As some of you in the West might know; the newspapers are filled to the brim with the “newly” released stories from Xinjiang. Well, I had an old friend reach out to me and tell me that they are against everything I stand for (supporting China) and that they wish that if/when I go to China I’ll be oppressed like the Uyghurs. Before I had a chance to reply I had already been blocked. So I thought to go and check others and whether others had blocked me as well. I now have at least 2 people who deleted me because of anti-China propaganda. And while some of you might say; don’t cry over spilt milk … I do feel like more of a pariah with every day I stay in the West and openly support China.
These issues started during COVID. The sheer sinophobia I had to deal with on a daily basis during that time was absolutely sickening, but I mostly just grinned and bare it. Most of my time these last few years (while I wait for borders to reopen) is volunteering my time at a care centre for elderly people. Seeing as most of them have onset dementia I don’t really get into arguments with them on China issues, as it’s a fool’s effort, but the anti-Chinese diatribes in the news have already caused the residents to not want me to come during the first waves of COVID and to not want me to cook Chinese food for them. These people read newspapers religiously and with these latest lies placating multiple pages I got told both today and yesterday that I don’t have to care for these specific residents anymore. I’m lucky in that this job isn’t a real job in that I don’t need it to stay afloat financially, but I still feel really conflicted. I should probably continue volunteering and just help other elders in this complex or other complexes, but I have decided that I won’t. Back during COVID, I was able to understand it somewhat that their xenophobia came from the fear of me transmitting COVID to them (because I interact with Chinese people and in their eyes would be more likely to be a carrier). Only this Monday I was literally showing and telling one of these residents, who used to be a farmer, about Chinese seawater rice and talking to them about the olden times and seeing their eyes light up to only be told today that they don’t want me to come anymore because I support that very same China. I should feel very bad about leaving the remaining residents I helped, but I’m planning on quitting in a week or 2/3 and from then on I won’t put another iota of my time and effort into improving Western society unless it also directly helps the people in the global South.
I’m just so tired.
EDIT: This is something I posted to get some catharsis, as I don’t really have anywhere else to post this without sounding unhinged. Feel free to downvote it.
I’m probably going to spend my time improving my Chinese and recording some stuff for SWCC to put on YouTube for people to listen to. I’m very out of my depth when it comes to socialist parties in the West. Whenever I hear about them it seems I first have to read a crash course on the many schisms and the antagonist attitudes that specific communist party has against other parties.
I have trouble wrapping my head around all this infighting. The CPC, again, for example, is able to work together with even the most polar opposite ideology and stay amicable and be able to work towards a common purpose with that other party even if that other party has a well-documented history of white terror. Why aren’t communist parties able to collaborate when 95%+ of their points align?
TBH, I wish I knew some communist developers. It shouldn’t be difficult to create a social action platform that allows for resources to accumulate transnationally. Being able to create a (vague) heat map of communist parties and their member spread would allow social movements to get kickstarted. A communist could be living across the street and I’d never know it. But if you allowed people to register themselves on a website with a non-specific location and then gave them the ability to fill-in the distance they’d be willing to travel to take part in a rally, or whatever, you’d make it much easier to organize across party lines and even tap from the community. I’m not suggesting Communist Tinder, but knowing that there are people within your vicinity that you could ally with or being made familiar with different movements/projects would be helpful, even if merely education.