Viral
Fake Footage Of “Chinese” Atrocities Shows The
Power Of Narrative Spin
By Caitlin Johnstone
August 12, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - The odious
right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong recently
posted a video of a man being brutalized by
an unseen tormenter which he captioned “Chinese
communism”, adding “I don’t know who needs to
hear this but this is what real oppression looks
like, not cops in Portland pepper spraying
rioters for throwing molotovs at them.”
There’s nothing in the video footage that
shows that this is happening in China, nor that
the person performing the abuse is a government
authority figure. But many people credulously
shared the video around, because anti-China
sentiment
has exploded over the last two years with
the help of careful narrative management by the
western political/media class.
This video footage re-emerges periodically,
like
last year when it was shared by virulent
China critic Arslan Hidayat, who claimed the
footage showed the Chinese government’s
persecution of a Uyghur Muslim.
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“DISCLAIMER: Disturbing Video. Chinese policy
when interrogating #Uyghur #Muslims is Beat and
Tase first then interview the suspect. #SaveUyghur
#CloseTheCamps,” reads Hidayat’s caption.
Except it’s
not from China, and the man being tormented
is not a Uyghur Muslim.
It turns out it’s very easy to get people to
believe they are viewing irrefutable evidence of
Chinese abuses. All you have to do is show them
video footage of one thing and tell them it’s
something else, and as long as they’re already
predisposed toward believing anti-China narratives,
they’ll believe you.
Over the last few weeks I’ve seen three different
verifiably fake videos depicting “Chinese” abuses
which people have been frantically spamming around
eager to show evidence of Beijing’s malfeasance,
just in my own personal meanderings through social
media. Like
this one:
After this wildly viral video surfaced, my
Twitter mentions were saturated with brainwashed
Chinagaters tagging me insisting that I retract my
position of rigorous skepticism toward western
narratives about what’s happening in Xinjiang. They
were certain they finally had me. There it is, video
evidence as plain as day. Who could deny such a
thing?
Only problem? That’s not
Xinjiang, and
those aren’t Uyghur Muslims.
https://twitter.com/Garou_Hidalgo/status/1285994495239245831
My favorite was
this one shared by the account “Uyghur Genocide”
on Twitter, captioned “#China has been keeping a
world record in techniques to torture prisoners &
detainees, such as those 5+ million #Uyghur adults
and children currently being held in China’s #ConcentrationCamps, prisons
& slave-labor factories. This is one:”
Except in reality it is not one. That’s not
China, and that’s not a Uyghur Muslim. It’s a BDSM
fetish video from Taiwan, those are consenting
adults at a private location, and the allegation has
long been discredited.
The following are
screenshots from a machine translation of a
fact check piece from a Taiwanese website:
Obviously none of this in and of itself proves
that Uyghur Muslims aren’t being mistreated in
Xinjiang. What it proves is that there’s a lot of
disinfo about what’s happening in Xinjiang, and that
there’s a very large market of herd-minded dupes who
are eager to swallow that disinfo with zero critical
gag reflex.
Western power structures have a very
extensive and extremely well-documented history
of lying about just this sort of thing, so there’s
no excuse for credulously believing what you’re told
about any US-targeted government absent mountains of
hard proof.
Refusing to believe western narratives put out
against US-targeted governments doesn’t mean you
automatically believe the opposite of those
narratives or believe any Chinese narratives, it
just means you remain agnostic until presented with
proof that rises to the level required in a
post-Iraq invasion world.
There’s a lot of geostrategic ambition riding on
Xinjiang, since it
plays a pivotal role in China’s Belt and Road
Initiative which will
upset unipolar US planetary dominance unless
thwarted. Which of course means the west has a
vested interest in disrupting China’s goals in that
region, since US hegemony depends on keeping other
nations down. Propaganda is being used to facilitate
that agenda.
Ultimately this is all a part of the
slow-motion third world war between the
US-centralized power alliance and nations like China
which have refused to be absorbed into that
alliance. This slow-motion third world war is
largely facilitated by dominance of international
mainstream narratives about unabsorbed nations.
The above videos are a good illustration of the
power of narrative. People believe they’re seeing
undeniable video footage of an atrocity being
perpetrated by a specific government, solely because
the bit of text over the video told them that’s what
they’re seeing. They literally see what they’re told
to see. The narrative overrides the actual raw data
that they are taking in with their own eyes.
The only sane response to a situation that is
swamped with propaganda and disinformation is to
hold tight to skepticism and agnosticism until
presented with hard proof. Get comfortable with not
knowing, and don’t forget that the power structures
presenting you with these narratives have lied to
you in the past.
Stay skeptical. Stay critical. Demand hard,
verifiable proof about any claim about any
US-targeted nation, and if it isn’t given to you,
don’t swallow it. This is how you keep your head
clear of the propaganda.
Caitlin's articles are entirely
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https://caitlinjohnstone.com
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
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The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House. |
