The Donald Trump administration is increasingly getting critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the recent salvo, Ambassador Sam Brownback, the State Department’s Special Representative for International Religious Freedom, has questioned the very legitimacy of the CCP. The criticism, as we shall see, is bang on.
“The Chinese Communist Party is saying they have a legitimate system for the rest of the world to emulate. And we are saying they do not,” Brownback told the online magazine, <em>Washington Examiner</em>.
He and other American officials like US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are correct because the party the CCP is closest to is German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), translated into English as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party. There are many things common between the Nazis and Chinese Communist Party thugs, but arguably the most prominent is the complete disdain for the people who unfortunate enough to be disliked by them. It was lesser races, especially Jews, in the case of Nazis; in China any ethnicity other than Han, be it Uyghur or Tibetan, is at the receiving end.
And it’s not just disdain; it is total dehumanization of the inferior (in their reckoning) ethnicities—Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Uyghurs, Tibetans, <em>et al</em>. Timothy W. Ryback, director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation at EUROCLIO, in The Hague, wrote on November 8, 1993, in New Yorker (<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/11/15/evidence-of-evil">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/11/15/evidence-of-evil</a>):
“The Nazis did not just murder millions of men, women, and children but literally ‘harvested’ their remains to drive Germany’s industrial machine. In the early nineteen-forties, a brisk trade emerged between German death camps, such as Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka, and German felt and textile manufacturers who used the versatile fibre in the production of thread, rope, cloth, carpets, mattress stuffing, lining stiffeners for uniforms, socks for submarine crews, and felt insulators for the boots of railroad workers.”
It was the most egregious objectification of human beings: the Nazis didn’t just slaughter millions of people; they also robbed them of their humanity by profiting from the personal and even bodily remains of their victims.
The CCP comes closest to the Nazis. Associated Press reported on July 2, “Federal authorities in New York on Wednesday seized a shipment of weaves and other beauty accessories suspected to be made out of human hair taken from people locked inside a Chinese internment camp. US Customs and Border Protection officials told The Associated Press that 13 tons (11.8 metric tonnes) of hair products worth an estimated $800,000 were in the shipment.”
Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner of CBP’s Office of Trade, was quoted as saying, “The production of these goods constitutes a very serious human rights violation, and the detention order is intended to send a clear and direct message to all entities seeking to do business with the United States that illicit and inhumane practices will not be tolerated in US supply chains.” The CCP targets are reportedly Uyghurs (<a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16306/china-genocide-xinjiang">https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16306/china-genocide-xinjiang</a>).
The Uyghurs, like the Tibetans, don’t fit into the scheme of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ So what does Beijing do? Well, the only thing it knows: it unleashes a reign of terror against the erring ethnic groups—murdering their leaders, throwing dissenters behind bars, and terrorizing the entire community employing various means. For the CCP, Uyghurs are less than human; they are certainly not citizens, not even subjects; they are objects; and objects can be used for the benefit of the communist state. And that includes their hair..
