I think it's partly because people in the US have generally a poor understanding of the world and are used to lumping people in along vaguely racial/ethnic categories. At least a lot them seem to presume that anyone who looks middle-eastern is an "arab", anyone from Eastern Europe is a "slav", anyone from South America is "hispanic", etc...
Hence they have no difficulty in placing Jewish people and German people apart, since in their minds they belong to different categories, but it gets much more difficult with people who they think are in the same general group.
Russia itself, for example, is a very multi-ethnic empire with many vastly different groups of people living there, and people like the Tatars or the Udmurts are no more "slavic" than the English or the Germans are "slavic".
And the extermination of ethnic groups in the USSR is generally not known or talked about. Hence you can even today come across silly ideas, such as Crimea being historically "Russian" when there was an extensive ethnic cleansing campaign carried out there that was completed only as recently as under Stalin's regime.
As the Nazis swept eastwards, they found plentiful support in the local populace. The bulk of my family left Lithuania in the late 19th century due to Tsarist persecution, mainly to the US and Britain; it was as well they did, because virtually every Jew who remained did not survive WWII. In fact after the retreat of the Red Army, Lithuanian nationalists and fascists slaughtered thousands before the Germans had even arrived.
Americans my age and older completed our high school education during the cold war, and at that time we didn't learn much about the history and culture of places that were behind the iron curtain.
WWII is a good example. When I was going through high school in the US in the late 1980s, it was a considerable topic, but the history of the war we knew mostly came from our own military, our field reporters, diplomats, our allies, and the refugees that came here during the war. We knew a lot about the naval war in the Pacific theater because we had lots of people who experienced it, but we had little insight into the war in China beyond the high level view of moving fronts and major events. We didn't know any more because Mao closed the country off at the end of the war and their history didn't get out. Likewise, we knew the history and battles of northern Africa and the western front in Europe well, we knew about life in occupied western Europe, and we knew about the Holocaust. But we didn't know much about the war in Eastern Europe beyond major movements and Stalin's view of things, because after that the Soviet Union went dark and the history didn't get out.
Something related I didn't learn until my early 20's, is just how bad Lenin was. Every book I looked through back then glossed over his crimes, painted him as an overzealous idealist who made a few mistakes, but had many useful ideas about reforming society. Until Stalin came along, perverted Lenin's vision and imposed his dictatorship over the Soviet Union.
The truth is Lenin was as ruthless a dictator as Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Yet you still see otherwise intelligent people quoting him.
Also a bit of a hypocrite:
Lenin never witnessed this violence or participated in it first-hand,[279] and publicly distanced himself from it.[280] His published articles and speeches rarely called for executions, but he regularly did so in his coded telegrams and confidential notes."Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now underway everywhere. An example must be made.
Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, fatcats, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all grain from them.
Designate hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a fashion, that for hundreds of verst around the people see, tremble, know, shout: "the bloodsucking kulaks are being strangled and will be strangled".
Telegraph receipt and implementation. Yours, Lenin.
P.S. Find tougher people."
After watching the movie, Tracker, which made comparisons between the the Boers and the Maori, under British rule, I did a little research into the Boer Wars.
Turns out, the Nazis didn't invent modern concentration camps. They got that model for processing large numbers of non-combatants, from the British in South Africa.
Plenty of atrocity to go around.
There's parts in Hitler's writings where he says he was inspired by his whole lebensraum idea and colonizing Russia and the Asian steppes and ethnic cleansing of Slavs and Tartars from the Anglos expansion west in the US and the ethnic cleansing of its native populations.* And the Nuremberg Laws were even more directly inspired by the US South's Jim Crow laws. Actually Jim Crow laws were even stricter on Blacks in the South than the Nuremberg Laws were on Jews in Nazi Germany. Of course during the war they went full crackpot on a genocidal rampage and took it much further, but you had to have the 1920s to get the 1940s.
Having researched atrocities in the modern era though, at this point I think the seeds of it can be planted in any society if it's dumped into the right social conditions with the right characters and a dose of bad luck.
That's what was troubling about the fact that Trump appeared to be modeling some of his speeches from his book of Hitler's speeches from the 1920s, culminating at this stage in the Beer Belly Putsch on January 6, 2021. It's not what it means right now, but what it'll mean 20 years from now.
* There was a book about exactly this connection that came out recently that was really interesting. It's on my laptop that just had a harddrive crash, so I can't find it just now. Hitler didn't really understand US history, but he took a lesson from it anyway. But it's not like the US treatment of natives is defensible even if you do understand it. And the West didn't really understood why Ukraine & the Eastern Front was the central piece to Hitler's whole plan in WWII and the Western Front was only there to keep Anglos off his back, like someone was saying above.
With the remaining global Jewish population mainly split between the USA and Israel, there's a joke in Jewish circles employed as a riposte to anti-Zionists:Originally Posted by demagogue
Half the world's Jews are settlers on stolen land; the other half live in Judea
It surprises me that with all the chatter about reparations, more isn't said about restitution for Native Americans. Or maybe it is and we just don't hear about it here in Europe. I know you can't undo history, but with reservations covering barely 2% of the USA, it seems like they definitely got the crappy end of the stick.
I once read an account that many slavs initially welcomed the Nazi invasion, thinking the Germans to be liberators from Soviet oppression. Only to soon find out they were even worse
There are cases on it all the time. There were I think two big Supreme Court cases this last year, one on the adoption law, but another about indigenous sovereignty around Tulsa where I was staying the first half of this year. There's also that Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon about the 1920s Osage murders that's coming out soon that's bringing attention to the issue.
Anyway, there are over 500 recognized tribes in the US, so the whole thing is pretty fragmented. The last big thing making national news was the Standing Rock protests trying to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline going through native land around 2016.
I taught at a law school for Myanmar indigenous groups, so I had to learn indigenous rights for that, and then I was writing a thing on Apache land rights, so I've read a little up on the issue. Chiricahua Apaches have been trying to get compensation for the loss of their reservation in the late 1870s for decades now, and they were legally integrated with Mescaleros.
Another issue was lot of the indigenous nations near the Canadian border have their sovereignty over their traditional lands recognized, so they can basically ignore the border on their own land. Apache traditional lands crossed the US-Mexican border, but as we learned from the GOP debates a few nights ago, nothing makes a Republican go into apoplectic hysterics more than the idea of non-white people crossing that border, and they're evidently doing all they can maximize the number of "accidental deaths" of people attempting it... So needless to say, Apache groups don't have the good fortune of their northern cousins in not having their lands split up by such a hard border, which is kind of ironic since Apaches, or their ancestral predecessors were originally (and their closest relatives still today) from Canada.
Over the last few years, the Chinese Communist Party has been leading a new Cultural Revolution, especially targeting traditional Chinese religion, landmarks and temples. Much has been said about the persecution of Christians there, but that seems minor compared to what they're doing to their own. Not even cherished tourist hotspots have been spared. Apparently according to the new laws, outdoor religious statues are forbidden and must be hidden or demolished
https://wildhunt.org/2022/06/new-gov...-in-china.html
https://bitterwinter.org/we-choke-with-silent-fury/
https://bitterwinter.org/a-national-...tues-in-china/
Over the past few years, Chinese authorities have been purging the influence of folk religion, which it refers to as xié jiào, sometimes translated as “evil cults.”
Two years ago, local officials in the village of Baofeng in the Chinese city of Gaoyou in Jiangsu province destroyed some 5,911 temples of traditional folk religion.
In 2020, a video emerged showing statues of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, being destroyed, apparently because of the Chinese state’s concerns about folk religious practices. Huangdi is the deity of the material world and civility and is the great shaper of society. He is considered the prime initiator of Chinese culture and holds wu (巫) or shamanic sorcery.
China’s oppression of folk religions stems from the implementation of Order No. 13, issued by the State Religious Affairs Bureau. Order 13 seeks to standardize the management of religious groups to promote their “healthy development” and “actively guide religion to adapt to a socialist society.” It is part of a plan to subjugate religious practices so they serve the state and ultimately produce and maintain “social harmony.”
As Cathy Sun notes in Harvard Political Review, “China’s persecution of religious minorities is part of a broader, systematic strategy to eradicate external influence in the social and political lives of citizens while harnessing aspects of religion that could serve the state’s interests. Its campaign of religious persecution is a not unprecedented effort to cement public recognition of the state’s authority and thereby generate political conformity.”
Recently, the Chinese government has doubled down on efforts to limit religious expression and ensure that religious activity aligns with state interests. Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and Daoism, as regulated by organizations controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, constitute the religions sanctioned by the state in China.
.......
In May, the Tibet Autonomous Region Cyberspace Administration (TARCA) announced that “a special rectification work in the field of online live broadcasting and short videos in the whole region” was needed to confront unspecified “social threats.” The new regulations ferret out activities “undermining national religious policies,” “promoting harmful information about religion,” and “spreading xie jiao and feudal superstitions.” These announcements are consistent with Order 13.
_________________________________
The owner of the Buddhist Deshan Temple was ordered to destroy his temple on April 16. Local officials posted on the temple door a demolition notice: “Illegal religious activity venue with substandard fire control measures.” The owner was warned that if he refused to move out all the belongings and destroy the temple himself, the authorities would take care of it. The officials added that “burning incense and worshipping Buddha is superstitious, and tantamount to not believing in the Communist Party.” Personnel were sent to watch over the temple day and night, prohibiting worshippers from entering it.
“Demolishing the temple is an order from the central government. You’re not allowed to believe anymore,” one official said when the temple owner asked to explain the reasons for the demolition. “Your Buddhist statues mustn’t be seen in Zhengzhou city!”
The temple was demolished four days later after the workforce of over 100 drove cranes, trucks, and excavators to do the job. The police cordoned off the temple and didn’t allow anyone to enter it; nearby residents were even prohibited from leaving their homes. The owner was kept in police custody during the demolition and released only after the temple that cost him over 500,000 RMB (about $ 74,000) was reduced to a pile of ruins.
If that's what they do to Han Chinese practicing Buddhism, you can imagine what they do to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims practicing Islam. Actually, whatever you imagine, unless you've already read up on it, the reality is going to be so much worse. There's a reason why claims of genocide and crimes against humanity were brought up to describe China's treatment of them.
Yeah there's accounts of concentration camps over there, even people having their organs harvested against their will. I don't doubt it, the Communist Party is up there in crimes against humanity.
Ironically, I saw a newspiece a couple years back how the Chinese president was actively promoting Chinese culture and Confucian principles overseas.
Schrodinger's dictator: Simultaneously promoting his culture in other countries, while destroying it at home
It's not just the Uyghurs either. There are forced labor camps all over the country. You can go to jail simply for using a VPN and if you happen to be the wrong ethnicity, you can end up with terrorism charges for that. And it has taken a turn for the worse quite a bit ever since Xi took power. Now the bouts of hypernationalist frenzy that used to be occasionally fanned up whenever there was a need for a distraction seem to be ever present and ramping up.
When I started studying Chinese, I also started watching a couple of vloggers that lived in China and posted the typical content vloggers do about living abroad -- kind of clickbaity, but mostly positive things about the culture and people from all over China. Since then, they have left China because they didn't feel safe there and the only things they have been posting for quite a few years now have been criticisms about the current state of the country. Their videos are still kind of over the top, but they give a taste of some of the messed up things that have been happening:
https://www.youtube.com/@laowhy86/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@serpentza/videos
There are a couple of reasons why I say the US with all its flaws and horrible deeds is still the lesser evil and it's because of China and Russia and countries that aspire to be like them.
Last edited by Starker; 1st Sep 2023 at 02:11.
People in US often forget how downright bad living in some countries is(except maybe for extremes). It all looks pretty when you're a tourist there with a whole bunch of cash enjoying "cheap" stuff, but ppl tend to forget that some people WORK for those money. I'm always taking "look at this streetfood, its like 2 bucks for a whole bunch of food" - ye, now imagine how little people make there since food is pretty good indicator of how high earnings are in the country. I've watched a couple of documentaries on how african kids a lot of the time grind themselves to exhaustion in sports just to "make it"(I think watched one or two about marathon runners that folks at local running store https://rununited.com/ recommended, also a few on basketball).
I've recently watched a documentary on Chinese work culture(12h a day, 6 days a week). Literally overworking most of the people there into oblivion and at every level.
Last edited by JakeOh; 25th Sep 2023 at 05:27.
China is going through so many of the same things that the US did during its era of industrialization but on a much larger scale and a slightly different government. Many Chinese factory workers improve their conditions by simply moving to a competing factory en masse. A company I used to work for always had supply issues because of the factory labor issues of one losing all of it's workers to a new improved factory down the street. Also, many Chinese laborers don't stick around for more than a year before heading back to whatever rural village or town they are from so you'd be hard pressed to form any unions there. Not to mention unions probably wouldn't do well against such a fine government.
My father finished his career in China, relocating there in 2003 during the investment boom that followed China joining the WTO. I visited in 2004. It was a fascinating to see the pace at which the old was being replaced with the new, and surprising to see how backward the Mao-era living and working conditions were outside of the cities. I visited Beijing and parts of the Great Wall, Shanghai, Shenzen, and Hong Kong. I never imagined there could be so many cranes. The cities were buzzing with development activity and excitement. There were internet cafes everywhere, and the great firewall wasn't in place yet. The police were unimposing, and I saw lots and lots of Buddhas. Younger Chinese were eating up foreign culture, movies, clothes, brands, fads, and phones. And the Chinese overall seemed entrepreneurial when I visited. There were a lot of small businesses starting up, a lot of people moving around for better work opportunities, and a lot of gig work for people coming in from rural areas. Not like a communist country at all.
The rate of change was unbelievable, and the Chinese people seemed to be embracing it, taking risks and pursuing opportunities, chasing what we call "The American Dream" here in the US. My impression back then was that as long as you didn't challenge the party, or belong to Falun Gong, you could enjoy a lot of economic and personal freedom. I'm sure the Muslims in the west were being persecuted back then, but I don't recall having heard stories in the western media at that point.
I left there highly impressed and optimistic. I bought into the idea that the transitional economy was leading to a market economy, and if steered right, it would have the freedoms and protections allowing it to be fully integrated with ours. Hu entered office as an internationalist and a liberal, and they finally floated the yuan in 2005. I also thought that once the Chinese people were economically empowered and given a taste of western liberalism, they wouldn't want to go back. But now I know the surveillance state was being developed in the background even then. And they only enjoyed a few years of open internet before the firewall really went up. Hu also reversed a 20 year trend of divestiture and privatization by expanding state-owned industries again.
Now the party has all fallen in line behind a strongman, and he's an old-fashioned communist and social conservative. I feel sad for all the Chinese people who only got a little taste of freedom before the old ways started returning, not long enough to value it like the people of Hong Kong.
China is known for changing very slowly, but yeah, they seem to be going backwards politically and where human rights are concerned.
Also, Hong Kong is quite a disappointment I visited Hong Kong in the early nineties a couple of times before the British turned it back over to China. Back then the city was an amazingly fun place and was very much the discount bin where old American expatriates went to live out the rest of their jazz and blues careers. It was a very fun place at one time and had a pretty decent economy even under British rule.
Also ironic how the Chinese government is destroying Tibetan culture, persecuting Buddhists there and crushing any free expression, while touting Tibet as a great tourist destination to Han Chinese
And no other country is going to push China for change because their economies are so intertwined with China's economy.
Yeah they're untouchable. Go against China, and say goodbye to all the cheap products we enjoy in the west. It's a messed up conundrum
Opening trade with China really only benefits the owners of a company, investors and some employees. It has clearly had a domino effect over time as more and more companies move production to China. Once they do that they also pretty much give up all of their trade secrets and a lot of production control unless you have employees on hand at those factories 24/7. The companies I've worked for can only maintain quality control by paying US employees to live in Taiwan and China just to hang around the factories to keep quality standards up and to chase away competitors using the same factories. But profit margins are insanely high that way for the few who are employed in the west.
After my dad retired, he consulted for a couple of other companies who were looking to set up shop in China. He talked them both out of it. I had some long conversations about it with him on ski lifts and such, and it basically boiled down to China not having adequate legal frameworks and protections and Chinese business partners not being trustworthy enough to build long-term strategic relationships with. His other issue was the lack of appreciation for quality. When we walked and drove around the cities, he would point out new buildings with expanses of glass, which already looked dingy after just a few years because they never washed the glass. He brought me to the back side of city blocks to show me how the apartment buildings and store fronts are nicely kept up front, while their back sides show how neglected and unmaintained the buildings really were. He told me of his visits to medium-sized cities and staying at a hotels where the dust was so deep he made footprints when he walked across the room. Those were some of his metaphors when discussing quality. He had been traveling to Japan for decades and China was a culture shock.
Still, the outsourcing pull was hard to resist in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the dollar was high and the labor market here was tight. Cheerleaders for a strong dollar don't realize that it kills manufacturing jobs in the US. The dollar went roaring into the stratosphere at the start of the 1980s, which triggered a wave of outsourcing to Japan, Taiwan, et al and our trade deficit grew dramatically until the crash of 1987. The dollar remained weak for the next decade, while our trade balance remained stable and even improved. Then the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997, causing the dollar to climb again, which was followed by another wave of outsourcing. It accelerated when China joined the WTO in 2001 and didn't stop until the dollar crashed in 2008. Right now the US dollar index is at 105, which is troublesome territory. Two years ago, it was at 92. And ninnies are complaining that Biden is killing the value of the dollar. Really.
Honestly, any amount of legal framework wouldn't do anything as long as there is corruption and a widespread attitude of everyone scrambling for themselves by any means. It's just so easy to ignore with a bribe or two and everybody's finding any loophole they can to game the system. Life in the Soviet Union used to be somewhat like that -- if something belonged to the state, you'd be an idiot to not steal it, because a) it was the only way to get ahead and b) fuck the state. And a lot of people higher up were on the take anyway.
In China it's really taken to a another level though -- you see everybody cutting corners in hospitals, restaurants, baby formula production... you name it. Which leads to things like people scooping up used oil from trash cans and using it to prepare food for customers and lifts falling down in brand new buildings because the certificate for the building code is fake and everybody ignores the weight limits. And anything you buy, chances are it's fake or replaced at least in part with something much cheaper. Fake alcohol, fake gold filled with tin... even if you buy some mineral water from the store (because you can't drink water from the tap in China), there's a chance the water is not fit to drink anyway and was just put in a thrown away plastic bottle and resealed.
Reminds me of the Great Leap Forward, when officials reported fake crop output figures to the government. The dictatorship insisted their dystopian idea was infallible, and quasi-divinely inspired. And so officials felt pressure to make it appear so, even if it meant taking every last scrap of grain from peasants who'd then starve to death
So many dumb things.
For example how they killed all the sparrows to prevent the sparrows eating the crops, but it turns out that that sparrows mainly eat insects, and then there was a massive unchecked insect outbreak which DID eat all the crops.
Or, how they took everyone's iron pots away to melt down to make "steel" in backyard furnaces for industry, but it turns out that the iron pots were an important source of iron in the diet of Chinese peasants, so now there are generations with iron deficiency.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote