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Comment by ElBarto | Hacker News Reader

You should be careful about the terms you use. Some terms should not be overused because overuse trivialises.

I'm very unconvinced the term is inappropriate here. China appears to be engaged in multiple "ethnic cleansings" and has been for a while.

I think a part of the reason why this may be making a bit more news lately is that while, broadly speaking, nobody really cares what happens to the people "over there" (for any value of "over there"), as China is becoming more powerful, the concern that "maybe we'll be next" is becoming a bit more pressing for more people. Allowing these actions to go unopposed is becoming more dangerous for people around China.

Not sure what's trivial about China putting millions of Muslims into "re-education" camps. Should we wait until they start killing them en masse to say something?

The point here is to evoke comparison with 1930s Germany, which expanded into neighboring territory and systematically imprisioned minorities. Hopefully China changes direction before it becomes 1940s Germany

This is a ridiculous comparison. China is not expanding and does not systematically imprison minorities (and as you know the holocaust is in another league altogether).

The point of my previous comment is also to avoid such comparisons that are unhelpful, to say the least. Don't overuse those terms (holocaust, nazi, etc)

using the term "holocaust" is a comparison? Nobody has a monopoly on that term.

China is looking to expand. China already took Tibet. It claims Taiwan. Now, it’s making audacious claims over the South China Sea - even going so far as to build artificial islands to cement their claims.

They even claim parts of India as well

> does not systematically imprison minorities

What about these ones?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

Why do you believe 1940's Germany is worse than China? 2.5 million people already died as a direct result from Mao's Great Leap Forward, with another 40 million (!) dying from famine during that same period, caused by said cultural revolution.

Nazi Germany was not the greatest loss of life by a government.

> Nazi Germany was not the greatest loss of life by a government.

But it is the government that's become nearly synonymous with human rights violations (in the West, at least).

You can also compare 1940s Russia which conquered eastern Europe and put most of Asia under its influence. Stalin starved and slaughtered millions.

> You should be careful about the terms you use. Some terms should not be overused because overuse trivialises.

I agree. The uniqueness of the holocaust has been a subject of much debate among historians, the so called "Historikerstreit", triggered by right-wing historian Ernst Nolte arguing that the holocaust was not unique, while the opposing majority view holds that the holocaust has been uniquely evil. (The whole debate is really too complex to be summarised in a few paragraphs.)

At any rate, I certainly don't mean to belittle the atrocities the Chinese Communist Party commits nowadays. But strongly agree with the above poster that one should be very careful with applying the term "holocaust" to anything but the systematic murder of jews and other minorities by Nazi Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_trivialization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Uniqueness_quest...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historikerstreit

I am afraid the question of whether the holocaust is unique will transpire to be rather like the question of whether WW1 was the "war to end all wars". It was not the first time anyone had attempted such a thing, but it was the first time it was done in a mechanized, organized manner. It won't be the last.

I'm Jewish, and everything I've heard about how the Uyghurs in China are treated reminds me exactly of how my people were treated in Nazi Germany.

The comparison is appropriate.

It's an unpopular opinion on HN because holding China accountable would threaten their bottom line. IBM was happy to sell Nazi Germany punch card tabulators and alphabetized even after the opening of the camps. China could burn Taiwan to the ground tomorrow and 3/4 of HN would still downvote anyone who suggests there might be more important things than making as much money as you possibly can.

I'm gobsmacked that you do not know what the holocaust was, then.

China is not trying (and never has) to physically and systematically eradicate an entire ethnicity, nor are they trying to drive them out through ethnic cleansing. In fact under the 'one child policy' ethnic minorities have the right to have more children than ethnic Han.

I urge people to really learn history and to make appropriate comparisons.

I would recommend comparing the restrictions China has put on the Uyghur population of Xinjiang to the Nürnberg Laws.

The comparison was with the holocaust, and what China does, which you clearly don't know, has also nothing to do with the Nuremberg Laws.

This is getting beyond ridiculous.

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