This is purely a rant because I don’t want to end up writing an effort post about this topic.
Every year, we see Westerners posting about the “Tiananmen Square Massacre” across social media. Their devotion to “fighting the oppressive Chinese government” is like fucking clockwork. It’s so reliable that if you wanted to, you can prepare posts and comments to counter their narratives months before each June 4th. The western narrative has been debunked thoroughly even by Western sources.
But the point of this post isn’t to complain about the twisting of events, but the glaring contradiction that is their relative (or absolute) lack of posts about events outside of China that were equally or even more brutal than they claim June 4th was.
Why is that?
Why aren’t they posting as regularly about the genocide of indigenous people in their own countries? Why aren’t they posting so frequently about the massacres in Jakarta? Why aren’t they posting as regularly about the bombing of Nagasaki or Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Dresden or Yemen or Iraq of Afghanistan or Syria? Why aren’t they posting each year about the famines Britain engineered in India and other countries? Why don’t I see yearly posts about the Nanjing Massacre? That also occurred in China. Why don’t I see the same reminders about the transatlantic slave trade?
The governments that perpetrated (and in some cases, continue) many of these atrocities still exist and are still oppressing the people who were targeted during these events. This is why they say they target China, right?
Hell, the Holocaust and the subsequent resurgence of facism sees less attention from Westerners than the June 4th incident these days.
The reason for this disparity is that these people don’t actually give a shit whether the Chinese people are oppressed. When they say “I hate the Chinese government, but I don’t hate the Chinese people,” they don’t give a shit whether the Chinese people support and continue to build their current government. It’s not about supporting others, it’s about asserting the dominance and righteousness of the Western world. Not only can they not empathize with those outside the West, they put immense effort into doing the opposite.
It’s about convincing themselves that they live in a just society and that, despite how badly they are oppressed, they could always be worse off. It’s racist, but that racism serves a purpose: it is the copium that keeps them convinced that it’s ok to be oppressed by their own governments.
I don’t rant because I expect the sinophobic propaganda to disappear. I rant because I’m tired of the racism. I rant because I’m tired of the ignorance. I rant because all I want is to see people show others a bit of empathy, to show a little skepticism when they are told others are evil, a little curiosity about the other’s point of view, but I’m constantly disappointed.
Rant over. Thanks for listening.
Too many people believe western media uncritically when it comes to international stuff. The contradictory part is they’ll sometimes have skepticism, distrust, or even hatred for one or more major news sources that’s focused on their own country’s affairs. But when it comes to news about other countries, the same skepticism can be missing.
Before I learned about ML and all that, I was in that place to some extent, I think. But now that I have some idea of what to look for and know a bit more about international affairs and history, it’s really obvious how western media narratives about “human rights” are just narratives of convenience. The formula goes something like: “Is X country somewhere we want to prop up against Y country? If yes, X country is a bastion of human rights and Y country eats babies. Does X country actively oppose us? If yes, X country eats turbo evil cereal as mandatory breakfast meals in every citizen’s state-mandated bowl.”
It’s very cartoonish. And I mean I’m not even exaggerating to say it’s cartoonish. I think of this video, which was from decades ago, yet is still so on point for the style of propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1tfkESPVY
But one thing I’m not sure how to contend with is when people are deep in paranoia about “foreign agents” and “foreign propaganda” kind of thing. I recall one time online trying to show someone that video to make a point about western propaganda and they straight up refused to watch it. IIRC, they were also someone who had come into the convo thinking I was a Chinese shill or something, but weren’t open about thinking that right away, so I naively attempted some good faith stuff at first.
The kind of thinking where anything that contradicts the existing narrative must be coming from “the enemy” “in secret” is such a disturbing thing. I think, would hope, most of us here don’t fall into that trap of thinking. For example, even something as straightforward as anti-imperialism is not binary good/evil; there can be countries run by factions that are not empowering the working class, the marginalized among their people as a system of power, but are nevertheless an important force of opposition against the western empire, against foreign capital and its exploitation.
Its the new thought terminating cliche liberals use to discredit marxists, see it as your que to block the other person.
This is why media criticism (
) is a great starting point for moving people left. It’s very easy for people confronted with uncomfortable facts to bury them the moment a “trusted, reliable” news source prints some rote “the enemy du jour is a Bad Country” piece. You have to show people how to critically read those pieces to avoid constant backsliding.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: