It's an argument not to think you're doing good work by repeating and defending narratives about other countries that are reported or possibly invented to hypocritically justify belligerence, an argument that I think is all the more important when much of the relevant information is on the other side of a language barrier and filtered through a media ecosystem which has not been entirely honest about targets of US wrath.
If you believe that survivor testimony is fabricated by the US to justify sanctions and war, just say so.
Nothing else-- a language barrier, a possibility that it could theoretically be used by the US State Dept-- is justification for stifling testimony or keeping quiet on atrocity.
You're presuming the opposite of the rationale because you don't know whether it is true or false, but since your conclusion, that they are doing a genocide, is most consistent with "there is no rationale other than race/religion", you've chosen to decide that is the truth. So you've ended up using your conclusion as a premise in your argument for the conclusion. Or perhaps it would be slightly more accurate to say that you've used your conclusion (they're doing a genocide) as a premise for another conclusion (there is no rationale behind who is incarcerated other than race and religion) which you then use as a premise for your conclusion that they are doing a genocide.
OK. So. We know what they have in common (the ethnic group & religion). We aren't aware of any other commonality. But you believe it would be more reasonable to
assume that all prisoners are guilty of watching ISIS videos or what-have-you?
I'm not about to make defensive assumptions on behalf of people running concentration camps. I'll work with what we actually know.
Right, and what that is not is evidence about the composition of the groups interned in the camps or the method used for deciding who is imprisoned and who isn't.
You said, above, that my "evaluation of the camps justifies my perception of the overall pattern". The accusation of
cyclical logic requires the two notions to be based solely on one another. It's perfectly relevant, then, to point out that my "perception of the overall pattern"-- a pattern of ethnic repression directed at Uighurs-- is borne out by a lot of other evidence as well.
You cannot criticise me for relying solely on the camps to justify the pattern, and then
simultaneously dismiss anything that's unrelated to the camps.
