racism

Bias Against China & Anyone Who Sounds Vaguely Chinese Is Not A Good Look On Liberals

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So many racist political cartoons about China on the interwebs it was hard to choose just one.

Admittedly I do not know if it was liberals who flagged my annual subscription fee to Lee Fang’s substack (a whopping $60) and put a hold on my credit card with the explanation “Possible Fraudulent Activity Detected.” 

What I do know is that no such hold or warning has been triggered by my subscriptions to journalists with last names like Johnstone, Hedges, or even Taibbi.

This happened in the same week that the leader of a Democratic Party-aligned “peace” group in my state commented about an article on NATO I had shared: “The article you linked is incoherent (and look where it is published).”[emphasis mine]

Global Times published the piece on April 7 and included this introduction:

Editor’s Note:

April 4, 2024, marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO. As a product of the Cold War, NATO should have been disbanded, but over the years, it has served as a war machine and facilitated US hegemony. The Global Times talked to a number of experts and scholars to reveal how the US exploits NATO to serve its geopolitical purposes and how NATO destabilizes the world, exacerbates nuclear threats and brings confrontation to Asia. 

In the second interview of the series, Global Times (GT) reporter Li Aixin talked to John Pang (Pang), a former Malaysian government official and a senior research fellow at Perak Academy, Malaysia. John said that having set Europe on fire with its aggressive enlargement, NATO proposes to bring their formula to Asia, against a far more powerful opponent – “It’s an imbecile proposition.”

Yikes! Both interviewer and interviewee have Chinese-sounding names. Who could possibly want to read and consider their opinions on geopolitical realities as the U.S. slouches toward WW3 with China?

Several times in the past week I’ve seen articles about the U.S. instigating a proxy war in the Pacific using the Philippines as their cat’s paw. I’ve also read analysis from sources we’re being trained to consider suspect. Here’s a short list:

Aukusing for War: The Real Target Is China  by Dr. Binoy Kampmark, published April 7, 2024 by the Australian Independent Media Network

Snow Job: 15 Years of U.S. Gaslighting in the South China Sea published April 9, 2024 by Peter Lee’s China Threat Report (audio version also available there)

Xi Jinping’s Thoughts On China’s Nuclear Weapons by Gregory Kulacki & Robert Rust, published April 1, 2024 by Union of Concerned Scientists.

That last article debunked a New York Times report claiming that China’s leaders 

“are looking to nuclear weapons as not only a defensive shield, but as a potential sword — to intimidate and subjugate adversaries.” [The Union of Concerned Scientists] examined the evidence and found it did not support that claim. 

Actually found a political cartoon about China that isn’t racist!

The narrative management strategies employed by liberals around China are extremely familiar, because we have just been through two years of being told that the war in Ukraine started in 2022 all the while being scorned for reading anything published in Russia. 

A thought police officer on a “peace” listserv based in Maine constantly attacks posts that deviate from U.S. State Department talking points while citing sources like the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN as beacons of truth. Uh huh.

Pot calling kettle black cartoon from the New York Times.

We’ve seen the recent claim that TikTok is being used to manipulate young people into hating Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and China is at fault because, as Nancy Pelosi said on camera, if China’s government can control the algorithms “we” are in big trouble. A backhanded admission that the U.S. controls the algorithms on Meta products, Twitter/X, YouTube, and search engines like Google.

This kind of bias makes you look stupid, folks. When Chew Shou Zi, CEO of TikTok, was attacked during a hearing in Congress for being Chinese he responded, “No, I’m Singaporean.” 

I was embarrassed for my country. 

You should be, too.

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Rich Men North Of Richmond vs Try That In A Small Town

Two summer anthems of disaffection with decay in the U.S. could not be more different. Yes, they’re both in the country genre and feature male leads but one is a pro-policing screed that couldn’t be slicker, and the other is as genuine as it gets.

Viral hit “Try That In A Small Town” from Jason Aldean’s 11th album was written by a team not including Aldean, recorded in a studio, and then embellished with one of the more incoherent music videos I’ve seen. Granted I don’t see that many music videos, but my impression of this one was that the lead singer is mailing it in while the montage of images behind him — flag-draped White House, looting, assault — do the heavy lifting. Basically a 2nd Amendment commercial laced with the kind of threats you may remember from your elementary school playground.

The artist denies it, but dog whistle racist imagery abounds. It’s possible this song could be construed as a campaign ad for Trump since the disorder depicted is widely viewed by Republicans as occurring under the Biden administration and Democratic mayors of big cities.

(For an insightful discussion of disorder and other electoral issues, I highly recommend Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn’s “America This Week: Campaign Preview” available here.)

Newer viral hit “Rich Men North Of Richmond” is performed by singer/songwriter Oliver Anthony in a lightly amplified outdoor setting. He nails the aggrieved white working class male lament in a way that the wealthy Aldean’s performance only mimics. 

Or maybe it’s not even a particularly white point of view? Rapper TRE TV nodded along in sympathy before sharing his reaction to Anthony’s intro, I been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay:

That’s how we all feel. We working, ain’t getting nowhere, the money ain’t adding up. You get your check and you’re like, What. Is. This?…Hell, this thing missing a couple of zeros!

I thought the vocals were tough.. and the message. I give this a 10. 

Anthony also takes a potshot at riders on Epstein’s “Lolita Express,” excess taxation, and references the suicide epidemic among young men suffering under top down control from the rich men north of Richmond. An interview with the singer revealed he was specifically thinking of Washington DC swamp monsters when he penned the alliterative line (he appears to like puns, rhyming, and alliteration).

He goes off the rails only once when he engages in fat shaming aimed at food stamp recipients. Hard to know for sure, but maybe he has an ex-girlfriend who’s 5 foot 3, weighs 300 pounds, and is partial to fudge roll?

It cracks me up how conservatives are trying to claim Oliver Anthony for their own. Did they listen to his words? Cue the mainstream media, now in overdrive claiming the song is a big hit with the right but leaving leftists cold. Wealthy media are having to spin extra hard to depict the ballad as a rallying cry for Civil War 2.0. You know, the war the wealthy hope we have instead of the revolution we need.

The problem with their analysis, of course, is that right and especially left have become so diluted in meaning that the terms are increasingly useless. Anthony has shared with journalists that he considers himself a centrist with no allegiance to either of the corporate parties.

Chris Hedges writes searingly about this from time to time. His latest is set in rural Maine aka northern Appalachia where I live and which, this time of year, looks nearly identical to the West Virginia setting of Anthony’s video. “Forgotten Victims of America’s Class War” lays out about as well as anything I’ve read how left vs. right or red vs. blue are increasingly meaningless in a gutted economy that’s failing working people.