https://sh.itjust.works/post/4274675

To this I say, no. As a community, we do not deny proven genocides, like the holocaust, or the genocide against indigenous Americans by various European colonizers, or the genocide against the Congolese by Belgium, or the Bengal famine that was carried out by the British empire. In fact, denying those genocides will get you banned, here. However: we are also aware of a tendency of nations to project their crimes onto others, and to manufacture atrocity propaganda to justify overthrowing or destroying rival governments… like Libya in 2011:

From Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad (a great book I highly recommend)

A post from Michael Parenti regarding the destruction of Libya by NATO-backed reactionaries

A headline shortly after Libya’s destruction by NATO-backed reactionaries

The US government has been reenacting the fable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and has been cynically leveraging the very serious accusation of genocide against its geopolitical enemies. This is the source of skepticism on Xinjiang. And this is not a new strategy, yes, the Holodomor, which everyone in the US has been taught to take seriously lately, is a nazi fabrication first spread to the United States in the works of Robert Conquest. Why would the USSR deliberately starve a fellow socialist Republic? Why would Stalin, a Georgian, have some kind of Russian chauvinist grudge against Ukrainians? Why would Lenin (Donbass), Stalin (Lviv), and Khruschev (Crimea) all expand the territory of the Ukrainian SSR while also trying to kill off the people inside of it? Why would the USSR ethnically cleanse Ukrainains while simultaneously sending food aid to the starving British colony in Bengal? Natural famines and crop failures were spun by the nazis into atrocity propaganda. Also, a state does not have to be perfect to be defended against false accuations. I think China is far from perfect, but the burden of proof is on the United States to prove its accusations (which have changed in scope several times) regarding Xinjiang. Delegations from Muslim majority nations visiting Xinjiang do not agree with the United States that there is a genocide of the Uyghur people. There is however an attempt to reeducate extremist groups like ETIM. Reeducating extremists might seem a harsh government policy, but I assure you it is a better way of dealing with religious fundamentalism than drone striking weddings or air striking hospitals like the USA did in Afghanistan.

  • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Even Stephen Kotkin (the lib), who is a highly esteemed academic historian (professor at Princeton), said what happened in Ukraine in the 30s wasn’t genocide in his Stalin biography. The only revisionism that’s happening here is libs pretending that there is a consensus about calling it a genocide among academic historians.

    All of these actions were woefully insufficient for avoiding the mass starvation in the countryside caused by his policies, in the face of challenging natural conditions. Still, these actions do not indicate that he was trying to exterminate peasants or ethnic Ukrainians.

    Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 by Stephen Kotkin published in October 2017 by Penguin Random House

    Here’s Mark Tauger’s takedown of Applebaum’s Holodomor book:

    Some might ask whether Applebaum’s writing is more accessible to “non-specialist” readers. There are many excellent writers among Slavic specialists, and a more accurate account could easily have been presented in clear and simple language. Applebaum’s writing does not “simplify” the truth, it obscures it, as discussed in this review. Red Famine thus does not fit well in the existing scholarly literature, even as “popular history.” Its interpretation resembles that of Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow, and it does use recent published sources that provide vivid descriptions of many people’s experiences in the famine. But it leaves out too much important information, has false claims on key points, and draws unjustified conclusions on important issues based on incomplete use of sources, making it not even close to the level of genuine scholarship, like Davies and Wheatcroft’s Years of Hunger. Red Famine is better characterized by a passage from Peter Kenez’s book on The Birth of the Propaganda State: “propaganda often means telling less than the truth, misleading people … manipulating and distorting information, lying” and addresses “audiences in simple language…”

    • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Even Robert Conquest amended his position after the release of the Soviet archives that the Soviet famine of the 1930s wasn’t genocide.

    • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Who cares about academic historians? A bunch of woke nerds if you ask me. The EU parliament voted that the Holodomor was real and a genocide so anyone who says otherwise is denying genocide and spreading misinformation.

  • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Why would the USSR deliberately starve a fellow socialist Republic? Why would Stalin, a Georgian, have some kind of Russian chauvinist grudge against Ukrainians? Why would Lenin (Donbass), Stalin (Lviv), and Khruschev (Crimea) all expand the territory of the Ukrainian SSR while also trying to kill off the people inside of it?

    My key question: Why would Stalin stop? If the Holodomor was a deliberate attempt to genocide the Ukrainian people, it would be to my knowledge the only genocide in the history of the world where the perpetrator just randomly decided to stop the genocidal actions and never again make any attempt to restart it for the next 30 years of his life.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      There are opportunistic genocides around famines (not in this case, of course) where the attempt is taken because it is easy and not pursued further when it is difficult. Britain did this multiple times around the world.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Make sure you remind the liberals that the Soviet “joint invasion” of Poland that they bitch and cry about is what gave Ukraine the entire western half of their country.

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    It’s wrong to deny wild accusations from untrustworthy actors that have insubstantial evidence to support them, tankies. Yes I believe there’s a genocide against white people in North America, do you disagree?

    • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      What supposed communist genocides are we denying? Give me sources showing credible evidence that these genocides happened, and links to a Hexbear users denying them, please. Back up your wild fucking claims.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Making up genocides and spreading neo nazis myths about communist states is the definition of genocide trivialization and denialism

      The historical facts are on our side but it doesn’t matter to scum like you who trivialize and fabricate for the benefit of anti-communist polemics

      Kick rocks crypto-nazi

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf

      READ THE REPORT. READ THE REPORT. READ THE FUCKING REPORT. READ THE REPORT OF THE UN INVESTIGATORS SENT TO XINJIANG. FUCKING READ IT. IT’S RIGHT THERE. IT’S PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. IT’S NOT VERY LONG. IT’S WRITTEN IN PLAIN LANGUAGE. READ THE REPORT. READ THE FUCKING REPORT. READ THE FUCKING REPORT. READ THE FUCKING REPORT. READ THE FUCKING REPORT. READ THE FUCKING REPORT!

      honk-enraged rage-cry monke-rage lenin-rage guts-rage

          • NailBunny [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            They do this every time.

            “They’re genociding people left and right!”

            …

            “Well if you read this bit it says they were kinda actually assholes”

            They will walk back whatever they say until they are saying nothing at all. You’d think through this process they’d come to realize how little evidence they have and self-evaluate, but…

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              A lot of these people sound like they were just picked up at random. The program was certainly more humane that just dropping hellfire missiles on random civilians, and the program as a whole does seem to have worked, but I imagine the working parts were probably more the cultural education and building mosques for mainline Sunni’s, not the kidnapping people without clear reason and making them sing patriotic songs. Given the way western counter-insurgency “works”, ie building up networks of contacts and then just randomly murdering people who are flagged as connected to a lot of people of interest, I doubt China’s method of identifying potential insurgents or people vulnerable to Wahhabism is any less prone to false positives. It’s just that there false positives live because they didn’t default to murdering weddings.

              Like, it seems to have worked, and as far as anyone knows it seems like they didn’t focus on killing people, but it still has problems, or at least is negatively effected people caught up in the dragnet. Balanced views and nuance

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Those conditions are better than the average us prison, so if that’s your bar then there’s a much bigger enemy to focus on first. Go kill a corrections officer if you think that is so horrible.

    • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      You know damn well that making up genocides and then accusing anyone who doesn’t unquestioningly believe you of being a genocide denier is a cynical act of bad faith rhetoric. I and I know you know that, because I’ll bet my left kidney that you don’t lend it credence when neo-nazis try to do it with their “white genocide”, so why in the world would you expect us to lend it credence when you do it?

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Do you deny the white genocide? (Which, BTW, I also don’t believe in. If you don’t deny it, conversation over. If you do, then you’d have to come to terms with the sources, nature of genocide, scale, and whether a genocide is actually happening or is being created to serve some powerful interest.)

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      i explained very carefully in my post how capitalist and imperialist nations leverage false accustions of genocide against socialists in order to manufacture consent for military action and justify destroying rival economic systems. but if you have already internalized those lies as the truth, then we will remain “genocide deniers.”

      If I say “spez@sh.itjust.works did a genocide yesterday,” and you say “no I didn’t” does that make you a genocide denier?

      Regarding Xinjiang, which is a major contemporary accusation, the burden of proof is on those leveraging this accusation (NATO countries) to prove that accusation, which they have consistently failed to

      I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, Killing Hope by William Blum, and Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Well yes, of course I deny communist genocides. You don’t? What about the claim made by Nazi conspiracy theorists that communism is a Jewish plot to genocide the white race? Are you a genocide denying tankie like us who believe that’s bullshit, or do you accept the Nazi claims about white genocide?

      Maybe some allegations of genocide are actually just made up bullshit to serve a political agenda and maybe we should reserve labeling people as “genocide deniers” to cases with clear, well documented evidence.

  • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I feel like this connects back to the liberal need to erase anyone left of them, because otherwise they can’t pretend to be the good guys

    also this:

    The kitten-burners seem to fulfill some urgent need. They give us someone we can clearly and correctly say we’re better than. Their extravagant cruelty makes us feel better about ourselves because we know that we would never do what they have done. They thus function as signposts of depravity, reassuring the rest of us that we’re Not As Bad As them, and thus letting us tell ourselves that this is the same thing as us being good.

    from https://redsails.org/false-witnesses/

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Its this.

      Actually hearing from people to the left of them forces them to grapple with the idea that they aren’t benevolent humanitarian they’re just slightly less racist imperialists.

      Reddit was perfect from them because it banned anybody who would critique them from the left so they literally thought they were “as progressive as they come”

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Legit had a liberal, when presented with the fact that the RAND corporation (the organisation that blurs the line between a US government agency and a private organisation which essentially set war policy in the Vietnam war for having kill counts as a metric for determining “success” in Vietnam, amongst other things) had released a paper that basically said that if the US wants to cripple the Chinese economy then what they’d need to do is to initiate a limited military conflict in the South China Sea within the next few years to disrupt the shipping lanes which China is largely dependent upon for foreign trade (before the Belt & Road Initiative gets away from the US and closes this window.)

      The outcome, they determined, would be significantly more damaging to the Chinese economy than it would be to the US economy.

      I stated that this has been around for some time now and it’s not a coincidence that the US is clamouring for war in the SCS and escalating in that region as much as possible without actually firing shots (yet).

      What did the lib do?

      You guessed it! It was obviously Sissypee tankie propaganda. From the RAND corporation.

      I wish I had a fraction of the confidence of these shit-tier libs on the internet have because goddamn, the absolute balls to make the bald-faced claim that a corporation which would have extremely high US security clearance requirements and which has been directly influential over US policy for three quarters of a century is somehow now churning out pro-Chinese propaganda without anyone noticing or making a fuss over it.

      It’s absolutely ridiculous the degree of information and knowledge that we are expected to bring to bear in a discussion and, upon presenting this info, the libs can summarily dismiss it for going against their narrative as Chinese propaganda (or tankie propaganda etc.) and they do it with zero evidence and zero familiarity with something like the RAND corporation’s history and function.

      You’d legit get a military officer to burst out in laughter if you claimed that the RAND corporation was an arm of the CPC in front of them. And that’s a bad thing because I wish all US military a very unpleasant experience.

      • JuneFall [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        I like RAND corp documents, they are openly arguing for and against things which some people think are “unthinkable”. Then they print those up and distribute them in the typical US think tanks and places of governing power as well as archives (which is were I get them from mostly).

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netBannedEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        It’s absolutely ridiculous the degree of information and knowledge that we are expected to bring to bear in a discussion and, upon presenting this info, the libs can summarily dismiss it for going against their narrative as Chinese propaganda

        Not to get too into the “is federation good?” topic in every thread, but it is able push back against this dynamic to an extent.

        If you argue against western propaganda on reddit, the libs usually far outnumber you. They feel reassured by this local superiority, and readers without a firm position can easily interpret the exchange as one crazy tankie arguing with a bunch of sensible, moderate progressives. And of course if you thread the needle just right and get some traction the mods will just nuke the thread.

        Here, libs have to argue on equal footing or worse. We usually outnumber them. And thus far across instances we’re federated with you don’t have too many mod removals of threads just because they successfully challenge the prevailing western narrative.

        • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          It’s been a while since I’ve read it but it’s titled “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable” (lol)

          When you consider the actions that have been taken since this paper was published, there have been two major developments that stand out (aside from the obvious military buildups and sabre-rattling):

          • The US attempt at a virtual blockade of high-end semiconductors to China. I believe that this was the US trying to hamper the Chinese military capacity - no chips, no tech. No tech, no cutting edge military capacity.

          • The recent AUKUS alliance which features tight cooperation in the development of hypersonic missiles and counter-hypersonic tech as well as Australia building 8 nuclear powered submarines. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this isn’t an attempt to tip the scales in the favour of the US in a situation of conflict in the South China Sea.

          The more conspiracy-minded among us would see that Australia having access to highly-enriched uranium to fuel the submarines, its recent moves to expand its missile capacity to ones which can be armed with nuclear warheads, and its expansion of its airforce base to house up to six nuclear-capable B52 bombers would be laying all of the foundations necessary for Australia to be a turnkey nuclear state, making it (hypothetically) possible for Australia to have nuclear strike capabilities in a very rapid turnaround time especially in a situation, say, where war broke out in the Pacific for some unforseen reason.

          All that Australia would likely need to do would be to pass some emergency measures through parliament and to get the blessings of the US and some tech transfer but all of the difficult aspects of sourcing the hardware, housing it, and having access to a nuclear payload would have already been put into place by this point so it’d be more or less a matter of simply assembling the parts.

          It’s crazy-making seeing this shit playing out before my eyes.

          I’m not a military analyst or some specialist consultant or anything but… you don’t need to be a genuis or to have some special insider knowledge to be able see what’s going on. I’ve been waiting for a Gulf of Tokin incident to occur in the South China Sea for years now. It’s not any accident that the US has been conducting “freedom of navigation” expeditions right off the coast of China and between the Taiwanese strait on a consistent basis in recent years.

          I suppose that I should put a disclaimer on that RAND report because it was published almost a decade ago now so while the conclusions that it draws, speculative as they may be, they’re also not as up-to-date as the more recent stuff so don’t treat it as gospel. Although that being said, the broad brushstrokes would still be applicable at the very least.

            • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              Yeah… sorry about that 😬

              It’s a bit of a blackpill to look into this stuff. But on the other hand, I’m just some internet stranger who is far from being an expert (I even said as much just before) so it could just be pepe-silvia style rambling from an absolute crackpot. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened on the internet lol.

    • aebletrae [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I don’t think this is actually a particularly good suggestion. It’s too easy to dodge with “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. It doesn’t matter if they lack evidence of presence, because they’re not trying to be objective, they’re trying to be superior.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netBannedEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Genocide is a crime, and to prove a crime occurred you have to come up with evidence.

        Throw that rules-based international order nonsense back in their face.

        • aebletrae [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Absolutely, but the people hurling accusations don’t care about the strength of arguments. They’re not even necessarily trying to make an argument (in the logical sense). Tossing back a document that says “genocide is hard to prove” isn’t going to win them over. It’s more likely to make them double down. And that strikes me as a mistake.

          There’s also the problem that to people who rightfully abhor it, any action that appears to be rules-lawyering genocide is almost certain to be rejected, turning away any audience that might have been receptive to a counter-narrative.

          That just leaves commenters who already agree, and when they join in, Hexbear is ‘brigading with denialist propaganda’, which feeds into the chuds’ sense of righteousness when they harrass us.

          Something this contentious needs time and a degree of receptivity, neither of which is provided by ‘throwing out’ some bombshell of evidence.

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            You’re never (well practically never) going to win over someone that’s so set in their beliefs that they won’t even stop and reconsider when they’re shown to be wrong. You’re moreso arguing for the observers on the sidelines.
            I don’t know if it sticks true here as well, but apparently Reddit used to have a 1:10 ratio of posters:commenters:voter’s:lurkers.

            • aebletrae [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              What fraction of lurkers do you think are won over by ‘Nuh-uh, it’s not technically genocide’? Not many, I’d bet.

              I’m well aware of the performative aspects of online discussion. It is exactly that performance that I’m criticizing. As I said before, rules-lawyering genocide is not a good look. And giving the opponent an easy out allows them to steal the show.

              420blazeit69 has provided a better lead-in:—

              Genocide is a crime, and to prove a crime occurred you have to come up with evidence.

              which might then be followed by the reminder that a motivated US State department wasn’t able to do that—not even with all the efforts of a Nazi apologist. With additional detail, that would be somewhat more persuasive than simply “[throwing it out and seeing how they respond]”. It at least returns the burden of justification, although I still think there are better spectator sports to play.

          • Barabas [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            The way that Rome conducted war is ironically a lot like how westerners believe the Soviet Union did. But the Romans are percieved as some kind of elite superforce who beat their enemies in 10-1 fights rather than simply having more soldiers in the vast amount of wars.

            • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              1·
              2 years ago

              Yeah Romans really just were very good at mass producing bare minimum equipment and throwing massive amounts of men at problems. I remember reading something from Julius Caesar talking about how the German tribes had clearly superior armor but it was of no concern.

            • Harrison [He/Him]@ttrpg.networkBanned from communityEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              The trouble is that people look at a state and culture that lasted 2100 years in some form or other, and yet apply the same expectations to every part of their history.

              Rome winning the Punic wars with an excess of manpower, and winning 10-1 engagements against vast gallic and Germanic armies were further away from each other than we are from the Napoleonic wars today.

            • NewLeaf@hexbear.netEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              It’s mostly just an amalgamation of every reddit argument I’ve been in since libs learned the word “tankie”

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      They won’t. I can’t get the fuckers to read the UN report, either. And good luck getting them to look in to any information on the 1932 famine that doesn’t come directly from Himmler of the OUN-B.

      • jackmarxist [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I remember one guy who posted the UN report as proof of genocide but the report itself didn’t say anything related to genocide.

        • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          I think sources are actually for trying to get people to exit the conversation, not actually assessing the continuity of evidence and argument.