it’s not hate, it’s human rights and history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Zenz#Criticism

In an article published in the TAZ newspaper on 23 September 2020, China correspondent Fabian Kretschmer described Zenz as “controversial”, as Chinese state media accused him of having a “radical evangelical background” and criticised the fact that Zenz had not visited China for over ten years. The fact that Zenz works for the right-wing conservative think tank “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation”, which has “close ties to the CIA”, also casts him in a “dubious light”. On the other hand, according to Kretschmer, Zenz’s research is primarily based on publicly available documents and social media publications by Chinese authorities and local governments that originate directly from the Chinese state, and his research remains “scientifically tenable”, even if it is “instrumentalised by the US government for its harsh anti-China policy”.[75] When asked about Adrian Zenz in his role as “the Western media’s most important source for the accusations against the Chinese government” and his accusation of “a demographic genocide campaign”, sinologist Björn Alpermann of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg explained in an interview with the weekly newspaper Jungleworld published in February 2022, it is not necessary to “sympathise with Adrian Zenz as a person or approve of the political agenda of his donors to come to the conclusion that birth control in Xinjiang has been tightened”.[76]

In the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland, Uwe Behrens described a report published in March 2021 by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy as a “string of unverified secondary information and statements by Uyghurs living abroad”, which was “ultimately based on the internet research of anthropologist Adrian Zenz”.[77]

In 2023, political theorists Alain Brossat and Juan Alberto Ruiz Casado described Zenz as “instrumental” in the step that renamed China’s campaign in Xinjiang from “mass arbitrary detentions and related violations” to “genocide”.[78] They described the arguments in his 2018 work as “academically flimsy” and criticized his 2019 work for containing misleading or directly false claims.[78]

Every Uyghur Allegation, Debunked (As of 2020, July 29th)

All that said (please feel free to get out the “Fuck you Tankie! Fuck you CCP!” now), the Chinese police presence in Xinjiang - particularly in the wake of the slew of terrorist attacks from 2008 to 2014 - is well documented. Large scale arrest, detainment, and prosecution is well documented. Chinese industrial development in the region is well-documented, as is the rapid urbanization and incorporation of the territory into the national economy often with large numbers of Han Chinese migrants entering the state.

Comparison between Chinese development of Xinjiang and US development of the American Midwest and Southwest is accurate. What is wildly inaccurate is the claim that (a) Chinese nationals aren’t allowed to debate or discuss the ethical or economic consequences of this domestication and that (b) American nationals are liberally educated and informed on the topic of US westward expansion and the consequences it had on native peoples. Further, the core socio-economic consequences of these policies - the outright decimation of the First Nations population when compared to the rapid urbanization in Xinjiang and the significant improvement in quality of life (also common to regions like Tibet and Mongolia) seems starkly contrasted.

What we have is far more comparable to the American War on Terror (or its predecessor War on Drugs and modern day War on Immigration). These sweeping campaigns to impose a domestic moralistic policy on the public at-large through mass incarceration, educational reforms, and homogenization of culture is openly lauded as virtuous when it comes from white Christian US nationalists. It only becomes genocide when it is practiced by Wicked Atheist Foreigners.

This further neglects how rhetoric around “Chinese Genocide in Xinjiang” is an application of the Strategy of Tension popular with American military intelligence and propaganda operations. Much like with Operation Cyclone in neighboring Afghanistan and support for ultra-nationalist Zionists in Israel, US arms dealing and deliberate radicalization of the local population into a militarized hostile cohort to destabilize a rival global power drives up the instances of conflict between Uighur civilians and Chinese state officials.

Finally, the incessant focus on “Free Speech” as a virtue seems to neglect the significant deterioration of public rhetoric and informed politicking in the United States. On the one hand, professional domestic propagandists and marketing/sales teams have heavily polluted the domestic discourse on a range of issues, such that seemingly popular ideas (universal health care, public pensions, full employment, elimination of homelessness, preventative measures against spread of infectious diseases, a stable reliable market for consumer goods) are routinely upended by short-term high budget advertising campaigns. On the other, the endless paranoia around foreign infiltration of media (Russian bots, Chinese wumao, Saudi buyouts, Iranians tricking student groups into joining antisemitic Hamas riots on campuses) makes any rational discourse online extremely difficult.

Public media moderation as a means of focusing discussions of current/historical events and ideological debates to the topic at hand, preventing “spam” and other forms of soft censorship by drowning out opposing views, and removing derogatory remarks / hate speech intended to poison the well are all vital to any kind of useful public discourse.

Expressing criticism of censorship by a particular social cohort (be it Chinese nationals or LGBTQ forum moderators or Woke Liberal admins) absolutely is tainted by bigotry. This is especially true when it takes place absent any acknowledgement of white nationalist censorship and bias in local predominantly white owned media. But sliding in a “Both Sides” doesn’t absolve you from using the rhetorical virtue of free speech to publish blood libel and red scares, largely concocted to encourage hysteria and legitimize violence against the target group.