Deepa Parent at The Guardian has been churning these articles out at a steady pace, often pushing out inflated death tolls of Iranian civilians and citing unconfirmed sources. Any story from her should be considered highly suspect at best and consent-manufacturing propaganda at worst.
The Grayzone is a disinformation blog that exists to defend authoritarian regimes like Russia, Iran, al-Assad’s Syria, and China. They specifically e.g. whitewash China’s ongoing cultural genocide in Xinjiang, deny al-Assad’s chemical attack on Douma, and support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
You surely know this, of course, if you’re citing them. I’m just clarifying for others.
What is rarely mentioned in Western reports is the international support China has received on its Xinjiang policies. In July 2019, ambassadors from thirty-seven countries sent a joint letter to the President of the UN Human Rights Council commending China’s “remarkable achievements in the field of human rights” and noting that “safety and security has returned to Xinjiang” with “not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang” in three consecutive years. The signatories included Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as well as others from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.14 By June 2021, this number had grown to sixty-nine countries issuing a statement in defense of China’s policies, with twenty-eight of these being members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), founded in 1969 to bring Muslim-majority countries into conversation with each other.15 This organization itself, after sending delegations to Xinjiang, issued a report in March 2019 praising China for “providing care to its Muslim citizens.”16
The signatories included Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
Wow, I’m so impressed that bastions of human rights like checks notes Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Pakistan, and Qatar found China’s cultural-genocidal “achievements” “remarkable”.
Was this actually meant to sway anyone, or were you just hoping copy–pasting this would get people to zone out, not read it, and just passively agree you’d said something convincing?
Edit: Anyway, here’s a good debunk of that article by Modern Chinese historian and socialist David Brophy. I disagree with Brophy on the subject of “genocide” because it’s very clearly a cultural one (whereas he’s using the one about killing off etc. of a group), but he nonetheless compellingly points out that the article you linked is a crock of shit.
you should at least demonstrate reading comprehension
I did comprehend, and I’m not falling for it; citing e.g. Saudi Arabia on any matter of human rights is patently ridiculous. The fact the Uyghurs are predominantly Muslim doesn’t automatically mean nakedly corrupt predominantly Muslim nations with extreme records of human rights abuses are going to stick up for them, and dressing it up that way to give it a veil of credibility is frankly disgusting.
Well presumably these nations care about Muslim culture. Are you saying they dont actually care about the Muslim people in Xinjiang? Thats a lot of Muslim countries listed, and you cherry picked a few out of them. Are they all wrong? Why would they defend the genocide of a Muslim group?
Thats a lot of Muslim countries listed, and you cherry picked a few out of them.
I cherry-picked them? Those were four of the seven countries AI slop authors Prashad and Chak named, and I noted them because they’re obviously corrupt and abusive and the authors definitely know this; the fact that the authors decided to list even one of the four I listed as if it’s compelling is absurd.
I just as easily could’ve included Egypt (under the extremely corrupt and abusive el-Sisi “presidency” since 2014) and Nigeria (roughly Muslim–Christian split and notable for extreme corruption), but I decided to list the most obviously egregious majority of them from the list the authors provided as evidence. You can view the full list of representatives here.
Yes, I fully believe Muslim-majority countires would defend the cultural genocide of a Muslim ethnic group toward political ends; what kind of question is this? Again, read the Tempest article by David Brophy and try to discuss it here; he uses his experience as a socialist and a historian to break down the half-hallucinated lies by Prashad and Chak.
Oh, okay, so you’re pulling a disingenuous whataboutism for someone who wasn’t even being discussed.
I didn’t offer Adrian Zenz’s opinion for the same reason I wouldn’t have offered Saudi Arabia’s. You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia which is why I criticized you for doing so. I instead offered the opinion of David Brophy excoriating that piece of AI slopaganda but who you completely sidestepped because his article competently and credibly drags the Monthly Review one into the street and puts it out of its misery.
It’s actually kind of hilarious that you’re (unsurprisingly) doing one of the main things Brophy criticizes Prashad and Chak for in the debunk I seriously doubt you cared to read.
Coming into a comment thread that is calling out the manufacturing consent against Iran, and bleating “but Xinjiang!” is whataboutism if I’ve ever seen it.
And yes, you are parroting Zenz. He is the source of this myth - via countless western sources regurgitating the same claims he’s been making since 2018.
In March 2017, the Jamestown Foundation (Washington DC) published a three thousand-word report on “Xinjiang’s Rapidly Evolving Security State” written by Adrian Zenz and James Leibold.1 A few months later, the same writers published another report, this one slightly longer at nearly five thousand words, with the more aggressive title, “Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang.”2 At that time, there was not much interest in these stories. Zenz came from the Victims of Communism Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and funded by various right-wing sources, including the Heritage Foundation.
You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia
And, ya know, a plethora of others that you decided to ignore for some reason… Associating a large swath of Muslim and Arab nations with human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia really lets your racism show.
I was remarking on the credibility of your source; you were remarking on the credibility of someone never cited here. You decided to use the source in the first place and then defend it when called out; I immediately disavowed the one you tried to push on me.
Brophy goes over your exact type of asinine rhetoric that seeks to ascribe this only to right-wing think tanks.
Liberal human rights organizations have often been too quick to make common cause with China hawks. The Left should have no truck with any of this.
But equally, the Left should not allow criticism of genocide claims to smuggle in an attitude of indifference to the human suffering that those claims point to—precisely what Prashad and Chak are trying to do. In their hands, talk of genocide is reduced to the work of a handful of individuals affiliated with right-wing think tanks, a move that allows them to focus on cultivating a sense that the entire Xinjiang issue is a construct of funding sources and self-interest. This will pass for “materialism” in some circles, but it is the sort of analysis that Gramsci had in mind when he complained of the reduction of Marxism to “economic superstition.” In such thinking, “‘Critical’ activity is reduced to the exposure of swindles, to creating scandals, and to prying into the pockets of public figures.”
Sadly, far too much of today’s China debate has this feel to it. Prashad and his co-thinkers are often enough on the receiving end themselves of critiques focusing on funding sources. It is a pity that instead of elevating the discussion above this level, they choose to descend to it.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars has condemned the Chinese policies in Xinjiang as genocide.
One can’t in good conscience cite the IAGS as an authority when they condemn the genocide in Gaza and then ignore them when they condemn the genocide in Xinjiang.
One can’t in good conscience cite the IAGS as an authority when they condemn the genocide in Gaza and then ignore them when they condemn the genocide in Xinjiang.
Whoops, sorry, based on the standard you set below, I’m afraid I have to conclude that you’re actually stanning the shit out of Marjorie Taylor Greene. After all, a bad actor not discussed here says that Israel is perpetrating a genocide of Palestinians much as Adrian Zenz says China is perpetrating a cultural genocide of the Uyghurs, and therefore I’m going to have to attribute your opposition to the obvious, well-documented, ongoing genocide in Palestine to an antisemitic belief in Jewish space lasers.
Wow, arguing in bad faith totally unconstrained by logic is so much fun; I see why you like it now.
(Go ahead, comb your sources to find the ones that are 1. In a position to actually know what they’re talking about with authority, like the IAGS, and 2. Not also calling out China for its policies in Xinjiang.)
That’s an odd way to say that the source is uncredible and a mouthpiece for covering up and whitewashing the crimes against humanity of authoritarian regimes. You know, like the kinds of crimes being discussed here.
And outlets like The Guardian and The BBC are responsible for covering up and whitewashing the crimes against humanity committed by Israel and its Western allies.
Does that make every article written for them fundamentally untrue?
Okay, so you just fundamentally don’t understand or care about how source credibility, bias, or anything outside of a black-and-white binary works. Taken in the extreme, I can’t say “Hey guys, check out this InfoWars source*” and then claim “but mainstream outlets are biased and lie too!!” when I’m rightly called out for it.
Yeah, sources like BBC News are biased for e.g. Israel’s genocide in Palestine. That’s why we normally treat them with a grain of skepticism when they report on things like that; for BBC News specifically, I’d probably just find a better source if I want reporting on Israel in Palestine or Lebanon. Nonetheless, it’s not ridden with unhinged conspiracy theories about how e.g. al-Assad never carried out an illegal chemical attack on his own people or AI-hallucinated disinformation about Alexei Navalny.
The Grayzone is a quintessential mouthpiece that exists effectively solely for that purpose.
* Edit: I guess I actually can cite them now and it’d be kind of funny. God bless you, Tesseract.
Deepa Parent at The Guardian has been churning these articles out at a steady pace, often pushing out inflated death tolls of Iranian civilians and citing unconfirmed sources. Any story from her should be considered highly suspect at best and consent-manufacturing propaganda at worst.
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/01/guardian-iranian-death-toll-concocted-monarchist-doctors/amp/
The Grayzone is a disinformation blog that exists to defend authoritarian regimes like Russia, Iran, al-Assad’s Syria, and China. They specifically e.g. whitewash China’s ongoing cultural genocide in Xinjiang, deny al-Assad’s chemical attack on Douma, and support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
You surely know this, of course, if you’re citing them. I’m just clarifying for others.
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-idea-of-the-uyghur-genocide-and-the-realities-of-xinjiang/
Wow, I’m so impressed that bastions of human rights like checks notes Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Pakistan, and Qatar found China’s cultural-genocidal “achievements” “remarkable”.
Was this actually meant to sway anyone, or were you just hoping copy–pasting this would get people to zone out, not read it, and just passively agree you’d said something convincing?
Edit: Anyway, here’s a good debunk of that article by Modern Chinese historian and socialist David Brophy. I disagree with Brophy on the subject of “genocide” because it’s very clearly a cultural one (whereas he’s using the one about killing off etc. of a group), but he nonetheless compellingly points out that the article you linked is a crock of shit.
western “democratic socialists” are dogs of empire, who cares for their label?
They are showing evidence that the leading Muslim countries in the world support China’s policies in Xinjiang.
Disagreeing is one thing but you should at least demonstrate reading comprehension.
I did comprehend, and I’m not falling for it; citing e.g. Saudi Arabia on any matter of human rights is patently ridiculous. The fact the Uyghurs are predominantly Muslim doesn’t automatically mean nakedly corrupt predominantly Muslim nations with extreme records of human rights abuses are going to stick up for them, and dressing it up that way to give it a veil of credibility is frankly disgusting.
Well presumably these nations care about Muslim culture. Are you saying they dont actually care about the Muslim people in Xinjiang? Thats a lot of Muslim countries listed, and you cherry picked a few out of them. Are they all wrong? Why would they defend the genocide of a Muslim group?
I cherry-picked them? Those were four of the seven countries AI slop authors Prashad and Chak named, and I noted them because they’re obviously corrupt and abusive and the authors definitely know this; the fact that the authors decided to list even one of the four I listed as if it’s compelling is absurd.
I just as easily could’ve included Egypt (under the extremely corrupt and abusive el-Sisi “presidency” since 2014) and Nigeria (roughly Muslim–Christian split and notable for extreme corruption), but I decided to list the most obviously egregious majority of them from the list the authors provided as evidence. You can view the full list of representatives here.
Yes, I fully believe Muslim-majority countires would defend the cultural genocide of a Muslim ethnic group toward political ends; what kind of question is this? Again, read the Tempest article by David Brophy and try to discuss it here; he uses his experience as a socialist and a historian to break down the half-hallucinated lies by Prashad and Chak.
Cool so I need to go talk to David Brophy then. You need to calm down my guy.
Right back atcha
Oh, okay, so you’re pulling a disingenuous whataboutism for someone who wasn’t even being discussed.
I didn’t offer Adrian Zenz’s opinion for the same reason I wouldn’t have offered Saudi Arabia’s. You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia which is why I criticized you for doing so. I instead offered the opinion of David Brophy excoriating that piece of AI slopaganda but who you completely sidestepped because his article competently and credibly drags the Monthly Review one into the street and puts it out of its misery.
It’s actually kind of hilarious that you’re (unsurprisingly) doing one of the main things Brophy criticizes Prashad and Chak for in the debunk I seriously doubt you cared to read.
Coming into a comment thread that is calling out the manufacturing consent against Iran, and bleating “but Xinjiang!” is whataboutism if I’ve ever seen it.
And yes, you are parroting Zenz. He is the source of this myth - via countless western sources regurgitating the same claims he’s been making since 2018.
And, ya know, a plethora of others that you decided to ignore for some reason… Associating a large swath of Muslim and Arab nations with human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia really lets your racism show.
I was remarking on the credibility of your source; you were remarking on the credibility of someone never cited here. You decided to use the source in the first place and then defend it when called out; I immediately disavowed the one you tried to push on me.
Brophy goes over your exact type of asinine rhetoric that seeks to ascribe this only to right-wing think tanks.
Okay, what’s your source on the claim that there is a genocide in Xinjiang?
“We must throw out the entirety of this source since the originator has some seedy opinions on entirely unrelated issues!”
“We must throw out the entirety of this source since the originator has some seedy opinions on entirely unrelated issues!”
“Uhhhhh… Whataboutism!”
Every time… You have to hold your claims to the same standard you hold the Grayzone’s.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars has condemned the Chinese policies in Xinjiang as genocide.
One can’t in good conscience cite the IAGS as an authority when they condemn the genocide in Gaza and then ignore them when they condemn the genocide in Xinjiang.
Then it’s a good thing I’m not doing that.
Is there a genocide happening in Gaza? And if your answer is yes, on what basis are you saying that?
Yes, there is. Based of a plethora of sources - some more reputable than others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human_rights_groups_accusing_Israel_of_genocide_in_Gaza#List
Whoops, sorry, based on the standard you set below, I’m afraid I have to conclude that you’re actually stanning the shit out of Marjorie Taylor Greene. After all, a bad actor not discussed here says that Israel is perpetrating a genocide of Palestinians much as Adrian Zenz says China is perpetrating a cultural genocide of the Uyghurs, and therefore I’m going to have to attribute your opposition to the obvious, well-documented, ongoing genocide in Palestine to an antisemitic belief in Jewish space lasers.
Wow, arguing in bad faith totally unconstrained by logic is so much fun; I see why you like it now.
Ok, but which ones.
(Go ahead, comb your sources to find the ones that are 1. In a position to actually know what they’re talking about with authority, like the IAGS, and 2. Not also calling out China for its policies in Xinjiang.)
Oh now uyghur stuff is “cultural genocide”? lol
You may not be a fan of the source, but the facts in the article speak for themselves
Other outlets that challenge the Western media consensus, particularly the death toll numbers, include Zeteo [link], just FYI.
That’s an odd way to say that the source is uncredible and a mouthpiece for covering up and whitewashing the crimes against humanity of authoritarian regimes. You know, like the kinds of crimes being discussed here.
And outlets like The Guardian and The BBC are responsible for covering up and whitewashing the crimes against humanity committed by Israel and its Western allies.
Does that make every article written for them fundamentally untrue?
Okay, so you just fundamentally don’t understand or care about how source credibility, bias, or anything outside of a black-and-white binary works. Taken in the extreme, I can’t say “Hey guys, check out this InfoWars source*” and then claim “but mainstream outlets are biased and lie too!!” when I’m rightly called out for it.
Yeah, sources like BBC News are biased for e.g. Israel’s genocide in Palestine. That’s why we normally treat them with a grain of skepticism when they report on things like that; for BBC News specifically, I’d probably just find a better source if I want reporting on Israel in Palestine or Lebanon. Nonetheless, it’s not ridden with unhinged conspiracy theories about how e.g. al-Assad never carried out an illegal chemical attack on his own people or AI-hallucinated disinformation about Alexei Navalny.
The Grayzone is a quintessential mouthpiece that exists effectively solely for that purpose.
* Edit: I guess I actually can cite them now and it’d be kind of funny. God bless you, Tesseract.