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Comment by matchapples | Hacker News Reader

Why do you say it's 99% propaganda?

"sinofication" sounds a lot like "eliminating the existing culture" which sounds a lot like genocide. Genocide is more than just murdering everyone like in some of the most well known cases like the Holocaust -- it includes elimination of an ethnic group by any means possible, including "nativification"

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I understand where you're coming from, but -cide implies killing.

Of a nation or ethnic group.

the "cide" in genocide refers to destroying

for example, a cultural genocide refers to destroying culture, e.g. Uighur or Muslim culture

Would you say the choice of the word "genocide" here is because it's the most accurate description of what's going on?

Or is it chosen for rhetorical/propaganda effect without too much concern for accuracy?

Would you say the common, accurate usage of the term "cultural genocide" to refer to what the term refers to, is a bigger or smaller problem than the actual cultural genocide itself?

Not the person you're responding to, but it is an accurate description of genocide under its current meaning as defined by the UN (probably the most authoritative body on this kind of matter).

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

What the Chinese are doing there is covered under Article II, c.

If you are being pedantic by holding fast to the literal Greek translation of "geno" and "cide" then, well, this is simply not the complete modern meaning of the term.

That article IIc pivots on the key phrase "physical destruction".

Look, internment isnt good either, why dig in your heels on the most loaded possible word?

physical destruction, internment, cultural genocide, they are all happening

why not focus on that, rather than your personal, individual dislike of a term?

why dig your heels in on the semantics of the thing, rather than the substance?

There is no authoritative body on the definitions of words. More generally, if genocide can mean "not killling, but very bad" then it is not much use except as an epithet - a negatively-loaded bomb to be lobbed in partisan debates at people who you think are doing something very bad. Virtually every controversial policy could be described as, "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to" some group.

The definition, US propaganda under Pompeo as head of State tried (and failed to meet), was UN's convention on genocide, which would trigger legal responses on member states. The TLDR is Pompeo laundered very tortured legal analysis through Zenz and some Gulanist Saudi think tank (IIRC) to try insinuate PRC met the definition when most credible international lawyers saw through the bullshit, but noted PRC actions closer to cultural genocide, which does NOT have definition at UN, and hence not prosecutable. The result is PRC actions merely labelled as potential human rights abuses at UN, aka business as usual, and a bunch of useful idiots who ate Pompeo's bait thinking PRC actually met the definition of genocide when it manifestly did not. And buy business as usual, of human rights abuses / cultural genocide, it puts PRC XJ actions in league with behaviours of the west. Hence you don't hear much about the XJ campaign anymore from western propaganda, because the propaganda was mostly useful if the genocide label stuck at UN, and made PRC actions more nefarious not equal to west. Now it's mostly used by US to justify XJ sanctions and trying to partners onboard to cripple XJ industry like solar, cotton, agriculture.

> There is no authoritative body on the definitions of words.

false: there are a few. They aren't always correct, but they're more correct than you personally

> More generally, if genocide can mean...

there is no question what it means, you simply personally disagree with it

and since you definitely aren't an authoritative body on the definition of words, your personal pedantic insistence that the word mean only what the strict etymological roots imply, rather than how people actually use it, is irrelevant

> a negatively-loaded bomb to be lobbed in partisan debates

it's quite telling that you seem to view usage of the term "cultural genocide" to refer to cultural genocide as a bigger issue than actual cultural genocide

don't like people using the correct term to refer to the action? maybe get those perpetrating the action to stop, instead of telling everyone we're using the wrong words to describe it.

It's absolutely not. There's a reason US propaganda under Pompeo had to manufacture and launder reports with tortured legal interpretation to try to get the genocide label to stick but couldn't because there's no intent to destroy, hence useful idiots trying to be pedantic and argue how enforcing family planning reflect intention even though that applied to Han majority, or mass (temporary) internment / inflicting "pain" somehow equivalent to physical destruction while population continues to grow.

Modern definition of genocide at UN explicitly wouldn't categorize what PRC is doing in XJ - cultural genocide - because members, especially west went out of their way to ensure cultural genocide would have little legal ramifications, otherwise Canada would have been sanctioned to death for self professed cultural genocide a few years ago. Incidentally the entire reason Pompeo tried to propagandize genocide label was because it would trigger diplomatic ramifications at UN. What the PRC is doing in XJ is cultural genocide, and bluntly that’s permissible thanks to lobbying from the west.

The entire manufactured genocide narrative is so retarded because if PRC wanted to, they could just... commit genocide. At PRC scale they can wipe out the 12M Uyghurs in a few weekends on the cheap instead of wasting trillions of RMB trying to sinicize them.

"-cide" is a suffix that means "to kill," as in:

  * suicide
  * regicide
  * fratricide
  * insecticide
  * pesticide

It comes from the Latin word "caedo," which means "to kill." The phrase "cultural genocide" is not the same as "genocide," and indeed the legal definition of "genocide" expliticly says that destruction of a culture is not genocide.

Using the word "genocide" to refer to something other than mass murder - and then falling back to the claim that "genocide" doesn't mean mass murder - is just playing rhetorical games.

> Why do you say it's 99% propaganda?

I suspect because of propaganda.

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