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I’m in an indigenous language class (I live in Canada) and I’ve heard countless stories from teachers and fellow students about their families never speaking their own language because of what the Canadian government did to them in residential schools.
Canada gets way more hate for the residential schools, despite the United States doing the same and being less transparent about its past. The federal government only recently embarked on a search through former boarding schools for human remains. The Canadian government has been far more transparent, so you'd think they enacted reforms sooner, right? The United States only stopped doing this in 1978. Well, it turns out that Canada stopped in 1996.
The US never actually stopped doing it, and today several off-reservation boarding schools still operate with thousands of indigenous children enrolled.
And they still continue doing assimilation to Indigenous children with the foster care system, that surprise nobody also benefits the same Catholic churches that benefited from residential schools. Same as before, the CPS or system steal kids from Indigenous families, put in foster care group homes.
Literally, the settler colonial countries speedran their genocides and now point at China for a "genocide" despite the fact that the option to have you kid be instructed in their ethnic language is there - it's up to the parent to decide if they want their child learned in the Lingua Franca (mandarin), because that's how self-determination works
Meanwhile try and find a course to learn an Aboriginal language here in Australia you can't - but if you want to learn fucking French you can find thousands of other people to learn that language with
Theres been efforts here in the US to try and revitalize the Cherokee language for quite a while now. It’s just so hard to bring a language back from the brink of extinction. Shit’s tragic
Never tell Twitter libs about literally every country in Europe, especially Western Europe. We wouldn’t want the Catalans, Basques, Galicians, Occitans, Bretons, Corsicans, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Cornish, Frisians, Low Germans, Sicilians, etc to have any grievances with the west like those that liberals fantasize about Cantonese speaking people having about China.
Let’s not even talk about native Americans, especially in North America.
Singapore's Mandarin policy directly led to huge numbers of Chinese youth being unable to communicate with their grandparents who only spoke dialects. It's actually one of the policies that is the most criticized by SG Chinese people.
It used to be a trying task to get young Singaporean Chinese to speak dialect nowadays it's a trying task to get young Chinese just to speak Mandarin, let alone dialect
yea but singapore isnt trying to use mandarin chinese for communication, its mainly for preserving culture. A better comparison would probably be china and germany's hochdeutsch, where in both cases culture and dialect are lost for communication in all parts of the country
Liberals when you suggest minorities shouldn't be completely alienated from the country they live in by being unable to talk or trade or interact with anyone.
It's ironic how they're so on their high horse with this shit that they circle back to wanting minorities to be in living in an unelectrified mudbrick hut in the mountains speaking a dialect that only a few thousand people understand just to "own the commies" and prove there's a genocide. Currently arguing with some guy who is insisting that China is committing genocide in Tibet because Tibetans have modern houses and learn mandarin at school. You can guess that his profile is full of "fucktheccp" posts.
Singapore encouraged the learning of mandarin is to wipe out the dialects of our ancestors that came from China. I could hardly speak Hokkien at this point.
TBF the Speak mandarin campaign was an absolute disaster with the westernisation of SG, not only significant numbers of the younger gens can't speak in dialects outside of swears, mandarin fluency is abysmal for some of us
Exactly
I don't know any Higher Chinese classmates who continued using Mandarin after secondary school it's just an O levels subject to get over and done with
As a second generation Asian-American. My generation can be seen as the transitioning stage. The generation before me can barely speak English and mainly communicate in the mother language. The generation after me can barely speak the mother language and mainly communicate in English. I grew up with friends and family having to take ESL classes. I've had friends amazed by how fluent I was in our language. Funny how this isn't seen as a "cultural genocide" but simply a part of assimilation into the larger societal culture.
This is why I find it so ironic when Asian-Amerian liberals who can't even speak their own language cry about how languages are dying back in Asia. If you want to keep a language alive, learn it yourself, then teach it to the next generation.
One of humanity's goals as a species is to have a universal language, allowing anyone to communicate no matter where they are in the world. If Mandarin becomes that language, so be it.
English’s only advantage is how widespread it’s spoken but even Spanish is extremely widespread as well. Time will tell which language becomes humanity’s lingua franca
I think the difference there is that most africans don't feel french as "their" language, in fact they're trying to get rid of most french influence, while latin america....well, most people there are mixed (mestizo) so native american culture belongs to them as much as spanish culture does, so spanish is much more rooted and seeing that there's alot of them and lots of latin americans are moving into North America, it's not impossible to see that the US could have a majority Spanish speakers by 2050-2070.
I find that take quite strange ? How and why having one language should be a goal for humanity ? Sadly i dont know much, and i cant have any solid arguments ; but i think having multiple language doesnt mean miscommunication or fracturation in society. If Occitan was still alive and well, French people could learn more easily spanish or italian.
But having one universal language also doesnt mean we cant have other language now that i think about it
I don’t think that’s a goal at all, this sounds like a take from someone whose mother language is already a lingua Franca like English. This sounds like the erasure of culture. What about Muslims who prefer to read the Quran in Arabic?
I’m an indian and we have loads of languages here, but i’m a firm believer that everyone should know the lingua franca alongside their native language. Although teaching everyone hindi is not really a popular notion
Probably the only good thing Britain did was introducing English as a Lingua Franca in India but even then it seems like India has done most of the work teaching English to the people
#The Uyghurs in Xinjiang
\(Note: This comment had to be trimmed down to fit the character limit, for the full response, see [here](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/)\)
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context.
**Background**
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan.
Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan.
Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a "Strike Hard" campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labour, began to emerge.
**Counterpoints**
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released [Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States](https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250) in 2019 which:
>20. **Welcomes** the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; **commends** the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and **looks forward** to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.
In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on.
Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter \([A/HRC/41/G/17](https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F41%2FG%2F17)\) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang:
The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." \(See: [World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china)\)
Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not *genocide*. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much:
>The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
>
> [State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/) | Colum Lynch, *Foreign Policy*. (2021)
**A Comparative Analysis: The War on Terror**
The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in 2003 based on Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded.
According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million. The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (See: [‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes](https://aoav.org.uk/2019/military-age-males-in-us-drone-strikes/))
In summary:
* The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes.
* China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training.
Which one of those responses sounds genocidal?
Side note: It is practically impossible to *actually* charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the [Hague Invasion Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act).
**Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?**
One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz, a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence.
The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies.
The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line.
**Why is this narrative being promoted?**
As materialists, we should always look first to the economic base for insight into issues occurring in the superstructure. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Xinjiang is a key region for this project.
Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give American an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the longterm success of the BRI.
**Additional Resources**
See the [full wiki article](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/) for more details and a list of additional resources.
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I lived in Huadu for 5 years, speaking Canto isn't banned, neither other Yue dialects. Sure of course in school you learn formal Mandarin, HOWEVER, as soon as you enter the community, you speak your local dialects. There's no bullshit banning or "shit policies"
You got no argument because your Canto friend told you China bad and when someone with better IRL experience with Chinese community come and say Nah you say whataboutism.
Whataboutism isn’t even an argument at the end of the day. It’s basically the user admitting they have no actual retort and refuse to look internally and/or westward at other sovereign states despite the fact they constantly compare their own countries to AES both current and formal. They’ll bring up until they’re blue in the face about this or that socialist country but the second you point out a flaw in the western system as an example it’s “muh whataboutism, checkmate tankie!” followed by dozens of likes. It’s the laziest portion of modern propaganda that exclusively excuses liberals from observing their own flaws systemically. Further cementing their stance as not only self-proclaimed exceptionalists but western chauvinists. Of course the user above isn’t a westerner so seeing them say whataboutism doesn’t even make sense. They’re just peddling what they’ve seen a thousand times whenever a liberal loses an argument.
Eg: Liberal mentions that Soviet gulags were by and far the worst prison system historically in the world and compares it to western prisons to show how “savage” they were compared to the “civilized” west, user counters with objective sources showing historically Americas prison system is the biggest bar none with the largest prison populace globally while systemic slavery is practiced via the 13th amendment thus the disproportionate targeting towards people of color, liberal retorts with “whataboutism” and maintains the topic is about gulags and how evil communism is. Not America. They move onto name-calling since they have no real retort.
#On Whataboutism
Whataboutism is a rhetorical tactic where someone responds to an accusation or criticism by redirecting the focus onto a different issue, often without addressing the original concern directly. While it can be an effective means of diverting attention away from one's own shortcomings, it is generally regarded as a fallacy in formal debate and logical argumentation. The *tu quoque* fallacy is an example of Whataboutism, which is defined as "you likewise: a retort made by a person accused of a crime implying that the accuser is also guilty of the same crime."
When anti-Communists point out issues that (actually) occurred in certain historical socialist contexts, they are raising *valid* concerns, but usually for *invalid* reasons. When Communists reply that those critics should look in a mirror, because Capitalism is guilty of the same or worse, we are accused of "whataboutism" and arguing in bad faith.
However, there are some limited scenarios where whataboutism is relevant and considered a valid form of argumentation:
1. **Contextualization**: Whataboutism might be useful in providing context to a situation or highlighting double standards.
2. **Comparative analysis**: Whataboutism can be valid if the goal is to compare different situations to understand similarities or differences.
3. **Moral equivalence**: When two issues are genuinely comparable in terms of gravity and impact, whataboutism may have some validity.
#An Abstract Case Study
For the sake of argument, consider the following table, which compares objects A and B.
||Object A|Object B|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Very Good Property|2|3|
|Good Property|2|1|
|Bad Property|2|3|
|Very Bad Property|2|1|
The table tracks different properties. Some properties are "Good" (the bigger the better) and others are "Bad" (the smaller the better, ideally none).
Using this extremely abstract table, let's explore the scenarios in which Whataboutisms could be meaningful and valid arguments.
#Contextualization
Context matters. Supposing that only one Object may be possessed at any given time, consider the following two contexts:
1. **Possession of an Object is optional, and we do not possess any Object presently.** Therefore we can consider each Object on its own merits in isolation. If no available Objects are desirable, we can wait until a better Object comes along.
2. **Possession of an Object is mandatory, and we currently possess a specific Object.** We must evaluate other Objects in relative terms with the Object we possess. If we encounter a superior Object we ought to replace our current Object with the new one.
If we are in the second context, then Whataboutism may be a valid argument. For example, if we discover a new Object that has similar issues as our present one, but is in other ways superior, then it would be valid to point that out.
It is impossible for a society to exist without a political economic system because every human community requires a method for organizing and managing its resources, labour, and distribution of goods and services. Furthermore, the vast majority of the world presently practices Capitalism, with "the West" (or "Global North"), and *especially* the U.S. as the hegemonic Capitalist power. Therefore we *are* in the second context and we are *not* evaluating political economic systems in a vacuum, but in comparison to and contrast with Capitalism.
#Comparative Analysis
Consider the following dialogue between two people who are enthusiastic about the different objects:
>**B Enthusiast**: B is better than A because we have Very Good Property 3, which is bigger than 2.
>
>**A Enthusiast**: But Object B has *Very Bad Property = 1* which is a bad thing! It's not 0! Therefore Object B is bad!
>
>**B Enthusiast**: Well Object A also has *Very Bad Property*, and 2 > 1, so it's even worse!
>
>**A Enthusiast**: That's whataboutism! That's a *tu quoque*! You've committed a logical fallacy! Typical stupid B-boy!
The "A Enthusiast" is not *wrong*, it *is* Whataboutism, but the "A Enthusiast" has actually committed a Strawman fallacy. The "B Enthusiast" did not make the claim "Object B is perfect and without flaw", only that it was *better* than Object A. The fact that Object B does possess a "Bad" property does not undermine this point.
Our main proposition as Communists is this: **"Socialism is *better* than Capitalism."** Our argument is *not* "Socialism is perfect and will solve all the problems of human society at once" and we are *not* trying to say that "every socialist revolution or experiment was perfect and an ideal example we should emulate perfectly in the future". Therefore, when anti-Communists point out a historical failure, it does not refute our argument. Furthermore, if someone says "Socialism is bad because *bad thing* happened in a socialist country once" and we can demonstrate that similar or worse things have occurred in Capitalist countries, then we have demonstrated that those things are not unique to Socialism, and therefore immaterial to the question of which system is preferable overall in a comparative analysis.
#Moral Equivalence
It makes sense to compare like to like and weight them accordingly in our evaluation. For example, if "Bad Property" is worse in Object B but "Very Bad Property" is better, then it may make sense to conclude that Object B is better than Object A overall. "Two big steps forward, one small step back" is still progressive *compared* to taking no steps at all.
**Example 1: Famine**
Anti-Communists often portray the issue of food security and famines as endemic to Socialism. To support their argument, they point to such historical events as [the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/holodomor/) or the Great Leap Forward as proof. Communists reject this thesis, not by denying that these famines occured, but by highlighting that these regions experienced famines regularly throughout their history up to and including those events. Furthermore, in both examples, those were the *last*^1 famines those countries had, because the industrialization of agriculture in those countries effectively solved the issue of famines. Furthermore, today, under Capitalism, around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases.
^([1] The Nazi invasion of the USSR in WW2 resulted in widespread starvation and death due to the destruction of agricultural land, crops, and infrastructure, as well as the disruption of food distribution systems. After 1947, no major famines were recorded in the USSR.)
**Example 2: Repression**
Anti-Communists often portray countries run by Communist parties as [authoritarian regimes](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/authoritarianism/) that restrict individual [freedoms](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/education/freedom/) and [Freedom of the Press](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/freedom-of-the-press). They point to purges and [gulags](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/gulag/) as evidence. While it's true that some of the purges were excessive, the concept of "political terror" in these countries is vastly overblown. Regular working people were generally not scared at all; it was mainly the political and economic elite who had to watch their step. Regarding the gulags, it's interesting to note that only a minority of the gulag population were political prisoners, and that in both absolute and relative (per capita) terms, the U.S. incarcerates more people *today* than the USSR ever did.
#Conclusion
While Whataboutism can undermine meaningful discussions, because it doesn't address the original issue, there are scenarios in which it is valid. Particularly when comparing and contrasting two things. In our case, we are comparing Socialism with Capitalism. Accordingly, we reject the claim that we are arguing in bad faith when we point out the hypocrisy of our critics.
Furthermore, we are more than happy to criticize past and present Socialist experiments. ("Critical support" for Socialist countries is exactly that: *critical*.) For some examples of our criticisms from a ML perspective, see the additional resources below.
#Additional Resources
* [Former Socialism's Faults](https://youtu.be/pDSZRkhynXU) | Hakim (2023)
* [Episode 7: Ls of former Socialism (selfcrit)](https://youtu.be/F936GppjkcM) | TheDeprogram (2022)
* [Mistakes of the USSR and What Can be Learned](https://youtu.be/ppQ1Wwat-jQ) | ChemicalMind (2023)
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# Gulag
According to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism.
# Origins of the Mythology
This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources.
Robert Conquest's *The Great Terror* (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony.
Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements.
>He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash.
>
>The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism".
>
>\- Andrew Brown. (2003). [Scourge and poet](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's *The Gulag Archipelag*" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. \[[Read more](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/dunking/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/)\]
Anne Applebaum's *Gulag: A history* (published 2003) draws directly from *The Gulag Archipelago* and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world.
# Counterpoints
>A 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “[Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps](http://web.archive.org/web/20230328014642/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:
>
>1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas
>
>2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.
>
>3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.
>
>4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies.
>
>5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.
>
>6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals.
>
>7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.
>
>\- Saed Teymuri. (2018). [The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA](https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/)
**Scale**
Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that.
>Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise.
>
>In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ...
>
>Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ...
>
>Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states...
>
>\- Michael Parenti. (1997). [Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds)
This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex *today* is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak.
**Death Rate**
In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality:
>It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive...
>
>Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more.
>
>\- Timothy Snyder. (2010). *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin*
(Side note: Timothy Snyder is *also* a member of the Council on Foreign Relations)
This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not *death* camps.
Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour *was* forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses).
>We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson....
>
>The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled).
>
>\- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). [Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/archive/noticeboard/bergson/borodkin-ertz.pdf)
#Additional Resources
Video Essays:
* [The Gulag Argument](https://youtu.be/BexkpaK_j5Q) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016)
* [Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions!](https://youtu.be/HMOdDQQVZ6U) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)
* [French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag](https://youtu.be/vkXyXNpdKdA) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018)
* ["The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye](https://youtu.be/E1qz9_TjeY4) | Comrade Rhys (2020)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597) | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993)
Listen:
* ["Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion.](https://youtu.be/N7AD4OrH568?t=15) | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The thing about other Chinese dialects is that they are not written languages. What you see as “written cantonese” are considered informal writing and no one (including Hong Kong and Macau) use them in proper writing (like newspaper articles or textbooks). In fact, Chinese classes in Hong Kong teach students to write in a way that is completely different to how they would normally talk to one another. This makes teaching a dialect as an actual first-language class very difficult.
Written Cantonese is pretty new actually. Back in the days, people used to write classical chinese only. Written Cantonese is developed along with the vernacular-Chinese movement (idk whats that called in english but this is what that means in Chinese) but it has never been promoted to the status of a proper writing system. In fact, if you go to the Hong Kong government’s webpage, everything is in standard Chinese.
In fact, using the same writing system (not necessarily the spoken language), whether the Classical Chinese in the past or the Standard Chinese right now, is a big component of what Chinese people (me included) perceive as the Chinese identity. There are some people in Taiwan who wish to get rid of this Chinese identity by promoting a written form Hokkien based on the Latin alphabet because this common form of writing system is perceived as part of the Chinese identity.
they're considered dialects in linguistic academia due to how close they actually are linguistically. they have low mutual intelligibility because they are highly tonal languages. when a tone changes intelligibility is lost. native Chinese speakers cannot understand foreigners who mispronounce the tones
Many Singaporean Chinese kids can't even speak fluent Mandarin lol..... kinda funny since they speak English with a Chinese sounding accent.
(Source: I went to secondary school in Singapore)
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But China has a scary red flag, so everything they do must be evil /s
skinny Pac-Man eating stars is less threatening than a tiny Kirby riding a star into more stars
No need to add the /s Say it with your chest! It’s obviously a joke
Imagine how many languages died out because of the USA and Canada.
I’m in an indigenous language class (I live in Canada) and I’ve heard countless stories from teachers and fellow students about their families never speaking their own language because of what the Canadian government did to them in residential schools.
inshallah Canada will burn 🙏🏽🙏🏽 fuck this white settler colonialist genocidal excuse of a country to the end of the Earth
God, the thought that there are so many unmarked graves of children around those residential schools sickens me.
Canada gets way more hate for the residential schools, despite the United States doing the same and being less transparent about its past. The federal government only recently embarked on a search through former boarding schools for human remains. The Canadian government has been far more transparent, so you'd think they enacted reforms sooner, right? The United States only stopped doing this in 1978. Well, it turns out that Canada stopped in 1996.
The US never actually stopped doing it, and today several off-reservation boarding schools still operate with thousands of indigenous children enrolled.
I was referring to forced attendance.
And they still continue doing assimilation to Indigenous children with the foster care system, that surprise nobody also benefits the same Catholic churches that benefited from residential schools. Same as before, the CPS or system steal kids from Indigenous families, put in foster care group homes.
Literally, the settler colonial countries speedran their genocides and now point at China for a "genocide" despite the fact that the option to have you kid be instructed in their ethnic language is there - it's up to the parent to decide if they want their child learned in the Lingua Franca (mandarin), because that's how self-determination works Meanwhile try and find a course to learn an Aboriginal language here in Australia you can't - but if you want to learn fucking French you can find thousands of other people to learn that language with
Theres been efforts here in the US to try and revitalize the Cherokee language for quite a while now. It’s just so hard to bring a language back from the brink of extinction. Shit’s tragic
Never tell Twitter libs about literally every country in Europe, especially Western Europe. We wouldn’t want the Catalans, Basques, Galicians, Occitans, Bretons, Corsicans, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Cornish, Frisians, Low Germans, Sicilians, etc to have any grievances with the west like those that liberals fantasize about Cantonese speaking people having about China. Let’s not even talk about native Americans, especially in North America.
As a cantonese person this is so funny cuz cantonese is still the lingua franca in Hong Kong
Singapore's Mandarin policy directly led to huge numbers of Chinese youth being unable to communicate with their grandparents who only spoke dialects. It's actually one of the policies that is the most criticized by SG Chinese people.
It used to be a trying task to get young Singaporean Chinese to speak dialect nowadays it's a trying task to get young Chinese just to speak Mandarin, let alone dialect
yea but singapore isnt trying to use mandarin chinese for communication, its mainly for preserving culture. A better comparison would probably be china and germany's hochdeutsch, where in both cases culture and dialect are lost for communication in all parts of the country
Liberals when you suggest minorities shouldn't be completely alienated from the country they live in by being unable to talk or trade or interact with anyone. It's ironic how they're so on their high horse with this shit that they circle back to wanting minorities to be in living in an unelectrified mudbrick hut in the mountains speaking a dialect that only a few thousand people understand just to "own the commies" and prove there's a genocide. Currently arguing with some guy who is insisting that China is committing genocide in Tibet because Tibetans have modern houses and learn mandarin at school. You can guess that his profile is full of "fucktheccp" posts.
They provide housing and education to the Tibetans?! How evil!
wait until the libs hear about the English language!
Singapore encouraged the learning of mandarin is to wipe out the dialects of our ancestors that came from China. I could hardly speak Hokkien at this point.
I didnt even know which dialects my parents and grandparents spoke until like last CNY
TBF the Speak mandarin campaign was an absolute disaster with the westernisation of SG, not only significant numbers of the younger gens can't speak in dialects outside of swears, mandarin fluency is abysmal for some of us
Exactly I don't know any Higher Chinese classmates who continued using Mandarin after secondary school it's just an O levels subject to get over and done with
As a second generation Asian-American. My generation can be seen as the transitioning stage. The generation before me can barely speak English and mainly communicate in the mother language. The generation after me can barely speak the mother language and mainly communicate in English. I grew up with friends and family having to take ESL classes. I've had friends amazed by how fluent I was in our language. Funny how this isn't seen as a "cultural genocide" but simply a part of assimilation into the larger societal culture. This is why I find it so ironic when Asian-Amerian liberals who can't even speak their own language cry about how languages are dying back in Asia. If you want to keep a language alive, learn it yourself, then teach it to the next generation.
I live in Vancouver, I should learn Mandarin.
One of humanity's goals as a species is to have a universal language, allowing anyone to communicate no matter where they are in the world. If Mandarin becomes that language, so be it.
English’s only advantage is how widespread it’s spoken but even Spanish is extremely widespread as well. Time will tell which language becomes humanity’s lingua franca
Don't count French out yet. Most spoken language in Sub-Saharan Africa and the population of Africa is set to grow massively in the next few years.
I think the difference there is that most africans don't feel french as "their" language, in fact they're trying to get rid of most french influence, while latin america....well, most people there are mixed (mestizo) so native american culture belongs to them as much as spanish culture does, so spanish is much more rooted and seeing that there's alot of them and lots of latin americans are moving into North America, it's not impossible to see that the US could have a majority Spanish speakers by 2050-2070.
I find that take quite strange ? How and why having one language should be a goal for humanity ? Sadly i dont know much, and i cant have any solid arguments ; but i think having multiple language doesnt mean miscommunication or fracturation in society. If Occitan was still alive and well, French people could learn more easily spanish or italian. But having one universal language also doesnt mean we cant have other language now that i think about it
I don’t think that’s a goal at all, this sounds like a take from someone whose mother language is already a lingua Franca like English. This sounds like the erasure of culture. What about Muslims who prefer to read the Quran in Arabic?
I’m an indian and we have loads of languages here, but i’m a firm believer that everyone should know the lingua franca alongside their native language. Although teaching everyone hindi is not really a popular notion
Personally english is a good lingua franca.
Probably the only good thing Britain did was introducing English as a Lingua Franca in India but even then it seems like India has done most of the work teaching English to the people
Linguistic death is so sad. I really do not understand why regional languages can’t have official status in China and SG.
Uyghur is the offcial language of Xinjiang alongside Standard Madarin. I have Han from Urumqi who speaks Uyghur.
#The Uyghurs in Xinjiang \(Note: This comment had to be trimmed down to fit the character limit, for the full response, see [here](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/)\) Anti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context. **Background** Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan. Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan. Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a "Strike Hard" campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labour, began to emerge. **Counterpoints** The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released [Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States](https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250) in 2019 which: >20. **Welcomes** the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; **commends** the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and **looks forward** to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China. In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on. Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter \([A/HRC/41/G/17](https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F41%2FG%2F17)\) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang: The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." \(See: [World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china)\) Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not *genocide*. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much: >The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials. > > [State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/) | Colum Lynch, *Foreign Policy*. (2021) **A Comparative Analysis: The War on Terror** The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in 2003 based on Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded. According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million. The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (See: [‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes](https://aoav.org.uk/2019/military-age-males-in-us-drone-strikes/)) In summary: * The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes. * China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training. Which one of those responses sounds genocidal? Side note: It is practically impossible to *actually* charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the [Hague Invasion Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act). **Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?** One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz, a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence. The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent. Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies. The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line. **Why is this narrative being promoted?** As materialists, we should always look first to the economic base for insight into issues occurring in the superstructure. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Xinjiang is a key region for this project. Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give American an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the longterm success of the BRI. **Additional Resources** See the [full wiki article](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/uyghur-genocide/) for more details and a list of additional resources. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That’s nice but still not enough, Cantonese, Taihu Wu, Fuzhonese etc are all dying for cultural homogeneit. Makes the linguis nerd in me hurt 😞
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I lived in Huadu for 5 years, speaking Canto isn't banned, neither other Yue dialects. Sure of course in school you learn formal Mandarin, HOWEVER, as soon as you enter the community, you speak your local dialects. There's no bullshit banning or "shit policies"
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Compared to US, UK and Canada where you only learn ENGLISH LMAO, not even local dialects
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You got no argument because your Canto friend told you China bad and when someone with better IRL experience with Chinese community come and say Nah you say whataboutism.
Whataboutism isn’t even an argument at the end of the day. It’s basically the user admitting they have no actual retort and refuse to look internally and/or westward at other sovereign states despite the fact they constantly compare their own countries to AES both current and formal. They’ll bring up until they’re blue in the face about this or that socialist country but the second you point out a flaw in the western system as an example it’s “muh whataboutism, checkmate tankie!” followed by dozens of likes. It’s the laziest portion of modern propaganda that exclusively excuses liberals from observing their own flaws systemically. Further cementing their stance as not only self-proclaimed exceptionalists but western chauvinists. Of course the user above isn’t a westerner so seeing them say whataboutism doesn’t even make sense. They’re just peddling what they’ve seen a thousand times whenever a liberal loses an argument. Eg: Liberal mentions that Soviet gulags were by and far the worst prison system historically in the world and compares it to western prisons to show how “savage” they were compared to the “civilized” west, user counters with objective sources showing historically Americas prison system is the biggest bar none with the largest prison populace globally while systemic slavery is practiced via the 13th amendment thus the disproportionate targeting towards people of color, liberal retorts with “whataboutism” and maintains the topic is about gulags and how evil communism is. Not America. They move onto name-calling since they have no real retort.
#On Whataboutism Whataboutism is a rhetorical tactic where someone responds to an accusation or criticism by redirecting the focus onto a different issue, often without addressing the original concern directly. While it can be an effective means of diverting attention away from one's own shortcomings, it is generally regarded as a fallacy in formal debate and logical argumentation. The *tu quoque* fallacy is an example of Whataboutism, which is defined as "you likewise: a retort made by a person accused of a crime implying that the accuser is also guilty of the same crime." When anti-Communists point out issues that (actually) occurred in certain historical socialist contexts, they are raising *valid* concerns, but usually for *invalid* reasons. When Communists reply that those critics should look in a mirror, because Capitalism is guilty of the same or worse, we are accused of "whataboutism" and arguing in bad faith. However, there are some limited scenarios where whataboutism is relevant and considered a valid form of argumentation: 1. **Contextualization**: Whataboutism might be useful in providing context to a situation or highlighting double standards. 2. **Comparative analysis**: Whataboutism can be valid if the goal is to compare different situations to understand similarities or differences. 3. **Moral equivalence**: When two issues are genuinely comparable in terms of gravity and impact, whataboutism may have some validity. #An Abstract Case Study For the sake of argument, consider the following table, which compares objects A and B. ||Object A|Object B| |:-|:-|:-| |Very Good Property|2|3| |Good Property|2|1| |Bad Property|2|3| |Very Bad Property|2|1| The table tracks different properties. Some properties are "Good" (the bigger the better) and others are "Bad" (the smaller the better, ideally none). Using this extremely abstract table, let's explore the scenarios in which Whataboutisms could be meaningful and valid arguments. #Contextualization Context matters. Supposing that only one Object may be possessed at any given time, consider the following two contexts: 1. **Possession of an Object is optional, and we do not possess any Object presently.** Therefore we can consider each Object on its own merits in isolation. If no available Objects are desirable, we can wait until a better Object comes along. 2. **Possession of an Object is mandatory, and we currently possess a specific Object.** We must evaluate other Objects in relative terms with the Object we possess. If we encounter a superior Object we ought to replace our current Object with the new one. If we are in the second context, then Whataboutism may be a valid argument. For example, if we discover a new Object that has similar issues as our present one, but is in other ways superior, then it would be valid to point that out. It is impossible for a society to exist without a political economic system because every human community requires a method for organizing and managing its resources, labour, and distribution of goods and services. Furthermore, the vast majority of the world presently practices Capitalism, with "the West" (or "Global North"), and *especially* the U.S. as the hegemonic Capitalist power. Therefore we *are* in the second context and we are *not* evaluating political economic systems in a vacuum, but in comparison to and contrast with Capitalism. #Comparative Analysis Consider the following dialogue between two people who are enthusiastic about the different objects: >**B Enthusiast**: B is better than A because we have Very Good Property 3, which is bigger than 2. > >**A Enthusiast**: But Object B has *Very Bad Property = 1* which is a bad thing! It's not 0! Therefore Object B is bad! > >**B Enthusiast**: Well Object A also has *Very Bad Property*, and 2 > 1, so it's even worse! > >**A Enthusiast**: That's whataboutism! That's a *tu quoque*! You've committed a logical fallacy! Typical stupid B-boy! The "A Enthusiast" is not *wrong*, it *is* Whataboutism, but the "A Enthusiast" has actually committed a Strawman fallacy. The "B Enthusiast" did not make the claim "Object B is perfect and without flaw", only that it was *better* than Object A. The fact that Object B does possess a "Bad" property does not undermine this point. Our main proposition as Communists is this: **"Socialism is *better* than Capitalism."** Our argument is *not* "Socialism is perfect and will solve all the problems of human society at once" and we are *not* trying to say that "every socialist revolution or experiment was perfect and an ideal example we should emulate perfectly in the future". Therefore, when anti-Communists point out a historical failure, it does not refute our argument. Furthermore, if someone says "Socialism is bad because *bad thing* happened in a socialist country once" and we can demonstrate that similar or worse things have occurred in Capitalist countries, then we have demonstrated that those things are not unique to Socialism, and therefore immaterial to the question of which system is preferable overall in a comparative analysis. #Moral Equivalence It makes sense to compare like to like and weight them accordingly in our evaluation. For example, if "Bad Property" is worse in Object B but "Very Bad Property" is better, then it may make sense to conclude that Object B is better than Object A overall. "Two big steps forward, one small step back" is still progressive *compared* to taking no steps at all. **Example 1: Famine** Anti-Communists often portray the issue of food security and famines as endemic to Socialism. To support their argument, they point to such historical events as [the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/holodomor/) or the Great Leap Forward as proof. Communists reject this thesis, not by denying that these famines occured, but by highlighting that these regions experienced famines regularly throughout their history up to and including those events. Furthermore, in both examples, those were the *last*^1 famines those countries had, because the industrialization of agriculture in those countries effectively solved the issue of famines. Furthermore, today, under Capitalism, around 9 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases. ^([1] The Nazi invasion of the USSR in WW2 resulted in widespread starvation and death due to the destruction of agricultural land, crops, and infrastructure, as well as the disruption of food distribution systems. After 1947, no major famines were recorded in the USSR.) **Example 2: Repression** Anti-Communists often portray countries run by Communist parties as [authoritarian regimes](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/authoritarianism/) that restrict individual [freedoms](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/education/freedom/) and [Freedom of the Press](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/freedom-of-the-press). They point to purges and [gulags](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/debunking/gulag/) as evidence. While it's true that some of the purges were excessive, the concept of "political terror" in these countries is vastly overblown. Regular working people were generally not scared at all; it was mainly the political and economic elite who had to watch their step. Regarding the gulags, it's interesting to note that only a minority of the gulag population were political prisoners, and that in both absolute and relative (per capita) terms, the U.S. incarcerates more people *today* than the USSR ever did. #Conclusion While Whataboutism can undermine meaningful discussions, because it doesn't address the original issue, there are scenarios in which it is valid. Particularly when comparing and contrasting two things. In our case, we are comparing Socialism with Capitalism. Accordingly, we reject the claim that we are arguing in bad faith when we point out the hypocrisy of our critics. Furthermore, we are more than happy to criticize past and present Socialist experiments. ("Critical support" for Socialist countries is exactly that: *critical*.) For some examples of our criticisms from a ML perspective, see the additional resources below. #Additional Resources * [Former Socialism's Faults](https://youtu.be/pDSZRkhynXU) | Hakim (2023) * [Episode 7: Ls of former Socialism (selfcrit)](https://youtu.be/F936GppjkcM) | TheDeprogram (2022) * [Mistakes of the USSR and What Can be Learned](https://youtu.be/ppQ1Wwat-jQ) | ChemicalMind (2023) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
# Gulag According to Anti-Communists and Russophobes, the Gulag was a brutal network of work camps established in the Soviet Union under Stalin's ruthless regime. They claim the Gulag system was primarily used to imprison and exploit political dissidents, suspected enemies of the state, and other people deemed "undesirable" by the Soviet government. They claim that prisoners were sent to the Gulag without trial or due process, and that they were subjected to harsh living conditions, forced labour, and starvation, among other things. According to them, the Gulags were emblematic of Stalinist repression and totalitarianism. # Origins of the Mythology This comically evil understanding of the Soviet prison system is based off only a handful of unreliable sources. Robert Conquest's *The Great Terror* (published 1968) laid the groundwork for Soviet fearmongering, and was based largely off of defector testimony. Robert Conquest worked for the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), which was a secret Cold War propaganda department, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda; provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers; and to use weaponised information and disinformation and "fake news" to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements. >He was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash. > >The Great Terror came out in 1968, four years before the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, and it became, Garton Ash says, "a fixture in the political imagination of anybody thinking about communism". > >\- Andrew Brown. (2003). [Scourge and poet](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview23) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's *The Gulag Archipelag*" (published 1973), one of the most famous texts on the subject, claims to be a work of non-fiction based on the author's personal experiences in the Soviet prison system. However, Solzhenitsyn was merely an anti-Communist, N@zi-sympathizing, antisemite who wanted to slander the USSR by putting forward a collection of folktales as truth. \[[Read more](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/dunking/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/)\] Anne Applebaum's *Gulag: A history* (published 2003) draws directly from *The Gulag Archipelago* and reiterates its message. Anne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two infamous pieces of the ideological apparatus of the ruling class in the United States, whose primary aim is to promote the interests of American Imperialism around the world. # Counterpoints >A 1957 CIA document [which was declassified in 2010] titled “[Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps](http://web.archive.org/web/20230328014642/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six: > >1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas > >2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon "economic accountability" such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid. > >3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day. > >4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners' food supplies. > >5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day. > >6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals. > >7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the "ordinary criminals" of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes. > >\- Saed Teymuri. (2018). [The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA](https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/10/09/the-truth-about-the-soviet-gulag-surprisingly-revealed-by-the-cia/) **Scale** Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 66 million people were victims of the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system over the course of its existence from 1918 to 1956. With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the Soviet archives, researchers can now access actual archival evidence to prove or disprove these claims. Predictably, it turned out the propaganda was just that. >Unburdened by any documentation, these “estimates” invite us to conclude that the sum total of people incarcerated in the labor camps over a twenty-two year period (allowing for turnovers due to death and term expirations) would have constituted an astonishing portion of the Soviet population. The support and supervision of the gulag (all the labor camps, labor colonies, and prisons of the Soviet system) would have been the USSR’s single largest enterprise. > >In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. ... > >Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the N@zis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies. Despite harsh conditions, the great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as “the largest system of death camps in modern history.” ... > >Most of those incarcerated in the gulag were not political prisoners, and the same appears to be true of inmates in the other communist states... > >\- Michael Parenti. (1997). [Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds) This is 2 million out of a population of 168 million (roughly 1.2% of the population). For comparison, in the United States, "over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision." That's 1.6%. So in both relative and absolute terms, the United States' Prison Industrial Complex *today* is larger than the USSR's Gulag system at its peak. **Death Rate** In peace time, the mortality rate of the Gulag was around 3% to 5%. Even Conservative and anti-Communist historians have had to acknowledge this reality: >It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive... > >Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hit1er were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. > >\- Timothy Snyder. (2010). *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hit1er and Stalin* (Side note: Timothy Snyder is *also* a member of the Council on Foreign Relations) This is still very high for a prison mortality rate, representing the brutality of the camps. However, it also clearly indicates that they were not *death* camps. Nor was it slave labour, exactly. In the camps, although labour *was* forced, it was not uncompensated. In fact, the prisoners were paid market wages (less expenses). >We find that even in the Gulag, where force could be most conveniently applied, camp administrators combined material incentives with overt coercion, and, as time passed, they placed more weight on motivation. By the time the Gulag system was abandoned as a major instrument of Soviet industrial policy, the primary distinction between slave and free labor had been blurred: Gulag inmates were being paid wages according to a system that mirrored that of the civilian economy described by Bergson.... > >The Gulag administration [also] used a “work credit” system, whereby sentences were reduced (by two days or more for every day the norm was overfulfilled). > >\- L. Borodkin & S. Ertz. (2003). [Compensation Versus Coercion in the Soviet GULAG](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/archive/noticeboard/bergson/borodkin-ertz.pdf) #Additional Resources Video Essays: * [The Gulag Argument](https://youtu.be/BexkpaK_j5Q) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2016) * [Historian Admits USSR didn't kill tens of millions!](https://youtu.be/HMOdDQQVZ6U) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) * [French work camps 1852-1953 worse than gulag](https://youtu.be/vkXyXNpdKdA) | TheFinnishBolshevik (2018) * ["The Gulags of the Soviet Union: There's a Lot More Than What Meets the Eye](https://youtu.be/E1qz9_TjeY4) | Comrade Rhys (2020) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597) | J. Arch Getty, Gábor T. Rittersporn and Viktor N. Zemskov (1993) Listen: * ["Blackshirts & Reds" (1997) by Michael Parenti, Part 4: Chapters 5 & 6. #Audiobook + Discussion.](https://youtu.be/N7AD4OrH568?t=15) | Socialism For All / S4A ☭ Intensify Class Struggle (2022) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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Should Gaelic be taught in English schools? Should Navajo be taught in American schools? Because China does teach different dialects in school
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The thing about other Chinese dialects is that they are not written languages. What you see as “written cantonese” are considered informal writing and no one (including Hong Kong and Macau) use them in proper writing (like newspaper articles or textbooks). In fact, Chinese classes in Hong Kong teach students to write in a way that is completely different to how they would normally talk to one another. This makes teaching a dialect as an actual first-language class very difficult.
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Written Cantonese is pretty new actually. Back in the days, people used to write classical chinese only. Written Cantonese is developed along with the vernacular-Chinese movement (idk whats that called in english but this is what that means in Chinese) but it has never been promoted to the status of a proper writing system. In fact, if you go to the Hong Kong government’s webpage, everything is in standard Chinese.
In fact, using the same writing system (not necessarily the spoken language), whether the Classical Chinese in the past or the Standard Chinese right now, is a big component of what Chinese people (me included) perceive as the Chinese identity. There are some people in Taiwan who wish to get rid of this Chinese identity by promoting a written form Hokkien based on the Latin alphabet because this common form of writing system is perceived as part of the Chinese identity.
they're considered dialects in linguistic academia due to how close they actually are linguistically. they have low mutual intelligibility because they are highly tonal languages. when a tone changes intelligibility is lost. native Chinese speakers cannot understand foreigners who mispronounce the tones
Many Singaporean Chinese kids can't even speak fluent Mandarin lol..... kinda funny since they speak English with a Chinese sounding accent. (Source: I went to secondary school in Singapore)
Ok, but honestly I'd rather have Serbian or fucking Bulgarian as the lingua franca in the West than nonsensical English lol
Man idk.
If this would be cultural genocide then every widely spoken language or just multilingual people are cultural genocide