this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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I'm not an American but it's hard to equate these two countries. While I don't love the US, you can't deny that the CCP literally runs concentration camps...
What would you call the places where the US detains immigrants? What would you call the enhanced interrogation techniques the US uses in guantanamo bay and CIA blacksites? What would you call the prisons where the US forces people to work without pay?
The US has used heavily militarized police and even tanks to crush civil unrest. The US doesn't just threaten to invade a neighboring island (like china threatens to invade taiwan), the US actually has invaded neighboring islands such as Cuba, Haiti (multiple times), the Dominican Republic, etc. None of this justifies any of China's actions, but it is important to know that nominally democratic nations can also act authoritarian.
I tentatively agree. The key to avoiding whataboutism is to make clear that you're willing to call out abuses and human rights violations for both sides.
The US also runs concentration campus, has slave labor, forced sterilization, torture, genocide, violently repressive police, persecution of religious minorities, etc. etc. etc. Hence why it's a red flag (no pun intended) when people in the west have A Lot To Say about China and just China.
::slaps top of any country:: you can fit so many human rights violations in this bad boy
(I have a lot more complaints about the US than China, but that's because I live in the US, not because I think other imperial powers are exempt from criticism.)
We do too. I'm sorry, but just because ours are callous and depressingly bureaucratic instead of passionate and angry, not having the intention of reeducating anyone, it doesn't excuse the fact that even though Trump is no longer president we have refugee children dying in cramped cages, women and children being violated by ICE agents, and other human rights violations constantly and ongoing.
Guantánamo...