still parroting imperialist/capitalist propaganda (ex: Uyghur Genocide)
It's just hard, because I know the people I'm referring to are generally good, empathetic people who care about social justice. They just have unfortunately had their consent manufactured in favor of these pro-imperial/US talking points. They genuinely think there's a humanitarian crisis and that China is killing a minority. They simply just don't realize everywhere they're being informed by is steeping in anti-communist, right wing sources vying to create propaganda.
It's honestly so much easier dealing with a shitty reactionary than a liberal who simply doesn't recognize their own biases. And you trying to reveal said propaganda to them comes off as you being a heartless freak trying to justify some terrible act, no matter how legitimate your proof against said narrative is.
Like, what if I am wrong? Idk, sometimes it just feels like I must be, because I'm so outside the narrative. For instance, people trying to justify Israel's treatment of Palestine is complete BS to me, so isn't that how my defense of China sounds to said liberal? I just get worried sometimes that I'm the one brainwashed and on the wrong side of history. I don't want to be the bad guy, I'm just trying to do what I beleive to be right. But isn't that how every shitty side in history feels?
A glimmer of hope on the topic is how the "Iraq has WMDs" propaganda completely disintegrated. Of course there are counterexamples (people still believe all sorts of wild shit about the USSR), of course we aren't going to occupy western China and have a highly-publicized search for evidence, but it is possible for a manufactured narrative to come undone, and to come undone in a way that the lie becomes common knowledge.
Say 10-15 years from now there are undeniably still Uyghurs in China, and their population has even grown. That would take a lot of wind out of the story's sails.
My university is holding an entire seminar about the “Chinese concentration camps”. It felt like the narrative never really caught on up here, but unfortunately it seems the narrative was just delayed
My university has like a group dedicated to liberating NK or some shit? I guess if you're tryna get an in with the CIA, it's a good place to start
Met my new lab partner yesterday, we were discussing our upcoming trip to do fieldwork in China and he said he's been before and didn't like it because "the communism thing was just all made so apparent" and that he "felt constantly watched". He's a 6 foot 3 white dude. OF COURSE PEOPLE LOOKED AT HIM. Nice guy other than that, so I'm hopeful.
White guy experiences a tiny insignificant dose of what minorities experience in America for a fraction of the time and it literally shook him to his core lmao. Maybe he'll be more empathetic from now on.
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I remember in college in around 2014 being told by my geography professor something along the lines of "The one child policy doesn't apply specifically to han chinese who move to tibet because they're trying to replace their culture" or something like that. I imagine this is based on something true that was misinterpreted either intentionally or unintentionally rather than being a complete fabrication, which I wouldn't necessarily be surprised by either. Does anyone happen to have any idea what he was talking about?
I don’t remember the specifics, but the one-child policy was never one-child for every couple in the country. You got a bonus kid allowance for falling into certain groups, up to three (maybe four?) children.
You got a bonus kid if you lived in a rural area, you got a bonus kid if you were an ethnic minority, at certain times you could get a bonus kid if your first child was a girl. Apparently over half of Chinese were allowed two kids during most of the one-child policy.
So it’s very possible that Han Chinese in Tibet were allowed two children, and Tibetans were allowed three.