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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Calling disproportionate imprisonment (and racist imprisonment by ethnicity) "genocide" is genocide-trivialization, in my view.

It wasn't a "genocide" when we imprisoned 1 in 3 black people in this country, even though it was pretty awful.

The Holocaust was a genocide.

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You seem to love to trot out the "1 in 3" statistic, and have done it several times in this thread. Maybe time to look behind this catchy headline:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/...

1. I don't see how "slightly more than 1 in 4" is all that better.

2. I used the past tense intentionally. It is true that it is no longer 1 in 3 today, but the rates were much higher in the 80s and 90s.

3. In 1997, "one in three young African-American men are incarcerated, or on probation or parole"

In my hometown (Washington, DC), this number was closer to 50%.

Cultural Genocide is certainly a thing:

The concept of cultural genocide : an international law perspective https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/43864

https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-2/2/

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

Okay, then I would claim referring to "cultural genocide" as "genocide" is genocide trivialization. In the Holocaust, they killed 11 million people.

I wouldn't compare that to an attempt to end child marriage in India, for instance.

Some cultural practices should be ended. By contrast, people from a certain culture should not have their lives ended simply for being from that culture.

Equating the two is nonsense.

I'd encourage you to study up more on the literature and definitions around cultural genocide. You're conflating nuances in subjects. Anyone discussing the subject seriously is typically focusing on one group, usually non-native to an area forcing cultural change on another group for the purposes of, compliance, curbing, minimizing or destroying, the group. See events such as Uyghurs in China, Natives in Canada, Darfur etc. You may value the destruction of a culture such to kill a peoples as lesser than say, the holocaust, and I doubt anyone would slight you on that value judgement, never the less, these are distinct things and need to be discussed equally, even if you're unhappy with the context around phrasing.

> need to be discussed equally,

No, they absolutely should not be discussed equally.

Darfur was an actual genocide, ie. a killing fields genocide. Native Americans were also killed at high rates, the "cultural genocide" came later.

Equating the killing of millions of people from a certain ethnic group with prohibiting certain practices (like France prohibiting the burqa or public expression of religion, like attempts to outlaw child marriage, etc.) is wrong.

You're seeking to launder the distaste people have for mass killings of an ethnic group into prohibitions of certain cultural practices which are not viewed nearly as negatively. There is no other reason to simply call it "genocide" without the (very important) "cultural" modifier.

Well it's wrong in your book, but it's not in mine, so where does that leave us? Reasonable people cannot disagree? I'm a dimwitted plebeian? Shall we reach for the white gloves?

Last I checked, folks were welcomed to their perspectives around here, we don't typically just go around telling people their opinions are "wrong".

Your point is self-contradictory.

It is my opinion that your opinion is wrong. You are telling me to not express that opinion.

But sure, we can agree to disagree about whether the killing of 6 million people of a specific ethnic group should be "discussed equally" with cultural genocide practices like Burqa bans in France, child marriage bans, or limits on having more than 3 children.

Sorry, I should have used the word "can" instead of "should" - As simply as possible what I was trying to convey is that cultural genocide can be discussed next to the holocaust in the context of genocide, the way an orange can be discussed next to an apple in the context of fruit. What I was trying to say is some people would say an apple is equally an orange in the context of fruit, not that some people might like orange more than apple, if that makes sense.

Equating Burqa bans in France and what China is doing to Uighurs is maybe not as extreme as what you're disagreeing with but is also very distasteful.

Fair enough. My intention was not to equate them, but merely to disagree that cultural prohibitions of any kind should be "compared equally" to genocides which kill people.

I think what's going on in Xinjiang is broader and much worse than merely trying to restrict certain "cultural" practices, but I also don't think it is a genocide with the intent to exterminate the Uyghur people.

> we don't typically just go around telling people their opinions are "wrong".

But sometimes we should, because some are.

Comparing everything to the Jewish Holocaust is also genocide trivialization.

"Cultural genocide" should be called "memocide".

At the point that you are only using the word "gene" metaphorically, it's time to switch to the word that already exists for that purpose: the "meme".

But meme already means something culturally, and we don't want people saying that genocide is a "meme"

That's just because the purveyors of stupid pictures-with-text have hijacked the term: The GP's usage is the original meaning of the word "meme".

Ignorance like you're displaying here just helps further this trivialization of the word. Please educate yourself and join the resistance in stead.

There’s no ignorance here. The parent is 100% that the word colloquially has a completely different meaning than originally intended.

You can try to “resist” cultural shifts in language, but I promise you’ll lose.

True dat. And yet, he persisted... Now onwards, my gallant Rocinante!

Outmaneuver them. Let meme mean "jpeg screenshot from facebook" and choose a new, cooler word for meme. I'll even call it a "onrad" if you want.

Thanks, but no thanks: sounds a bit too close to Onan for my tastes.

Why is gene metaphorical here? Are people not a result of external stimuli? My understanding is that gene variants are involved in evolution often caused by extrinsic factors?

Forced sterilization and religious conversion (not to mention the occasional organ harvesting) isn't genocide?

Let's recenter the definition of genocide. From google:

> the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group

Now to your points:

> religious conversion

1. No, forced religious conversion is not genocide in my book.

> Forced sterilization

2. Look, I'm not a fan of this law either, but sterilization in-lieu-of fine is one of the remedies in China for breaking the two (previously one)-child law and is also applied to Han Chinese. The Uyghur population is still growing at a faster rate than Han Chinese.

> the occasional organ harvesting

3. Awful and at large scale, absolutely a genocide. My understanding was that this had been done against Falun Gong in the early 2000s - do you have evidence on this practice continuing against Uyghurs circa now?

Google's definition is not authoritative.

> ... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

> (a) Killing members of the group;

> (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

> (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

> (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

> (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

> — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2

The strongest case is for paragraph (d).

Is there a special law targeting Uyghurs? Or are Uyghurs (due to their religion) more likely to have higher birth rates that are in contravention of Chinese two-child law?

Another question - does a genocide necessarily require an actual reduction in the population of people being genocided?

I do agree that the strongest case is for (d) (or maybe c, actually), especially if Uyghur women are being sterilized with fewer than 2-3 births.

1. There's also such a thing as cultural genocide, which forced religious conversion certainly qualifies as. Not to mention wiping out a culture is part of an overall genocide, usually it's the objective.

2. Oh, so the Chinese are just enforcing their population control law? Then what are the internment camps for? And why the Uighur birth rate plummeting far faster than the reported national Chinese birthrate? https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...

"Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show."

3. The UN apparently does. Note that said treatments are apparently disproportionately targeted at various ethnic minorities. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...

"UN human rights experts* said today they were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China

The experts said they have received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations. The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation."

> 1. There's also such a thing as cultural genocide,

1. Yes, referring to "cultural genocide" as "genocide" is genocide trivialization. There's an obvious difference between killing 6 million people because of their ethnic background and outlawing a practice (say, child marriage in India or wearing a burqa in France) that happens to be a large part of a certain culture.

2. You're conflating a few different things I'm saying. The internment camps are for alleged violations of a lot of extremely broad and bullshit laws designed to target Uyghur people, as well as for violations of China's two-child law. I am not claiming that the internment camps are just for people violating China's two child law.

Your chart indicates that Uyghur birth rates are roughly the same as Han Chinese, not that they are being disproportionately suppressed below Han Chinese.

> 3. The UN apparently does. Note that said treatments are apparently disproportionately targeted at various ethnic minorities. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...

I'll defer to them then. If they've been doing it against Falun Gong in the recent past, I wouldn't put it past them to be doing it to the Uyghurs. That is obviously a crime against humanity. It is scary that we probably won't know the true extent of this for decades at least.

You're trivializing "cultural genocide" by comparing it to child marriage bans in India or Burqa bans in France. Cultural genocide is not just banning random specific practices, the near complete eradication of local languages or cultures by the French state throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is a better example or what the British did in Ireland. And if "cultural genocide" is not the appropriate name for that what would be a better one?

1. I think it is up for debate what the way France treats ethnic and religious minorities, and their extreme focus on eliminating any sense of cultural difference from the public sphere constitutes.

2. I am not saying that "cultural genocide" is not the appropriate term. Honestly, it probably is. I'm merely saying that "genocide" is not the appropriate term for a "cultural genocide."

The purpose in referring to the repression of the Uyghur's as a "genocide" without qualifiers is to try to take some of the distaste people feel for mass killings and apply it to this.

Then let’s clear up this whole debate. I meant to type cultural genocide, but it was late and I was sleepy so I said “ethnic” instead of “cultural.”

It’s trivial compared to the Communist Party’s ongoing cultural genocide against numerous ethnic minorities, involving imprisonment, slave labor, forced sterilization, “re-education,” family separation, forced marriages to Han Chinese men, and many other abhorrent conditions, but still terrifying that Chinese diplomats in another country think it’s okay to gate crash a party, photograph attendees (presumably for identification and retribution), and then start a fistfight because they were “provoked” by a “false national flag.”

I don’t need to take some of the distaste we have for the holocaust and apply it to this. It’s shameful and terrifying enough on its own.

If the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II, involving forced labor,suppression of religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception and forced abortion does not qualify in your view as genocide than you are out of touch with the accepted definition of the word.

>> My understanding was that this had been done against Falun Gong in the early 2000s - do you have evidence on this practice continuing against Uyghurs circa now?

Yet you seem to really like the "1 in 3 black men" behind bars headline, based a study from 2001, at the peak of US incararation rates across all population groups. Even the authors state its' gone down significantly.

> If the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II, involving forced labor,suppression of religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception and forced abortion does not qualify in your view as genocide than you are out of touch with the accepted definition of the word.

There are 2.5 million black people in prison in the US, compared to a high end estimate of 1.5 million Uyghurs. (To be fair, there are 3x as many black people as uyghurs, but you said largest-scale.)

I would not expect a population to increase while it is undergoing genocide.

> based a study from 2001, at the peak of US incararation rates across all population groups

I've been consistent in using the past tense when referring to this study.

Are you a PRC-funded troll or misinformation spreader? You keep misinterpreting arguments here and posting silly (and wrong) rebuttals.

Nobody is calling disproportionate imprisonment "genocide" (we call them "lockdowns" LOL).

The "genocide" accusation against China is (these days) focused on / caused by (alleged) sterilization of its Uighur population. Which undoubtedly is a genocide (extermination of a lineage), if a bit more bloodless than e.g. Holocaust.

I disagree if the sterilization is applied even-handedly as an application of their two-child law. I am skeptical that a lineage is being exterminated if, at minimum, they can have replacement level number of births. The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is.

But backing up a bit - really what I'm taking issue with is the word "genocide." We can call horrendous, human rights violating policies for what they are without having to fall back on calling something a "genocide."

Not everyone who disagrees with you is PRC funded. I would encourage you to look over the HN guidelines as you seem to have forgotten some of them. [0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is.

This seems to be the crux of your argument justifying the PRCs sterilization policy. As others have noted forced sterilization is a crime against humanity regardless of reason. Justification of forced sterilization based on a believed “correct” ethnic ratio is abhorrent.

Nope, but nice spin.

1. Saying a birth rate policy should be applied universally to all citizens of China is not justifying such a policy based on a 'believed “correct” ethnic ratio.'

2. My point about the growth of the Uyghur population was a separate point, which is that from my (apparently naive) understanding of what a genocide is, the population would typically decrease after it occurred, not increase.

3. Forced sterilization is ongoing in the criminal justice system in the US, at least as late as 2011. Don't think it is equivalent because it is not nearly as broad based, but in the 80s and 90s it was a not uncommon remedy offered (mostly) to black people to get probation instead of jail in exchange for sterilization, as well as just straight-up court mandated sterilization.

I also don't think the CCPs child policy is justified, but I do think that it should be within the realm of actions that the state can take.

You’re advocating for a position on China’s 2 child policy that, in America, would most certainly would be deemed unconstitutional under a disparate impact framework. I know we’re talking about China here, but most Western countries have recognized that you can target a subgroup without saying you’re targeting a subgroup. You’re basically arguing that the Holocaust would not be a genocide as long as Germany was universally applying its no [insert Jewish characteristic] policy.

Just to underscore my point here, almost every aspect of your viewpoint on the genocide China is committing is abhorrent and untenable if you believe in human rights.

So you are saying that having lots of children is intrinsic to being Uyghur? It's a Uyghur "characteristic"?

The US law around this issue is in flux, see for instance [0], where policies that were neutrally applied but impacted people a specific religion were ruled constitutional. This specific case was later rendered moot by congressional action.

Regardless, is the claim that China is conducting a genocide, or that its actions would be in violation of the Civil Rights Act if it were a US state? Are we enforcing the Civil Rights Act globally now?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith

US common law like disparate impact is always in flux - it’s common law. The minutiae of disparate impact edge cases is irrelevant under your argument where the universal application of the 2 child policy somehow requires China to round up, sequester in internment camps, and ultimately sterilize a particular group.

I won’t bother replying to the rest of your post about religious beliefs and children because it’s an attempt to derail the conversation by focusing on details that are relevant only to the particular framing you’re advancing.

Do you have anything against the Uyghur population growing faster and replacing the Han?

No, I think such concerns are stupid. I also don't think the Uyghurs are "replacing the Han."

But I do find it interesting that China is apparently conducting the first genocide in history where the population being genocided is increasing rather than decreasing.

> Are you a PRC-funded troll or misinformation spreader?

You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you have evidence of abuse, you should send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. If you don't, you should remember that the vast majority of these perceptions on the internet are completely imaginary. Either way, you should be editing such swipes out of your comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Plenty of past explanation at these links:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 (<-- Mini-FAQ)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397695

Sorry. I said it partially tongue-in-cheek.

What would be an appropriate response to someone who's posted several comments to the same top-level post, all of which are grossly misleading and/or complete strawmen?

Obviously I don't have evidence of "abuse" (is this even abuse? obviously people can be trolls without being big-co/gov funded) but I'd like to point out the above fact to other commenters who might not have noticed it otherwise.

In terms of posting to HN itself, an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information—or alternatively, to remember that to a first approximation, everyone is wrong on the internet, and just let it go. You don't need to do more than that for other commenters; they can take care of themselves.

If an account is behaving badly, such as by repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, sending a heads-up to hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it is also an appropriate response.

> an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information

Isn't that just demanding that everyone surrender to a shill's Gish gallop?

I'd need to see specific links. It's difficult to answer that generically, because who people call a 'shill' varies so much, and it's unquestionably the case that people frequently apply such terms to other commenters who in fact are posting in good faith. On the internet, someone having a sufficiently different background from you, and someone posting in bad faith, are basically indistinguishable.

I can't resist saying a couple general things though. First, I think you need to assume a smart audience. If someone's throwing an endless sequence of distracting objections at you (which is how I understand 'gish gallop'), that doesn't have a lot of persuasive power for a smart audience. You should trust readers to see that those are distractions, and limit yourself (at most) to pointing out that they're not relevant.

Second, if you're truly dealing with someone posting in bad faith, the time-honored internet adage explains what do to: don't feed the trolls. I would never underestimate the wisdom of that advice. It may be the wisest thing the internet has ever said.

> I'd need to see specific links. It's difficult to answer that generically

Sorry, no links; I was asking generically. (Though a couple pro-PRC guys on this page feel pretty close.)

> the time-honored internet adage explains what do to: don't feed the trolls. I would never underestimate the wisdom of that advice. It may be the wisest thing the internet has ever said.

Yup. (Well, immediately after anything posted by me, of course.) Sometimes hard to remember, though: Provocateurs provoke.

Anyway, forget all that for a while, and have a merry Christmas!

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