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Washington Free Beacon
National Security
Foreign Propagandists Exploit
U.S. Unrest
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/foreign-propagandists-exploit-u-s-unrest/
China compares Hong Kong
activists to U.S. looters, as ex-Iran prez quotes Tupac
Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani / Getty Images
Yuichiro Kakutani - June 7, 2020 5:00 AM
Foreign propagandists are
exploiting the death of George Floyd to question the legitimacy of the U.S.
political system and deflect concerns about their own human rights abuses.
China,
Russia, Iran, and other authoritarian regimes have offered wall-to-wall coverage
of the Floyd protests and ensuing riots on their propaganda outlets, using the
unrest to paint democratic systems as prone to turmoil. The propagandists—as well as
top-level government officials—have also exploited the Floyd protests to smear
specific pro-democracy or anti-regime movements within their own countries,
associating the movements with scenes of chaos and disorder in U.S. cities.
The spate of propaganda
coverage and public statements are indicative of how foreign adversaries are
manipulating an American tragedy to delegitimize anti-regime voices in their
home countries. This is especially the case for China, as the Floyd protests
served as a welcome diversion from the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
massacre and public outcry in Hong Kong, where demonstrators are out in the
streets opposing a new national security law that would allow the Chinese
government to crack down on anyone conducting what it considers seditious or
terrorist activities.
Hu Xijin, the editor in chief
of the state-controlled Global Times, has repeatedly tweeted about the
Tiananmen Square massacre, accusing the United States of hypocrisy. For
example, the propagandist uploaded a post comparing footage of Tiananmen's
famous "tank man" standing in front of a tank column with videos of
NYPD police cars crashing into protesters.
"The US repression of
domestic unrest has further eroded the moral basis to claim itself ‘beacon of
democracy,'" Hu tweeted on Wednesday. "The era that the US political
elites could exploit [the] Tiananmen incident at will is over."
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow
at the Heritage Foundation, said that China and the other foreign countries are
at the "height of hypocrisy" for exploiting U.S. domestic unrest to
delegitimize opposition back home.
"It is the height of
hypocrisy for a communist party that has created concentration camps for Muslim
Uyghurs, that has completely suppressed the freedom of its citizens, that has
not allowed criticism because people who criticize it [end up] in prison … to
lecture us on whether the riots are getting out of hand," he said.
Authoritarian governments are
also using the Floyd protests to portray the United States in the worst light
possible—a nation chronically ill with racism, as a spokesman for China's
foreign ministry put it.
RT, a multinational media outlet
controlled by the Kremlin, has aggressively covered the Floyd protests since
late May as part of an effort to delegitimize pro-democracy movements abroad.
On May 29, the propaganda organ aired a three-minute segment calling out the
"hypocrisy" of U.S. leaders who support Hong Kong protesters but
oppose violent riots in U.S. cities. The segment juxtaposed riotous scenes in
U.S. cities with videos of Hong Kong protesters, who are now marching to oppose
a new national security law that will undermine the city-state's rule of law.
"We criticize China for
threatening to use its military against those [Hong Kong] protesters," the
newscaster said. "As Americans take to a street and attack police and
destroy property, the same voices who supported the Hong Kong protesters are
calling American protesters ‘thugs.'"
The Chinese government has also
latched onto the Floyd protests as a way to deflect growing international
concerns about its new national security law, as well as the June 4 anniversary
of the Tiananmen Square incident.
Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman
for China's foreign ministry, used the protests to deflect U.S. concerns about
the new national security law. When Morgan Ortagus, spokeswoman for the U.S.
State Department, criticized the law on Twitter, Hua responded by writing,
"I can't breathe," a popular Black Lives Matter slogan inspired by
the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd at the hands of police officers. She
also retweeted the May 29 RT segment that compared U.S. rioters to Hong
Kong protesters, writing, "THUGS AND HEROES HYPOCRISY."
Chinese state media outlets
have also used the current unrest to spin the regime's disputes with the United
States over the coronavirus pandemic. China Daily published
a cartoon criticizing the Trump administration's decision to terminate
World Health Organization funding by evoking the Black Lives Matter movement.
It depicted
a coronavirus patient saying "I can't breathe" as his supply of
oxygen is cut off due to Trump ending funding toward the organization. Another
cartoon, titled "Beneath
Human Rights," depicted the Statue of Liberty as a police officer kneeling
on the neck of a dying George Floyd.
Iranian leaders, meanwhile, have used the Floyd protests to criticize
America's maximum pressure policy against the theocratic regime and undermine
U.S. support for Iranian protesters. Iran's foreign minister Javad Zarif has
been at the forefront of this effort. In one instance, Zarif "corrected" a U.S. State
Department statement condemning Iran's crackdown on protesters by replacing all
references to Iran with the United States.
Zarif also directly tied the
U.S. sanction regime imposed on Iran to Floyd's death, saying that both involve
a "knee-on-neck" technique that intends to strangle its victims.
"The ‘knee-on-neck'
technique is nothing new: Same cabal—who've admitted to habitually ‘lie, cheat,
steal'—have been employing it on 80M Iranians for 2 yrs, calling it ‘maximum
pressure,'" Zarif wrote. "It hasn't brought us to our knees. Nor will
it abase African-Americans."
The Iranian efforts sometimes
involve strange expressions of solidarity that betray a gap in Iran's
understanding of American culture. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
tried to express his solidarity for African Americans by quoting Tupac, tweeting,
"Pull the trigger kill a Nigga he's a hero." Critics mocked the
president for using the n-word in an awkward attempt at solidarity.
Gonzalez, the Heritage Foundation expert, said that it is
unclear how these comments are playing out in front of the domestic audience of
the authoritarian regimes. He did, however, say that some of the more
transparent attempts at distraction have "backfired," provoking anger
among citizens who see through the government's attempt to divert attention
abroad.
"When the Iranians tried to make use of [Floyd's
death], and had a demonstration of people talking about the so-called racial
intolerance of the U.S., the family of the people who died in the plane crash
took to social media to say they aren't buying this," Gonzalez said,
referring to the relatives of the passengers aboard the Ukrainian flight that
was shot down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in January. "They are doing
this to deflect criticism from [themselves]."
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