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In a somewhat related vein, there are entirely too many "anti-colonialists" in what is now fashionably called The Global South who, when push comes to shove, reveal themselves to be actually kind of okay with colonialism as long as it's not perpetrated against them. When a colonialist war of aggression is perpetrated against these white folks called "Ukrainians", and perpetrated by Russia, a country they really rather like, then what's a little colonialism between friends? Heck, Russia shows up with a colonialist militia to prop up dictators and mine for diamonds and gold all over the Sahel and it's like, heck yeah, thank for your kicking out the French. Really interesting logic.
My opinion, they're mostly middle class westerners that grew up in a cradle of empire, sucking from the teat of exploitative resource extraction. Then when they stopped seeing the benefits of imperialism as their country fell into late stage capitalism and eating itself alive, they turn their resentment against capitalism and correctly identify it as what's ailing their society, but somehow completely fall for the propaganda that there are socialist countries on this planet that are "fighting capitalism." They do nothing to challenge their deeply rooted western arrogance or imperialist savior complex, and begin lecturing people from smaller nations that actually, it's not imperialism when a country with a red flag does it.
Best of luck to you.
Tibet, Xinjiang, invading Vietnam.
>Or soviet imperialism
You're joking, right? The quintessential imperialist power of the Cold War. Post-WW2 subjugation of eastern Europe. Occupation of the Baltic states. The failed colonialist war against Finland. Suppression of attempts to leave its imperialist orbit in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, to a lesser extent Poland under Gomulka. The disaster in Afghanistan was started b1y the Soviet colonialist war there, of course.
>Or Vietnamese imperialism
Laos was a client state for a while, and their involvement in Cambodia crossed the line into imperialism at various points in the 70s.
>Or Cuban imperialism.
This one has a long and storied history. Cuban mercenaries were used to bolster far-left authoritarians and Soviet-aligned strongmen all over Latam and in Africa too. Even to this day they gladly send mercs to fight Russia's fascist war of aggression in Ukraine.
> Or soviet imperialism.
Show one example of Soviet imperialism, you say? There are entire museums dedicated to the subject!
Making threats against sovereign Taiwan is imperialism, though of course a soft form for now. However it has engaged in imperialist economic pressure such as when it prevented vaccine deliveries to Taiwan during COVID-19, forcing the country to develop its own domestic vaccine.
The genocide and economic exploitation in Xinjiang is old school imperialism.
As for the soviets, if American operations in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam are imperialism, then so too were Soviet operations in Afghanistan.
Yes when CCP undertakes an ethnonationalist settler campaign into Tibet and then instructs the settlers to “call for help”, it can be presented as Tibet “asking” for CCP authoritarianism. Same playbook as Russia in eastern Ukraine.
Yes, when the Xinjiang muslim population is terrorized by police state and concentration camps in a country with no free speech, it is hard to find locals publicly complaining and advocating for themselves.
> If Xinjiang has concentration camps, then why are the Chinese allowing the UN , tourists and journalists in?
They didn't used to, I should know, I tried to go and was rejected.
Yes, Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine, and a far more violent one than the CPC committed against Xinjiang. The PLA did not snipe Uighur Muslim children in the back of head and did not airstrike hospitals in Xinjiang. It still committed a genocide.
Remember the words of Chen Quanguo: "Round up everyone who should be rounded up," immediately before ordering mass arrests.
I'm sorry, but I've had this conversation too many times, I will simply need to give you the challenge I've given everyone else. Please, can you canonically dismiss each of these sources? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin... There are 402 of them. I understand it's a relatively monumental task, but that's the unfortunate reality you find yourself in when you argue against consensus, it's a lot of work. If you can't do that, then, I don't understand why I should believe you instead of the mountain of evidence against you. And no, "it's all CIA" doesn't really work considering the diversity of sources.
By the way, you never addressed imperialist threats against Taiwan. Could you please explain how threatening to invade a sovereign nation isn't imperialist?
1) Why is that that are very few if none of the sources you've linked are Islamic sources ? If Muslim people can recognise the plight of the Palestinian people, why can't they recognise the plight of the Uighurs?
2) Those sources are, for most of them, from countries that were extremely hostile to the idea of islamic and arabic independence movement. Why is that they wished for the continuation of Colonialism, wish for the destruction of the Palestinian people, and yet cheer for Uighur independence?
What we are facing here doesn't require spooks forcing journalists to write articles with a gun cocked against their head. This is gramscian cultural hegemony. Bourgeois journalists are reporting on those "facts" because it directly serves the interest of their wealthy Masters, and if we follow the rule of "don't bite the hand that feeds you" they would rarely if never contradict them.
Great! Me too. In fact I am a communist. That's why I can't enter the PRC without facing prison. Discussion of class consciousness is currently banned.
> 1) Why is that that are very few if none of the sources you've linked are Islamic sources ? If Muslim people can recognise the plight of the Palestinian people, why can't they recognise the plight of the Uighurs?
I don't understand how something like a newspaper can be "Islamic." As far as I know, all well-regarded news organizations are secular. So, I guess that is why none of the sources I've linked are "Islamic sources": because newspapers are secular.
Also, who is "Muslim people?" Every follower of Islam on planet earth? Why is it their specific responsibility to take notice of something in Xinjiang? Because the people have a religion of the same name? What's that matter?
This is what I meant when I wrote, "smells like ethnonationalism," this seems to me like an ideology that creates Statehood around people, and draws lines around people based on their ethnicity or religion. I prefer to take people as they are, rather than lump them into arbitrarily defined categories. Why aren't men in France doing anything to stop school shootings in America, which are committed almost entirely by men?
> Those sources are, for most of them, from countries that were extremely hostile to the idea of islamic and arabic independence movement.
Which sources? What does it mean to be hostile to "the islamic and arabic independence movement?" Which countries?
> Why is that they wished for the continuation of Colonialism
Who is "they?"
> Bourgeois journalists are reporting on those "facts" because it directly serves the interest of their wealthy Masters
And reports out of the PRC serve the interests of the CPC. The bourgeois journalists have provided substantially more evidence. The CPC restricted entry to Xinjiang, and when it finally acknowledged the existence of the reeducation camps, still never let foreign journalists in. As a Marxist, I choose the side with the most evidence.
By the way, some of the sources include: a PRC based associate professor in Fudan University (Chuchu Zhang), a newspaper famous for exposing corruption in South Africa (AmaBhungane), and other independent or NGO sources that I challenge you to claim are afraid to "bite the hand that feeds them." Did you know that Blackwater had plans to build a training center in Xinjiang? Did you know that it set aside 2.7$ million USD for establishing business in Xinjiang? Did you know that American companies helped build the surveillance system used in Xinjiang? (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Promega) But, it's the journalists that are bourgeois? (https://www.thenation.com/article/world/china-xinjiang-genoc...)
You still have not addressed PRC imperialism against Taiwan.
Or, to put it another way: they're really anti-Americans.
It's interesting to see the exaggerated responses to Trump. Objectively, he's less authoritarian than say the PRC, but he's unlocked a lot of probably pre-existing resentment in US allies (probably derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...), and gotten a much stronger and more vicious response.
I mean, if you're mad about what happened to that 5 year old immigrant with the hat in Minneapolis, what you you think about what's happening to kids in Xinjiang and Tibet (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/09/world/asia/ti...)?
> Gyal Lo, a Tibetan education researcher, became alarmed by the boarding schools in 2016, when he saw that his two preschool-aged grandnieces, who were attending one in his hometown in northwestern China, preferred to speak Mandarin, not Tibetan.
> When the grandnieces, then ages 4 and 5, went home on the weekend, he said in an interview, they appeared withdrawn and spoke awkwardly in Tibetan with their parents, much changed from when he saw them in the previous year. Now they behaved “like strangers in their own home,” he said.
> “I said to my brother, ‘What if you don’t send them to the boarding school?’” Gyal Lo said. “He said he had no choice.”
> Gyal Lo set out to investigate the changes that families were going through as the schools expanded across Tibetan regions in China. Over the next three years he visited dozens of such schools, and saw that many Tibetan students spoke little of their mother tongue and were sometimes only able to see their parents once every several weeks or even months.
It's much worse and more systematic.
Annexing Greenland, even if it did happen, is objectively not nearly as terrible as the genocide of Uygurs or murdering tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. You just don't expect it from America, that's all. But no worries, give us time, the rest of us are re-calibrating our expectations and next time we won't be nearly so comically shocked.
I mean, that's a rationalization for feelings, but I don't explains the responses. Isn't Canada pursing closer relations with China because Trump, for instance? That's like deciding to ally with Magneto because Professor X fell short of your expectations.
Canada is doing the normal things countries do in a multipolar world in which none of the big players (other than maybe the EU if they become a big player) will be a truly reliable ally from which no danger to its sovereignty emanates.
Due to geographical and logistics constraints, China is in many ways far less dangerous to Canada than the US, if the likelihood of the US going full fash and invading us is anything above 0. It's a good move to offset your complete dependence on the big and somewhat friendly player next door, who can swallow you up whole if it decides to do so, by engaging more closely (than before) with a big and somewhat unfriendly player far far away, who can do little damage to you in case your relationship sours. Realpolitik the big boys call it, I think.
/s
If you have a moment, I invite you to take a peek at my blog, website (see "Values"), or comment history, and let me know in what ways I'm fascist. Should be quite easy for you, if I'm one of the most fascist people in existence.