Even hypocritical criticisms exchanged by superpowers can do good. Over the last century, history shows that they have.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day that should inspire reflection on the importance of universal human rights, billionaire investor and part-owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors Chamath Palihapitiya went viral with his own eyebrow-raising take on the subject.
On his podcast, Palihapitiya leapt with both feet into a debate about corporate responses to human rights violations in countries where they do business, specifically about China, where human rights advocates have documented atrocities against Uyghurs, a minority ethnic group in the Xinjiang region.
Palihapitiya said he did not care about the Uyghurs’ predicament — and that this sentiment was broadly shared by elites who were simply unwilling to be as bold as him and just say it. “Let’s be honest, nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, OK?” he told his visibly surprised co-host, Jason Calacanis, on their podcast over the weekend.
Palihapitiya proudly expressed his indifference at reports of rape and forced sterilization of Uyghur women. He dismissed Calacanis’s concern as moral “virtue signaling.”
“You bring it up because you really care, and I think that’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care,” Palihapitiya said. “I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, it is below my line.”
To defend his posture of uncaring, Palihapitiya turned his sights on Western countries’ own track record of human rights abuses, including wars of aggression and torture at domestic prisons. Concerns about foreign atrocities, like the furor over China and the Uyghurs, he said, have at times even served as a cover for military interventionist policies that have done even more harm.
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