demagogue on 24/8/2023 at 20:23
There's parts in Hitler's writings where he says he was inspired by his whole lebensraum idea and colonizing Russia and the Asian steppes and ethnic cleansing of Slavs and Tartars from the Anglos expansion west in the US and the ethnic cleansing of its native populations.* And the Nuremberg Laws were even more directly inspired by the US South's Jim Crow laws. Actually Jim Crow laws were even stricter on Blacks in the South than the Nuremberg Laws were on Jews in Nazi Germany. Of course during the war they went full crackpot on a genocidal rampage and took it much further, but you had to have the 1920s to get the 1940s.
Having researched atrocities in the modern era though, at this point I think the seeds of it can be planted in any society if it's dumped into the right social conditions with the right characters and a dose of bad luck.
That's what was troubling about the fact that Trump appeared to be modeling some of his speeches from his book of Hitler's speeches from the 1920s, culminating at this stage in the Beer Belly Putsch on January 6, 2021. It's not what it means right now, but what it'll mean 20 years from now.
* There was a book about exactly this connection that came out recently that was really interesting. It's on my laptop that just had a harddrive crash, so I can't find it just now. Hitler didn't really understand US history, but he took a lesson from it anyway. But it's not like the US treatment of natives is defensible even if you do understand it. And the West didn't really understood why Ukraine & the Eastern Front was the central piece to Hitler's whole plan in WWII and the Western Front was only there to keep Anglos off his back, like someone was saying above.
SD on 24/8/2023 at 22:00
Quote Posted by demagogue
There's parts in Hitler's writings where he says he was inspired by his whole
lebensraum idea and colonizing Russia and the Asian steppes and ethnic cleansing of Slavs and Tartars from the Anglos expansion west in the US and the ethnic cleansing of its native populations.
With the remaining global Jewish population mainly split between the USA and Israel, there's a joke in Jewish circles employed as a riposte to anti-Zionists:
Half the world's Jews are settlers on stolen land; the other half live in JudeaIt surprises me that with all the chatter about reparations, more isn't said about restitution for Native Americans. Or maybe it is and we just don't hear about it here in Europe. I know you can't undo history, but with reservations covering barely 2% of the USA, it seems like they definitely got the crappy end of the stick.
Azaran on 25/8/2023 at 01:22
Quote Posted by SD
As the Nazis swept eastwards, they found plentiful support in the local populace.
I once read an account that many slavs initially welcomed the Nazi invasion, thinking the Germans to be liberators from Soviet oppression. Only to soon find out they were even worse
demagogue on 25/8/2023 at 03:50
Quote Posted by SD
It surprises me that with all the chatter about reparations, more isn't said about restitution for Native Americans. Or maybe it is and we just don't hear about it here in Europe. I know you can't undo history, but with reservations covering barely 2% of the USA, it seems like they definitely got the crappy end of the stick.
There are cases on it all the time. There were I think two big Supreme Court cases this last year, one on the adoption law, but another about indigenous sovereignty around Tulsa where I was staying the first half of this year. There's also that Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon about the 1920s Osage murders that's coming out soon that's bringing attention to the issue.
Anyway, there are over 500 recognized tribes in the US, so the whole thing is pretty fragmented. The last big thing making national news was the Standing Rock protests trying to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline going through native land around 2016.
I taught at a law school for Myanmar indigenous groups, so I had to learn indigenous rights for that, and then I was writing a thing on Apache land rights, so I've read a little up on the issue. Chiricahua Apaches have been trying to get compensation for the loss of their reservation in the late 1870s for decades now, and they were legally integrated with Mescaleros.
Another issue was lot of the indigenous nations near the Canadian border have their sovereignty over their traditional lands recognized, so they can basically ignore the border on their own land. Apache traditional lands crossed the US-Mexican border, but as we learned from the GOP debates a few nights ago, nothing makes a Republican go into apoplectic hysterics more than the idea of non-white people crossing that border, and they're evidently doing all they can maximize the number of "accidental deaths" of people attempting it... So needless to say, Apache groups don't have the good fortune of their northern cousins in not having their lands split up by such a hard border, which is kind of ironic since Apaches, or their ancestral predecessors were originally (and their closest relatives still today) from Canada.
Azaran on 29/8/2023 at 14:52
Over the last few years, the Chinese Communist Party has been leading a new Cultural Revolution, especially targeting traditional Chinese religion, landmarks and temples. Much has been said about the persecution of Christians there, but that seems minor compared to what they're doing to their own. Not even cherished tourist hotspots have been spared. Apparently according to the new laws, outdoor religious statues are forbidden and must be hidden or demolished
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https://wildhunt.org/2022/06/new-government-measures-curtail-folk-religion-in-china.html)
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https://bitterwinter.org/we-choke-with-silent-fury/)
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https://bitterwinter.org/a-national-catastrophe-for-religious-statues-in-china/)
Over the past few years, Chinese authorities have been purging the influence of folk religion, which it refers to as xié jiào, sometimes translated as “evil cults.”
Two years ago, local officials in the village of Baofeng in the Chinese city of Gaoyou in Jiangsu province destroyed some 5,911 temples of traditional folk religion.
In 2020, a video emerged showing statues of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, being destroyed, apparently because of the Chinese state's concerns about folk religious practices. Huangdi is the deity of the material world and civility and is the great shaper of society. He is considered the prime initiator of Chinese culture and holds wu (巫) or shamanic sorcery.
China's oppression of folk religions stems from the implementation of Order No. 13, issued by the State Religious Affairs Bureau. Order 13 seeks to standardize the management of religious groups to promote their “healthy development” and “actively guide religion to adapt to a socialist society.” It is part of a plan to subjugate religious practices so they serve the state and ultimately produce and maintain “social harmony.”
As Cathy Sun notes in Harvard Political Review, “China's persecution of religious minorities is part of a broader, systematic strategy to eradicate external influence in the social and political lives of citizens while harnessing aspects of religion that could serve the state's interests. Its campaign of religious persecution is a not unprecedented effort to cement public recognition of the state's authority and thereby generate political conformity.”
Recently, the Chinese government has doubled down on efforts to limit religious expression and ensure that religious activity aligns with state interests. Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, and Daoism, as regulated by organizations controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, constitute the religions sanctioned by the state in China.
.......
In May, the Tibet Autonomous Region Cyberspace Administration (TARCA) announced that “a special rectification work in the field of online live broadcasting and short videos in the whole region” was needed to confront unspecified “social threats.” The new regulations ferret out activities “undermining national religious policies,” “promoting harmful information about religion,” and “spreading xie jiao and feudal superstitions.” These announcements are consistent with Order 13._________________________________
The owner of the (https://bitterwinter.org/zealous-officials-destroy-four-temples-in-one-village/) Buddhist Deshan Temple was ordered to destroy his temple on April 16. Local officials posted on the temple door a demolition notice: “Illegal religious activity venue with substandard fire control measures.” The owner was warned that if he refused to move out all the belongings and destroy the temple himself, the authorities would take care of it. The officials added that “burning incense and worshipping Buddha is superstitious, and tantamount to not believing in the Communist Party.” Personnel were sent to watch over the temple day and night, prohibiting worshippers from entering it.
“Demolishing the temple is an order from the central government. You're not allowed to believe anymore,” one official said when the temple owner asked to explain the reasons for the demolition. “Your Buddhist statues mustn't be seen in Zhengzhou city!”
The temple was demolished four days later after the workforce of over 100 drove cranes, trucks, and excavators to do the job. The police cordoned off the temple and didn't allow anyone to enter it; nearby residents were even prohibited from leaving their homes. The owner was kept in police custody during the demolition and released only after the temple that cost him over 500,000 RMB (about $ 74,000) was reduced to a pile of ruins.Inline Image:
https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Ks%CC%A3itigarbha-Bodhisattva.jpgInline Image:
https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Deshan-Temple.jpgdemagogue on 29/8/2023 at 17:26
If that's what they do to Han Chinese practicing Buddhism, you can imagine what they do to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims practicing Islam. Actually, whatever you imagine, unless you've already read up on it, the reality is going to be so much worse. There's a reason why claims of genocide and crimes against humanity were brought up to describe China's treatment of them.
Azaran on 29/8/2023 at 18:31
Yeah there's accounts of concentration camps over there, even people having their organs harvested against their will. I don't doubt it, the Communist Party is up there in crimes against humanity.
Ironically, I saw a newspiece a couple years back how the Chinese president was actively promoting Chinese culture and Confucian principles overseas.
Schrodinger's dictator: Simultaneously promoting his culture in other countries, while destroying it at home
Starker on 31/8/2023 at 12:55
It's not just the Uyghurs either. There are forced labor camps all over the country. You can go to jail simply for using a VPN and if you happen to be the wrong ethnicity, you can end up with terrorism charges for that. And it has taken a turn for the worse quite a bit ever since Xi took power. Now the bouts of hypernationalist frenzy that used to be occasionally fanned up whenever there was a need for a distraction seem to be ever present and ramping up.
When I started studying Chinese, I also started watching a couple of vloggers that lived in China and posted the typical content vloggers do about living abroad -- kind of clickbaity, but mostly positive things about the culture and people from all over China. Since then, they have left China because they didn't feel safe there and the only things they have been posting for quite a few years now have been criticisms about the current state of the country. Their videos are still kind of over the top, but they give a taste of some of the messed up things that have been happening:
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https://www.youtube.com/@laowhy86/videos)
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https://www.youtube.com/@serpentza/videos)
There are a couple of reasons why I say the US with all its flaws and horrible deeds is still the lesser evil and it's because of China and Russia and countries that aspire to be like them.
JakeOh on 5/9/2023 at 12:34
Quote Posted by Starker
It's not just the Uyghurs either. There are forced labor camps all over the country. You can go to jail simply for using a VPN and if you happen to be the wrong ethnicity, you can end up with terrorism charges for that. And it has taken a turn for the worse quite a bit ever since Xi took power. Now the bouts of hypernationalist frenzy that used to be occasionally fanned up whenever there was a need for a distraction seem to be ever present and ramping up.
When I started studying Chinese, I also started watching a couple of vloggers that lived in China and posted the typical content vloggers do about living abroad -- kind of clickbaity, but mostly positive things about the culture and people from all over China. Since then, they have left China because they didn't feel safe there and the only things they have been posting for quite a few years now have been criticisms about the current state of the country. Their videos are still kind of over the top, but they give a taste of some of the messed up things that have been happening:
(
https://www.youtube.com/@laowhy86/videos)
(
https://www.youtube.com/@serpentza/videos)
There are a couple of reasons why I say the US with all its flaws and horrible deeds is still the lesser evil and it's because of China and Russia and countries that aspire to be like them.
People in US often forget how downright bad living in some countries is(except maybe for extremes). It all looks pretty when you're a tourist there with a whole bunch of cash enjoying "cheap" stuff, but ppl tend to forget that some people WORK for those money. I'm always taking "look at this streetfood, its like 2 bucks for a whole bunch of food" - ye, now imagine how little people make there since food is pretty good indicator of how high earnings are in the country. I've watched a couple of documentaries on how african kids a lot of the time grind themselves to exhaustion in sports just to "make it"(I think watched one or two about marathon runners that folks at local running store (
https://rununited.com/) recommended, also a few on basketball).
I've recently watched a documentary on Chinese work culture(12h a day, 6 days a week). Literally overworking most of the people there into oblivion and at every level.
mxleader on 6/9/2023 at 02:49
Quote Posted by JakeOh
I've recently watched a documentary on Chinese work culture(12h a day, 6 days a week). Literally overworking most of the people there into oblivion and at every level.
China is going through so many of the same things that the US did during its era of industrialization but on a much larger scale and a slightly different government. Many Chinese factory workers improve their conditions by simply moving to a competing factory en masse. A company I used to work for always had supply issues because of the factory labor issues of one losing all of it's workers to a new improved factory down the street. Also, many Chinese laborers don't stick around for more than a year before heading back to whatever rural village or town they are from so you'd be hard pressed to form any unions there. Not to mention unions probably wouldn't do well against such a fine government.
