Also please stop upping NY Times articles and tweets blaming China or China's response. Sinophobia. Learn it. This is the best article that breaks down the fake outrage people have over Trump's indifference to human life. HE WASN'T THE ONLY ONE.
Coronavirus Alarm Blends Yellow Peril and Red Scare
Corporate media’s
typical framing of Chinese government actions to combat the virus verged on
parody, portraying uncontroversial moves in the most insidious terms possible. For example, instead of reporting that Hubei government officials were
fired for withholding information about the coronavirus outbreak from higher-ups, outlets like
CNN (
2/13/20) and
Business Insider (
2/11/20) claimed they were “purged.” Discussing volunteer efforts to assist China’s effective quarantine efforts, the
New York Times’ “To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China” (
2/15/20) framed it as “one of the biggest social control campaigns in history,” and described “neighborhood busybodies” and “uniformed volunteers” aiding the quarantine efforts as “Mao-style mass crusades.”
The
Wall Street Journal ran op-eds like “A Communist Coronavirus” (
1/29/20) and “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia” (
2/3/20), which gleefully claimed that the “mighty Chinese juggernaut has been humbled” by a “species-hopping bat virus,” and argued that the “Wuhan coronavirus is a metaphor” for “the Communist Party of China” and “American isolationism” being ideas that are “incompatible with the modern world.”
Another
Times report, “Coronavirus Crisis Exposes Cracks in China’s Facade of Unity” (
1/28/20), played into the ludicrous “imminent collapse” of the Chinese government trope, by claiming that the coronavirus outbreak has “blown up” the “facade” of a “gradually unifying society,” and that the “cracks” showing in “China’s veneer of stability” reveal that China “remains riddled with vulnerabilities that no amount of censorship or strong-arming can hide.”
The
Times’s Nicholas Kristof (
1/29/20) argued that “we’re seeing the dangers of Xi’s authoritarian model, for China and the world,” because of “Xi’s China” systematically gutting institutions like journalism, social media and NGOs (avenues typically
exploited by the US to
subvert targeted governments and spread
pro-American propaganda).
The
Times (
1/25/20) reported that “officials in Wuhan and around the country withheld critical information, played down the threat and rebuked doctors who tried to raise the alarm,” which should raise questions about “weaknesses at the very heart of the Chinese system”: China’s “rigidly hierarchical bureaucracy” and “quasi-imperial system” discourage “local officials from raising bad news with central bosses,” as “top party bosses in Beijing” have “little direct power over what happens in the provinces.”
USA Today ran an op-ed (
2/12/20) by Republican Sen. Ben Sasse claiming that the “coronavirus disaster” is the “deadly consequence” of Xi and the Chinese Communist Party’s “malfeasance and misrule,” with “Communism” being the “perfect incubator for the coronavirus.” Both Sasse and the
Times’ Kristof claim that this is so because the Chinese government allegedly silenced “whistleblowers” like Dr. Li Wenliang, which prevented him from alerting the public about the novel coronavirus.
The Los Angeles Times (
2/16/20) seemed to imply that the coronavirus epidemic was a
positive development, insofar as it stripped Xi Jinping’s “aura of invincibility in ways that no political dissident, opposition party or revolutionary movement ever could,” and because “his inability to contain it” could lead to growing dissent and skepticism towards his “form of techno-authoritarianism.”
The
LA Times even managed to sneak in references to “ancient notions” of a “mandate of heaven construct,” with “Confucian thinking and forms of deeply rooted superstition” holding “widespread sway,” as a potential explanation for why Chinese people might not realize that Xi and the Communist Party don’t have the support of “mysterious forces in heaven.”
This is readily apparent in corporate media’s predominant framing of the coronavirus as a problem for “Xi Jinping,” or the “Communist Party” (
New York Times,
1/26/20;
Time,
2/6/20;
Wall Street Journal,
2/7/20;
Foreign Policy,
2/10/20;
Foreign Affairs,
2/10/20), rather than for the Chinese people and those suffering from the virus abroad, or as a problem for the international community to solve
cooperatively with China.
CNN (
2/11/20) criticized Xi’s visit to treatment centers as a “stage-managed outing,” scorning the president for never “being at any risk of infection,” and refusing to place himself in a situation “where his health was under threat,” based
solely on the kind of face mask he was using!
damn it's almost like white people don't fairly report on non-white people
.
