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China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
121–130 of 273 posts
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
The presence of the "nonviolent" but complacent and complicit minority in these countries is what enables things to be the way they are. Maybe not everyone participates, but if you poll them on whether or not they support honor killings, oppression of women, etc. a large number will agree. This is not some fringe set of beliefs. Now personally I don't think we need to "do something about it", but the U.S. has actuall…
About your first point, you are totally right. A report made in France tells that 28% of Muslim support an authoritarian position and a separatism against their host country society. While 1/3 is technically a minority, it is still a really hight proportion and a really signifiant number of people that can be counted in millions. " 28 % des musulmans de France peuvent être regroupés dans ce groupe qui mélange à la fo…
That's truly shocking. I wonder if anything can be done at this point. The only hope is that these numbers go down rather than increase in the next years.
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other news, the US, NATO and friends in this century alone destroyed Iraq, Libya, almost destroyed Syria and Yemen and did a few other nasty things that resulted in at least a million dead. Do you have a big enough item 5 for that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Doesn't make his point any less valid in this PARTICULAR context.
I mean, where are we going to move the factories if the prerequisite is "No brutal use of deadly force against Muslims" ?
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#124The fact that this is done under the guise of antiterrorism ought to ring some bells to American readers.
The situations don't compare well, even though the US too often uses terrorism as a guise to pursue global political goals.
Domestically there are 3.3 million Muslims in the US. There are ~50 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with most of the former detainees having been released without charge. Some of them were charged as enemy combatants and or terrorists. And Guantanamo is widely considered a black mark on the US reputation.
The US has millions of Muslims that co-exist entirely peacefully with a very large Christian majority. After 9/11, at the height of anti-Muslim emotions in the US, Muslim Americans weren't put into camps by the tens or hundreds of thousands; they weren't slaughtered; their rights weren't wiped out; their culture and religion wasn't made illegal; the US didn't arrest them by the hundreds of thousands in targeted fashion. In fact, it's extraordinary just how peaceful and calm the situation after 9/11 actually was: if you believed the propaganda, America surely would have killed or arrested every Muslim in the country, except the propaganda is all a lie.
The US is not trying to destroy Islam in the US. The US is not interning millions of Muslims, trying to eradicate their culture and beliefs. The US is not torturing its Muslim population of 3.3 million. The US is not restricting their movement, their worship, or keeping them from owning guns or knives to defend themselves. The US is not razing their places of worship. The US is not building massive camps to put hundreds of thousands of Muslims into.
The US isn't doing anything even remotely similar to what's going on in China.
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#125In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail. We've seen so many examples of fallen tyrannical states. But many ideas fail the first few times they're tried. China seems committed to making totalitarianism "work." It's hard to think of any more dangerous invention. Even nuclear weapons aren't as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government. This is an in…
One could argue that “totalitarianism” was the default government form for most of history. The problem is, the higher we go on the Maslow pyramid, the more likely it is for it to fail. You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it). And totalitarianism by definition has problems accepting criticism. The only way for totalitarianism…
> You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it).
You create an upper middle class for the "creatives" and you restrict the areas of creativity to military and industrial use.
Most well off people that I know are happy to think the poor deserve to be poor and repressed (different people have different reasons for justifying it. Few seen to really care).
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Doesn't make his point any less valid in this PARTICULAR context. I mean, where are we going to move the factories if the prerequisite is "No brutal use of deadly force against Muslims" ?
Was he making a relevant point besides that the West/US has done bad things too?
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#127In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail. We've seen so many examples of fallen tyrannical states. But many ideas fail the first few times they're tried. China seems committed to making totalitarianism "work." It's hard to think of any more dangerous invention. Even nuclear weapons aren't as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government. This is an in…
Successful "tyranny" could be analogous to successful multicellular life. We could be witnessing a similar development in the history of life. But note that multicellular life never wiped out single cells, and in fact we live symbiotically with a large number. Plus, cancer is apparently not something that can be eliminated.
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#128In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail. We've seen so many examples of fallen tyrannical states. But many ideas fail the first few times they're tried. China seems committed to making totalitarianism "work." It's hard to think of any more dangerous invention. Even nuclear weapons aren't as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government. This is an in…
One could argue that “totalitarianism” was the default government form for most of history. The problem is, the higher we go on the Maslow pyramid, the more likely it is for it to fail. You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it). And totalitarianism by definition has problems accepting criticism. The only way for totalitarianism…
> "only way for totalitarianism to “work” is if the rulers are both much smarter than the population as a whole"
The party can pick the smart people from population to join.
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't make his point any less valid in this PARTICULAR context. I mean, where are we going to move the factories if the prerequisite is "No brutal use of deadly force against Muslims" ?
Was he making a relevant point besides that the West/US has done bad things too?
I guess I inferred that he was pointing out the futility of looking for a place to move factories that is untarnished in this regard. If that was his point, he's right. I can't really think of any place to move the factories to that wouldn't just be kind of pointless. I mean, pretty much everyone uses deadly force against muslims. (Maybe someplace where they don't have muslims? We might be able to move there?)
In any case, I should probably just let him, (or her), outline what their own point was.
Re: China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other
#130In the West we have a false sense of security that totalitarianism will inevitably fail. We've seen so many examples of fallen tyrannical states. But many ideas fail the first few times they're tried. China seems committed to making totalitarianism "work." It's hard to think of any more dangerous invention. Even nuclear weapons aren't as dangerous as a sustainable model for modern tyrannical government. This is an in…
One could argue that “totalitarianism” was the default government form for most of history. The problem is, the higher we go on the Maslow pyramid, the more likely it is for it to fail. You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it). And totalitarianism by definition has problems accepting criticism. The only way for totalitarianism…
> You just can’t have a huge mass of creative, inventive people without them complaining about leadership (and wanting to improve it).
You could split a country economically into a wealthy economic zone and a zone for the working class.
Or you could have a wealthy country that helps another country to be totalitarian, for the right economic gains.