| > there have been many attacks, but not since Xinjiang turned into a total surveillance state It might seem that way when you ignore attacks on people by the surveillance state. From the invasion of privacy en masse, to people being disappeared, thus robbing them of even their deaths in a way not even the most heinous terrorist attacks do. It's like nuking a city and then saying you "stopped all car thefts" in it. It's just as fundamentalist and religious, only with a party line that can shift on its own, vs. preachers who shift their interpretations of fixed scripture, for the same result. Also, monuments destroyed in medieval times? Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution > The start of the Cultural Revolution brought huge numbers of Red Guards to Beijing, with all expenses paid by the government, and the railway system was in turmoil. The revolution aimed to destroy the "Four Olds" (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) and establish the corresponding "Four News", and this can range from changing of names and cutting of hair, to the ransacking of homes, vandalizing cultural treasures, and desecrating temples. In a few years, countless ancient buildings, artifacts, antiques, books, and paintings were destroyed by Red Guards. Doesn't sound so great. A book I can recommend is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Swans > it might take materialist brainwashing ('re-education') to reverse religious brainwashing. They're not even getting "materialist" brainwashing, whatever that would even be, they're getting totalitarian brainwashing. Within the framework of totalitarianism, where there is no truth except the truth enforced by coercion, what you say makes sense: only a stronger lie can combat an existing lie, and anything grounded in truth or voluntary insight is lava. It's still essentially arguing wether a turd or a puddle of puke constitutes better tasting food -- any no doubt existing differences are meaningless, they should never make you pick one or the other. > "Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world."
-- Hannah Arendt |