Of all the propaganda blitz about Uighurs the thing that's jumped out to me is how much the extent to which the specific label of "genocide" was effectively used to divide people. In the real world it's a fringe position, even from Western critics of China, to call anything the government has done in Xinjiang a genocide. That's why they had to bust out the term "cultural genocide." But in a lot of radlib spaces there's people who have run over themselves actively looking for the most extreme argument they can make, which has them making up these fantasies of the central government of China making concentration camps and killing floors in Xinjiang. Completely different from what the actual propaganda narrative is (which is itself exaggerating a deradicalization program to make it sound like North American Residential Schools).

But because the most extreme anti-China users wield the term "genocide" they can use it against anyone who actually knows any version of the facts, because you can be labelled a genocide denier as long as you don't believe the fantasy version where there's death camps in Xinjiang. It's also perfect for enforcing group discipline because it's really easy to justify the purity test on the basis that denying any genocide makes you as bad as someone like David Icke. Without that wrinkle, I figure most reasonable people would hear the extre anti-"tankie" people and not really care too much, especially if they aren't familiar with the evidence they cite. But because they're told that it makes them a bad person if they deny the genocide, which is a big and scary word, they just go along with the consensus. Honestly, I can't fault the average lib who thinks that way, the ones I fault are the ones who go out of their way to find reasons to project evil onto China.