Thank you for sharing the video on Fast Fashion. Since I read Naomi Klein's No Logo and became involved in the anti-sweatshop movement in college in the late 90s, early 00s, the issue of marketing, branding, and cheap consumerism has alarmed me. It's been horrifying, to say the least, to see that our burgeoning movement 20+ years ago failed. Mostly, what I loved about that video was the spotlight, albeit brief, on slave labor by Uyghurs and other Turkic-minorities. For years now, China has been committing genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkistan (what China calls Xinjiang). East Turkistan, the Uyghur homeland, was colonized by China in the 1940s. While Uyghurs have long been persecuted, since 2016, the efforts have ramped up with millions of people sent to internment camps, prisons, and labor camps. Women have been raped and sterilized in these camps. Healthy people die after torture. Their children have been taken away and put into schools and orphanges -- literally millions of children. And when people are released from camp, they are either put in prison or, more often, released to work in the cotton fields or in factories throughout China. What has happened there is horrifying, and I wish people who seem to care so much about human rights would shine a brighter spotlight on what China is doing in East Turkistan. I wish college students would camp out on their quads in protest against the Chinese government. I wish there was an anti-Chinese BDS movement. It's hard to understand why that isn't happening, thought it may have something to do with the desire for cheap goods and, more likely, the fact that there aren't Jews in China. But that's a conversation for another day.
Horrifying, indeed. No doubt there are lots of reasons why these kinds of civil rights abuses aren't currently getting the same kind of attention on college campuses as the civil rights abuses of the Israeli government against Palestinians, but I think it's likely because of the immediacy of our own government's complicity and not, as you seem to be suggesting, because college students are antisemitic.
I'm not saying college students are antisemitic. But I do think there is a great deal of antisemitism involved in the groups that have been the organizers of these protests, and I think the disproportionate amount of anger comes because of Israel as a Jewish state not just at Israel as an ally of the US or Israel as a human rights violator. US money is everywhere and we are complicit in a great number of terrible actions- both US government money and US consumer money. But when one country gets a disproportionate amount of attention and, yes, a great deal of antisemitic comments, then it's hard to think otherwise. But, please do know, I am against the Israeli incursion in Gaza and have signed my name to a number of petitions for a cease fire. I'm just saying, if we want to talk magnitude, the genocide of the Uyghurs is much larger and has gotten far less attention, and I was glad to see that clip about them in that video.
Loved the bad men article. "Trump and Elon Musk… challenge my spiritual clarity." What a line!
Thank you for sharing the video on Fast Fashion. Since I read Naomi Klein's No Logo and became involved in the anti-sweatshop movement in college in the late 90s, early 00s, the issue of marketing, branding, and cheap consumerism has alarmed me. It's been horrifying, to say the least, to see that our burgeoning movement 20+ years ago failed. Mostly, what I loved about that video was the spotlight, albeit brief, on slave labor by Uyghurs and other Turkic-minorities. For years now, China has been committing genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkistan (what China calls Xinjiang). East Turkistan, the Uyghur homeland, was colonized by China in the 1940s. While Uyghurs have long been persecuted, since 2016, the efforts have ramped up with millions of people sent to internment camps, prisons, and labor camps. Women have been raped and sterilized in these camps. Healthy people die after torture. Their children have been taken away and put into schools and orphanges -- literally millions of children. And when people are released from camp, they are either put in prison or, more often, released to work in the cotton fields or in factories throughout China. What has happened there is horrifying, and I wish people who seem to care so much about human rights would shine a brighter spotlight on what China is doing in East Turkistan. I wish college students would camp out on their quads in protest against the Chinese government. I wish there was an anti-Chinese BDS movement. It's hard to understand why that isn't happening, thought it may have something to do with the desire for cheap goods and, more likely, the fact that there aren't Jews in China. But that's a conversation for another day.
Horrifying, indeed. No doubt there are lots of reasons why these kinds of civil rights abuses aren't currently getting the same kind of attention on college campuses as the civil rights abuses of the Israeli government against Palestinians, but I think it's likely because of the immediacy of our own government's complicity and not, as you seem to be suggesting, because college students are antisemitic.
I'm not saying college students are antisemitic. But I do think there is a great deal of antisemitism involved in the groups that have been the organizers of these protests, and I think the disproportionate amount of anger comes because of Israel as a Jewish state not just at Israel as an ally of the US or Israel as a human rights violator. US money is everywhere and we are complicit in a great number of terrible actions- both US government money and US consumer money. But when one country gets a disproportionate amount of attention and, yes, a great deal of antisemitic comments, then it's hard to think otherwise. But, please do know, I am against the Israeli incursion in Gaza and have signed my name to a number of petitions for a cease fire. I'm just saying, if we want to talk magnitude, the genocide of the Uyghurs is much larger and has gotten far less attention, and I was glad to see that clip about them in that video.