yeah lets hear the british opinion on this, it’s sure to be very valuable 
Your obsession with China raising them (which has happened under the guise of consolidation) is a red hearing you beat to death.
That is but one example. That was the very first thread I pulled, the first example I looked at, it’s hardly an obsession.
You keep repeating the razing statement when that was never the crux of the situation constructing a silly strawman your head.
Yeah the exact facts never seem to be the crux of the situation, just the overall vibe of “china bad”. You can debunk 100 things and people will find 1000 other allegations that they believe.
I show you literal photographic proof China is altering Mosques and you say it isn’t fact.
I never said that. I doubt it’s for nefarious purposes. Case in point, I believe that the plaque at the kashgar id kah mosque got removed, but not because it a danger for the chinese state but rather for renovation purposes. I believe that the gatehouse that was built in 1997 was demolished, I don’t believe that the entire mosque was. I think these embellished half-truths are really insidious and need to be fact-checked. Are the alterations for nefarious purposes or simply restorations from a building boom in the 1980s and 1990s that was notorious for cheapening out on materials? I believe I read that tidbit somewhere in those western-aligned sources you love to the exclusion of all else, but don’t care to go back and check.
What matters is China’s long history of cultural erasure since their forced cultural revolution.
Really? Because a lot of the mosques and sites that are under renovation now were built after 1980 I believe, for the reason above.
Wondering where you get all your propaganda from so I reversed searched some of the garbage you spew and came up with this.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202011/17/WS5fb30a8aa31024ad0ba9477a_3.html
oh I thought I had linked that, my bad. I usually do that when giving verbatim citations. Well that’s what I came up with when I tried to look up the fate of the kashgar id kah mosque’s plaque. I really dislike your “kill the messenger approach” here as you would say. It’s possible that they are telling the truth even though you think they are untrustworthy wouldn’t you agree?
I do appreciate your examination of South Africa. How the persecutors pretend to be the persecuted is a little much. It is refreshing to see you can critical examine this even if you are incapable of doing the same for China.
Yeah it just seems like a certain government has a penchant for frivolous genocide allegations tbh.
You know, it’s kinda cute to see what I looked like not even 3 years ago. Which is why I have unduly spent so much time on you I think, you talk and do things exactly as I would’ve so I can’t really be mad at you. I don’t know if you really are this stupid or why you keep mischaracterizing what I say, or make weird assumptions about my motivations, but your undue arrogance sure doesn’t paint a very favorable light. Probably a lot of stuff in your personal life rests on this type of propaganda, you mentioned you worked with Amnesty International before so it’s probably harder for you to take a step back and consider that all of this might just be propaganda. Try talking more in terms of falsifiable claims that you personally believe and argue them. Not general claims like “thousands of mosques are getting destroyed!!11” but this specific thing has occured and here’s the proof.
Lastly it just seems like a really weird thing for the chinese government to do? Like what’s the logic here
Oh yeah definitely an introvert, also since I grew up in a muslim-majority country where the christian community was very tight-knit coming to Germany I definitely felt more like an outsider to the communities here, overwhelmed by the amount of choice of communities really at first, but lately the lack of communities that I could feel at ease at due to my antizionism. But there’s a lot of good in being part of any organization, having a role and helping out to oneself which is why I’ll be looking for another community once I have some more free time.
I don’t know where you exactly are, but a soup kitchen or something like that where you help once a week is a really cool thing to hone social-skills in a low-risk setting since you can just stop going there at any time. Also it’s really fun to be in charge of something, and to be “the person” so thats cool.
Deep dives aside you have done nothing to discredit any sources I provided besides vague assurance you know it is all fake.
Aside from the thing I’ve done I’ve done nothing. Got it.
Your kill the messenger approach is just pathetic. Here is the thing, the messenger can be untrustworthy but still tell the truth.
I don’t think you know what that phrase means. I don’t dislike the messenger because of the message. I distrust the message because of the messenger, which is perfectly valid. If the messenger is untrustworthy then why should I trust them?? Maybe they’re telling the truth, but they have to go the extra mile to make me trust them. Also why are they the only one? Why is almost every one of the muslim majority nations disbelieving the CIA when it comes to that genocide, but they all believe that there is a genocide in Palestine? Well, all of them except Uyghur advocacy groups, who support pissrael[1] apparently.
My distrust of the messenger comes from how they have acted throughout history. But even if we ignore that the CIA never once, afaik in it’s entire history, was with the side fighting for human rights, but always sided with the oppressors, then there still is the issue that the CIA is not an impartial party in this. They are funding the sufi terrorists. That terrorist network that operated in Xinjiang grew out of the US supported mujaheddin, which grew into the US supported al-qaeda and spread like a malignant tumor all over WACA since. They are deeply embedded in muslim terrorist networks, starting back in the 70s. Their assets are getting imprisoned, their effort getting thwarted, this is like taking whatever Russia is saying about what’s happening in east Ukraine at face value. They have a vested interest in making up or puffing up stories of abuse which is why whatever they saying should be faced with even more intense scrutiny to sort the wheat from the chaff.
You spend so much time on single mosque story it is kind of mind-boggling.
That’s what fact-checking is like, and why the gish-gallopping and constant goalshifting is so effective. The devil is in the details as they say. Also I’m never 100% sure what the claim is, all-out genocide, “cultural” genocide, severe human rights violations? Are the mosques razed, altered, renovated what’s the actual position? It’s never really clear.
China is known for shutting down and altering a larger number of mosques.
see that’s what I mean, the paper that I was talking about, the one you linked, asserted that China is “razing […] mosques”, citing a paper where that mosque was under the section “demolished mosques”, but now we’re downgrading to “shutting down and altering”? This blase approach to details is mindboggling when we’re talking about allegations of genocide by an adversarial nation. Imagine if people were talking about pissrael demolishing mosques but it just turns out they are giving them a new facade with hebrew lettering instead of arabic. It would instantly disqualify them (correctly imo) but here we just play fast and loose with the details. Razing centuries old mosques and altering the facade of newly built mosques is all the same after all…
This isn’t up for debate and honestly you are coming off as someone who is delusional to ignore this fact.
I’ll decide what I believe and what I consider to be up for debate myself. I get that you just believe the western media because you’re that far gone in your ideology, but I think we need to look at falsifiable claims and prove them instead of whatever this is. Also your claim that this is a settled debate is not true at all. Basically no one outside of the western world believes this is happening.
Honestly after seeing pictures used to insinuate a mosque has been razed only to find out that it’s actually very much still standing I don’t believe anything coming out of… cursory glance at the sources again the CIA? this is just goofy now come on
Also you know how I got the mosque wrong and spend so much time confusedly looking at the Kashgar Id Kah mosque? Well the most I could find that was alleged was the removal of a plaque at the gate. Well:
The imam said that after repair work was carried out, the plaque was repositioned on an outer wall of the main prayer hall inside the building.
The plaque, which is 2.7 meters long and 1.3 meters wide, was made and hung over the entrance to the mosque in 1982, but the characters and designs on it faded and were damaged due to exposure to the sun and wind.
The imam added: “In 2017, the plaque was repaired together with other facilities at the mosque. It was moved to its current position and a large canopy was put up to prevent the plaque being exposed to the weather. This work is actually very easy to verify.”
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202011/17/WS5fb30a8aa31024ad0ba9477a_3.html
I leave it to you to fact-check it if you want. So I don’t expect much from that ft’s articles allegations as well. Also I’ve been very open about the fact that I would only consider post-2023 major happenings as I consider anything before that pretty much settled and don’t have the time to revisit it all.
Most of the evidence coming out of China is gathered by human rights organizations.
backed and financed by the CIA. Do you think that organisations like radio free asia operate independently from the CIA? It’s just a front for the CIA.
You even admit your indoctrination into your cult of like minded genocide deniers. Why a leftist would look up to China or Russia is beyond me and shows a complete lack of discernment.
My self-indoctrination by looking at the allegations in details and coming to my own conclusions? As if you haven’t been indoctrinated to deny the genocide of the white farmers in South Africa 
I find it funny you think the CIA is running around planting all this evidence to make China look bad
What evidence 
? No, what I believe is that they have a bunch of uyghur people who, for various reasons, chose the US over the PRC. Now, they know that the financial support they receive in the countries they live in is contingent on them being useful to the propaganda effort else they get dropped. See e.g. Guan Heng[2]. So they take a story like the Keriye Id Kah mosque’s gatehouse getting demolished and puff it up as if the entire mosque was destroyed. This is already a known phenomenon see e.g. Yeonmi Park for a particularly egregious example.
I can see you have a long journey ahead deprogramming yourself if you care to.
Yeah same to you, yours is somewhat longer though
Perhaps you will be happy lapping up eastern propaganda as you used to lap up western.
the gall to think that I am just “lapping up propaganda” instead of fact-checking, when it was fact-checking that got me where I am is just utter projection. This will also likely be my last message in this chain. I think I’ve shown what I intended to show, whether you’re willing to actually look or just dismiss it all with a sneer is of course up to you.
oh wouldn’t you look at that the UHPR is a NED project[1]. Because of course it is. What a colossal waste of my time.
I’m not gonna go do a deepdive again. It is such a chore to even find falsifiable claims buried in the footnotes why are they not front and center? I made such a deep dive back in 2023 found it lacking. If there is new material from then please do share it. At the moment it just looks like there is no more genocide, if there ever was one.
I am not just posting for you, I am very aware you don’t consider any sources I use valid. This is a common tactic of tankies. No surprise there.
Well the first link leans on Zenz so I’m just gonna throw it out based on what I already know about him and his “reports”. The second one links the CIA directly so I’m not gonna bother with it either. Granted it’s not material to the article but it shows who is ultimately behind this article and it’s the biggest human rights violator on the planet. The third[1] I actually then looked at, now this really is the first thread I pulled and since I actually have to study (and type this comment twice because I accidently deleted the entirety of it) the only thread. Looking at the ToC there is section about “Destruction of Uyghur religious and cultural property” which seems like a good place to start looking for falsifiable claims. It alleges “razing of mosques” citing a Uyghur Human Rights Project report[2] so lets go there. The first mosque in the “Demolished mosques” section talks about the Keriya Id Kah Mosque. There is a thing about it’s gatehouse getting demolished:
Pictures of the mosque gatehouse appear as recently as March 2018. The demolition of the gatehouse appears to have taken place on the 19th or 20th of the month, according to analysis from Bellingcat. The prayer hall remains standing.
but earlier it was said that
In 1997 towards the north gate of the mosque a three story 227 square meter gatehouse was built in the style from the times of Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan using 80,000 RMB from the Xinjiang Ministry of Cultural and Religious Affairs along with 500,000 RMB collected from the people of Keriya.
so it’s really not ancient history that got demolished here. I don’t exactly know why, but there are plenty of reasons for demolishing such a structure. Later there is this quote saying
The Imams and the preachers of the mosque faced the same fate as the mosque.
so they are alleging the mosque got razed after all?? It’s just bonkers how hard it is to pin down an actual claim here. The mosque certainly seems to still be standing as a quick google to the coordinates shown in the picture will tell you. What’s more is that these areas can be travelled by tourists, got travelled. Of course the citations of that “report” link to the CIA as well, so I don’t know why I bothered. Why is there no organic resistance or reporting going on? Why does it all keep tying into the CIA?? What’s more, I spent an hour looking at the wrong mosque, I confused the one in kashgar with the on in keriya. Because the information is completely scattered all over, self-contradictory and I have no clue whether at any given point the piece I’m reading is alleging all-out genocide, cultural genocide, human rights abuses or what.
Did you ever bother to verify what these sources are talking about? Because this was the common theme back when I looked into it, it somehow always looped back to the CIA.
You are of course wrong, but that is okay. You are primarily driven by ideology rather than logic.
See these smug self-satisfied zingers is the reason why I don’t believe you care about the people of xinjiang one iota. It’s just about feeling superior to the tankies and non-westerners. You’re also wrong about me being “driven by ideology” as the breaking down xinjiang reporting is what got me into marxism and on the “tankie” side of things, not the other way around. I can’t explain just how uncomfortable it was to break with all the instutions and media that gave a feeling of safety. That sinking feeling the more I looked into exactly the kind of sources you posted. I previously thought that I got a clear view of the goings on in the world by consuming western media and having to break with all of it (really all of it, “Der Spiegel”, BBC, whatever yank news outlets I read before, they all were repeating it in lockstep) had me reeling. That feeling of having your worldview turned upside up is freeing but deeply uncomfortable. Of course whatever doubts I still had were put to rest with the reporting on the gaza genocide after Operation Al-Aqsa flood and the past years really solidified just how much of a puppet theatre it all is.
The devil is in sussing out what is true and what is not by understanding the intent and circumstances.
it really is, but I have a feeling you actually didn’t look at the material that closely.
I truly view both nations as utterly corrupt partners in making billionaires richer.
well good news on that front, China is cleaning up with it’s billionaires https://hexbear.net/post/2802029
Since hitting a peak of 1,185 in 2021, Hurun said the number of dollar billionaires had been reduced to 753, with the 36 per cent decline exceeding a 10 per cent fall in the renminbi’s value against the dollar over the same period.[3]
On 1. yeah I should have clarified sorry. After the TikTok exodus I got curious and had a look
On 2. I think it was this comment that had a lot of vital background information, like e.g. that the sufi terrorist attacks that started this whole ordeal were US-backed and orchestrated. That they were doing in Xinjiang what they had previously done in Afghanistan with the mujaheddin. Other links are compiled by davel for instance here.
On 3. I had the exact opposite reaction lol. When reading Marx and Lenin I thought it such a natural way of looking at the world. I remember reading “Wagelabor and capital” I thinking that the individual observation weren’t a great new insight (when demand down then price go down as well who knew?) but put together they formed a new understanding of the world. Looking at stuff like the reserve army of labor gave me a whole new perspective of the world how I relate to society etc.
Part of that is because being christian with a protestant upbringing I had to repeatedly synthesize contradictions. Evolution vs creationism being one of the bigger ones. Lately I’m on veganism vs carnism and speciesm practiced by Jesus himself which might be the one that does it in if I’m to be honest. It’s of course not helped by the fact that all the churches around here are turbozionist so I feel completely estranged from what I used to consider my community. But the whole idea of holding two contradictory concepts and instead of rejecting one or the other marrying them and forming a new understanding of both was something I had already done pretty much all my life.
It completely reshaped my understanding of nazi germany for instance, from one where the nazis were evil because they just hated minorities and people who thought different, to the nazis were the evil expression of the capitalists. The reason the nazis were able to gain power is because they got bankrolled by the industry leaders and the reason the industry leaders bankrolled them is because they were reeling from the aftermath of world war 1 and because they were deathly afraid of a communist revolution in Germany akin to the ones in the soviet states. Taking it further and seeing that the holocaust was basically capitalism at work, that it was animal agriculture applied to humans, made me go vegan in a snap. It all was a smooth transition once I had to break with western media which started with the Xinjiang propaganda campaign until I was a vocal vegan marxist.
On 4. I don’t know where you got that from, genocide is a material act. The liberal classifications of race and ethnicity are idealist of course but the result, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine for instance, is material reality. A hypothetical AES (emphasis on the A) state wouldn’t classify people by race and ethnicity since they are idealist constructs. However people being part of different cultures is also material reality. That some people will identify as “Uyghur” while others won’t and that this shapes their actions and how they relate to themselves and others is also real. There of course are genocides by states that purport to be socialist. E.g. the khmer rouge, Luna Oi has a great video about them here, but I would say that a state that takes their socialism seriously wouldn’t commit a genocide, there is no incentive to.
The name changed because it doesn’t meet the statutory definition of the law. This has zero to do with it being a genocide outside of one narrow definition
not the impression what I got. See the discussion about it here, it seems the main issue was a lack of sources calling it the “uyghur genocide”.
mainly the discussion was kicked off because it revealed wikipedia’s western bias:
Uyghur genocide → Uyghur genocide accusation – In line with Palestinian genocide accusation and doesn’t imply it’s a settled fact like the current title does, but also still in line with the WP:COMMONNAME arguments (which I don’t agree with, but this is a compromise) since it includes the supposed common name. The discrepancy between the current titles of this page and Palestinian genocide accusation implies a hypocrisy on the part of Wikipedia.
So clearly they’re arguing about whether it’s a “settled fact” or not. The discussion there is about a lack of scholarly articles calling it “genocide” and I don’t see anyone arguing it on the basis of it not meeting any sort of legal criteria.
Also you can stop posting the same material over and over again, I promise you I have seen at least the source material, back when I made my deep dive and found it lacking. If there’s anything new on this issue within the last 3 years please do let me know. Otherwise it seems like everybody dropped it as the so-called “human rights violations” peetered out due to lack of us-backed salafi terrorism.
Shouldn’t you be discussing this on wikipedia?Apparently their editors don’t think that there is enough credible evidence of a genocide as well, hence the name change.
I’m talking about that very page being renamed from “uyghur genocide” to “persecution of uyghurs in china”
Protip: if you think that someones “so dumb it hurts” you’re likely misunderstanding something or missing info. Some humility goes a long way.
see the “frequently asked questions” on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3APersecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
Q1: When was consensus established to name the page Persecution of Uyghurs in China?
A1: The current title reflects the consensus established in the most recent move discussion (22 January 2024). Two previous widely attended move discussions (30 June 2020 and 1 April 2021) had resulted in this page being titled Uyghur genocide. Please see Logs and discussions below for the full list of move discussions. In these discussions, editors discussed reporting from reliable sources in light of WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CRITERIA, the first two times establishing an affirmative consensus that the title “Uyghur genocide” is an appropriate name for the article. The third debate, immediately following a 12 January 2024 discussion that was closed as “not moved”, citing WP:NCENPOV as the naming convention guideline justifying a shift to the new name.
If you think there is logical consistency with tankies you got another thing coming.
See that’s all I ever see from those looking to counter it, just outright smug dismissal and no actual argument. That’s how they got me.
Are you surprised the world is not making a bigger deal out of Muslim suppression? Not me, par for the course.
I’m sorry have you seen the reaction in the muslim world to the palestinian genocide? The only one making a “big” deal out of this so-called genocide are the countries hostile to china. And even they stopped caring about it in the past couple years.
There is almost no proof of the Native American Genocide so I guess it must have never happened. Looks like the natives are doing just fine with their casinos!
Good lord what are you talking about?
smug self-righteous noises
This is how I know that you don’t actually care to win other people over, or about the population of Xinjiang, you’re just grandstanding, euphoric from your own intelligence. You declaring something stupid doesn’t make it so. I found the “tankie” position far better researched on every topic. That’s why I “joined” them. I made an account on hexbear, I post there regularly and I haven’t seen geopolitical knowledge and analyses as in depth as they are there anywhere on the lib spaces. So I stayed, 3 years later and my position kept getting reaffirmed and reaffirmed by your kind.
A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” […] This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China […] it’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.
What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.
from https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
more about the background of the atrocity propaganda from xinjiang https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/
let me tell you right now before you go through the trouble of digging up more sources that I don’t consider anything that Adrian Zenz has touched to be credible. The guy believes he is on a mission from god to destroy communism.
No, it’s a federated platform. No single person or organization “runs” the whole thing.
Same logic would be used to say no Native American or Palestinian genocide either.
I don’t follow? We have way more evidence of both genocides, both of the actions, mass killings, child abductions etc., as well as propaganda campaigns to stoke hatred and fear. Neither group is very free to practice their religions and culture, facing harassment and red tape etc. I don’t see the parallels at all.
I am sorry, but I don’t buy it for a second.
I’m not looking to convince, I’m just giving my POV as asked. These were the types of questions I saw the tankies be able to answer and that’s what ultimately convinced me that the whole thing is just a US propaganda psy-op. Back in like 2019-2020 I was breathlessly reading “Der Spiegel” articles about systematic rape of uyghur women in prisons and bought into it wholesale. I got flipped, so to speak, in 2023 or so. So what I’m portraying here is what people that want to “flip” me back are up against.
You referred to Wikipedia as an authority earlier
Not at all, on the contrary, I was pointed out that even wikipedia doesn’t call it a genocide anymore.
It seems obvious that they want to erase Uyghur culture and replace it with Han.
Not to me, because whenever I look on xiaohongshu for uyghur content there is a lot to find there. The street signs have both uyghur and chinese letters, uyghur is taught in schools, people can practice their faith, I don’t see this erasure at all. Whole-ass street festivals where uyghur people celebrate with their food and music, broadcast on a chinese app aimed mainly at chinese people.
And there’s plenty of reasons for China to do this - they’ve long seen the land there as Chinese, regardless of the people living on it.
Who is “they” in this case? The government of china underwent multiple radical transformations. I wouldn’t think that the china of today has the same goals as the china of even 50 years ago. Or do you mean the people of china? I am not aware of any popular hateful sentiment towards uyghur people. Shouldn’t there be a lot anti-uyghur propaganda around to rally the han chinese against the uyghurs? Granted I’m not super prolific on chinese media, I occasionally go to xiaohongshu but it would be pretty convincing evidence if there was a governmental campaign to rally hate amongst the han chinese against the uyghur people.
Not to mention natural resources, extending borders, marshaling resources to fight capitalist imperialism, et cetera, et cetera…
Why do they need erase the culture of the uyghur people to get access to the natural resources there? The extending of borders doesn’t make sense to me, xinjiang is already a part of the republic? And who benefits from all this? A genocide is a massive operation, no one undertakes genocide unless they don’t expect immense profits from it. E. g. during the holocaust it was companies like IG Farben, Bayer, Lufthansa, Siemens, Rheinmetall and so on. Also what was the spark that set it off? The reporting is just like, nothing prior to like 2019 or so, suddenly genocide, then some backtracking and now radio silence again.
The ICC would define genocide very narrowly, just the slaughter of people en masse based on ethnicity
And that’s what most people understand under genocide. Also the forcible sterilisation would fall under the ICC definition but aside from that one legal opinion from like 5 years or so is there anything new on that? What about the 1 million people in detention have they been freed? Like I see these articles like this one again after a couple years now and they seem even less credible, just really bombastic flashy effects but at it’s core, just some satellite images showing like 3 or 4 construction sites to prove abductions of hundreds of thousands, that’s the thing that gets me. Hundreds of thousands. That’s a massive massive operation, I would expect more evidence and local resistance groups and aid networks and so on…
So let’s leave the rubric of “genocide”
So no genocide in Xinjiang? Or are we going by another definition of genocide?
I have not seen any evidence beyond some generic jail images, there seems to be no resistance organisation within xinjiang, i do not see a reason for china to do this and all the reporting is filled with non-objective loaded language like “authoritarian”, “brutal crackdown”, “chinese regime” etc.
compare all of the reporting from this so-call “genocide” to the actual reporting (the non-western or indie kind) from the actually ongoing genocide of the palestinians, its night and day.
then there were many predominantly muslim countries that sent officials to visit xinjiang and they came back satisfied that there was no ongoing genocide. We get more information out of the tightly regulated gaza ghetto than an entire autonomous region in china. If you want some more hard facts and recent history of the region I can dig some stuff up if you want, I don’t remember most of it since it’s been a while since I looked at this stuff myself.
Not even wikipedia thinks it’s genocide anymore… get with the program
The ladybugs wanted out 🐞🐞🐞🐞🐞
Not even a week ago almost everyone on this site was licking the boot of a nazi-tattooed former blackwater merc and abu ghraib guard who did worse shit than ICE except that it was to brown people so the yanks didn’t care…
A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.
An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.
kmarx wagelabor and capital
