Vice, which is one of the outlets that's been known to promote content under the direct guidance of the U.S. government in recent years, is here engaging in a subtle ploy to associate China's response to the virus with "authoritarianism." China's "draconian restrictive lockdown," which is another way to say "quarantine," was entirely necessary and in line with how most other governments have handled the virus.
Vice's phrasing is meant to reinforce the narratives that China had failed to respond to the virus quick enough, and that the actions it took against the virus were oppressive and sinister. Vice's underlying message, which is that those quarantined by China's government were put in an unusually miserable and repressive state compared to the other quarantined populations around the world, is absurd.
Thanks to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: China's people have had access to universal healthcare during this crisis. They've been in a country that's virtually eradicated poverty. They've been able to contact police officers who go shopping for families in need of assistance during the quarantine.
This contrasts capitalist countries like the United States: where the gutted and highly privatized healthcare system is being overwhelmed, the people who've lost their jobs during the quarantine are already largely in financial hardship due to neoliberalism, and the police have continued to act as a terrorizing force which frequently shoots innocent people.
Another claim the Vice article makes is that "even the slightest reference to coronavirus or the government's response was erased" as a result of China's censorship. This is also misleading. Most of what the censors deleted was people referring to the military games in regards to the virus, likely as a measure for keeping the public from jumping to conclusions too early about America's potential role in the crisis. They did not go after posts that referenced the severity of the crisis, but rather material that could be harmful to international relations.
This week, the U.S. propaganda machine expanded upon these claims by alleging that China lied about the extent of the virus. Unsurprisingly, the intelligence agents who are cited as sources for this revelation are anonymous. And the Bloomberg reporters who helped break this story didn't even see the report behind it, instead having the details outlined to them by these mysterious officials. There was no evidence to back up their claims; all they did was craft another headline that reflects the other baseless insinuations from imperialist propagandists.
These charges and mischaracterizations distract from the enormously effective efforts of the CPC in combating the virus. Because of the party's rapid construction of medical centers and sustained widespread quarantine, the disease has recently been close to obliterated within the country. China has also provided medical resources to numerous countries, a humanitarian act which the mentioned Vice article somehow tries to spin as a bad thing.
The CPC responded as best as was possible for it to, and keeping a spreading pandemic within a country's border is essentially beyond the powers of any state. So China can't be accused of letting the virus spread throughout an unnecessary amount of its people (as the U.S. government can certainly be accused of). Nor can China reasonably be accused of "letting" the virus spread globally.
Using McCarthyism and censorship to shut down those who challenge the warmongering claims
Pandemics create a scary kind of political psychology. Similarly to the mass fears of terrorism throughout the last two decades, when people feel threatened by a disease they become hostile towards those who step out of the defined parameters for keeping society safe. While those urging people to disregard all of the Covid-19 safety advice are engaging in dangerous misinformation, this fringe and extreme position is being conflated with voicing dissenting views about where the virus came from and which country is responsible.
Headlines about pro-China Covid-19 content being "foreign disinformation" are promoting the perception that it's wrong to ask the questions I've posed throughout this article, or to point out the falsehoods of Western reporting on China's handling of the virus. It's making dialogue about the issue harder to have, and it's giving leverage to the oligarchic censorship engines within the U.S./NATO empire.
Facebook has been deleting posts about the virus to a far more thorough extent than has been the case for China's censors. At the same time, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the BBC, and other entities have joined in on a project called the Trusted News Initiative. TNI partner Noel Curran has said about the project's goal that "There is a tide of misinformation and bad information, driven mainly through online social platforms, which is threatening to undermine public trust and cause further anxiety for people. This initiative underlines the role of public service media in tackling misinformation head-on and delivering accurate content that audiences can safely rely on."
It's an extension of the McCarthyism, censorship, and stigmatization of supposed "fake news" that's dominated Western politics in recent years. Media hysteria about "Russian interference" after the 2016 election facilitated an unprecedented series of censorship measures from corporations and governments, rationalized by a desire to protect trust in institutions. Amid the last decade's growing backlash to neoliberalism, the ruling class has been waging a war on dissenting journalism and socialist politics. Now is another opportunity to silence and shame those who challenge imperialist and capitalist narratives.
An example of the emerging hostile atmosphere towards dissent can be found in a recent graphic from Counter Hate UK, which advises people to respond to "Coronavirus misinformation" with the following measures: "Report misinformation to platforms," "[don't] reply, share, or quote misinformation," and "spread official advice" to "drown out fake news."
This is the psychological weapon that the U.S./NATO empire is using to keep itself on the path of war escalations and internal repression: instilling people with the fear that if they challenge anything the centers of power tell them about the virus, they'll endanger society. But we need critical thinking and open dissent more than ever during this time. The capitalist ruling class is neglecting the needs of the masses while using the crisis to exacerbate inequality, and we poor and working people need to fight back. We must challenge the narratives which enable the imperialist war campaigns against China and other countries, and we must work to intensify the class struggle.
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