this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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‘They beat me until I lost consciousness’: growing reports of brutal arrests, torture and deaths in Iran’s prisons (www.theguardian.com)
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[–] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Coming into a comment thread that is calling out the manufacturing consent against Iran, and bleating "but Xinjiang!" is whataboutism if I've ever seen it.

And yes, you are parroting Zenz. He is the source of this myth - via countless western sources regurgitating the same claims he's been making since 2018.

In March 2017, the Jamestown Foundation (Washington DC) published a three thousand-word report on “Xinjiang’s Rapidly Evolving Security State” written by Adrian Zenz and James Leibold.1 A few months later, the same writers published another report, this one slightly longer at nearly five thousand words, with the more aggressive title, “Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang.”2 At that time, there was not much interest in these stories. Zenz came from the Victims of Communism Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and funded by various right-wing sources, including the Heritage Foundation.

You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia

And, ya know, a plethora of others that you decided to ignore for some reason... Associating a large swath of Muslim and Arab nations with human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia really lets your racism show.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

is whataboutism if I’ve ever seen it.

I was remarking on the credibility of your source; you were remarking on the credibility of someone never cited here. You decided to use the source in the first place and then defend it when called out; I immediately disavowed the one you tried to push on me.

Brophy goes over your exact type of asinine rhetoric that seeks to ascribe this only to right-wing think tanks.

Liberal human rights organizations have often been too quick to make common cause with China hawks. The Left should have no truck with any of this.

But equally, the Left should not allow criticism of genocide claims to smuggle in an attitude of indifference to the human suffering that those claims point to—precisely what Prashad and Chak are trying to do. In their hands, talk of genocide is reduced to the work of a handful of individuals affiliated with right-wing think tanks, a move that allows them to focus on cultivating a sense that the entire Xinjiang issue is a construct of funding sources and self-interest. This will pass for “materialism” in some circles, but it is the sort of analysis that Gramsci had in mind when he complained of the reduction of Marxism to “economic superstition.” In such thinking, “‘Critical’ activity is reduced to the exposure of swindles, to creating scandals, and to prying into the pockets of public figures.”

Sadly, far too much of today’s China debate has this feel to it. Prashad and his co-thinkers are often enough on the receiving end themselves of critiques focusing on funding sources. It is a pity that instead of elevating the discussion above this level, they choose to descend to it.