Yes! The Fourth Reich: the PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. And one of its elite enablers: NIKE.

Setting this up, an acquaintance of many years asked me why in my book, Pimps Whores And Patrons Of Virtue I wrote about NIKE with loathing, and without explanation. He fancies himself as a genuine intellectual and uber informed. On reflection, his claims are absurd and pathetic, respectively.

Allowing myself the conceit of truth: I am not a racist, do not feel nor even casually harbor thoughts of white privilege, multi-cultural from birth, devoid of racial, ethnic, religious and gender biases.¹ Interesting inasmuch as a young child and man, I learned much about religious, and ethnic hatred and persecution. Literally on my own skin. Nothing more instructional that literally bleeding for what/who one is.

For the last too-many years, the PRC has gone about with genuine method and purpose to enslave, rob of all humanity, and I fear contemplate eventually exterminating its minorities. Not much of a stretch for China. In fact, Mao Zedong may be rolling over in his grave having succeeded in murdering only 49 million people. Perhaps as many as 69 million people. That was in just a few years, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, with the world entirely non-plussed. Wonder if he was challenged by Stalin’s accomplishment. Recent researchers suggest that Uncle Joe—the power-mad, dipsomaniac uncle—caused the murder of possibly 48 million people, with the world entirely non-plussed.

In any and all ways, both of those examples of cataclysmic events are kinda incomprehensible. Imagine some dictatorship murdering the entire population of California. Noteworthy that there are 218 countries in the world with populations of 45 million or less.² Hmm.

Some potential for world domination, ain’t it?

In the just recent five years, China built the Xinjiang “internment camps”, some 380 (!!) of them. Those are in the Northwestern part of China. By most accounts, those have or are currently “housing” upwards of 1.8 million (1.8 million !!) people. Gordon Chang, a really smart and very quotable guy, likely the pre-eminent authority on all things China, asserts that number might be 3.3 million. Those are mostly Uyghurs, and some Kazakhs and Turks. In China terms: only 3.3 million.

Mostly Muslims. And remarkably, some Buddhists! But for the wholesale suppression of religion in China, Buddhism might be the “national” religion in China. Or … would that be Confucianism? Not likely, since “in modern times” all things-Confucius have by and large devolved into more fortune-cookies’ content and glib-speak than anything else.

Of course, in the long-held tradition of Mao’s China, those people are there to be “re-educated”, part of the war on terror the CCP is waging. And the modern version of that: torture, systematic raping of the women, starvation, disease AND slave labor. In the stated goals of the CCP, re-educating them to re-introduce them to productive members of the enlightened Chinese population.

Imagine the threat to China posed by those few million starving, diseased, stripped of everything but their natural instinct to survive, souls.

Getting to the Fourth Reich part… Just a not-so-minor observation: there must be sound reasons why there are crematoria built adjacent to those camps. Or so cognoscenti on matters China report.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, I wonder?

Let us be clear: The German Holocaust will for eternity remain the shining and grotesque display of the clearly limitless cruelty of people to people. Yet, horrifyingly a potential roadmap of others.

I am wondering at what point all those Uyghurs will achieve a Chinese Social Score so low as to compel their extermination.

[Not entirely parenthetic to this, I am aware that at this writing, you, me, everybody in the U.S. is also building a robust “social score”. Assuming you use your mobile, log on anywhere online, ring your doorbell, start and drive your car, buy bathroom tissue, visit any store, talk to your doctor, watch your smart TV … you get it. Best be aware lest you get summarily canceled.]

I am focusing on those in camps in Shandong Province, in Northeaster China.

NIKE has been making shoes in their big factories there. Yes. Until recently, they made a yeoman’s effort to camouflage that through down-line relationships through South Korean partnerships. Shameless balderdash. Much of the workforce is asserted to be Uyghurs, transported from the camps in Eastern China. Ethnic slave labor. And entirely dispensable quasi-people.

The same NIKE that lectures me on white racism, ethnic suppression, equity, inclusion and all that. At least they have the decency, no, the arrogance, no, the clear focus to cater to their clearly displayed marketing goals.

I opine that intellectually and morally bankrupt people and businesses do not need my little dollars. The sad truth is behemoths like NIKE can just [successfully] cater to limited markets in the U.S. and massive markets like China.

To my now former-acquaintance: wake the bloody hell up.

¹ In the interest of full disclosure, I do have some gender bias. I profess a healthy affinity for quality women.

² There is persistent argument as to how many countries and territories there are in the world. Some are claimed but not widely accepted. And then many territories change names, borders and sovereignty as frequently as washing machine cycles.