Why Biden's Sinophobia is More Damaging Than Trump's
Nasty words hurt, but liberal American Exceptionalism is more widely accepted, & so is a more effective form of racism
On the heels of top U.S. diplomats embarrassing themselves at the U.S.-China summit recently in Anchorage, Alaska, journalist Danny Haiphong delivered what should serve as a wake-up call to well-meaning Americans about some of the more powerful, and hidden, causes of the current wave of anti-Chinese and Asian racist violence sweeping our country. As Haiphong points out, it is much easier to point the finger at reactionaries who use explicit slurs, like Donald Trump, for rising anti-Asian violence.
Such proud bigots as Trump certainly have their share of blame, here, but much more pernicious and effective at spreading hate is the more subtle racism of American exceptionalism that has taught us to be suspicious and fearful of the Chinese for centuries. That type of anti-Asian racism is promoted by both major American political parties, and is in full-swing under the current Biden administration as evidenced by its Sinophobic policies and rhetoric used by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the Alaska Summit.
“A lot of people, especially the mainstream liberal class. The press, the corporate media, they’re wringing their hands with it saying, ‘this is Donald Trump. He said China Virus, he said Kung Flu, he scape-goated the Asian-American community, people of Chinese-descent in particular. That’s the problem.’ Well, I would say that Tony Blinken going to a meeting that’s supposed to be a diplomatic summit among equals and saying, ‘no, actually, we’re better than you and you are, in fact, making the world a lot more dangerous,’ which is quite ironic since the United States is considered by 70% of the world’s population to be the biggest threat to world peace, I would say that that sends a huge message that 25% of the world is coming to eat your lunch,” Haiphong said during a recent great episode of the “Left Bitches…” podcast.
“And then you have…these people who are always constantly saying, ‘China is coming to get ya. Even if China is doing good, it’s still coming to get you. ‘ That is usually the missing contexts to these attacks that are happening on people of Asian descent…it has a long history, ‘yellow peril,’ in this country. A long history dating back to the mid-19th century when the U.S. looked upon China as a source of wealth. FDR’s grandfather made all of his wealth on opium which was part of the horribly destructive century of humiliation for China with Western powers going to China, carving it up and saying, ‘ we’re going to force the sale of opium, addict much of the population, displace it and render it impoverished, and we’re going to make a killing off of it…as we’re doing the same with chattel slavery.’”
The very things most Americans like to believe make our country stand apart in a positive way from other nations and in the course of human history, are actually disguises for the genocidal racism that has always been at the core of what we stand for. Tragically, terms like “human rights” lose all meaning here in the United States – the nation with the globe’s largest prison population, and one which holds U.S. citizens in prisons indefinitely without charging them, tortures, and bombs daily the poorest people on earth – and occludes the fact that we commit more true human rights abuses than any other nation, on-scale.
“This American exceptionalism garbage promoted by Jake Sullivan and his head boss Tony Blinken, that has a big impact,” Haiphong continued.
“This focus on ‘human rights’ especially, weaponizing human rights is so important. Humanitarian Intervention is racism. It is imperialism. It’s particularly dangerous because it has universal appeal. It can bring in the so-called Democratic Socialists, the Leftists, the Liberals who think that they have some type of authority on human rights and on what social justice is but really all they’re doing is carrying the water for the militarists who a lot of whom think this is a much more effective way of driving U.S. hegemony.”
Watch the entire episode of “Left Bitches…” above, and make sure to subscribe to their podcast so you don’t miss any future editions.