The Uighurs

Max Blumenthal alienated former supporters in 2015 when he transformed overnight from Assad critic to ardent admirer, but has been adept at avoiding serious career consequences from his startling reversal.¹

When one thinks of Ben Norton, however, “adept” is generally not the word that springs to mind. His entire career has been a long series of wild-tirades which can usually be refuted by work he did only a few months or years before — his positions on China are no exception.²

In 2017, reports began to leak out that China was detaining hundreds of thousands of Muslim minority Uighurs in its Western Xinjiang province. China had been forcing the general Uighur population to submit to invasive surveillance measures since the early 2000’s, when China started building extractive mineral projects in the region. Xinjiang boasts impressive reserves of zinc, lead, copper, gold and petroleum.

The stories were troubling, China was detaining Uighur Muslims in an effort to indoctrinate them culturally. Taken from their families against their will, they were kept in prison-like compounds, prohibited from practicing their religion and forced to speak only Mandarin as they underwent “integration” procedures that some detainees described as “torturous” and “brainwashing.”

Ben Norton, back when he thought oppressing Muslims was wrong (screenshot of a since deleted tweet)

China denied the claims at the time, but a steady stream of disturbing interviews with Uighers who had been imprisoned in the internment camps began to emerge, as well as on-the-ground reports from Xinjiang itself. The truth, it seemed, was finding its way into the daylight.

Before these reports, in 2014 and 2015, Norton had been decrying CCP Uigher oppression as “Colonization” (before Grayzone completely reversed its editorial positions, deferring instead to Russian network RT’s approved narratives). He has since deleted that commentary

A few years later in 2018, Norton penned an article parroting CCP in which he categorically denied the existence of Uigher camps. The official narrative, however, would evolve over the next year during an ever-changing series of statements by the Chinese government itself. CCP admitted the camps existed, but only for terrorists, later claiming that the camps were re-education and job-training centers to help the Uighurs integrate into Chinese society. Most recently, in December in 2019, CCP announced that the camps had been closed.

Uighur activists deny all of these statements, claiming the camps are a systematic program to erase their culture and the oppression very much continues.

This head-spinning series of narrative developments left Norton a bit….exposed.³

This inconsistency might be less of an issue were it not a disturbingly common trend in Grayzone reporting. People evolve on issues over time and stubborn commitment to ideological positions in the face of new evidence should be avoided.

A claim by Norton in an article for Grayzone denying the existence of Uigher camps. That thesis would soon be debunked not only by dozens of media reports, but by the Chinese government itself. (screenshot)

Norton’s constant flip-flops however seem to just a bit too convenient. His position depends more on who he is working to promote rather than truth-seeking. To borrow a cliche, it’s a feature not a bug of the services he offers.

Blumenthal penned a second article on the subject admitting that the internment camps existed, but arguing that they are a positive program. Echoing CCP again, he argued that media had inflated the numbers of detainees. He “proved” this by lying about the origin of the latest report, a leak of internal documents from CCP itself, by claiming the information came from the “U.S backed radical right” and an evangelist academic.

Doing the same thing he had done in Nicaragua and Venezuela the year before, Ben types up 1500 words calling protesters “CIA” and “fascists” and before calling it a day and heading to a bar in Brooklyn.

Instead of presenting a clear argument against the leaked information, he spends nearly the entirety of the article personally attacking an academic and activist for a book he wrote ten years before.

But petty inconsistencies would not deter Norton, Blumenthal and their new RT correspondent Dan Cohen, from making a fearless pro-government charge against the latest target.

The Grayzone were about to become self-declared China experts, and they would do so from thousands of miles away.

Edit: An hour after this article was published a second set of CCP leaks were released to the public. You can read the report here. They do not reflect well on Grayzone’s reporting.