Xinjiang Denialists Are Only Aiding Imperialism
Denying China’s oppression of Uighurs helps empire—both China’s and
the US’s.
ByGerald Roche
<https://www.thenation.com/authors/gerald-roche/>Twitter
<https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche>
The Nation Magazine, YESTERDAY 10:27 AM
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Chinese Troops Xinjiang
<https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/xinjiang-kashgar-gty.jpg>
Chinese soldiers march in front of the Id Kah Mosque on July 31, 2014,
in Kashgar, China.(Getty Images)
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Opposing American empire should never justify supporting perpetrators of
atrocities, and yet that’s exactly what some anti-imperialists are doing
with their analysis of events in China’s Xinjiang region. These pundits
claim that efforts to expose human rights abuses in Xinjiang are really
aimed at generating consensus for a “new Cold War” against China. It is
only the latest manifestation of American denialism, and instead of
challenging US empire, it only helps to cover up US government
complicity in the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Americans have a history of rejecting the facts of unjust violence
abroad. The tactic is most associated with right-wing Holocaust
denialism. The historian Deborah Lipstadttraces
<https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Denying_the_Holocaust/_yLm_cHp_REC?hl=en&gbpv=0>American
Holocaust denialism back to interwar historians and their criticisms of
America’s decision to enter World War I. Unlike denialists, these
revisionists had truth on their side. Britain had falsified reports of
Germans’ using babies as target practice, mutilating civilians, and
committing other acts of brutality in order to lure America into the war.
Post–World War II critics adopted similar strategies, often portraying
the Germans as victims and the Allies as aggressors. But Germany had
actually committed mass murder this time. And so revisionists became
denialists. They claimed that the Holocaust had been fabricated to coax
America into another European war. For these right-wing denialists, the
point was never about what had happened to the victims. It was about
making domestic political gains. And if that involved supporting
abhorrent regimes and refusing to acknowledge their crimes against
humanity, so be it.
Although these denialists mostly aimed to promote US isolationism,
others have followed, pursuing different agendas using the same
techniques. These have included anti-imperialists on theleft
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1462352032000149495>who, in
order to critique American empire, dismiss obvious truths andquestion
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332083260_Denying_Rwanda_Why_Do_Leading_Leftists_Deny_the_Rwandan_Genocide_of_1994>whether
well-documented massacres ever happened.
Most notorious among anti-imperialist deniers are Edward S. Herman and
David Peterson. In their book/The Politics of Genocide/
<https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/politics-denialism-strange-case-rwanda>,
they argue that most accusations of genocide are justifications of US
imperialism in the name of “humanitarian intervention.” Looking for US
interests behind every report of genocide, they even invert the role of
victim and perpetrator in the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, portraying the
post-genocide government as a tool of US empire. Noam Chomsky, despite
his otherwisenuanced views on genocide
<https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1738&context=gsp>,
legitimized these arguments by providing a foreword to the book.
XINJIANG DENIALISM
For many anti-imperialists, the need to denounce US empire is reason
enough to support any of its opponents. And if those opponents commit
atrocities, their abuses can be denied. Xinjiang is just the latest
iteration in this pattern. The specific identities of the Xinjiang
denialists don’t really matter, and I have no intention of inflating
their cause by naming them or linking to their work. What brings them
together is a tireless effort to debunk every aspect of the “mainstream”
narrative about Xinjiang, and to scream “got his ass” at anyone who
refuses to debate their ludicrous ideas.
To understand the perversity of this denialism, you don’t have to
believe every think tank report and news item about Xinjiang; indeed,
there are good reasons to approach all of these critically. Nor do you
have to agree that what’s happening to the Uyghurs constitutes genocide
(though I do). This is because what these anti-imperialists deny is much
broader than the application of a term in international law. They deny
basic facts of history.
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Like the United States itself, China is an imperial state. Its
contemporary borders are the result of conquest, and its current
population is a collection of peoples violently confined by the forces
of the state. Whether you think China is socialist or capitalist doesn’t
change this.
The territory now known as Xinjiang (literally, “new frontier”) was
invaded in the mid-18th century amid a global spree of imperial
expansions. It was retained by the People’s Republic of China because of
a loophole in the decolonization process that enabled states to hold on
to colonial possessions that were part of the same landmass. Because
China didn’t cross an ocean to colonize Xinjiang, the territory and its
people were ineligible for decolonization within the UN’s framework.
Thus, praising China’s policies in Xinjiang is praising contemporary
imperialism. It also means praising mass incarceration and surveillance,
the criminalization of minority identities, assaults on language and
culture, and the violent repression of dissent.
And yet, applauding China is often a part of these anti-imperialists’
strategy. In addition to endless ad hominem attacks and insisting that
everything they disagree with is a CIA psy-op, these denialists create
YouTube deep-dives and interminable Twitter threads presenting the
“real” Xinjiang. These inevitably present a “flipped script,” where
everything in Xinjiang is good, actually. People are happy; the
government is providing jobs; reeducation camps are super-helpful; and
minority languages are flourishing exuberantly. Everyone can practice
whatever religion they want in exactly the way they want, and the people
are protected from extremist Muslims by friendly cops.
RELATED ARTICLE
The Nation <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/xinjiang-uigher-camps/>
WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT XINJIANG IN INTERNATIONALIST TERMS
<https://www.thenation.com/article/world/xinjiang-uigher-camps/>
A. Liu
These assertions are backed up by an endless stream of facts. A
photograph shows an elderly Uyghur man praying. A graph shows an
increase in Xinjiang’s population. A video shows Uyghur men and women
dancing. Someone points out that the Chinese constitution states that
minorities have the freedom to use and develop their languages.
And some of these things are true. But in presenting these facts as
evidence of benign governance in Xinjiang, rather than the shallow
tokenism of colonial rule, they exemplify a hallmark of what Richard
Hofstadter once called theparanoid style in American politics
<https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics/XcLSoljnmBcC?hl=en&gbpv=0>.
These denialists do not lack “verifiable facts,” just “sensible judgment.”
COMPLICITY, NOT DUPLICITY
If these people want to criticize America, they can highlight
UScomplicity
<https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/genocide-war-crimes-and-the-west/>in
ongoing colonialism in Xinjiang. One doesn’t need to invent
conspiracies. For example, China’s designation of all forms of Uyghur
resistance as terrorism has been directlyinspired and enabled by the
US-led Global War on Terror
<https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691202181/the-war-on-the-uyghurs>.
Within a year of the 9/11 attacks, the US deputy secretary of state,
Richard Armitage, had capitulated to pressure from China and identified
the Uyghur resistance group East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist
group, which helped pave the way for the eventual mass incarceration of
Uyghursin the name of “De-Radicalization’
<https://islamiclaw.blog/2020/06/23/limeng-sun/>.” The US War on Terror
made it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to redefine Uyghur
resistance as terrorist extremism, rather than national liberation or
anti-colonialism.
Until recently, this framing of the issue has allowed them to act with
impunity in Xinjiang, partly because they havefollowed
<https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/07/09/good-and-bad-muslims-in-xinjiang/>the
American anti-extremist playbook. Then President Donald Trump even told
Xi Jinping, in person, that building the so-called reeducation centers
was “exactly the right thing to do
<https://www.sbs.com.au/news/donald-trump-told-china-s-xi-jinping-detaining-uighurs-was-right-thing-to-do-new-book-claims>.”
We know
<https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/02/12/transnational-carceral-capitalism-xinjiang/>that
the founder of US mercenary corporation Blackwater, Erik Prince (also
brother of former US secretary of education Betsy DeVos) transferred his
expertise from Iraq to China via the security service provider Frontier
Services Group, which trained anti-terrorism personnel in Beijing and
planned to open a “training center” in Xinjiang. And despite
Blackwater’s claim that it is pulling out of the region, a 2020
financialreport
<https://doc.irasia.com/listco/hk/frontier/interim/2020/int.pdf>sets
aside nearly $2.7 million for “setting up business” in Xinjiang. We also
know that US tech companies have helped create a surveillance state in
Xinjiang. Companies likeThermo Fisher Scientific
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html>andPromega
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/19/china-xinjiang-surveillance-biosecurity-state-dna-western-tech/>have
sold equipment tohelp
<https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/not-forensic-genetics-anymore-surveillance>police
in Xinjiang build a system of racial profiling, based on DNA samples
obtained, in part, from a prominent US geneticist. And finally, we know
that thesupply chains
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/western-companies-get-tangled-in-chinas-muslim-clampdown-11558017472>of
dozens of US companies run through Xinjiang. Companies like Nike and
Apple evenlobbied
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/business/economy/nike-coca-cola-xinjiang-forced-labor-bill.html>against
legislation that would affect their capacity to do business in Xinjiang.
Whether you think these complicities support genocide, “mere”
atrocities, or “only” colonialism doesn’t change the fact that the US
security state has inspired, aided, and profited from the domination
over Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
A VERY AMERICAN ANTI-IMPERIALISM
US involvement in Xinjiang means that it’s perfectly possible to oppose
US empire without engaging in denialism, praising colonialism, and
debasing the dignity of victims and survivors. But doing so would
undermine the impact of the anti-imperialist argument on their target
audience: Americans. As part of their laudable but misguided efforts at
building popular opposition to US imperialism among Americans, these
anti-imperialists want to portray the United States as a two-dimensional
comic book villain engaged in a program of global deceit.
In the end, although not all these denialists are American—there are
many in Canada, Pakistan, and Australia—all of them are engaging in a
celebrated American tradition of denying other countries’ human right
abuses in order to make arguments about America to Americans. This
narcissistic parochialism is surely one of the most successful exports
of American empire.
Gerald Roche <https://www.thenation.com/authors/gerald-roche/>TWITTER
<https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche>Gerald Roche is an anthropologist and
a senior research fellow at La Trobe University in Australia.
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