TheOldRazzleDazzle [he/him]

I heard a hot take that Ulysses is anti-imperialist literature that preserves memory of Dublin as a living city in resistance to British assimilationism. Put that in your pipe and smoke it condescending suburban white lady!

That’s actually not true. Suicide contagion absolutely goes down when the focus moves from the person and act itself and switched to mental health issues and resources within the community it occured in. Notable peer reviewed journal Wikipedia points to this tactic as being the reason why suicides actually went down in Seattle after the death of Kurt Cobain. Of course it’s probably at best ineffective when it’s done in a pro forma, token kind of way like you see in most journalism.

That said, the whole point of copycat suicide is identification with the person who killed themselves. So lol if you want to identify with Hitler go ahead and march in your proud boy parade, just remember to take your cyanide nutrition supplements afterwards like a champ.

Everything written here about how 90% of American “facts” concerning Uighurs in Xinjiang are derived from the inductive reasoning of a Christian evangelical in non-peer reviewed articles is completely true.

That said, I don’t see anything written here about the long history of the region which is now Xinjiang as a state or territory. The fact that nothing anyone has posted here discusses that long history demonstrates an inadequecy of analysis of historical conditions. It leads people to say things like, “Uh, a CIA did it” and move on as if everything is now resolved.

I recently listened to an episode of the Historic.ly podcast with Carl Zha, who I think is quite well informed on Chinese history but interprets that history in ways very different than me. In about five minutes he said 1) Xinjiang has always been part of China – 5000 years of Chinese history! 2) Xinjiang became part of China in the Qing dynasty – ~350 years of Chinese history! 3) Xinjiang has had ethnic separatist movements and has declared itself an independent state separate from Chinese rule numerous times in those last 350 years (as recently as the mid-20th century with Soviet backing). To summarize, Xinjiang has always been part of China, so long as “China” only begins with the Qing, and except for all of those times when it wasn’t.

To not see any contradiction in these statements is to not be able to see the region and ethnic conflicts as a whole in mainland China through any other lens but Chinese state orthodoxy. To not question why Xinjiang today is part of China while also not questioning why Mongolia today isn’t part of China is to just be caught in the currents of US and Chinese state propaganda with no critical awareness or historical analysis.