Let’s Remember the Holocaust by Stopping a New One as it Happens

Today we mark one of the most solemn occasions in man’s checkered history, a low point that scars our memory and sears the human conscience: the Nazi Holocaust. Aimed first at Jews, then at other ethnic groups, the handicapped, and others whom an evil, materialistic ideology scapegoated, this genocide stands out as specially memorable.

First because of the central role of the Jews in the cultural and religious history of the world, and second because this mass murder wasn’t committed in some obscure, underdeveloped land which didn’t keep records. The most literate society in human history organized it and pursued it, and kept meticulous records of the hair, and dental gold, and shoes produced as by-products.

Ever Again?

But we are in danger of rendering the Holocaust almost meaningless, indeed of making a mockery of our noble promise, “Never Again.” Because a mass genocide is happening again, right before our eyes. It’s being perpetrated by a highly industrialized, bureaucratic regime with a materialistic worldview. The subjugation and slaughter once more are aimed at a scapegoated religious and ethnic group.

Once more, non-violent and apolitical civilians are being worked as slaves in camps, to the profit of corrupt, inhuman companies allied to a regime. Again, products flow from the factories, and corpses from the camps. Today as in the 1940s, the innocent are subject to cruel medical abuse by doctors without consciences, allegedly for “the greater good.”

Uyghurs Are the New Jews

Have you guessed yet what we’re talking about? You probably have. Because unlike the Nazi Holocaust which was mostly hidden from view by the fog of war, the genocide of Uyghurs at the hands of Communist China is widely documented. It’s not some filthy secret, which even the Nazis wouldn’t mention in public.

Instead, news stories appear all the time — though many media won’t print them — revealing that China’s government has imprisoned millions of people for their ethnicity and religion. That it uses them as slave labor in factories that make parts for Apple and Nike.

Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.

Would Americans have bought Volkswagens if they were made by Dachau prisoners in 1940? Then why do we patronize these ruthless companies today? Because they posture about “racial justice” in America? What the Uyghurs oppressed by China would give to have such companies speak up for them …

Kidneys and Livers Cut Out of Prisoners of Conscience

Forbes magazine even showed that China makes millions each year stealing organs from the bodies of prisoners, and selling them on the black market. Yet Pope Francis’ right hand man, Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, appeared at a conference of China’s official organ thieves to flatter that regime, and offer it cover for its crimes.

It’s easy and satisfying to bash our ancestors for not abolishing slavery sooner, or ending segregation in a timelier manner. Progressives who teach history in school frequently bash America for not doing more to stop the Holocaust, for instance by bombing the tracks that led to the concentration camps. Each of those questions is interesting in itself, and we’d have the right to ask it. But only if we were actively working to stop slavery, genocide, ethnic cleansing and organ theft from happening in our time — with the full complicity of Western corporations, and the silence of Western governments.

But that takes too much effort. It might require some sacrifice. It would likely get you targeted by one of China’s many well-funded, willing accomplices, who work to “cancel” and silence critics of that regime and its ongoing genocide.

The New National Socialism

The Chinese regime has gone beyond Marxism, and now embraces a racialist national socialism no more humane than prevailed in Germany. The Chinese government locks down entire cities, such as Shanghai, in pursuit of crude and politicized “zero COVID” goals. When starving and desperate civilians leap from their balconies, the Party sends drones to buzz the high-rises and blast them with propaganda. What kind of government welds sick people in their homes to die? The kind that perpetuates genocides.

We warned against the rising “ideologies of evil” in our 2014 book, The Race to Save Our Century. In the years since it appeared, we’ve become ever more alarmed that the West today is ready to repeat its catastrophic errors of the past.

China is currently arming itself faster than Nazi Germany did in the 1930s. It’s preparing for foreign adventures that threaten neighboring countries. It’s liquidating ethnic and religious groups, and working them as slaves. It’s stealing their organs and selling them — albeit not as lampshades, but illicit kidneys and livers for wealthy medical patients.

Who’s Next in the Crosshairs?

How much more needs to happen before people see the ominous parallels between this regime and Hitler’s? What will it mean if China gets away with its savage assault on the Uyghurs? That’s a question it’s actually possible to answer.

We know from Hitler’s own words that his assault on the Jews was inspired by the success of the Turkish assault on Christian minorities during and after the First World War. He infamously quipped to his associates, “Who remembers the Armenians?”

Will the authors of the next genocide after this one sneer, “Who remembers the Uyghurs?”

Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, author, activist and human rights worker. Subscribe to his podcast, The Jason Jones Show.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. Together, Jones and Zmirak wrote The Race to Save Our Century, and “God, Guns, and the Government.”