"At Social Capital, our mission is to advance humanity by solving the world's hardest problems. We believe that empowering entrepreneurs who seek to improve the lives of the people around them is the best way to create more opportunity globally."
--Social Capital mission statement
Winston Churchill once said that men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
A West Coast sports guy and social media exec--who, we shouldn't have to admit, we've never heard of before--made a splash this week when he told the truth to some podcast. The traditional media got wind of his comments. And he's currently being raked over the proverbial (and only) figurative coals.
His name is Chamath Palihapitiya, and he's an owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA, along with being one of the early Facebook kids and the founder of something called Social Capital. But let's say his most public role is with the NBA, because of course it is.
It's the National Basketball Association, and not only that, it's the Golden State Warriors, which are not your father's Golden State Warriors. They've been good lately. They've got star power lately. They've got championships lately.
The NBA is big on mainland China. The NBA likes to play games on mainland China. The NBA likes to make money with mainland China.
The NBA doesn't like for its people to criticize mainland China. And, as we've all seen, mainland China may be the most thin-skinned major country the world has seen in some time.
The ChiComs have many PR problems these days, what with the Olympics coming to town, and the covid-19 bug that may have started in a lab over there, and a government that keeps flying planes over Taiwan to scare the world.
But then, there are all those Uyghurs who have been rounded up in the Xinjiang Province and put in concentration camps. Islam is a big part of the Uyghur identity, and since nothing can be bigger than The Party, the Uyghurs must be punished with forced sterilizations, slave labor, torture and worse. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused the Red Chinese of crimes against humanity.
Beijing denies all, and says its day camps are for "re-education." (Where has the world heard that before?) And not only is it doing nothing wrong, it's only doing it because of militants in the region. So 12 million mostly Muslim fellow countrymen must suffer.
And the NBA owner?
"Nobody cares about what's happening to the Uyghurs, okay," Mr. Palihapitiya said. "You bring it up because you care and I think it's nice that you care. The rest of us don't care. I'm just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line."
Well.
He went on to list other items that he does care about, including empty shelves in the grocery stores here, climate change, and the real problem with China if it attacks the free Chinese on Taiwan. But as for the Uyghurs, nobody cares.
If the front pages in Western newspapers tell the story, he's mostly right. If the nightly news and cable TV news broadcasts are indicative of what Americans are interested in, he's mostly right. See all the countries sending athletes to China for the Olympics. Some are keeping diplomats home, but that only means that Mr. Palihapitiya is mostly right.
It's a crying shame--sometimes a wailing, screaming, tortured shame--but he seems to be mostly right. Although not completely. Some Americans will bear witness to these crimes. We have our souls to think about.
By the time you read this, Mr. Palihapitiya might have issued one of those apologies/explanations/walk-backs. He is certainly learning what it's like to be dragged over those figurative coals today. Unfortunately for many under the thumb of the ChiComs, they may be facing coals that are all too real.