[Animatronio]

Meanwhile China is bad.

[o_m]

Both countries can be bad at the same time.

[bunga-bunga]

I haven't seen "reeducation camps" in the west in a few decades

[caditinpiscinam]

The US imprisons tons of people, with a strong bias towards certain races.

Are our prisons meaningfully different from "reeducation camps"? Are they any less biased, brutal, or damaging?

You can argue that prisoners in the US are "criminals", but states can call whoever they want a criminal.

[bunga-bunga]

You may argue that drug users should not be incarcerated or that there's bias in finding such users, but this unfortunately happens in most of the world and in China.

You or your children can end up in the camps for praying in Xinjiang, it's not exactly the same thing.

[xcdzvyn]

This is totally ridiculous. China is literally committing genocide. They are kidnapping innocent people and harvesting their organs.

[Animatronio]

What is ridiculous is that China is vigurously criticised in every news outlet in the West on every occasion, while the French gov't gets away with almost everything. Can you explain that?

[bunga-bunga]

They’re literally protesting right now in the streets in France, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

No country is a saint, but you should stop with the whataboutism.

[imjonse]

That is true, luckily. OTOH, to be fair the west has been good at "offshoring" its abuses for quite a few centuries.

[noisy_boy]

So your argument is: So what if I slapped Bob, look what Jim is doing?

[freedomben]

Indeed, we seem to be in the age of binary thinking. Maybe it's always been this way and I am mostly now noticing, but it is quite maddening.

[pessimizer]

Binary thinking is when you refuse to complain about other people doing the same thing that you are currently doing.

[pessimizer]

No, the argument is that if you slapped Bob, why are you always talking about Jim?

[lost_tourist]

Both are bad, the French aren't currently forcibly sterilizing, enslaving, and genociding a culture like the Chinese are doing with Uyghers, however. So there are different levels of bad.

[dredmorbius]

Not since the 1960s, at any rate.

(The legacy of colonialism in many larger European countries is ... pretty dark. France, Belgium, UK, Germany, Spain, Portugal, ...)

[Animatronio]

You are right, what's a little surveillance between friends. It's not like they're acting like the Chinese at all.