China's internal troubles (not the Far West)

[Bill Moore]

China's internal ideological warfare seeks to promote so-called correct thinking and love for the f'd up communist party.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/22...-end-in-sight/

China’s Mass Internment Camps Have No Clear End in Sight
Around 1 million Uighurs have disappeared without trial. Worse may come.

It is not surprising, then, that the most common officially cited purpose for the internment camps is to purify people’s thoughts, “eliminating extremism” and instilling a love for the party. A recorded announcement leaked this month from Xinjiang’s Communist Party Youth League, designed to calm rampant fears about the re-education camps, explained that camps “treat and cleanse the virus from their brains.” The names used for camps have varied widely, both for the same camp over time and from one camp to the next, but most have included the word “transformation”—for example, “concentrated education transformation center.”

This is the real Chinese Communist Party, as ugly as it have ever been throughout its long history of repressing its people. Once again we see mass internment, and the party leveraging a youth league to impose its will. It reminds me of Mao's atrocities when he used youth leagues to conduct mass murder of teachers and others who didn't have the correct political views. Today the world can see it happen, but much of the world turns a blind eye to it. Why? To pursue a superficial Chamberlain peace in our time? In hope of gaining economic benefit through trade with China that could be damaged if they demonstrated incorrect thinking? There is a point when the illusion of the communist party as modern political party that shares many common interests with the majority of the advanced countries must end.

The content of the indoctrination reflects a new emphasis on nationalism throughout the PRC. State media outlets tout the party as China’s savior as they always have, but “China” is now more tightly linked to the culture of the ethnic majority, the Han Chinese. In this view, religions deemed foreign, for example Islam and Christianity, are seen as threats, as is the purportedly Chinese religion of Buddhism when it is practiced by non-Han people such as Tibetans. More than any leader since Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping has promoted the idea that he himself is the embodiment and protector of the Chinese nation. In some camps, inmates are required to replace the common Islamic blessing before meals, bismillah, with thanks to Xi Jinping.

It isn't just Uighers, but CCP also suppresses other religions such as Tibetan Buddhists and Christians. The state has destroyed numerous churches, and put large pictures of Xi in the churches remaining. I guess he views himself as superior to Jesus Christ, or maybe it is Christianity with CCP socialist traits? Despite this the Pope recently reached out to China to reach some sort of accommodation, but now the Pope has recently awakened from the illusion that accommodations can be made with the CCP at an acceptable cost.

There is no limit to the CCP's brashness:

The strangest of these were the coerced line-dancing competitions that spread across the region in 2014. These were supposed to move people away from “extremist” forms of Islam that forbid dance. In other places they pushed children to sign promises not to believe in God and arranged public ceremonies for pledging loyalty to the CCP.

The following is not wild speculation, there is ample historical evidence that provides credibility for this assertion.

Local officials have already expressed dehumanizing outlooks on the role of the re-education camps as “eradicating tumors” and “spraying chemicals on the crops to kill the weeds.” Should authorities decide that forced indoctrination has widely failed, much of Xinjiang’s minority population will be framed as irredeemable. And with the state-controlled Global Times claiming, in response to the recent U.N. condemnation of China’s racial policies in Xinjiang, that “all measures can be tried” in the pursuit of China’s “stability,” mass murder and genocide do not look like impossible outcomes.

When viewed as a whole, hyper-nationalism promoted by the CCP; rapid expansion of its military which it uses to coerce other nations; illegal expansion of its territory; mass internment camps, and a return to youth leagues to enforce "correct thinking, " it is clear that dangerous storm clouds are forming in East Asia. Mao used the youth leagues to kill millions, and then the CCP promoted the same behavior in Cambodia when they supported the Khmer Rouge. The trade war should be the least of our concerns. Communism is a sick form of extremism that is at least as evil as the pseudo-religious ideology that ISIS claims to adhere to.