I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
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who are all based in the west, i checked
Actually they’re cringe in the west
as a side note, there’s no such thing as unbiased. everyone is shaped by their class background and material conditions
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ignoring the class character of those sources will wind up with an unexamined bias towards a bourgeois viewpoint, however international
Critiquing China from the left is ok. And what that looks like is acknowledging that there is racism present in China and there are marginalized groups who aren’t being treated fairly. That needs to change, just like it needs to change in nearly every other country in the world. Marginalization of minorities remains a global problem, and China could be doing more.
BUT, there is little credible evidence to suggest that minorities in China are worse off than minorities in the US, or Scandinavia, or Japan, or Isreal, etc etc etc. In some respects, they may even be better off.
So yeah, it would be totally reasonable to take, say, an anarchist perspective, and criticize China as part of a broader concern about power structures. Criticism that paints China as “evil” is not criticism from the left and is, intentionally or otherwise, buying into Western anti-China propaganda.
let’s be specific about what your claims are, marginalized is an incredibly low bar to clear when the US has been pushing lies about extermination camps
https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang
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The accusation is that they are operating extermination camps, though. That is the claim of various media and government-affiliated organizations in the west. That’s what we’re responding to.
I think there’s some confusion that because we push back so strongly against red scare nonsense regarding China that we have no criticisms of the country.
This is not true. We do, it’s the “critical” part of critical support. But in the context of the most deranged militaristic country in the world warmongering constantly the choice of when you voice those criticisms is very important. If you’re not careful those criticisms actually strengthen the hegemonic conception that China is an evil enemy to be defeated at all cost.
So the issue myself and others here have isn’t that Uighurs may face discrimination, marginalization, etc. They might, I will admit I don’t know enough to comment one way or another.
The thing is, “marginalization” is most definitely NOT the narrative going on in western media. It is that China is specifically engaging in genocide and forced labor camps. Both of these claims are patently untrue with zero evidence; and even Michele Bachelet’s UN commission agreed on this.
That is the narrative we push back on here.
Can you or any liberal institution you know of point to an instance where America resolved the issue of organized terrorist attacks in a region without the use of invasion, drone strikes, and black sites? By all means, please tell us how you think China should have solved this issue instead.
I wouldn’t say it’s marginalization so much as it is being born into poor economic standing with limited upwards mobility, if that makes sense? China does try with it’s affirmative action policies, but it’s pretty hard to overcome when you’re a visible minority and generally born in poorer provinces simply by demographic distribution.
Thanks for acting as an excellent example.