No, for several reasons. He was entirely in part of the mainstream for white America at the time. The KKK basically ran an entire state for a while (Indiana) during this period. The American president was a vocal, outspoken racist (Woodrow Wilson). But also because attributing an ideology like racism to some kind of trauma lets people off the hook, Plenty of people lived through traumatic childhoods and did not embrace racism, and plenty of people with great childhoods embrace racism.
His racism doesn’t need some sort of complicated backstory to explain it. He lived in a white supremacist society that consistently fed him these views and reinforced the “rightness” of them. He, like other artists, was a product of his time.
The hypocrisy of the Republicans and some Democrats is terrible, but speaking as a Muslim I am happy anytime someone brings up the genocide in Xinjiang. Nobody has done anything. Not one government in any Muslim-majority country has condemned it. In fact a couple dozen of them wrote to the UNHCHR saying everything China does to its Muslim minorities is fine. And a bunch of so-called-Muslim leaders need to remember that Quran, Sunnah, and Hadith are unanimous: Where your Brothers and Sisters are being oppressed you have a duty to help them, even if it means giving up that sweet, sweet Chinese money.
It needs to be screamed about. Out loud. All the time.
Bingo. You can’t just say “If it’s bad it’s from America, and if it’s from America it’s bad” on this one. There is plenty of locally-grown hatred to go around from Burma to Britain to Beijing.
This entire incident has illustrated a particularly strange consequence of politics that can only be due to quantum Republican theory.
We have a perfect example of Schrödinger’s muslims. If they appear on the Chinese side of the border, they’re a downtrodden and oppressed minority that we need to speak out in favour of. Move a mile to the west, into Afghanistan, and they’re dangerous insurgents who need to be on the receiving end of a drone strike.
I certainly don’t want to downplay or ignore the problem. At all. I especially agree about Muslim-majority governments. The same dynamic is playing out right now with regards to them and Israel with new agreements between their governments. They’ve abandoned the Palestinians for the sake of expediency.
I’m not a Muslim, but I’ve long thought the House of Saud shouldn’t be caretakers of the holy cities. They are petty dictators who repress anyone who doesn’t practice as they do (while acting very different in private, no doubt). Is it any wonder that someone like Bin Laden emerged, given the rank hypocrisy?
All that said, these are the same people who have been ginning up violence against Muslims here for years. There have been murders because of their rhetoric, as you know. And the peace process has been largely abandoned due to the GOP (and to a lesser extent, the Democrats) not wishing to push for a balance between the Palestinians and Israelis.
That sounds a bit like “all that said I am going to gatekeep and decide what’s right for other people’s activism while speaking for them.” I hope you didn’t mean it that way.
No, of course not. I’m saying it matters to point out hypocrisy when lives are on the line. As is this case. I’m not even saying they shouldn’t speak out on this issue. But they are lying through their teeth that they give two shits about Muslim lives. They have been showing us who they are for a while now. Who they are is in favor of genocidal policies as long as they are the ones who are authoring it.
Since I live here and not in China, I have more impact on our own foreign policy rather than on China’s internal policies. There isn’t much I can do, other than avoid buying Chinese produced products when possible and not patronizing Chinese cultural productions. I can more effectively speak out on our foreign policy and vote in a way that supports my political and moral views than I can shape China other than supporting policies that are consistent with human rights, which very little of American foreign policy is driven by.
Again, I don’t believe that the GOP senators speaking out actually care about human rights. they care about any way to make China look bad. We as a country have a long history of supporting genocidal governments when it suits us. The only reason they are criticizing China here is because of hostilities over global trade issues.
Indeed, the Chinese government points to the presence of Uighur insurgents in Afghanistan and now Syria as a reason why the crackdown on “terrorism” in Xinjiang is necessary. They do not acknowledge that their policies in Xinjiang might contribute to radicalisation of Uighurs.
It’s pure deflection. They lack the standing to be taken seriously on this issue by anyone but their propagandised base. Their party is drenched in blood and wallows in the cruelty they have wrought all around the world. The United States had always, probably since before almost anyone here was born, always been in an unbroken series of racist wars and proxy genocides.
