Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

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> Not a fan of any authoritarianism, but USA could also be described the same way. We have massive data warehouses that just collect everything, phone calls, texts, internet packets. We just have different owners, but its the same game

This is hardly a reasonable comparison. Most of the crazy shit you're talking about like breaking protests with the military and the LSD trails are from 60 years ago. Firebombing cities happened during WWII and was the accepted (though terrible and it turns out strategically wrong) air doctrine of all sides.

Yes, US bulk data collection is wrong, but we know it isn't being used to round up people en masse for wrong think. We don't run massive reeducation/forced labor camps for ethnic minorities. The Xinjiang internment camps have housed basically the equivalent of the whole US prison population and where there is institutionalized forced sterilization, mass rape, water boarding, torture involving electrical shock, and beatings. Even the worst US prison is basically day camp by comparison, and the people of Xinjiang are being rounded up largely for their ethnic identity.

You false equivalence is frankly, fucking bullshit.

Your ego is getting in the way of seeing the facts friend. Just because it happened before your lifetime doesn’t make it somehow less of an atrocity. US was founded on slavery and genocide. Now we outsource genocide for oil, and do slave labor in our prisons in accordance with the 13th amendment.

No it isn’t ego, it’s a command of basic facts.

With respect to the injustices of the FBI and CIA, there was a congressional commission that investigated abuses, held people to account, and enacted some laws to change the situation. Such a process is impossible in China today which has no separation of powers. Hell you can’t even talk about the Tiananmen massacre without being locked up and it’s scrubbed from the internet but we can openly discuss domestic police abuses all day long without fear of reprisal.

As for WWII it isn’t even relevant to the discussion of domestic policy, notwithstanding the fact that it was near total war.

The US was not founded on slavery and genocide, this is bullshit history. Half if the original colonies barely ever had slavery and had banned it before the revolution. The founders, if you’ve read any of their writings hoped to see the young republic end the institution within a generation, and expected to fade away due to epidemic pressures from the more productive north.

War for oil is a stupid conspiracy theory. The Iraq invasion never took oil resources and immediately handed them over to the Iraqi state which sold them on the global market just like before. There was no US genocide there or anywhere for oil. This is just nonsense.

Yes we do still technically have forced labor in prison, though it’s actually usually voluntary these days. This is totally different in kind and character from what is happening in Xianxjang, again where people are actual victims of a real modern genocide.

You’re engaging in giahgallop and whataboutism here.

>The US was not founded on slavery and genocide, this is bullshit history. Half of the original colonies barely ever had slavery and had banned it before the revolution.

>Half of the original colonies barely ever had slavery and had banned it before the revolution.

>Half of the original colonies

So.... you're saying that half of them had full on slavery, and the other half had reduced to no slavery....to me it seems "founded" on slavery is absolutely accurate, especially considering that is literally enshrined in our highest governing document via the 3/5ths compromise, and went on to be the heart of the southern economy, becoming near and dear to enough people's hearts that half the country went to war to preserve it. And what would you call what we did to Native Americans if not genocide?

You're very much ignoring the actual historical context and the writing of the founders. That even half of the new nation outlawed slavery was pretty unique in the world of 1776 where slavery was globally ubiquitous. Article 1 section 9 of the constitution set a sort of cooling off period after which congress could end the Atlantic slave trade, which it did. The writing of the framers from the time makes it clear that their intention was to end importation in 1808 under the theory that it would cause slavery to end. They were trying to do so without fracturing their unstable union, it was a compromise just like the 3/5 compromise. But again, this was an unusually emancipatory direction for any new nation in the 18th century when every other nation had slavery, serfdom, or both.

I didn't address native peoples or genocide in my previous comment. But, if I were to do so I would probably argue that it was mostly carried out in the 19th century and was not a feature of the founding but its not an area of history I feel well enough versed in to make a super strong argument off the top of my head.

But that's not even the point, I'm arguing that the OP is acting in bad faith by arguing that CHina's current crimes are excused by the bad behavior of the US 250 years ago. Modern day slavery and genocide on the scale that exists in Xinjang are inexcusable and unparalleled since WWII. The US has made moral progress and the CCP is committing crimes against humanity.

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