By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, January
18, 2022
You’re going to hear a lot of hot takes
about Chamath Palihapitiya and his comments about the Uyghurs in China this
week. Amid the resulting firestorm, Palihapitiya issued a brief
statement declaring he recognizes he “came
across as lacking empathy . . . My belief is that human rights matter, whether
in China, or the United States, or elsewhere. Full stop.”
No, that isn’t his belief. This is
damage-control public relations. He specifically said in this conversation that
if he said he cared, he was lying. He said the “hard truth” is that nobody
cares — and what a statement like that means is that Chamath Palihapitiya
cannot conceive of anyone else genuinely caring about China’s human-rights
record. He thinks everyone else is virtue-signaling, too, and that he’s the
only one brave enough to say that China’s ongoing effort to exterminate an
entire ethnic group doesn’t really matter that much.
Let’s start with Palihapitiya’s remarks,
full and in context, made on his
own podcast, All-In, on January 15:
Palihapitiya:
Nobody cares about it. Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,
okay? You bring it up because you really care and i think–
Co-host
Jason Calacani: What do you mean, nobody cares?
Palihapitiya:
The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard–
Calacani:
You’re saying, you variously don’t care?
Palihapitiya:
I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth, okay? Of all the things that I care
about, yes, it is below my line, okay? Of all the things that I care about, it
is below my line.
Calacani:
Disappointing.
Co-host
David Sacks: I think, people, if you explain to them what’s happening to the
Uyghurs in China, they care, but it’s not top of mind for them. That’s not
what’s on people’s minds right now, as they go to their grocery store and the
shelves are empty–
Palihapitiya:
Sure, that I care about. Yeah, I care about the fact that our
economy could turn on a dime if China invades Taiwan, I care about that. I care
about climate change. You know, I care about a bunch. I care about America’s
crippling, and, you know, decrepit health-care infrastructure. But if you’re
asking me, do I care about a segment of a class of people in another country?
Not until we can take care of ourselves, will I prioritize them over us.
Notice this dodge, the notion that it is a
binary choice — that caring about human-rights abuses abroad means we cannot
care about human rights at home.
Did Americans who objected to Apartheid in
South Africa in the 1980s not care about injustices in the United States? Do
the people who denounce the Taliban not care about inequality or injustice here
in the U.S.? Do the people who call out Vladimir Putin’s human-rights abuses
not care about racism or poverty within our country?
Why is it that discussions of China’s
human-rights abuses tend to bring out the “clean up our own house first”
rhetoric from wealthy businessmen?
The conversation continues:
Palihapitiya:
And I think a lot of people believe that, and I’m sorry if that’s a hard truth
to hear, but every time I say that I care about the Uyghurs, I’m really just
lying if I don’t really care. And so, I’d rather not lie to you and tell you
the truth — it’s not a priority for me.
Calacani:
And my response to that is I think it’s a sad state of affairs, when human
rights as a concept globally, you know, falls beneath tactical and strategic
issues that we have to have.
Palihapitiya:
That’s another luxury belief! That’s another luxury belief!
Calacani:
I don’t believe believing in the human declaration of human rights that Eleanor
Roosevelt is—
Palihapitiya:
It’s a luxury belief!
Calacani:
I don’t think it’s a luxury belief to believe that all humans should have a
basic set of human rights.
Palihapitiya:
I think it’s a luxury belief, and the reason I think it’s a luxury belief is we
don’t do enough domestically to actually express that view in real tangible
ways. So, until we actually clean up our own house, the idea that we step
outside of our borders with, you know, with us sort of like, morally
virtue-signaling about somebody else’s human-rights track record, is
deplorable.
Notice the escalation. It’s no longer
merely something Palihapitiya doesn’t care about; he finds U.S. denunciation of
China’s human-rights record — or any other country’s human-rights record! —
“deplorable.” (That is a fascinating word to choose, considering recent
history.) Palihapitiya is much angrier with the people calling out China’s
abuses of the Uyghurs than he is with China for actually abusing the Uyghurs:
Calacani:
Far from deplorable.
Palihapitiya:
Look at the number of black and brown men that are incarcerated for absolutely
ridiculous crimes. I don’t know if you saw this past week, but there was a
person that was released from jail because he couldn’t even be protected in
jail, because in some of these cells they run these fight clubs inside of
Rikers Island that are basically tacitly endorsed by the corrections officers
that don’t do anything — Hold on, Jason! So, if you want to talk about the
human rights of people, I think we have a responsibility to take care of our
own backyard first. First. And then we can go and basically morally tell other
people how they should be running their own countries.
In an
unusual decision last month, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ordered the
release of one of the men who had been forced to participate in the “fight
night” because, she said, the Department of Correction had failed to protect
him. The department’s inability to manage the jail system as the man awaited
trial on robbery charges, Justice April Newbauer said, “was tantamount to
deliberate indifference.”
The ruling
served as an extraordinary rebuke of the Correction Department’s leadership,
underscoring the dangers faced by detainees and guards alike in a jail system
in which slashings and
stabbings have surged, and some
detainees have been left to fend for themselves. It also could offer a
blueprint for others seeking pretrial release amid the disorder that has
gripped Rikers Island since the pandemic began in 2020.
The conditions inside Riker’s Island are
genuinely and indisputably abominable and unworthy of anything calling itself a
“justice system.” But apparently, in Palihapitiya’s mind, conditions inside
Riker’s Island means that the U.S. cannot denounce concentration camps in China
— or, presumably, any human-rights abuses anywhere else in the world. And later
in the conversation, Palihapitiya scoffs, “Are you saying the situation with
the Uyghurs is the same as the Holocaust?”
Gathering millions of people into work
camps and punishing them with “rape, enforced sterilization, torture,
imprisonment, persecution, deportation and enforced disappearance” in an effort
to wipe them out . . . doesn’t sound
all that far from the Holocaust:
China’s
government has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the
Uyghur people, a public tribunal set up by a prominent British human rights
lawyer concluded Thursday.
Forced
birth control and sterilization policies targeting Uyghurs in China’s far
western Xinjiang Province were intended to reduce the group’s population, the
tribunal’s chairman, Sir Geoffrey Nice, said after the Uyghur Tribunal, a group
of nine lawyers, academics and business people released a 63-page
tribunal judgment.
Palihapitiya’s
net worth is estimated at about $1.2 billion. Palihapitiya is a sponsor and investor in half a dozen SPACs — special
purpose acquisition companies — a kind of investment vehicle that allows
private companies to go public with less scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission. Palihapitiya’s SPACs have merged with Virgin Galactic and
Clover Health.
If Palihapitiya publicly said, “Yes, I
care about the Uyghurs and what China is doing to them is deplorable,” could
those statements damage his businesses and his investments? Absolutely. The
Chinese government could well start hindering any business associated with
Palihapitiya.
But . . . just how much damage would
taking that stand do? Next year, instead of having $1.2 billion, would his net
worth be “only” a billion? “Only” $800 million?
With a net worth of $1.2 billion,
Palihapitiya is never going to be in a position where he’s going to wonder how
he’s going to pay his rent or mortgage, or how he’s going to put food on the
table. It would require a spectacularly bad turn of events for Palihapitiya to
ever end up in poverty. He is a 45-year-old man who is going to live, at
minimum, comfortably for the rest of his days, if not in the lap of luxury.
If a guy like Chamath Palihapitiya can’t
afford the consequences of standing up for what’s right, who can?
Obviously Palihapitiya can afford
the consequences of standing up for what’s right. He just chooses not to,
instead choosing to call standing up to genocide “deplorable.”
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