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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Has anyone been following the scenes in China?

The government has changed the definition of a COVID death, apparently to slice the death statistics after relaxing zero-COVID and cases surge. Omicron emerged last year as it ripped through Africa, and that variant seemed less dangerous (although more contagious) than its ancestors. It's suspected that it could be a subvariant of that. Also worth mentioning that China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany, but only for German expats living in China. Too early to tell and we don't have the full facts yet, but I won't be surprised if the situation is grimmer than the PRC government is willing to disclose.

On the other hand, it's amazing how the western mainstream media has reverted to parroting COVID-regime talking points again, after months of calling zero COVID insane. It reads like they're using it as an excuse to justify bringing back more autocratic measures at home, the coming weeks will be very telling.

China covid policy is (was?) an immense success unfortunately the rest of the world is too inept and criminal to react efficiently to covid entry points and therefore millions of humans die and quality of life, worldwide intelligence level and lifespan are put at an extreme and yet unknown risk. How many times will people catch covid in their own lifetime? How many percents of neurons/synapse lost? This is extremely worrying.

China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany

China is the biggest exporter of vaccine worldwide (2 billions ?), while occident was keeping them all for themselves and did not allow other countries to produce patented vaccines (well it maybe was allowed very late I don't recall exactly the timeline) china saved the majority of mankind regarding covid deaths.

While their vaccine was a bit less effective, with the newer variant it is on par if not better? (I haven't looked at the viral load metric, where mRNA vaccine have become entirely useless) see https://old.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/zq0x2h/after_2nd_and_3rd_dose_chinas_sinovac_reach/

Of course the best vaccine would probably be a combination of distinct ones. Also, let me remind the world that the Russian main vaccine is very competitive and was denied out of pure racism, although nowadays we have the ukrainian war narrative.

As for accounts of said racism I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.

As for anti-sino racism, while on the digression, I'll ask the reader who caused the Great Chinese Famine.

  • -40

As for accounts of said racism I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.

Holocaust, 11 000 000 - 17 000 000 dead.

who caused the Great Chinese Famine

PRC, Mao in particular.

Holocaust, 11 000 000 - 17 000 000 dead.

Well I'm not an expert on holocaust, a quick google gave me a 5-6 million killed jews estimate and that is the authoritative one on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#::text=Between%201941%20and%201945%2C%20Nazi%20Germany%20and%20its%20collaborators%20systematically%20murdered%20some%20six%20million%20Jews%20across%20German%2Doccupied%20Europe%3B%5Ba%5D

It seems the 11-17 number your refer is a mix of jewish kills and the killing of other minorities, especially Romani people

cf https://www.ilholocaustmuseum.org/holocaust-misconceptions/#::text=There%20were%2011%20million%20victims%20of%20the%20Holocaust%20(or%206%20million%20Jewish%20victims%20and%205%20million%20non%2DJewish%20victims)%C2%A0

I am not refering to the Jewish genocide but to one that is twice as big and that you never heard about because of racism:

It killed 11 million human beings, 11 million slavic civilian people for their ethnicity

https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/75106

who caused the Great Chinese Famine

PRC, Mao in particular.

Well that is a misleading answer.

Mao had its flaws but the general direction of china made sense, they suffered from the century of humiliation, something that isn't taught in schools because of racism.

As a result they went from the first economic power worlwide to extreme poverty and had to make, very late, a transition to an industrial revolution (from a mostly agriculture based economy)

There has been flaws during this necessary transition, however people completely fail to understand the reason behind 99% of the deaths, an artificial one, deliberately chosen by the U.S.A and other occidental countries, a worlwide ban on exports to China. A worlwide ban of many technologies including the main disruption of the century, the discovery and production of fertilizers.

Therefore the death of all those human beings has for main and sufficient responsability the occidentals hegemonists and their will to bend China and froze them into the middle age.

The ignominy of the west is rampant everywhere and the ignorance of those crimes againsts humanity continue even today.

  • -24

I am not refering to the Jewish genocide but to one that is twice as big and that you never heard about because of racism:

You're on a board where people very often debate the Holocaust and other genocides - if you assume that "no one has ever heard of this" you are almost certainly wrong.

Mao had its flaws but the general direction of china made sense, they suffered from the century of humiliation, something that isn't taught in schools because of racism.

Again, Chinese history, including the "century of humiliation," is not some obscure topic no one here knows anything about.

You're getting reported a lot, and while most of those reports are because you're taking an unpopular ideological position (people are allowed to be Maoist apologists or PRC defenders here), you are also making a lot of casual assertions like "no one knows anything about this because of racism" that veer into consensus building and inflammatory claims without evidence.

Do not make assumptions about what people don't know and the reasons they don't know it, and if you want to argue that there are historical facts being suppressed because of racism, you need to actually back that up, not just assert it.

Hi, thanks for the heads up.

I agree I said the claim of racism with a bit too much insistance and that I shouldn't have used a universal quantifier "no one"

In case it wasn't clear, it was a figure of speech, I'm obviously not claiming at all litterally that no one knows about the slavic genocide but it is an emphasis to make people realize how strikingly underknown, undertaught and undertalked it is.

Context is key, did I say straight out of nowhere that the person I'm answering to did not know about the slavic genocide? No,

My initial comment was a question:

I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.

Then the person answering mostly failed the test as there was no mention of the slavic ethnicity being twice as big as the jewish ethnicity, which is the salient and useful fact.

They have mixed up the term holocaust (jew only genocide) with other ethnicity which hide the salient fact and defeat the purpose of the question.

Although my two salients statements, that china were induced extreme suffering because of the west especially fertilizer ban and unfair treaties, and that the biggest genocide concern the slavic ethnicity, are example of an asymetry in what matters to people from the west, the differentiating factor between slavic and jewish is none except the possibility of differential racism.

Therefore this asymetry of reporting and of caring of human suffering and of responsibility is an evidence based example of racism mechanisms or at best ethnicity selective apathy.

It would be hypocrisy to not admit to the asymetry of public commemoration between the two genocides. Shoah is a worlwide topic that is a basic fact.

Another piece of evidence is that I was mostly not taught those facts in my standard school (France) or they were mentionned for a minute.

The litteral title of the scholar paper research I linked on the slavic genocide is "The forgotten Holocaust"

I'm sure that make much more evidence than needed to get the point and have a civil discussion about it. But alas, people are polarized.

Yes some people in this community knows about those historic events contrary to my lazy claim however it is very likely that for the rest of people it should make them question their information feeds and their opinons about worlwide justice. Hence a rare and useful contribution.

Again I will avoid needless universal quantifiers in the future.

I wish people would come with intellectual curiosity and good faith.

pedantic note:

you're taking an unpopular ideological position

I am not doing any ideology here and I have stated no defense or approval for the PRC.

I am stating facts that can hurt beliefs in the anti-sino tribe. That does not make me a part of the pro-sino tribe.

I'm interested in reality, not ideological sects.

In case it wasn't clear, it was a figure of speech, I'm obviously not claiming at all litterally that no one knows about the slavic genocide but it is an emphasis to make people realize how strikingly underknown, undertaught and undertalked it is.

Apply a little nuance and good faith here yourself. I am aware you didn't mean literally no one else in the world but you knew about this subject. But you're coming in hot with a lot of statements about how "no one knows" things that in fact have been discussed here frequently.

I am not doing any ideology here and I have stated no defense or approval for the PRC.

I am stating facts that can hurt beliefs in the anti-sino tribe. That does not make me a part of the pro-sino tribe.

I'm interested in reality, not ideological sects.

I am not making assumptions about your "sect," but you are making too many ideological statements to be convincing as a non-ideologue.

I am not making assumptions about your "sect," but you are making too many ideological statements to be convincing as a non-ideologue.

Seeing the world for what it is does not imply having mild opinions about things, quite the contrary.

In many cases, what people might perceive as ideological can sometimes be instead simple debiasing statements.

If in the future you see me say potent statements without any evidence nor trivially accessible evidence then I would like to be noticed and to provide said evidence or otherwise change my mind and exit a sect I was unaware to be in.