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Why is this not the world’s biggest ongoing news story? In a cultural genocide with few parallels since World War II, thousands of Muslim religious sites have been destroyed. At least 1 million Muslims have been confined to camps, where aging imams are shackled and young men are forced to renounce their faith. Muslims not locked away are forced to eat during the fasting month of Ramadan, forced to drink and smoke in violation of their faith, barred from praying or studying the Koran or making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
– Fred Hiatt
I am amazed this is not the biggest ongoing news story on the planet. Yet the silence from the world, particularly the Muslim world, is astonishing. Makes one wonder (as if) what is really behind the unrelenting focus on Israel when China can do this with hardly a murmur.
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Don’t be silly. China imports billions of gallons of Middle Eastern oil. They are spending billions of $$ across Central Asia on their One Belt, One Road projects. Muslim nations don’t want to jeopardize that cash flow. Finally, China doesn’t give a damn what the world thinks about its treatment of Muslims and no one has any leverage to change that. It will get Western Media no clicks or tweets and the Progressive Narrative has other priorities to push on people who may actually listen.
China’s never been big on the idea of its people serving two masters.
Christianity gets a lesser hostility because of that whole “render unto Caesar” thing, so long as China gets to be Caesar.
Isn’t this par for the course as far as China is concerned? The communists have a long and brutal history suppressing _all_ religious groups, not just Muslims.
The reason why the Arab world considers Israel a higher matter can be explained theologically, any region once under Islamic control that was reverted back is a priority target, this applies especially to the area controlled by Israel because (a) it was conquered by one of the “righteously guided caliphs” early on in Islamic history, (b) it contains Islam’s third most holiest site and (c) it is controlled by the most hated of enemies.
The PC of the west beg that the west be insulted – so others oblige. There is no cost – hordes of western intellectuals will agree, indeed will preemptively feed them their lines, then resist any western resentment, still more any consequences. And the success of the west is very annoying to Chinese and Muslims alike. Both have old cultures asserting their right to rule all.
By contrast, China will resent criticism – will punish it where and how it can. The same faults that let them do it let them make others fear criticising them for doing it.
“As if” indeed – like the OP, I don’t wonder at all.
The Chinese aren’t White or Jews so of no interest to the usual crowd.
And how many Chinese skyscrapers have had passenger jets flown into them?
Just possibly, the Chinese have watched and learned, and want to do better than the West to stop it spreading to them.
A bit premature to start lecturing them, perhaps? And just a teeny bit……colonial?
Hurray for the Chinks, they’ve still got spine in their culture and don’t hate themselves.
Islam delenda est.
@Fred Z + 1000!
I know of quite a few Chinese restaurants none of which, and I can’t imagine why, any muslim has dared to even give a dirty look.
But then neither have I heard of a “muslim patrol” going into a pub full of Millwall or Rangers supporters to tell these kuffirs that they have to stop drinking. Again, can’t imagine why.
To answer the OP question — why is this not the biggest news story? I think for two reasons. Everyone in the west condemns this: Republican, Democrat, Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, EU, all. So, given that the basis of news is conflict then there is no conflict to report. Secondly, because frankly there is nothing anyone can do about it.
So as with news typically these sorts of stories tend to be documentaries on Channel 4 or PBS where everyone nods along at how terrible it all is, before flipping the channel to find out what is going on at Emerdale.
The Left don’t like examples that some in the West might wish to follow?
The ‘Chinks’ are a Han Empire, and if you think they’ll not be your problem soon enough, you’re a fool.
Not many people wonder about the unrelenting focus on Israel. It’s obvious why it happens – anti-Semitism.
Might I suggest it’s just the same as HK? Beijing is just untouchable.
Also, Israel has a Jewish population of c6.7m. There are over 1.2 billion Han Chinese in the PRC alone with a very significant diaspora. That makes a difference.
Jesus Christ. You’re supportive of chucking people into concentration (sorry, “re-education”) camps?
Israel is a convenient foil to attack the US, and also “the poor Palestinians” are a convenient way for the Western left to feel guilty or brave, variously (and the antisemitic ones get to Jew-hate with cover), and equally for the Arab world to have an external scapegoat.
China is a giant regional power that also doesn’t give a flying goddamn what any other power thinks.
So … Israel is the devil, China is “oh well that’s not nice” if people even notice.
(I mean, it’s easy to demand divestment and boycotts of Israel.
To stop China from being far worse than Israel has ever contemplated being at its worst, would require … either serious fiscal impact or an actual, very large war, or both . So …)
The Chinese have no time for western style left wing multiculturalism and islamophilia.
Good for them I say, tolerance of Islam is national suicide.
The left do not actually care about Muslims – any more than they actually care about black people (the left supported the pulling back of police from American cities KNOWING this would mean very large numbers of black people would be murdered by other black people), or they care about women – for example the left do not give a damn about the vast numbers of rapes in Sweden and other countries.
Third Wave Feminism, Black Lives Matter, “caring about Muslims” – it is all FAKE, the left could care less about Muslims or any other “victim group” – all that matters to the left is weapons (“victim groups”) to use against the “capitalist” West.
“Paul it sounds as if you are saying that the left is dominated by the ideas of the Frankfurt School of Marxism” – yes that is exactly what I am saying, such ideas have massive influence in the education system, and, via “education”, the media and the corporations, as well as governments.
Short version – as the People’s Republic of China is not part of the West (the West being what the left wish to destroy), they could burn millions of Muslim people alive, and most of the left WOULD NOT CARE.
I’m losing no sleep over this.
Oh dead.
How sad.
Never mind.
Paul Marks – spot on.
It also helps that the Chinese have liberally bribed the globalists to facilitate the exporting of global manufacturing capability to China; and the real reason the Globalists loathe Trump as he is increasingly successful at reversing it.
Paul Marks is correct as to why the West doesn’t care and George Atkisson is correct re the silence of the Ummah. Muslims only care about each other when there’s an angle in it, usually as an excuse for opposing civilisation. Otherwise they prefer to slaughter each other.
Much as I would love every single Muslim in the West to be relocated whence they or their ancestors came, Muslims in China are deserving of sympathy. They are only part of China because they were conquered (a long time ago admittedly); they didn’t rock up there demanding benefits and concessions, as per Europe.
There is one thing we in the West could do about the problem of the totalitarian giant China:
Trade with India!
Much more trade with democratic India and much less trade with China.
Indians are just as capable of manufacturing the stuff we buy on Amazon as the Chinese are.
There are no media stories about this, because China now rules the world, financially if not militarily. The USA owes billions of dollars to China; British Steel looks like getting billions of Pounds to keep the steel works going; most of the property on the Costa Blanca is owned by Chinese companies, i.e. the Chinese government. This is why there were only token protests over the Chinese invasion of Nepal, and the (alleged) amputation of the thumbs of Tibetan monks so they couldn’t use their prayer beads. How many western newspapers and media stations have Chinese investments? This is why there are only token protests over the Chinese developing military bases in the South China seas. Australian friends already describe their country as part of the PRC. The Chinese play the long game and their investments are not out of the goodness of their philanthropic hearts, but rather to influence and dictate their own terms when they consider it necessary.
There has long been conspiracy theories of a one world order. I just wonder wonder whether it will be led by George Soros or whoever the Premier of the PRC is at the time.
The Chinese aren’t White or Jews so of no interest to the usual crowd.
Bing, bing, Bing – the man is a winner!
I notice several people on this comment segment seem fine with China’s actions.
I’m not.
Same reason Saint Greta isn’t going there to explode in their collective face about their CO2 emissions – she wouldn’t be coming back.
As one comment answered the question of why she isn’t going there, “China’s already communist”.
Thus Gandalf warns the hobbit who wishes that Saruman and Sauron were adjacent so they could fight each other while the west watched.
If the Ummah remain silent about the Uighurs, that will tell us they hate the west more and see no overwhelming downside to discarding the Uighurs – cause enough for us to see no upside to it. But, to paraphrase my quote, the Uighurs cannot fight China – and the Chinese can treat the Uighurs as an experiment in renewed totalitarian domination, one where they can go far without much internal downside, one whose lessons they can then apply more widely.
If the Uighurs could fight China, or if all the terrorists of the Ummah were now to go fight for them, I would grant there was some Iran-Iraq war aspect to the business. The outside world’s knowledge of this cruelty is perhaps still just new enough to leave a small element yet of “we’ll see”. But, as the old (and fake – it’s from Kai Lung) Chinese proverb says, “One learns to itch where one can scratch” and I fear the Ummah have learned to hate where they can more easily hurt.
Johnathan Pearce
November 12, 2019 at 12:56 pm
Understand the sentiment, but:
1. It isn’t a perfect world, and things aren’t always soluble, or even when they are, without moral staining. Hamburg vs Nazis etc.
2. It isn’t for people in one country to lecture those in another how they should run that other country to the first person’s satisfaction, no matter how self-righteous. Empire is deeply unfashionable.
3. Given the many imperial humiliations of China in 19th and 20th Century, any attempt to do (2) won’t just be counter-productive, it will pour petrol on the flames.
4. If despite (3), one persists in lecturing, it would probably help if the lecturing country has already solved the problem being lectured about. This is something the West, and the UK specifically, are openly and abjectly failing at doing.
5. The Uighurs are not complete innocents in this: they have initiated islamic terrorism in China and are now reaping the whirlwind (to coin a phrase). Did they expect Western-style supplication and surrender? Have they learned nothing of Chinese pride and ruthlessness?
It’s a sorry situation, but at least the Chinese are making a go at combatting the Islamic terrorist nutters. If they succeed, the West will have seen there is atleast one answer, and hence be failing by choice.
There’s no Persil answer to such issues. Less than a lifetime ago, this country and its allies were deliberately destroying cities with 100 kilodeaths per day. Blood is on everyone’s hands.
Easy way to stop it would be for the Uighurs to stop the Islamic terrorism. The money & resources used in the current repression would soon find another purpose. Maybe more to the West’s twaterrati’s liking. Or maybe not.
Aetius
Indians are just as capable of manufacturing the stuff we buy on Amazon as the Chinese are.
But that isn’t true. In a past life I ran a company that manufactured commercial electronic devices. The experience dealing with China was breathtaking. Here in the US if you want to get a PCB manufactured and stuffed in experimental quantities (maybe five or ten boards) it will easily take five weeks. Getting injection molded cases is even slower and harder, it takes them a month to make the tool. If you are going with latex mold cases for prototyping, it is a bit faster, but not much.
In half that time a firm in China can manufacture two thousand units with injection molded cases, all tested, packaged in nice little boxes and shipped back to the US. And needless to say the total cost for 2k units isn’t much higher than the cost of a steel mold and a dozen prototypes depending on the contents of the BoM.
Oh another thing… getting work done to make parts FCC part 15 compliant is hell in the USA. It is a highly specialized skill, in fact I think it is actually black magic, and there are very few boutique companies that do it. Send it to China and they will stick on a few caps, magnets add some grounded metal, and turn it around in a week.
It might be different now than it was in 2013-4 when I was doing this, but back then it was an easy choice.
What I learned there is that China is kicking the US’s butt not because they are cheap but because they are better. It might be because they stole a lot of ideas, but the situation is what it is. It is simply easier to make stuff ten thousand miles away in China than it is here. For manufacturing, my experience is that India is even worse than the US. They just simply don’t have their shit together to deliver in the way China does.
And FWIW, part of the reason is evident if you just go to a Chinese manufacturing facility. These people are hungry for business. They invest heavily in capital equipment, their external infrastructure is excellent, and their staff work their asses off, every single day, and their supply chain is extremely well organized and efficient (partly because they are all fairly tightly co-located). This is NOT what you see in an American factory.
I think there is a burgeoning alternative in South East Asia. Samsung moved a lot of their manufacturing to Vietnam. Haven’t worked with it so don’t know how that works.
There’s an assumption there, unsupported, that all Muslims are terrorist nutters. This is obviously untrue, and not supported by facts.
The more we allow integration, the more secular Muslims become. Fact.
The reason this story isn’t worldwide news isn’t some PC anti-Chinese thing. It’s an authoritarian anti-Muslim thing, which the powers that be are leveraging to erode our freedoms and introduce a police state. If you’re falling for it, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.
Come to Samizdata and get your head messed with!
I had no idea(@Fraser Orr) that China was so much better than India at producing high spec hardware.
Conversely, I had no idea that so many Samizdata readers would think that internment in concentration camps and organ harvesting was OK provided that it was for muslims!
I don’t think so, myself.
Yep. So it turns out.
Liberty for all! Except you, you dirty Muslim.
neosnake: “It’s an authoritarian anti-Muslim thing, which the powers that be are leveraging to erode our freedoms and introduce a police state.”
The topic of the post is events in China, by Chinese authorities. Are British ‘powers that be’ colluding with Chinese authorities in China to introduce a Police state in the UK?
It is a bit late in the day for such collusion anyway, since we already live in a Police state in the UK ( Thank god the Police are so bloody incompetent ), and have for some years. China is indisputably a Police state already. But why the British authorities wish to collude with the Chinese authorities, ‘beats me’.
neosnake: “The reason this story isn’t worldwide news.. ”
Actually, it is, in that it’s obviously been reported in the USA, I’ve seen the Story on the BBC in the UK. No the reason the story doesn’t get any traction is because most people, are too busy getting on with their lives, trying to make ends meet for themselves, to care about a foreign tribe, in a foreign country who’s culture is utterly alien and have managed to upset a totalitarian regime ( Not very intelligent of them ). They don’t believe anything broadcast on the BBC, after being lied to about ‘gas attacks’ in Syria, watched the Yazidi genocide prosecuted by allies of the Western government, and experienced their own daughters being peddled on the streets of their own towns and cities by ‘the more secular Muslims’ ( hat tip neosnake), while British Police ‘look the other way’.
Chinese Moslems getting the rough end of the Pineapple in China? Frankly dear, I don’t give a damn! (hat tip Rhett Butler ).
neosnake: “Liberty for all! Except you, you dirty Muslim.”
Moslems can have liberty if they can build a society that encourages it. Unfortunately Moslems have to adhere to their ‘holy book’, otherwise they are not moslems, merely Arabs, or Asians. Give up the backward doctrine, and they could be in with a sporting chance of a decent society, which they wouldn’t want to flee at the first opportunity.
“Conversely, I had no idea that so many Samizdata readers would think that internment in concentration camps and organ harvesting was OK provided that it was for muslims!”
Admittedly it’s a more extreme example of it than we usually see here, but I’m not at all surprised. I’ve been muttering about it for a while now. Everyone believes in freedom for themselves, and everyone shouts out for liberty when their own freedom is under threat. The real test is whether you believe in freedom for your rivals and opponents.
The task libertarians face is to take people who start with a newfound interest in freedom for themselves, and try to explain to them why that can only possibly work in the long run if we give the same freedom to everyone. Everyone does things that somebody else finds annoying. Everyone is part of a hated minority in something. If you build a society that stomps on hated minorities, or abandons them to be stomped on, sooner or later it will end up stomping on you. If you build a society where it’s acceptable to abandon the Uighurs to prison camps, then by the very act of doing so you build a society where it could be equally acceptable to abandon you to them. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction.
The Muslims need to learn the same lesson too, of course. But to a large degree they can only learn it from us by example. We’re very obviously successful and prosperous, and they’d like to copy our methods and be successful and prosperous too. We set an example and show them how we think civilised people should treat even people they profoundly disagree with and don’t like. So when they meet people they profoundly disagree with and don’t like (i.e. Us, and other victims), they can slowly learn do the same. And if they’ve seen us cheer for people being sent to death camps because they’re ‘on the other side’, that’s what we’ll teach them about the grand principles of tolerance we preach, which they’ll cheerfully apply to us. They’re like a magic mirror, that shows you to yourself as others see you.
Supporting universal freedom, even for people we hate, doesn’t mean surrendering to evil. You can still fight it. But you have to be much smarter about the means and methods you use.
You can’t defeat evil by becoming evil. Because even if you win, evil still wins.
If the other country is being run according to the will of its people, then maybe this is true.
But, last I looked, free elections aren’t a big part of Chinese society.
And even if the Chinese had voted to intern and attack all of those Muslims, a large part of what makes up our concept of a free world has to do with protecting minorities from the will of the majority. (SEE US Constitution.)
We have a moral duty to cross the street to rescue the child from the unjust attacker. Our duty to the Chinese Muslims might be far more attenuated, but, once again, we’re just haggling over price.
“Moslems can have liberty if they can build a society that encourages it. Unfortunately Moslems have to adhere to their ‘holy book’, otherwise they are not moslems, merely Arabs, or Asians. Give up the backward doctrine, and they could be in with a sporting chance of a decent society, which they wouldn’t want to flee at the first opportunity.”
Yes, exactly. Well put.
That’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve. If you isolate a culture from any outside influences, it ossifies. It’s got no reason to change, no reason to improve. You can only change it by making close contact with it. Humans learn how to behave in society from one another. The constant friction of having to live and trade with neighbours rubs off the rough edges. People try to fit in, and avoid conflict. It’s a slow process – it takes several generations to take effect – but the closer together people live and work, the faster the cultural diffusion happens.
Muslims today are already very different to how they were 50 or 100 years ago. Muslims living in the West are already radically different to Muslims living in Muslim-majority countries. They’re more secular, more tolerant. They are, by the standards of orthodox Islam as set down in Sharia law, no longer Muslims. They don’t adhere to their holy book. They no longer follow all the rules. And the longer it goes on, the further away from the original Islam they will go.
But’s it’s a delicate and sensitive process, both because the conservatives can see what’s happening and will kill anyone they see as an apostate, and because even for those who see the benefits of changing, it’s still a kind of defeat. They have their pride. So if you want them to keep on moving in our direction, you have to keep it quiet what’s going on. It’s not that they don’t know. But if you force them to acknowledge it, they’re forced by their principles to fight it. Let them pretend they’re not being assimilated, and they’ll go along with you and pretend they don’t notice what you’re doing.
The Islamic conservatives can see as well as everyone else what’s happening and where it’s going to end up, which is why their principle demand is for the West to stop having contact with Muslims. Kick the Westerners out of Arabia. Shut down the Western schools (literally: boko haram). Cut off the Western media. Build a wall, to keep out the cultural competition. With no Western example to corrupt their youth, the Mullahs will provide the only guide and example to their societies, and Islam will last forever.
They know that if we tear down their walls, they’ll lose. Islam will ultimately go the same way as the Church of England, which is notorious for its secularism and lack of religious fervour. The only way to win is to compete. You can’t win by hiding behind walls.
My home base lies within ten miles of about 100,000 Somali. They are neither tolerant nor secular. They are Muslims. They follow all of the Muslim rules, and they’re rigidly enforcing their religious rules on each other, and on new entrants.
I was here last year. I also watched as we elected Keith Ellison – a Muslim – as our AG, and Ilahn Omar as one of our US Representatives. They both seek to serve those same rules. They’re both anti-Israel – which I use as a sort of moral baseline measure. This is a community totally incompatible with US society.
What you just said is a great aspirational statement – but it’s not true.
The melting pot is dead.
Because of some personal losses, I came out of 9/11 with a partially (but not completely) irrational hatred for all things Muslim. I had Muslim friends before that date, and I have fewer now, but I do have some.
How do you personally feel about fundamentalist Christians? Do you give each individual one of them a personal chance to prove their willingness to abandon their religious training and accept you, or do you start from a position of, screw them until they prove they deserve better?
I’m still at that second position with Muslims, which is why I do still have a few of them as friends. If you can accept every fundy Xtian until they show their bad side, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.
Yeah, never mind if they round up a bunch of Jews and stick them in gas chambers, why should anyone from another country lecture the Germans about how to run Germany, right? Oh you don’t mean Germany in the 1940s, you mean China in the 2010s because that is totally different?
The Western world is barely hanging on to the liberty it has.
We are in no shape to force a hostile Chinese nation, whose government is not without public support, to accept Liberty for all.
There comes a point where if Liberty is to survive at all, first Libertarians have to have secure “breeding grounds”.
We also need converts. Islam’s own implacable rules do not lend themselves to Liberty.
What positive outcomes can be achieved by the West for Uighurs when we can’t even secure our demographic future.
China is importing a lot of oil, normally you could lean on oil producers and threaten sanctions, but the current power balances preclude this. So are we going to war with China? Trump is tackling wider economic issues but I bet the truth is, most of us are sick of spilling Western blood for minimal result.
I am ok with leaving the Uighurs to their fates. Not cause they are enemies of Freedom, but because I value the blood and treasure of the few free people we already have.
Given how all the middle east and oriental wars of the last three centuries have ended, what should the 10% of humans who live in the Anglosphere actually be doing about this? Why should we be first to step forward for people who are no ally of ours? Will we be really be safer after?
How fickle the Western freedom fighters are.
They haven’t yet liberated Tibet nor the Tibetans – a cause we’ve known about since ‘forever’. And an object lesson for China and totalitarian regimes everywhere.
Tibetan culture is still suppressed, their traditional leader is still living in exile because his religion is proscribed by Communist China.
Now, the latest fashionable cause has come along, allowing the bleeding hearts in the West to bleat about a more sexy cause. Never mind Tibet, we don’t either care about the Yazidi genocide, the Uighurs are the most recent, more sexy cause célèbre. Extra victim points because, Moslem.
Here we have a brand spanking new opportunity to revel in how bad the West is for its failure to immediately put right the injustices suffered by the Uighars, its such fun! A wonderful masturbatory self flagellation, to twatter on about morals, and justice and liberty, and how the West is the root cause of every outrage, you know, because.
Well, we are all free, apparently. So use your freedom to go to China and remonstrate mano a mano with the Chinese authorities.
Good luck.
Bell Curve: “Yeah, never mind if they round up a bunch of Jews and stick them in gas chambers, ”
There you go, discussion officially over. BCs played a blinder with his Jew card.
Bell Curve: “why should anyone from another country lecture the Germans about how to run Germany, right?”
If you qualified your statement to reflect Nazi’s in Germany after the second world war, you might have a point. But here is another thing that pisses me off about these Western wanking sessions. Modern Germans are so supine, they are actually cooperating with their own final solution. The resettlement of their own country by foreigners who it is documented have raped and assaulted and in some instances murdered their women and children.
But no, the Germans did something bad a eighty years ago.
Well, Turkey did something bad in 1915 with the extermination of perhaps three million Armenians.
Nobody constantly beats up on the Turks (Genocide, mass castration, Harems populated by slaves; system operating as normal for the Ottomans ).
And if the Turkish Armenian genocide is ever mentioned, do you get the supine grovelling from them? No, you get two fingers.
But the intellectuals in the West, these professional grovellers disgust me.
A violent, pedophilic war cult is being treated appropriately? Yawn.
How quickly “freedom” becomes “freedom to do what Westerners tell them”.
Freedom includes the ability to make mistakes. Those in China must find their own path.
Nothing in my comment condoned the Chinese action or state, simply pointed out the consequences of “freedom”, if it is to mean anything at all.
Also the futility of trying to coerce the Chinese to do what we prefer. Nor the lack of wisdom in pushing something that clearly isn’t working here.
Concentration camps? Yes, and horrible they are. But who’s clear to cast that first stone, eh? The US used them in 1941 for their ‘Japanese’ citizens.
The British? Well we invented the damn things, and the military effectiveness of cholera & typhoid upon women and children. cf Boer War.
WW2(Europe) wasn’t fought over the Nazi treatment of Jews. The pre-war anti-semitism was widespread, in US and Britain, pretty much everywhere. And no, I’m not condoning it, just noting the fact. The cause of Britain & France entering the war was the integrity of Poland, so that’s a fail then. In reality, the German military expansionism was the underlying cause, so that’s a half win: the support team sort of stayed put.
Also ‘freedom’ compatible, because the cause wasn’t what Germany was doing in Germany, it was their encroachment by violent means upon neighbours.
The record of the Holocaust was a fortuitous discovery, just in time before people on the winning side started digging too deeply into how the winning had been done. Similar events on the Soviet side were less convenient and not publicised so much. cf Katyn Forest. Atleast, not until “Uncle Joe” was no longer needed and they became the next “bad guys”. Deservedly so.
Neonsnake takes a well qualified reference “Islamic terrorist nutters” and treats it as a tautology. Projection, maybe?
Certainly, I do not equate the violent extremists with all Islam, although I believe there’s a saying about fish swimming in the sea….now who said that….ah!
If freedom means anything at all, it means freedom for others too, even if you disagree with their methods, etc.
Tim the Coder: “The British? Well we invented the damn things ..”
Point of order. General Valeriano Weyler used concentration camps in Cuba in 1897. So, I think Spain gets the prize by a year or so.
But what is a country where if you don’t adhere to the government approved religion you have to pay a tax to practice your own religion. Where your sons are castrated and pressed into service in the army of the Head of State, and your daughters are kidnapped and used as sex slaves in the Head of State’s brothel? What is that but a genocidal concentration camp?
What does that even mean? Freedom to build concentration camps? Freedom to create a technological panopticon? The freedom to murder people? Bizarre.
I used ‘etc’ because I thought there no need to restate the Libertarian position on this site.
But Freedom, like Free Will, involves the ability to do ill, as well as good. And who is appointed to judge?
You are free to disapprove of Chinese action here, and express that. I agree with you, their actions are abhorrent. And?
You are not entitled to force your will upon them, even if there was a way to do so. Maybe they are wrong, or maybe we are. Or both are wrong, maybe.
You are free to stop dealing/associating with them.
But any coercive action is exactly the removal of Freedom you oppose. All are Free. All will Comply.
The word ‘murder’ is itself judgmental: “killing” is a more accurate word. The UK has killed many millions, over the years. Our history say these deaths are justified of course. Those being killed may have begged to differ.
If Chinese policy offends us so much, stop buying their exports. If we keep buying, we approve, regardless of the words we utter. Wasn’t it Khrushchev who said the West would sell the Communists the weapons to destroy themselves? We would appear to be funding just that nowadays.
Don’t like it? Stop buying.
A fair question, but I’m unable to provide an answer that would be fair – I simply don’t know any. The best I can do is say that I know a lot of Christians (non-fundies) and I assume at the starting point that they’re cool; but that’s because in every instance I can think of, that’s been the case, so it’s pure experience on my part.
I think the “worst” I’ve come across personally are a few who are against gay marriage, but that stance doesn’t bother me at all, I think it’s very understandable from their perspective, and I’m perfectly fine with their right to hold and express that opinion.
Everyone can form moral theories, everyone can judge, no one has to be ‘appointed’. You are being an apologist for the Chinese government’s behaviour in spite of saying otherwise as you seem to think no one has a right to express a critical view of their actions.
And I would love not to buy Chinese but that is very hard to do (and half the time impossible to even know).
No shit Sherlock, I am expressing an opinion, I am being judgemental about the behaviour of the Chinese Communist Party. Oh the humanity 😆
Well, someone is taking it as a tautology. If I’ve misrepresented you, then my bad. But it appears that the Chinese, if not you, are treating it as a tautology, and you appeared to be endorsing their stance by noting that if the method works, and the West fail to replicate it, then we’re failing “by choice” to combat terrorism – the implication being that sending hundreds of thousands of innocent people to camps for “re-education” is an acceptable method to employ.
It seems, to say the least, an odd stance for anyone to take, let alone a libertarian, and a somewhat extreme inversion of the Blackstone Rule.
But maybe I’ve misread or misinterpreted you.
“How do you personally feel about fundamentalist Christians? Do you give each individual one of them a personal chance to prove their willingness to abandon their religious training and accept you, or do you start from a position of, screw them until they prove they deserve better?”
Imagine this said by a Social Justice Warrior (talking about death camps for MAGA-hat wearers): “How do you personally feel about Trump-supporting Brexit-voting right-wingers? Do you give each individual one of them a personal chance to prove their willingness to abandon their ideological training and accept you, or do you start from a position of, screw them until they prove they deserve better? I’m still at that second position…”
“What positive outcomes can be achieved by the West for Uighurs when we can’t even secure our demographic future.”
Depends who you mean by “we”. If you mean “we” free people, then the only way to secure our demographic future is to spread freedom. If you don’t mean we free people, but something else, then our freedom won’t survive, even if “we” do.
“China is importing a lot of oil, normally you could lean on oil producers and threaten sanctions, but the current power balances preclude this. So are we going to war with China?”
No. All you need to do at the moment is publicise it. Talk about it. Criticise it. Bring it up at every opportunity. The Chinese government are sensitive about their reputation – one reason they get so upset when people criticise them. We should still trade with them, but every time we do we ask all sorts of questions about whether these products are made by Chinese slave labour in Uighur death camps, and can we have some sort of evidence to satisfy our moral compliance people, and how much more we’d be able to do together in trade if we didn’t have all these human rights violations to worry about, until they do something about it.
“Freedom includes the ability to make mistakes. Those in China must find their own path.”
By “those in China” do you mean the Chinese people, or the Chinese government? Because I’ve no idea what mistake you think an ordinary Chinese citizen has made, when they have no choice over their government.
“But who’s clear to cast that first stone, eh?”
We don’t *care* who did it first. We care about the ones operating right now. They should *all* be condemned, whether we did it or they did it.
“But Freedom, like Free Will, involves the ability to do ill, as well as good.”
I would have thought “the Libertarian position on this site” referred to the Harm Principle?
Make mistakes, yes. Harm yourself, or with consent, yes. But it should go without saying that murder and totalitarianism aren’t included in our definition of ‘freedom’. I would like to think so, anyway.
I think, without wishing to put words in his mouth, that bobby b’s intention was to note that we all have prejudices, and rightly pointed to a group that I could be expected to be prejudiced against. If bobby b lost people in 9/11, then I perfectly understand his view, even while the coldly logical part of me might disagree. I also note that he still has Muslim friends.
My experience of Muslims is much different; I don’t know where you’re from, NiV, so am unsure of how much you know of London, but I grew up on the west fringe of Essex, and worked in East London, and lived with a Muslim lad in student digs while at Uni. I know a LOT of Muslims, and have had zero problems, so my view is different.
I’ve worked in areas (East Ham, Walthamstow) that are apparently “no-go zones” for non-Muslims, and the jihad that my staff attempted against me was for their mums to note that I was a “bit skinny”, and form a rota to bring me curry for lunch and feed me up.
A more interesting question to ask me might have been “How do you feel about right-libertarians, or the alt-right?”
That one would have caused me to squirm uncomfortably a little, since that’s where my prejudices run.
“I know a LOT of Muslims, and have had zero problems, so my view is different.”
I had Muslim friends back when I used to get involved in that particular debate. I’ve not had any particular trouble with them personally. But as I do with most controversial subjects I come across, I did research the question quite intensively. From a libertarian point of view, orthodox Islamic beliefs are very definitely and unarguably a huge problem. And thus I can only really say that I don’t have a problem with Muslims to the extent that they’re not actually Muslim. (Although it’s a question of definitions. If we invent a new religion and call it ‘Islam’, is it?) There are lots of people who claim to be Muslim but aren’t. Conversely, there are a fair number who claim not to believe the totalitarian bits but do. And of course we all know about those who claim to believe in the totalitarian bits quite openly, rightly saying that according to the orthodoxy it’s mandatory.
So I can certainly *understand* why lots of people around here are concerned about Islam. I profoundly disagree with their strategy, but I understand the problem. At the same time, I can also understand and to some degree sympathise with the motives of the jihadis. They’re living through the final collapse and defeat of their once-mighty empire. Their culture, history, and traditions are being systematically dismantled and thrown in the trash before their eyes. Their whole understanding of morality is being subverted, turned upside-down. Their youth are being corrupted, and seduced into the ways they have always been taught were sinful. And white Westerners are stomping around in their countries, toppling neighbouring governments, supporting Israel against them, criticising their human rights record and their bribery and corruption, helping dissidents, encouraging women and non-Muslim minorities to stand up, setting up schools for girls, and generally wreaking havoc on 1400 years of tradition and social stability. Of course they’re angry! Of course they’re upset! I think their traditional ways are wrong and illiberal, and need to be stopped, but I can certainly understand and sympathise with why they’re upset. Their reasons echo those of conservatives everywhere.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the bulk of non-Muslim Muslims, like your friends, but even the orthodox jihadi Muslims I don’t really hate. (Hate the sin, not the sinner.) They’re soldiers fighting on the other side from me in a war for cultural survival. So even though I profoundly disagree with them, and indeed despise much of what they say, I respect their feelings about it. They’re only human, like the rest of us.
“I think, without wishing to put words in his mouth, that bobby b’s intention was to note that we all have prejudices, and rightly pointed to a group that I could be expected to be prejudiced against.”
We all have prejudices. We all have people prejudiced against us. And from an objective rather than a subjective point of view, these are exactly the same thing.
I can certainly understand and sympathise with *why* people might feel prejudiced. But I’m going to keep hammering and hammering the same point home – exactly the same reasoning applies to people prejudiced against us. And all the things we let pass because they’re done to people that we’re prejudiced against because of their beliefs, for perfectly understandable reasons of course, can be applied by those other people who are prejudiced against us because of our beliefs. From the point of view of someone looking in from outside the argument, these are indistinguishable. It’s the same thing.
Forgive us our prejudices, as we forgive those who are prejudiced against us.
While Niall ever-hopeful Kilmartin hopes that the woke culture that erodes the melting point can itself be reversed, and the melting pot restored, I find bobby b a good deal closer to reality at this time. Even the BBC (!!!) is finally noticing both the explosion culture in Sweden and that the Swedish establishment is far more eager to deny it and suppress reporting of it than to address it.
On that point I am more in sympathy with Nullius (the word ‘as’ is as important here as in what Nullius is paraphrasing – or, one could say, particularising). But I’m also in sympathy with Perry de Havilland (London) (November 13, 2019 at 11:45 am et seq). We defend free speech – not every act that the freedom of Hoc Volo, Sic Jubeo can prompt a Chinese dictator to take. We think we’ll benefit from hearing positions we disagree with presented accurately not as travesties – but may still then disagree (with each other amongst others 🙂 ).
In the days of the French revolution, Burke warned against counter-revolutionary attempts if certain to fail – these would only disgrace better-prepared, later attempts. But, he said, reason could always be hazarded. I have no problem with people arguing that whatever power we have to slow the Chinese might be better spent (morally and practically) on Hong Kong, and/or that we have little/no power. But mere reason tells us that how the Chinese oppress the Uighurs says much about the Chinese. Mere reason says that what the violent Ummah don’t say or do about it says much about them – and what the woke don’t say about it says much about them. That’s three groups, none of whom I like, all revealing their lying hypocrisy – and I do like the truth. I’m astonished that none of the don’t-care people see that we have a thoroughly selfish reason for wanting this story out there to expose all three. And as I love the truth I have a moral reason for wanting it out there too. And if one act of cruelty is deterred or the refracted story helps HK, well, I’m good with that too.
Niv,
To be fair, you are right, publicising their awful behaviour does present opportunities at home too. I just don’t want to be dragged into yet another pointless war.
Niall,
As you pointed out, making the Ummah, Totalitarian China and the home grown Alliance of SJW causes all look like cowards, murderers and apologists has upsides.
Valuable and nice synergy.
Perhaps we’re dealing with a mere difference in environment. You seem to know many Muslims who have assimilated and backed down from rampant Islamism.
Here in the Midwest of the USA, I’m dealing with the huge, monolithic Somali mass migration. They came here and set up entire new Somali communities. They have no incentive to learn our language or our philosophies – they have no incentive to assimilate.
And they are indeed Muslim. Boy, are they Muslim. And even those with whom I have friendly relationships tell me matter-of-factly that I’m an infidel, that I’m outside of God’s chosen and thus less than fully human, that I was put here to either serve the Faithful or die. And this is not the minority view. It’s the norm amongst the 100,000+ community. I’m sure that, after a few drinks, our dear Representative Ilhan Omar would eagerly support such a sentiment.
As I’ve said before, a prejudice is useful only to the extent that you have no personal factual knowledge. Once I get to know someone, a prejudice is no longer of any use – but only then can I begin to judge an individual as an individual. In the face of their monolithic rejection of my status as a full human being, it would be foolish of me to pointedly ignore that rejection. If someone holds the same religious views as those that motivated the hijackers on 9/11, I have to make some group assumptions.
Which was my point in asking neonsnake about fundamentalist Christians – the ones who took the Old Testament to heart and apparently wrote off the New Testament as being based on the SJW rantings of a Millennial. They’re going to monolithically call him an abomination, and a subhuman. He’s their version of an infidel.
But if he hasn’t encountered any of them, then my example was inappropriate, and his example of the alt-whiters is probably better. Yes, we all have our prejudices – I always assume that a stove element is hot, and so I’m not willing to test it by touch, and I always assume that a Somali thinks of me as a subhuman being put here by Allah to be their servant, or to die if that would be more convenient, and so I don’t start out assuming their brotherly love for me.
I can be convinced on an individual basis – but until then the prejudice is the default. Similarly, I’m assuming that neonsnake would await some knowledge of the individuals involved before announcing his orientation to a group from Stormfront. He – rightly – needs to use whatever tool is available for his own personal security before giving the benefit of the doubt to everyone. So do I.
“Forgive us our prejudices”? No, value them, but be willing to discard them as soon as better information becomes available.
bobby,
You write,
I don’t see in what sense such people call themselves “Christian.” If you write off the N.T. and see its protagonist as a subhuman apostate, how can you possibly deem yourself a worshipper or even a follower of Christ?
The Mormons are in fact a Christian heresy. I suspect the same of the Christian Scientists, though I don’t know enough about them to prove. This is also said of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Are they all considered Christian Fundamentalists?
Are the Hutterites, the Amish, the Mennonites, Fundamentalists?
Asking for info only. :>))
Oops. I may have written that unclearly. I meant that they would see neonsnake that way.
As for the other groups you name, I’ve not encountered fundamentalists in those groups. Fundies are usually just hard-core Protestants who believe that all of the words in the Bible require absolute literal adherence. These days, they’re usually old, and rural. Forty years ago, they played a big part in conservative politics. One hundred years ago, they played a big part in Democratic politics. Now, they’re pretty much out, and they’re disappearing as they die without replacement.
Since the tone and tenor of the NT comes off as more forgiving and accepting than the words of the OT, they tend to deal with any contradictions or disparities by giving more weight to the OT – leaving them very harsh and judgmental. While the NT says things like “hate the sin and love the sinner”, a fundie is going to think “hate the sin, and God will deal with the damned sinner in Hell.”
They’re real fun at parties. 😀
(ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism )
“And even those with whom I have friendly relationships tell me matter-of-factly that I’m an infidel, that I’m outside of God’s chosen and thus less than fully human, that I was put here to either serve the Faithful or die.”
Then assuming you’re understanding them correctly they’re not Muslim either, although in a completely different way. That’s not the orthodox belief about unbelievers.
The “God’s chosen people” thing is Jewish, not Islamic. According to Islam everyone is born a Muslim, but those raised by unbelievers are turned away. And the primary role of Muslims is to convert people back to Islam, to convert the world.
They are required first to call people to Islam voluntarily. If that’s been tried and they won’t convert, then conquer them. Those captured in war can be ransomed, enslaved, or killed (which may be where the ‘serve or die’ thing comes from). And Muslims can form treaties to tolerate non-Muslim monotheists living in Islamic society, as second-class citizens who are supposed to defer to Muslims but definitely not servants or slaves, always encouraging them to convert. But there’s nothing in there about them being ‘sub-human’, or being ‘put there’ to be a servant. You’re supposed to convert, not serve. It’s always a choice. And Allah forgives those who repent and convert.
What you describe sounds more like Old Testament Moses! Are you sure that’s what they said, or was it just the nearest archetype you could find the categorise them in our culture?
Nullius in Verba (November 14, 2019 at 7:31 am), one should avoid making the ‘not real socialism’ error of muslims, as of socialists. There is not a duty to kill or enslave all monotheists but there is a right to enslave many. It covers all who refuse dhimmi submission but it has in various times and places covered the right to take some who do, as many a muslim treaty and law demonstrate through the centuries.
It is possible to argue that in pure original islam, those monotheists who offer and maintain in full the dhimmi submission should be exempt from enslavement. However other interpretations – e.g. that Christian families could be ‘taxed’ by enslaving selected children as part of their jizya, even families who could have paid money instead – have a long and active history. There is a clear argument that it is merely wholesale extermination or enslavement of the dhimmi-status-accepting, not-converting monotheistic community that islam forbids, leaving occasional enslavement of rendered-weak-in-law dhimmi by favoured-in-law muslims as a legitimate and natural islamic action not just in islam’s history but also in its theory.
Meanwhile, note that mono means one – and indeed it means a particular one. It refers to the various (other) peoples of the book. The number zero, like the number many, can be – and naturally is – treated as polytheism. Islam is quite clear about polytheists.
Julie near Chicago (November 14, 2019 at 4:36 am), as you say, fundamentalist Christians, if Christian as well as fundamentalist, must believe all, including themselves, are sinners failing to meet the rather demanding standards of their founder – indeed it would be an unusual form of service that did not specifically require every participant to admit that.
Every preacher is of course tempted to denounce fiercely sins that are unfashionable in their congregation while treating much more lightly those the parishioners themselves commit. (I suspect some US episcopal bishops are less likely to rebuke their congregation for any acts of silencing un-woke speech than even the modern ACLU would be. 🙂 )
However the rebuke of this is very well-known – known far beyond specifically Christian circles. I met it earlier today in an article contrasting the not-even-a mote of Trump’s phone call without a quid pro quo against the beam-sized quid pro quo of Biden’s boasting he’d withheld the aid till the prosecutor was fired.
(For completeness, there is a possible exception to the above: the peculiar 17th-century-and-adjacent Calvinist doctrine of the ‘elect’. But discussing that would be going even more off-topic than maybe we already are. 🙂 )
Freudian slip on the misspelling at the end? 😉
I immediately thought of Westboro Baptists, and would have said that I feel I could be forgiven for not having them on my Christmas Card list. But then I thought about it, and guessed that wasn’t quite what you meant – that instead, you were looking for a group that may or may not, as individuals, hold the “stereotype” view associated with them.
Christianity is too easy for me – I associate with a lot of Church people, since I grew up going to Church (not something I think you’d have guessed!), so I’m aware that the “stereotype” view associated with them (at least C of E), that they’re outrageous homophobes, just isn’t true. So, it’s a bit of an easy get-out for me, and I feel it doesn’t answer your question honestly, fairly and respectfully.
To answer in such a fashion, I need to find a group that I am prejudiced against, potentially unfairly, that I view as a monolith, and that I start with a “screw you” viewpoint. A group that, if called out, I would feel uncomfortable about my unfair prejudice about, and that’s the alt-right, who I automatically associate with disgusting levels of misogyny and xenophobia; I assume they’re all Generation Identity nutters who want to deport my partner and her sister. And because of the right-libertarian to alt-right pipeline, I can be unfairly prejudiced against certain types of libertarian.
I think that’s probably the closest parallel, as its the one where I know, rationally, that I’m probably in the wrong, but I still get animated about it anyway.
The people who received most correction from Jesus were people who believed in their own righteousness and condemned or criticised others for being lesser beings.
Regarding the woman taken in adultery and who was about to be stoned, he said to her would-be executioners, whoever is without sin let him cast the first stone, and they just left.
It’s not about condemnation but salvation.
Unfortunately when mankind gets involved corruption sets in. (No doubt it will be the cause that we destroy ourselves now that we have the totalitarian tools to do so).
I agree with both sentences; and therefore must note that what I’m talking about are indeed people that call themselves Muslim, and practice various parts of the religion to a lesser or greater degree and with lesser or greater focus.
(My anecdote about “feeding me up” is one that sticks with me, since the mother of my Uni friend also did the same for the rest of our household, feeding the poor being of evidently heavy importance.)
There’s something in the notion that we (and they, I think) tend to label people from the Middle East and South East Asia by their religion, first and foremost (true of Sikhs and Hindus as well as Muslims), with little reference to their level of religiosity, in a way we don’t do with Westerners, Chinese, Japanese etc (I guess it can apply to Jews as well?). So we end up with a monolithic block called (by us or by themselves) “Muslims”, but encompassing both my Muslim acquaintances and bobby b’s.
I try hard to go by experience – whilst I’m aware of how outrageously problematic the Koran is, I judge Muslims on how they treat me, in the same way that I judge Christians – I don’t get agitated about Leviticus 18 and 20 while talking with a chap wearing a cross round his neck, nor about what Paul said to the Romans or the Corinthians.
I would also say that bobby b is also going by experience – so whilst you’re no doubt correct that those Muslims he has experience of are misinterpreting their own Book, I would say that it’s more relevant to bobby b that they’re calling him an infidel, and of much less significance that they’re technically wrong to do so.
(In plain text, that last bit looks a bit like I’m being snippy, but it’s not meant to)
I agree with that, and will add:
It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.
That’s exactly what quite a few have said, repeatedly.
You probably have more knowledge of the Koran than I, but then it sounds as if you have more knowledge of it than most of Somalia (and now Minnesota.)
And we then get back to the old argument of, what constitutes true religion – the underlying documentation, or the current practices and beliefs of its adherents? I’m talking about the latter.
Nope, intentional. As I’ve said before, “alt-right” is so broad and meaningless now that we need some narrowing terms. As someone on the right, but not part of the corporate Republican Never-Trump wing, I’m probably alt-right. I chose alt-white because the far-right white supremacists – the “Stormcloud” type groups – also tend towards the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist anti-gay philosophies.
But enough of trying to find the correct weird group to use in my original purpose. From what you said to NiV, you did understand what I meant about each of us having some well-founded prejudices that we employ for our own protection.
Exactly. That’s what I think the fundamentalists miss.
I wondered, after I posted.
I love it. Truly.
It gets across exactly what I mean, without drawing in people who actually are “right” without buying the fire-and-brimstone shit. Y’know, like us.
I’m stealing for future posts.
I hope so.
It was a difficult question for me to answer (but a good question for you to ask), and I wanted to answer it honestly, and not be glib. I wanted to find a group that made me uncomfortable, so that I would be forced to be honest and confront myself.
I’m not about to deny your life experience. That’s bullshit tactics. I could say “my life falsifies yours!” and that’s still bullshit.
It really doesn’t. It’s nonsense.
My view is more “Come over here. We’ll have some beers in Finchley, you’ll see what I mean.”
In return, I’ll come to Minnesota, have some beers. And see what I think.
You talk about environment, and I absolutely agree. I’m in favour of “multi-culturalism”, since I live in an environment here where assimilation has, demonstrably, worked and is positive.
I’m one of what people call the “north London Metropolitan elite”.
It’s worth noting that the people who use that phrase often mean it to mean “Jews”, in the UK. It’s not a neutral phrase
– it’s an antisemitic phrase, exactly the same as “Cultural Marxism”, which is highly anti-Semitic.
I have heard that claim before & it is still preposterous. The term “Cultural Marxism” is used by a great many people & I have never once actually heard it used to mean anything whatsoever to do with Jews.
I always assumed they were a false flag operation. Annoying (straight) military funerals and families in the way they did never made an atom of sense from the preaching-against-sin PoV, but loads of sense if the aim was to provide black* propaganda encouraging soldiers to support LGB (fewer letters back then) or at least dislike its opponents. In 2012, their attacking Kim Davis made my suspicion feel like certainty to me; it looked like, with the USSC ruling, they felt their cause was won and were no longer even pretending hard. It is not likely that a truly hostile-to-gays outfit would be best known for causing distress to the families of straight soldiers killed in action and to the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, under pretexts that claimed loudly to be gay-hostile but made such very little sense in those terms (or any other). Groups often act in ways that defeat their own ends but some things go beyond what is plausible in that line.
(*Just for clarity, the word ‘black’ here of course refers not to skin colour but to the white/grey/black classification of propaganda by whether its apparent origin and purpose is its real origin and purpose.)
I’ve dealt with some of them. Sadly, astoundingly, they (at least the ones I met) do indeed firmly believe what they profess to believe.
They’re mostly just mentally ill cultists.
bobby b (November 14, 2019 at 11:25 pm), I always assumed some ‘footsoldiers’ would be outside the loop and for real(ly thick). However I also know that, in this mad world, “some things go beyond what is plausible in that line” and “some things go beyond what is possible in that line” are not synonyms, so I do not confuse my assumption with knowledge. I could not help but notice their attack on Kim Davis in 2012 was peculiarly hard to reconcile with their justification for hassling conventional military families at funerals in the past – but who knows.
I have. If you haven’t, I envy you. Folks like the Daily Stormer, pleasant charmers like that. John Earnest, the San Diego synagogue shooter, folks like that (I don’t advise googling, unless you fancy gouging out your eyes after)
Not saying that everyone who uses the term is anti-Semitic, but it’s worth being conscious of its history. It comes from Nazism (Cultural Bolshevism), and more recently from your William Lind types.
Either way, not a great look, even for those using it innocently, as it were.
Westboro are a secret cabal of teh gheys, playing the long game to encourage military acceptance of LGB folk.
Makes complete sense.
Christ all-fucking-mighty…ROFL
On the one hand, I have to agree with Perry (Perry de Havilland (London), November 14, 2019 at 10:32 pm) that outside some very unusual circle, “Cultural Marxism” and “north London Metropolitan elite” would not be recognised as conveying the slightest hint of “Jew”. Certainly that would get completely past almost everyone in the UK. Any particular circle can have their own jargon, of course (and conversely, I know reasonably informed people who look blank if you refer to something as ‘woke’). But anyone hoping to spread anti-semitism any significant distance would have to find a jargon that could communicate at least some vague suggestion of it.
On the other hand, I long ago saw Louis Theroux’s programme on David Icke, who claims that the Queen and many other prominent figures are really 12-foot-tall lizard-like aliens. As Louis followed David around, it became unmistakably clear that both some people who came to his lectures to listen avidly and a small Jewish group seeking out anti-semitism to oppose were assuming that ’12-foot-tall lizard-like aliens’ was a code-word for ‘Jews’. As Louis said, after listening and observing David carefully,
Bit like the westboro baptists, perhaps – if it made any sense at all then it might mean that, but one must allow for the possibility that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever?
Maybe we (or at least I) should get back on topic. Via instapundit (so most here will see it anyway but no harm to mention to the rest), it is reported that the China has yet more more Uighur camps than was thought. Glenn Reynolds, like the OP, thinks the lack of interest is ‘amazing’ – but I suspect he means ‘revealing’.
I have to disagree again. I have heard the term “Cultural Marxism” used by a great many people, and they clearly do not mean “Jewish” when they say it. As previously said, I have never actually heard it used that way in the wild, regardless of what some say.
But even if I accept *some* people might use “Cultural Marxist” to mean “Jew”… so what? That is like not flying the English flag because the BNP fly the English flag. You can give such people that degree of control over your language if you like but I will not be following suit.
Perry, thus (my boldface):
Which is exactly why I (almost) never use the word “gay” to mean “homosexual.” It is a different word entirely with a different meaning entirely, no matter how much homosexuals would like to co-opt it. I once was talking about Horowitz’s last U.S. performance to a piano student perhaps 10 years younger than I, and I remarked to her that it gladdened my heart to see him looking so downright gay in the performance.
Her face fell. “Oh. I didn’t know that about him.”
Now truth to tell, some say that Horowitz was in fact bisexual, but I neither know nor care. What hurt was that she was unable to understand this simple English sentence because she’d never even heard “gay” used in its proper meaning. *BLEEP*
I’m not about to vandalize the English language by using 9000 made-up pronouns. That is just plain a rabbit-hole with shapeshifting tunnels and byways. (Even worse in Canada, of course, if that stupid bill C-16 or whatever it’s called went through. Whatever else, J. Peterson’s done yeoman’s work on that one!)
.
I am picky about language, and not always for reasons that justify my pickiness — such as personl aesthetic anathema. (Example: “blog,” = “slimy bog” to my ear and I won’t use it. Admitted. But the foregoing is to my mind a just and righteous reason for people to avoid misusing certain terms in order to slip one in under the net, and to make up words so as to feel somehow Important.)
PdH: “I have heard the term “Cultural Marxism” used by a great many people, and they clearly do not mean “Jewish” when they say it. As previously said, I have never actually heard it used that way in the wild, regardless of what some say.”
The term ‘cultural Marxism’ is becoming more frequently used, it is correct in at least two aspects, those it applies to, are attempting to undermine the culture, and very probably they are Marxists too.
Perhaps it’s one of those occasional terms that clearly identifies the motives and strategies of those it is often applied to. Thus Cultural Marxists feel the need to undermine its use, what better way to neutralise the term than by associating it with the last great taboo. Pretty much the same strategy the Andrew Cuomo attempted to associate the good old Italian name ‘Fredo’ with the slur ‘Nigger‘.
In the attempt, made a right twat of himself too.
The above line (from here) caught my eye because the Nazis sometimes used the term “vocational training” to describe the destination and activities of deported Jews.
The story also caught my eye because
Another example of how the robber baron is actually preferable to the totalitarian ideologue – though it would be charitable to consider that Wang may have had better motives but thought it wise only to mention those he (vainly) hoped the party would tolerate.
I understand your point. I, respectfully, don’t wholly agree with it.
It’s a tricky thing. I’m constantly trying to bring people over to “our way of thinking”, and that involves making some tactical decisions on language, focus etc.
Personally, I feel that “identity politics” does the same job that “Cultural Marxism” does, without risking a swift Google and a pushback of “OMG you anti-semite!” which then requires an amount of explanation.
In today’s polarised society, I’m pursuing “softly softly catchy monkey”.
It’s slower, it’s more difficult, but it doesn’t alienate potential allies, and I’m unsure of the value of appealing to the alt-right (alt-white).
It strikes me as pandering to authoritarians, an easy thing, whereas persuading the “left” that a more libertarian view point achieves their goals (equality of opportunity, even if they won’t phrase it like that) is a more difficult, but infinitely more worthwhile, goal, even if it means fighting hard to make sure they understand their phrasing, and what they’re fighting for. That’s our job.
YMMV, etc etc
It is in some ways depressing when the muslim world acts like the only alternative to hardline islam is an ‘enlightened’ Saudi prince signing trade deals in China and saying they have a right to put people in concentration camps if they choose.
Of course, the enlightened prince would not be the first ‘enlightened’ prince whose own royal house used ways to remain in power that were not so enlightened as his public statements and flattery from intellectuals would have you think – maybe he did not want to limit his own government’s options. Or maybe he is learning the wrong lessons from the west in place of his traditional beliefs – our universities are certainly teaching them. Or both.
One wonders if anyone will even ask the prince whether the Uighurs have really been defiant enough that the communists had the ‘right’ to withdraw their equivalent of Dhimmi status from them. But I guess when ‘the book’ is nominally Chairman Mao’s little red book then there is emphatically no ideological authority for tolerating even the slightest deviation.
(Cautionary appendix: as these statements were ‘quoted on Chinese state television’, we should check what all the prince says he said when he returns. He might have been spun.)