My partner is Lebanese and one issue that has consistently come up with any discussion of Marxism (and honestly the online left as a whole) is Uyghur genocide denial. Essentially, they see it as proof of (white) western leftists being hypocrites and having a glaring Islamophobia problem. I’m inclined to defer to them, but at the same time, I’ve found myself often politically aligning with MLs on other issues, and I know very little about Chinese internal politics or the Uyghurs myself, so I would greatly appreciate being able to get an understanding of what the ML perspective is.
not sure about MLs but my dumbass take is it seems like China’s claims as to how and why they are treating the Uighers the way that they are holds up to scrutiny, like, the west has been stoking separatist tensions along the border of Xinjiang, and so far even if they are abusing human rights it’s containing the problem in a way that doesn’t involve killing a million Iraqis, saying mission accomplished, and still having mass terror attacks. god bless America
and the claims of cultural genocide don’t really hold up to scrutiny either, and those accusations are especially weak in light of real actual genocide happening r/n
and China just doesn’t have a motive to genocide the Uighers. Why? Really the only reason is the separatist shit but clearly they’re not going the “we have to destroy all palestinians to destroy hamas” route with that. Probably because China isn’t as full of han supremacists as there are frothing mad crackers in America and westerners project and assume the dastardly orientals must be as bloodthirsty and racist as they are.
also I get hung up on specific points I guess but another reason I don’t believe China intends any genocide of any kind on the Uighers is because historically ethnic minorities in China were exempt from the one child policy which, like, is the exact opposite of what you’d want to do if you wanna genocide pesky minorities, severely restrict the main demographic’s birthrates while doing nothing to theirs? if the Chinese had genocidal intent they wouldn’t have done that
edit: Also I saw a picture of a Xinjiang oil refinery from like the 1950s so it’s not like oil is only just suddenly important to China in the region (and consequently a motive for genocide, although it’s definitely a motive to stamp out separatist groups)