Leer en Español
Earlier this week, Silicon Valley billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya sparked fury on the Twittersphere by stating “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs […] of all the things that I care about, it is below my line.”
Palihapitiya’s words and immense lack of empathy don’t show, as some have suggested, how indifferent “the 1%” is to human misery. Rather, the venture capitalist, who also happens to be a major Democratic donor, depicts with painful degree of precision one of the main problems with tech titans and numerous far-left activists: underestimating China as a real, tangible threat.
We get it, guys: most of your production plants are not just in China, they’re precisely in Xinjiang (even you, Elon, opened a showroom there, and I’ve fought back to back alongside your side in most of your battles). But when “selfless” activists defend Palihapitiya’s indisputable cruelty just because he has called for “more women in tech” and made vague statements about America’s flaws, they feed and fatten the one power that can come for everything they hold—or should hold—dear, such as our basic freedoms. Because concentration camps, such as the ones Uyghurs are thrown in, are a huge red flag when it comes to human rights violations.
Here at El American, we disagree on many things. These disagreements might sometimes even be noticed in our newsletters, actually, in which editors, as myself, “go rogue” and speak from our personal points of view. However, and let me be clear on this one: the Uyghur genocide is not below our line. At El American, we care.
Pris Guinovart is a writer, editor and teacher. In 2014, she published her fiction book «The head of God» (Rumbo, Montevideo). She speaks six languages. Columnist since the age of 19, she has written for media in Latin America and the United States // Pris Guinovart es escritora, editora y docente. En 2014, publicó su libro de ficciones «La cabeza de Dios» (Rumbo, Montevideo). Habla seis idiomas. Columnista desde los 19 años, ha escrito para medios de America Latina y Estados Unidos