Thread by @Locadoes

(1) In early 2018, Anime News Network published a article about Japanese animator who was a Holocaust denialist. The irony unfortunately was someone who has a connection to ANN, as well as past ties and affiliation to the various anime/manga companies is a denialist of one of the

(2) biggest human rights crisis in the 21st century. As someone who is involved in educating young people about the prosecution of Uighurs and other Turkic groups as a nonprofit executive director, this led me to research denialism. Genocide denial is a problem throughout the

(3) very history of genocide, permeating throughout various elements of our lives, including the most surprising elements. One surprising element is anime and manga. Both myself and my chief youth leaders are anime fans. So, it is gut wrenching right now incidentally discovered

(4) a connection between ANN and various anime/manga companies with someone who supported covering up one of the biggest genocide happening right now. Jason Thompson, is a writer who previously did a column at ANN as well as appear as a podcast guest for the website.

(5) Beside writing for ANN, he a freelance editor for Viz Media, a freelance manga editor for Random House, and a guest columnist for io9, Crunchyroll, and Comixology. His work span across the anime and manga industry. I remember seeing his columns at ANN. Unfortunately,

(6) despite his accomplishments, there are some information that made me disgusted when I found out about. In a area called East Turkestan, also called Xinjiang by the gov., in Northwestern China, there are concentration camps housing millions of people from the Uighur and

(7) various prominently Muslim ethnic groups. If anyone is interested in learning more about the prosecution, there a documentary made available about it.

(8) Doing research about the prosecution going in East Turkestan, that led me to discovering their a cottage industry built on denying the prosecution against Uighurs and other Turkic groups. Researching one of the leading denial movement figures, Carl Zha, I noticed that

(9) one of his followers were Jason Thompson. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I presume that he didn't know some of his work. Unfortunately, as I dig deeper, I ended up in a very dark place. I try contacting him to ask if he was aware of Carl Zha denialism.

(10) Looking through his tweets, not only was Jason Thompson aware of his denialism, but wholly supported and try to promote it himself. Carl Zha is condemned by Uighurs, and every single scholar and researcher who mention his work. Probably the best thread about him is available

(11) here:
bookcaseoperation.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/screen…
What make Zha brand of denialism so pernicious is how subtle it is. He present himself as a "moderate" who determined that thousands of researchers, scholars, journalists, and Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, and their families members, got

(12) together in a room, decide to make up and exaggerate a story that extremely consistent through different accounts and he is the only one who know the truth. Everyone from the media to the Uighurs are lying and exaggerating about everything. He will go to Xinjiang to show

(13) the world that he the one who know what really going on. Look at all these beautiful Uyghur women, look at me in Xinjiang, let me joke about genocide, let me downplay how many people in the concentration camps. Can you see how insidious this kind of denialism is?

(14) Why care that someone with ties across anime and manga industry is a genocide denialist. The problem is Anime News Network, according to it staff is supposed to be against this. When they investigated Kazuyoshi Yaginuma, they were supposed to be against genocide

(15) denialism and prosecution of ethnic groups. Now why is it that they are and other companies are not repudiating Uyghur Genocide denialism the same way companies repudiate Kazuyoshi Yaginuma. As a community leader, I will be working on a youth discussion examining how

(16) pervasive denialism have become in our life and demanding that ANN and other companies take action to repudiate denialism. It is unacceptable that ANN present itself as someone against denialism and hate but will turn a blind eye if it someone they have a connection to.

(17) To the Uighurs and various other groups being prosecuted, this is a serious issues. Carl Zha is to them the same way David Duke or Richard Spencer is to Jewish or Black people. These companies must between turning a blind eye or taking action to repudiate it.

Unroll
@threadreaderapp