I genuinely went to read this in good faith since it’s The Intercept (I know it’s not great, but it’s not CNN) but decided to do a quick text search for Zenz just to make sure. And of course, the whole fucking thing is full of Zenz.
This is just ridiculous at this point. I really don’t want to be a genocide-denier if there is actually one happening, but for fuck’s sake this is just ridiculous, LET ME SEE ONE REPORT ON THIS WITHOUT ZENZ ALL OVER IT.
The true centrist cold take here is “America & the west is genocidal as fuck in a way that we DO somewhat understand, let’s not fix China let’s fix America.” I mean as if we had any power to ‘do anything’ about China, not like foreign policy is influenced by public opinion or democracy whatsoever.
The best way I have of dealing with this to regular people isn’t to deny what’s happening with the Uighurs, since it looks the same as holocaust denial, rather, say “Ok, even if the most dramatic numbers of Uighurs who are suffering are true, there are far more people suffering in Yemen, something our government can actually do something about” and then talk about Yemen
That’s a logical fallacy, namely whataboutism. How can you try to ignore a conversation about genocide?
But yeah good point lol. Yemen & the middle east in general.
It’s not necessarily whataboutism so much as it’s something out of control and suffering due to American foreign policy is (more) in our control to expose to an apathetic public and so on.
This is Chomsky’s argument from the late 80s about why he’s fine with Russian activists in Russia but he doesn’t really care what Russia does because he can’t do anything about it, meanwhile he can work to effect political discourse in the US. In some ways it’s the opposite of whataboutism.
something our government can actually do something about”
To be fair, the situation with the Uighurs probably has an American element to it. Radicalizing extremists in areas strategically important to US foreign policy is kinda our thing.
True, but it’s much easier to explain how america can stop selling weapons to saudi arabia, refuelling their planes, and providing them with intel
