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Roderic Day Profile picture
@RodericDay
Jul 26, 2020 • 78 tweets • 32 min read • Read on X
I'm gonna make a thread about key resources that I encountered as I researched Xinjiang/Uyghur accusations. No particular order, maybe vaguely chronological.

This documentary critique by Sun Feiyang was the first, flipping the BBC narrative on its head.
medium.com/@sunfeiyang/br…
I happened to be taking Mandarin classes at the time, so tidbits like deliberate mis-translation really grabbed me. Or the "dramatic irony" wrt leaving.

It's really quite something watching the documentary before and after.

Basically a top-tier class in recognizing propaganda! ImageImageImage
Then I started looking at the more "grassroots" kinda evidence, little videos from regular people in social media crying, making it seem like existence there was quite sad and miserable.

That turned out this thread full of debunked clips and stories:
I decided to then see if I could find something about what various "authorities" were saying. You can't trust any one authority, but what about what disparate authorities agree about?

thenews.com.pk/latest/422970-…
What about a western institution? The World Bank fit the bill.
worldbank.org/en/news/statem Image
I found out China invited the UN, and that the USA vehemently tried to stop it from going.

However, the UN counter-terrorism chief went anyway, and they reached "broad consensus".
reuters.com/article/us-chi…
They invited European diplomats
reuters.com/article/us-chi…
It's important to liken this to 2018, when Maduro asked the UN to go to Venezuela verify the elections, and the Venezuelan opposition asked them *not to*, because it would "validate the regime".
reuters.com/article/us-ven…
They milked that to call the Venezuelan government an "illegitimate regime" ever since.

Anyway. The Economist published an article that purported to slam Muslim countries for not siding with China, but it instead made the accusers seem more egregious:
economist.com/china/2019/07/… Image
No matter how you slice it, it's basically "white colonialists vs. the rest of the world".

These people have no credibility in claiming they care about the plight about Muslims, or literally anyone else for that matter. ImageImageImage
I don't pay attention to Chinese media that much because I am still ingrained with the attitude that it is super biased, but they have in fact been putting out statements debunking the accusations:
globaltimes.cn/content/115847…
They even have some people on video. So it's not like they can't find at least one person to take their side!
Anyway, then we start getting into the real interesting part: so, China has some Uyghurs on their side. But what about the Uyghurs that America has got on their side? What about the Experts?

This is where it all goes haywire. 90% of what you hear comes from *one guy*: Image
Adrian Zenz is cited by virtually every "reputable" outlet out there as the foremost world expert in Xinjiang, but people never mention his background at all.

Let's start from the undeniable: he's been caught blatantly lying before.
Why does he lie? Because he works for a propaganda outfit called "Victims of Communism". The literal *job* of this propaganda foundation is to lie and lie.

This is scarcely mentioned. ImageImage
What about his methodology? He constantly makes absolutely basic mistakes like mixing up 80% and 8%
Ajit Singh does another good methodological take-down here, just going step-by-step on how the "millions of jailed people" numbers were arrived at, a figure that no longer even gets cited. It's just "common knowledge" by now.
thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/chi…
The guy is literally on record saying he didn't know anything about the topic, but the BBC commissioned his research.
If he doesn't know what he's talking about, what was he doing before? Why him?

Well, then it gets straight up weird. You've maybe seen this before, the guy is a "theological scholar" who believes in the Rapture, and that his job on Earth is to fight China, the anti-Christ. Image
Is it a random fluke that they picked this evangelical guy?

Well, no. Here's a whole thread of extremely notorious "China Watchers", like Bethany Allen and James Graham and T. Greer, all talking about their deeply religious backgrounds:
This doesn't mean there's a religious war afoot. It's still all imperialism and resources.

Just pointing out the China Watcher community selects for people with long histories of white supremacy, people that won't flake because facts get in the way.

As Vidal put it, Image
Then there's the victim testimony. It's very difficult to reject Victim Testimony, makes you feel like a Holocaust Denier or something, but some facts need to be laid out clearly: the USA *knows* this. They know how well "atrocity propaganda" works.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_… ImageImageImageImage
I think there's no better explanation of how the USA has manipulated people's vague desire to "stop an atrocity" than this short clip from the Nostalgia Trap on how Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" justifies American imperialism.
So, with that in mind, what about projects like the Xinjiang Victims Database at Shahit dot biz? So many sad stories!

Well, you need to dig in!

Rushan Abbas is featured in it repeatedly. Rushan Abbas worked as a translator for Bush in Guantanamo Bay! She thinks GB > China. ImageImageImageImage
Abbas did an AMA on Reddit, and it was an absolute disaster. She really revealed to what a total extent she was an agent of the United States.
medium.com/@RobertArlan/a…
Funnily enough, just the other day, Sophie Richardson, "China Director" at Human Rights Watch, ALSO did a Reddit AMA, and it was another complete disaster, where she revealed she couldn't answer even basic questions about her area of "expertise":
reddit.com/r/worldnews/co…
This is just an aside, but absolutely everyone should read this essay about Human Rights organizations in general, by Mark Ames
thedailybanter.com/2012/06/the-qu…
Chase it with these recent pronouncements from that monster Mike Pompeo
apnews.com/5ede767e136d84… ImageImage
Am I saying this happens to all testimony? Well, I haven't seen all testimony. It certainly seems to happen with all high-profile testimony!

Sayragul Sauytbay is another one that gets a lot of airtime. She also says whatever is needed:
There's a beautiful short documentary about this process of manufacturing horror stories, about Korea. It discusses how the USA pays for horror stories to bolster its claims around the world.

Incredibly recommended!
So, let's get to the core of the issue. What is *actually* going on? Here's a summary post, and I will expand it a bit.
As Churchill says, white imperialists have *always* had the program of destroying China.

China has been a thorn on their side since forever. However, China is too big and strong to be destroyed, so they want to break it apart.

Pay attention, you'll start seeing it everywhere: ImageImage
This has a nice side-benefit that you don't rely exclusively on racist warhawks for support

in fact, tons of liberals and even "leftists" will freely sign up to any project labeled "self-determination", if you spin it just right!
I like calling it the "regime change left".

Dissent, Jacobin, Lausan, Chuang, MadeInChina, SupChina, The Nation, Progressive International, etc.

They're always there to yell "both sides are bad" and stake out a third position.
Anyway, so we know about this project about breaking up China.

The next big important thing, as it pertains to Xinjiang specifically, is the US funding and arming of terrorists.

Brzezinski in 1998 could not make it more clear: the USA wants to drag China into an "Afghan trap" ImageImage
China responded not by sending the PLA, but instead by creating de-radicalization programs and schools.

Maybe this project is under-funded, under-supervised, and fraught with abuse? Possibly. I sure hope it isn't.

"Every Day Is Kristallnacht"? Resolutely not. Image
Time for another theoretical aside, but I think here it is worth reading Kevin Dooley's critique of Noam Chomsky's extremely inconsistent "anti-imperialism".

One that often indulges in pretending the USA can be a force for good in the world. It cannot.
kevindooleyirl.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/the…
>The difference between his position and a hard-line anti-imperialist position isn’t tactical. What he’s arguing is simply a violation of anti-imperialist principles based on a fundamentally different understanding of what can drive the empire to act in the world.
💯
All "leftists" and "progressives" need to understand that they cannot preach "lefty unity" at one moment, then demand we abandon the CPC and side with Mehdi Hasan and The Intercept on the next.

You're "uniting" with the wrong people.
Empire isn't "stupid" or "bumbling".

It is extremely savvy, and it will absolutely support "Labour Movements" in Poland and Chile if it helps it achieve long-term goals.

You cannot rely on simplistic "David vs. Goliath" formulae.
nytimes.com/1974/09/20/arc…
And similarly, America will absolutely fund terrorism.

In fact, just in 2010, the narrative was exactly inverted!

American state department outlets like NPR were pushing propaganda like "Chinese Muslims good, Other Muslims bad"!
npr.org/2010/07/21/128 ImageImageImage
Vijay Prashad has a very interesting lecture about the relationship between Socialism, Nasserism, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and terrorism

I haven't dug deeper, but it is certainly a much more compelling narrative than "Clash of Civilizations"!
There's no end to where every single aspect of this discussion could go, from the discussion of whether China is socialist (it is!), to parallels to Latin America, to the pacifying role of foreign horror stories in the USA domestically.

My main takeaway is: please research!
Earlier in the thread there's a post that talked about how three imperialists lay out the China strategy

I expanded on how Churchill wanted to dismember China, and how Brzezinski thought weaponizing terrorism was a way to do it

What about Kennan?

Well, first you should acquaint yourself with Kennan. The man was as influential as he was racist.

Another vicious, religious bigot and anti-socialist, he's referred to in America as one of the "Wise Men" of foreign policy.

newrepublic.com/article/117174… ImageImage
In the memo, Kennan lays it out clearly:

>we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity
history.state.gov/historicaldocu…
Here's where it is important to know about the Belt and Road Initiative, and how Xinjiang fits into it.

European world supremacy was enforced via the ruling the ocean, so China is trying to build a land-based trade network that isn't subject to their whims. Image
Especially with the rise of Xi Jinping, they realized that things were not headed that way.

Note that this fear of "China exporting their ideology" is just projection from the country that has exported "Freedom and Democracy" at gunpoint for decades.
whitehouse.gov/briefings-stat… ImageImageImage
John Pilger has a pretty interesting documentary about Obama's "pivot to Asia", Trump's follow-up, and the ultra-militarization of the entire South China Sea region via Okinawa, South Korea, and the Marshall Islands.

A long but important watch.
Image
the reason why this is such an existential threat is because what is at stake isn't just some markets in Europe/Africa, but the entire ideological project of capitalism

Izak Novak does a great job going in-depth on this
izaknovak.wordpress.com/2020/04/17/62/ ImageImageImageImage
The threat of China (and others like Cuba and Venezuela) isn't bellicose, from China against American people.

The threat is internal: if westerners start seeing the virtues of alternative governance models, their rulers are in deep trouble.
Westerners brag so much about calling BoJo a clown and Trump a cheeto they don't realize that they don't get to vote against war or for public health projects

Capital rules capitalists, and capitalists rule countries
Image
Look around and you'll find plenty of extremely bourgeois sources detailing how China, though open to markets, isn't *capitalist*. After all, merchant capitalists coexisted with Feudal Lords in Feudalism.

What we are seeing is Capital in panic.
theguardian.com/world/2019/jul… ImageImageImage
Is China socialist?

>whether we call the former communist countries "socialist" is a matter of definition. suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world - as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize Image
that's the inimitable Michael Parenti, by the way.

if you haven't seen his famous "yellow video", it's absolutely a must watch.

all his lectures are very good.
anyway, if people didn't fear "genocidal China" and the airwaves weren't completely saturated with absurd horror stories about skin flaying, westerners would start demanding their own states deal with poverty or the environment
newscientist.com/article/221136…
focus on "censorship", a blunt instrument, displaces focus on "saturation", a surgical one:

>the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum
people come to me and say "I saw 98 articles about this horror, are you saying they're all wrong?" with incredulity.

because they've deeply bought into the lie that they have a furiously combative free press that just wouldn't let a lie like "Saddam has WMDs" stand.

but it did.
anyway, those are some of my thoughts regarding Kennan's admission, and *why* America and its vassals are doing what they are doing.

it's not only about resources at stake, the threat to the ideological dominance of Capital is existential.
wow, I was just informed by a friend that one of my posts was silently censored!

Here it is, right before the one about calling BoJo a clown. The sentiment expressed here is pretty important! Image
here's a discussion about the NYT "Xinjiang Papers" story by Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley, which I believe relies on dubious framing for impact.
here's a discussion about the BBC story on the Uyghur model who claimed to have recorded footage from the camps, which led me to have a strange interaction with Professor James Millward, and learn a bit about ETIM outside of China
here's a thread about Codastory's Isobel Cockerell and her interviews with Carl Zha, Jerry Grey, and "Xi Fan". there's full footage and also short clips, which allows people to draw their own conclusions about the interviewer and the interviewees
Daniel Dumbrill interviewed Arslan Hidayat, and it resulted in some very bizarre discrepancies between Arslan's mournful claims about his father-in-law, and available video of him on television
as a reminder, Arslan Hidayat is the Twitter user mentioned near the beginning of this thread, caught several times manufacturing sad viral videos from unrelated footage
Thread about a very interesting article from 2014.
Thread narrowly focused on debunked claims:
Nathan Ruser from ASPI doesn't even know how basic grocery shopping works in China!

Great example of sheer ignorance passing itself off as expertise, quoted everywhere uncritically.

h/t @ae_alna Image
I think these four pictures really capture the core reality of the process we are witnessing

VOX founder preaching unification over hatred, regime change toadies gushing about reaching targets, main beneficiaries, expected outcomes

This thread on The Economist's David Rennie, originally a simple petty taunt, uncovered that his whole family history is basically a microcosm of imperial aggression against China!
This thread, also against The Economist, reveals how anti-China sentiment is used to suppress domestic demands for ecological development in the West, burying good examples with twisted narratives
A single in-depth investigation is more insightful than a thousand low-effort snipes.

And when it comes to unpacking things carefully, @moghilemear13 is one of the best.
medium.com/@sunfeiyang/th…
On Emily Feng
Zenz strikes again
The shoe debacle
"Past work"
I wrote an essay about the rationale that links Venezuela, Bolivia, HK, Xinjiang, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and "middle class" everywhere together:
redsails.org/everyday-subku…
A brief survey of recent stuff, especially The Intercept completely exposing itself as a rag.

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More from @RodericDay

Roderic Day Profile picture
Mar 27
To understand tortured news language today, like goofily not mentioning "Israel" in articles, notice how people relate to history.

Back in the day people knew "The Holodomor" was a Nazi joke. But NYT, etc. were carefully ambiguous. Decades later, all that ambiguity pays off.
Of course, things look unstable and all that "future-proofing" may never pay off.

But just try to imagine a particular world a hundred years from now, where Zionists continue to rewrite history: "Oh yeah? If it happened that way you say, why did no NYT article mention it?"
"Are you suggesting *all* the mainstream was colluding against 'Palestine'? All of it? Psh, ridiculous! A conspiracy theory!"

We mock this today because we see it side by side.

But in a hundred years? Just look at how people speak of the USSR today. "Radicals" ate it all up.
Read 10 tweets
Roderic Day Profile picture
Mar 6
401ks make workers into capitalists.

Pensions had them fighting politically for terms.

401ks meekly align their interests with those of markets.

By the end of most affluent careers, "workers" will "vote" against wage raises and safety regulations to protect their "nest egg."
It's not like pensions were amazing, mind you. They're a concession, not worker control.

But people with fat 401ks who cry "Who could callously invest in horrible companies like Exxon and Facebook and Lockheed-Martin!?" amuse.

*You* do!

Restricted funds are a fig leaf.
It's bothered me forever.

Capitalist governments basically figured out that, if the whole point is to tax workers then use funds to repress them, with "tax-free investment opportunities" they could simply skip the middleman and *directly* have workers fund corporations.

Clever!
Read 11 tweets
Roderic Day Profile picture
Mar 1
Every once in a while I dive into Rosa Luxemburg's archive to try to find something of hers to put upon RS and I always conclude the same thing:

- She's really genuinely likable
- She's dangerously misguided

She's got a trippy yet familiar combination of charisma and wrongness.
Take her commentary on the Plekhanov-Lenin split.

She's attacking Plekhanov to defend Lenin, but she comes off as naive: she underplays what Plekhanov detects in Lenin, while *also* underplaying the correctness of Lenin's insights on "spontaneity." Image
But she obviously authentically and genuinely believes what she is saying.

Until the very very last (before her murder) she is saying things like "We lose, and we lose, and we lose, but then we'll win!"

She's the ultimate martyr. Image
Read 11 tweets
Roderic Day Profile picture
Feb 15
A CPUSAer replied to my WITBD note.

MLK Jr., for all his virtues, was an avowed religious idealist whose political career was majorly buoyed by an officially uncredited and politically under-theorized "good cop" dynamic with Malcolm X and the Soviet Union as "bad cops."

Image
Image
To put this in ML terms, for CPUSA to imply MLK Jr. has important "innovations" over Lenin in terms of peace and faith in America is like telling Germans to read SDs.

You could instead read Black Panthers like Huey and Fred and Assata, but they don't make CPUSA look very good.
Incidentally, however @afromaterialism does answer one of my questions.

CPUSA does make a lot of sense if instead of seeing it as a Communist Party you see it as a kind of secular, non-denominational American church for people marginalized by capitalism.
Read 9 tweets
Roderic Day Profile picture
Jan 21
New @RedSailsOrg!

In 1921 Lenin said "you cannot hope to become a real, intelligent Communist without making a study of all of Plekhanov's philosophical writings, because nothing better has been written on Marxism anywhere in the world."

Let's try one!
redsails.org/the-meaning-of…
@RedSailsOrg 'We can foretell that although there will be a revival of interest in Hegel among the educated classes … bourgeois scientists will undertake a feverish "critical revision" … many doctors' diplomas will be obtained fighting the late professor's "extremes" and "arbitrary logic."'
@RedSailsOrg 'Naturally, science's only gain from that "critical revision" will be that the learned defenders of the capitalist system will repeatedly display their theoretical worthlessness, just as they have already shown it in the field of politics.'
Read 40 tweets
Roderic Day Profile picture
Sep 1, 2023
I think for Losurdo the Soviets failed philosophically insofar as they turned theory into practice but failed to then turn practice into theory.

Applies both to Lenin's NEP and to Stalin's repulsion of Nazi invasion through "siege socialism."

Overused "special circumstances."
The problem is not that what was done was done—indeed, those were good real solutions to hard real problems.

The problem is how it dovetails with the habit favoured by liberals of drawing a loop around an action and declaring "that doesn't reflect on who I really am."
This is why Losurdo likes G. W. F. Hegel and Deng Xiaoping so much.

He's against romantic sweetening, against rhetorically reaffirming one's ideals while insisting this or that is a "necessary evil."

If something is truly necessary we shouldn't speak of it as an "evil."
Read 10 tweets

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