If this thing happened, I'd turn into a Meme
In 2018 an American couple from Washington D.C. was murdered by ISIS in Tajikistan during an intercontinental bike journey.
The incident quickly turned into a right-wing meme about the naivety of cosmopolitan liberals. This occurred after several outlets portrayed the couple's journey as some kind of flower power odyssey seeking to prove humans aren't really evil.
In this week's episode of the podcast, I made an offhanded remark about how I should travel to Xinjiang, China to see how Chinese Uyghurs are really treated.
If the opportunity were available and my safety and security could be guaranteed to a reasonable degree of certainty, this is something I really would do.
However, the above hypothetical led to the amusing thought. I imagined the following headline:
UYGHUR GENOCIDE SKEPTIC DETAINED IN CHINESE PRISON CAMP
Of course, there is a lesson to be conveyed here.
Being skeptical of CIA narratives about the US' enemies does not mean being naïve about the reality of the world. It just means, as Daniel McAdams and Lew Rockwell say, "don't do the CIA's work for them."
In this forthcoming episode of the podcast, I welcomed Samuel Urban on the show to help us decode what is perhaps the area of the world that is most foreign to the American people: the Far East.
Samuel is the host of the Illegitimate Scholar Podcast. He is a cultural anthropologist and investor.
If you want to hear us joke about me being detained in a Chinese prison, Supporting Members are watching this episode right now. Join them through the link below for $5/month or $55/year.