I have been delayed in posting the past month because I moved to Thailand to work as an English Teacher. There was a brief period of a few weeks where I did not have time to write. This past week, however, I have started writing a lot more and am back to my usual schedule of reading and writing. I will be striving to post a number of essays this month discussing events as they happen as well as events from the past month.
The New Red Scare
After Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong, resulting in the establishment of the communist PRC, the Truman administration was criticized for ‘losing China’.[i] Senator Joseph McCarthy drove the loss of China narrative and accused several officials in the State Department responsible for overseeing policy in East Asia of being communist infiltrators.
One of McCarthy’s primary targets was John Service, a US diplomat who served in China and was one of the “China Hands”, a group of scholars and diplomats who had extensive knowledge about China and had influence on US policy in Asia before, during and after the Second World War. Service, and others like Owen Lattimore, were subjected to endless loyalty hearings, seeking to prove their alleged sympathy for communism and betrayal of America.[ii]
McCarthy, in his infamous Lincoln Day speech delivered in Wheeling, West Virginia, railed against the alleged infiltration of communism in the US State Department, and he captured this when he said of the penetration of communist ideology in US foreign policy making that “This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been most traitorous. . . .”[iii] He famously declared “I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. . . .”[iv] However, he was unable to produce this list at the time, and he later admitted to reporters that he made up the number 205. Whenever he was asked about his ‘list’, he could never produce it, and his claim, that there were 205 known communist traitors in the State Department, was based on a letter from former Secretary of State James Byrnes in which hundreds of State Department employees were screened and out of 285 suspected communists, 79 were fired. Though 79 subtracted from 285 is 206, McCarthy said 205, but in the days that followed and in other speeches, he revised this number again to 57.[v]
McCarthy’s ‘list’ did not exist, despite his statement in his Wheeling speech that he had it “in his hand”, and without evidence, many were smeared and eventually fired from the State Department because of McCarthy’s accusations, which did not need evidence in the land of paranoia and terror created during the Cold War. Joe Janes, a professor at the University of Washington, hosts a podcast called ‘Documents that Changed the World’ and in one episode he discusses the impact of McCarthy’s ‘list’, arguing that although it did not exist, the emotions and fear that it exploited were very real and gave it immense power.[vi] Thus, the document itself may not have been real, but it wasn’t the list that mattered, it was the fear of communism it tapped into that mattered.
We, not just America but the entire West, are engulfed in a similar state of irrational fear and paranoia about Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, who together form the new ‘axis of evil’, or so we are told by our rulers.[vii] TikTok is the latest target of the illiberal liberal class and their crusade against China, but it’s not the only one. The US Commerce Department and the European Commission opened an investigation into Chinese electric smart vehicles to determine if they pose a national security threat, the FBI and CISA are declaring that drones produced in China could be used to collect data and to hack into energy infrastructure, and last year, The House Select Committee on the CCP asked the FCC to crack down on electronic devices made in China, including interactive toys, like the talking doll “My Friend Cayla”, which the committee dubbed the ‘spy doll’.[viii] In 2017, Germany banned the doll, deeming it a tool of espionage and officials ordered parents to destroy their Cayla dolls.[ix]
Concerns about data hacking and cyber warfare are justified, but if all the public officials and scholars who hear China and look behind them and under their beds, searching for the spy watching them intently, truly opposed state surveillance and data collection, then they would be decrying their own governments, as well as China. Biden and US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo insist that Chinese electric smart cars will be used by the CCP to spy on American citizens and that the cars can be taken over by the CCP. However, the Vault 7 leaks published by Wikileaks revealed that the CIA can hack into smart cars already, as well as televisions and mobile phones, and this did not evoke their outrage.[x]
The issue for people like Biden is not that Americans are being spied on or are being manipulated, it is that they fear losing their once tight grasp on the narrative. Spying and manipulation are necessary, so long as the CIA are the spies and manipulators.
The fate of the China Hands will likely be shared by many in the entire West, not just in America. In their crusade against all things China, the illiberal liberal class is exploiting public fear and distrust to justify stricter censorship, like through the banning of TikTok, and ballooning defence budgets. Through its ban of TikTok, the US federal government is being bestowed with the power to ban any website or app that it deems a threat to US national security. The Biden regime may be escalating the Trump regime’s already aggressive position on China, but to most China hawks, like Elbridge Colby, H. R. MacMaster, Nikki Haley and Ben Shapiro, Biden is weak and capitulating. Just as he is portrayed as weak in the Middle East and Europe, he and his officials, like Antony Blinken and Janet Yellen, who both went to meet with their Chinese counterparts in 2023, are not doing enough to contain China and to deter an invasion of Taiwan. Anyone who dares to question this logic must be ostracized as an agent of the CCP. Any platform that deviates from the West must be a tool of the CCP and the new axis of evil. Thus, it must be banned.
There is much more to the bill threatening to ban TikTok than an attack on free speech or a bid to protect Americans from espionage, this is the next phase of the new red scare. Just like the first, it will lead to firings, boycotts, and smearing that will destroy careers and ruin lives. After the first red scare, McCarthy was eventually censured for his abuse of power, but his legacy of instilling paranoia and terror of communism far outlasted him.
The louts leading this charge against all things China were, until now, speaking out against cancel culture when it targeted people like Jordan Peterson and J. K. Rowling, but when it comes to Israel and China, you are either all in with the illiberal liberal class or you are unpersoned.
Israel’s Self-Immolation
Israel and its most fervent supporters in the West are following the example of Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.[xi] As Israel continues to lose support for its war against Hamas, both from other Western countries and commentators and pundits, it and its backers are getting increasingly aggressive, lashing out and excising from their circle anyone who dares provide the slightest critique of Israel’s actions, even if they agree with the overall goal to crush Hamas, as well as adding an incredibly harsh and long winded condemnation of Hamas as a caveat to anything even remotely critical of Israel. Candace Owens is the latest to be excised from the conservative elite.[xii] She joins Alex Jones, Dave Smith, Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Tucker Carlson.
Carlson is not a rabid hater of Israel, but who questions the blank check that the US routinely writes for Israel, arguing that the job of the US government is to serve the American people, not the Israelis or the Ukrainians.[xiii] Carlson is simply applying the logic he uses to oppose US funding for Ukraine to Israel.
In 1991, when Buchanan was sparring with the founder of The National Review, William J. Buckley, who wrote a long essay in the magazine on conservative thinkers who espoused antisemitism, he famously noted in a column that there is one common definition of antisemitism, that it is “an embedded hatred of Jewish people, manifest in writing and conduct, . . . a grave sin, a disease of the heart, a variant of racism.” and he went on to write that there is another definition, that it is “a word . . . used to frighten, intimidate, censor, and silence; to cut off debate; to . . . smear men’s reputations.”[xiv] In a later essay published in The American Conservative, a magazine founded by Buchanan, Scott McConnell, and Taki Theodoracopulos in opposition to the Iraq War, Buchanan argued that the Bush regime’s war in Iraq and across the Middle East were waged to “make the world safe for Israel” and were plotted many years before Bush’s 2003 invasion.[xv] Buchanan argues that “What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.”, and on the charge of antisemitism and its use as a blunt instrument by the US ruling class, Buchanan writes “Indeed, it is the charge of “anti-Semitism” itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them.”[xvi] We see such charges now, against Owens and Carlson, both right-wing figures who crossed the red line that is Israel, which are intended to smear them and to tarnish their reputations.
Outlets like The Daily Wire claim to be vehemently against cancel culture, which they championed and self-aggrandized over when they hired Gina Carano after she was wrongfully fired by Disney for expressing political views that the company found distasteful.[xvii] Shapiro has for years expressed disgust for cancel culture and authoritarian attitudes towards free speech on college campuses and in Hollywood, and yet, Owens has been cancelled from his outlet for criticizing Israel.[xviii] This fracture on the right is not new.
What led to Buchanan, Paul, and others being excised from polite conservative society has returned and will only result in more animus for Israel, and the same conservative elites who shout and scream about the ‘progressive left’ trying to impose a warped narrative of American history are struggling to impose their own narrative on US foreign policy and Israel. As Chris Hedges argues, though “Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank.”, by the time it fulfills this mission, “it will have signed its own death sentence.”, as “Its facade of civility, it’s supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation, will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent.”[xix]
Some conservatives speculate that Biden is currently trying to court Muslim voters in Michigan by publicly calling on Benjamin Netanyahu to exercise restraint in his crusade against Hamas and Gaza.[xx] To them he is weak, despite his servility to Israel that is akin to Trump. The Zionist position is impossible to debate, as to even suggest that there is a debate to be had is to imply that there is an alternative to it, and to many on the religious right, this is unthinkable. On this point, Edward Said writes in The Question of Palestine that “…the refusal to accept the Zionist argument left anyone in the West with the poorest of alternatives: being simply negative, anti-Semitic, or an apologist for Islam and the Arabs.”[xxi] Said made this observation in the 1970’s, and it is truer now, as people who dissent from the party line on Israel in the US are declared antisemites and are ostracized.
The efforts by the right and the Israel lobby in Washington to erase critics of Israel and US support for it will eventually backfire. They are unwittingly erasing themselves. As Said notes, “The almost total impossibility of talking rationally about the Palestinian question in the United States today is of service neither to this country nor to Jews.”[xxii] Protecting Israel from all criticism, pretending that it can do and has done no wrong, is not helpful, it is harmful. By doing this, Israel and its staunchest Western backers have begun its slow burning self-immolation.
[i] Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. “Who Lost China?.” http://www.trumanlibrary.gov, 2024. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/who-lost-china.
[ii] Lattimore, Owen, David Lattimore, and Blanche Weisen Cook. Ordeal by Slander. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004., and Newman, Robert P. Owen Lattimore and the Loss of China. S.L.: Univ of California Press, 2021.
[iii] McCarthy, Joseph. “Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Speech on Communists in the State Department.” http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu, 2021. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3633.
[iv] McCarthy. “Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Speech on Communists in the State Department.”
[v] Tye, Larry. Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
[vi] Janes, Joe. “Joseph McCarthy’s List.” ischool.uw.edu, 2014. https://ischool.uw.edu/podcasts/dtctw/joseph-mccarthys-list.
[vii] Matthews, Merrill. “20 Years Later, the ‘Axis of Evil’ Is Bigger, Bolder — and More Evil.” The Hill, November 29, 2022. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3754480-20-years-later-the-axis-of-evil-is-bigger-bolder-and-more-evil/., and Rothacher, Albrecht. “A New Axis of Evil?” The Loop, February 6, 2024. https://theloop.ecpr.eu/a-new-axis-of-evil/.
[viii] CNBC. “U.S. Says to Investigate National Security Data Risks from Chinese Vehicles.” CNBC, February 29, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/29/us-says-to-investigate-national-security-data-risks-from-chinese-vehicles.html., Vasquez, Christian. “CISA, FBI Warns of Chinese-Manufactured Drones.” CyberScoop, January 17, 2024. https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-drone-critical-infrastructure-warning/., and Finn, Emily, and Devan Markham. “Is China Spying on Americans via Interactive Toys?” NewsNation, August 9, 2023. https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/china/china-spying-americans-interactive-toys/.
[ix] Collins, Katie. “My Friend Cayla Doll Banned in Germany as ‘Espionage Device.’” CNET, February 17, 2017. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/parents-told-to-destroy-connected-dolls-over-hacking-fears/.
[x] WikiLeaks. “Vault7 – Home.” Wikileaks.org, 2017. https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/.
[xi] Donegan, Moira. “Aaron Bushnell Set Himself on Fire Outside an Israeli Embassy. It Is Our Loss He Is No Longer with Us.” The Guardian, February 28, 2024, sec. Opinion.
[xii] Pengelly, Martin. “Candace Owens Leaves Daily Wire Site amid Israel and Antisemitism Tensions.” The Guardian, March 22, 2024, sec. Media. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/22/candace-owens-leaves-daily-wire.
[xiii] Postel, Danny. “The Conservative Fault Lines Revealed by Debates over Israel.” New Lines Magazine, November 7, 2023. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-conservative-fault-lines-revealed-by-debates-over-israel/.
[xiv] Muravchik, Joshua. “Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews.” Commentary Magazine, January 1, 1991. https://www.commentary.org/articles/joshua-muravchik/patrick-j-buchanan-and-the-jews/.
[xv] Buchanan, Patrick J. “Whose War?” The American Conservative, March 24, 2003. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/whose-war/.
[xvi] Buchanan. “Whose War?”.
[xvii] Zeisloft, Ben. “How the Daily Wire Uncanceled Gina Carano, Star of ‘Terror on the Prairie.’” The Daily Wire, 2021. https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-daily-wire-uncanceled-gina-carano-star-of-terror-on-the-prairie.
[xviii] Zilber, Ariel. “Ben Shapiro Denies Candace Owens Was Axed over Israel Comments.” New York Post, March 29, 2024. https://nypost.com/2024/03/29/media/ben-shapiro-denies-candace-owens-was-axed-over-israel-comments/.
[xix] Hedges, Chris. “The Death of Israel.” ScheerPost, December 18, 2023. https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/chris-hedges-the-death-of-israel/.
[xx] Geraghty, Jim. “Biden Can’t Reinvent Himself as a Palestinian Ally.” National Review, February 28, 2024. https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/biden-cant-reinvent-himself-as-a-palestinian-ally/.
[xxi] Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. Random House Trade, 1979.
[xxii] Said. The Question of Palestine.
Bibliography
Buchanan, Patrick J. “Whose War?” The American Conservative, March 24, 2003. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/whose-war/.
CNBC. “U.S. Says to Investigate National Security Data Risks from Chinese Vehicles.” CNBC, February 29, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/29/us-says-to-investigate-national-security-data-risks-from-chinese-vehicles.html.
Collins, Katie. “My Friend Cayla Doll Banned in Germany as ‘Espionage Device.’” CNET, February 17, 2017. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/parents-told-to-destroy-connected-dolls-over-hacking-fears/.
Donegan, Moira. “Aaron Bushnell Set Himself on Fire Outside an Israeli Embassy. It Is Our Loss He Is No Longer with Us.” The Guardian, February 28, 2024, sec. Opinion. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/28/aaron-bushnell-self-immolation-gaza-israel.
Finn, Emily, and Devan Markham. “Is China Spying on Americans via Interactive Toys?” NewsNation, August 9, 2023. https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/china/china-spying-americans-interactive-toys/.
Geraghty, Jim. “Biden Can’t Reinvent Himself as a Palestinian Ally.” National Review, February 28, 2024. https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/biden-cant-reinvent-himself-as-a-palestinian-ally/.
Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. “Who Lost China?.” http://www.trumanlibrary.gov, 2024. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/who-lost-china.
Hedges, Chris. “The Death of Israel.” ScheerPost, December 18, 2023. https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/chris-hedges-the-death-of-israel/.
Janes, Joe. “Joseph McCarthy’s List.” ischool.uw.edu, 2014. https://ischool.uw.edu/podcasts/dtctw/joseph-mccarthys-list.
Lattimore, Owen, David Lattimore, and Blanche Weisen Cook. Ordeal by Slander. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004.
Matthews, Merrill. “20 Years Later, the ‘Axis of Evil’ Is Bigger, Bolder — and More Evil.” The Hill, November 29, 2022. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3754480-20-years-later-the-axis-of-evil-is-bigger-bolder-and-more-evil/.
McCarthy, Joseph. “Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Speech on Communists in the State Department.” http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu, 2021. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3633.
Muravchik, Joshua. “Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews.” Commentary Magazine, January 1, 1991. https://www.commentary.org/articles/joshua-muravchik/patrick-j-buchanan-and-the-jews/.
Newman, Robert P. Owen Lattimore and the Loss of China. S.L.: Univ of California Press, 2021.
Pengelly, Martin. “Candace Owens Leaves Daily Wire Site amid Israel and Antisemitism Tensions.” The Guardian, March 22, 2024, sec. Media. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/22/candace-owens-leaves-daily-wire.
Postel, Danny. “The Conservative Fault Lines Revealed by Debates over Israel.” New Lines Magazine, November 7, 2023. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-conservative-fault-lines-revealed-by-debates-over-israel/.
Rothacher, Albrecht. “A New Axis of Evil?” The Loop, February 6, 2024. https://theloop.ecpr.eu/a-new-axis-of-evil/.
Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. Random House Trade, 1979.
Tye, Larry. Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
Vasquez, Christian. “CISA, FBI Warns of Chinese-Manufactured Drones.” CyberScoop, January 17, 2024. https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-drone-critical-infrastructure-warning/.
WikiLeaks. “Vault7 – Home.” Wikileaks.org, 2017. https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/.
Zeisloft, Ben. “How the Daily Wire Uncanceled Gina Carano, Star of ‘Terror on the Prairie.’” The Daily Wire, 2021. https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-daily-wire-uncanceled-gina-carano-star-of-terror-on-the-prairie.
Zilber, Ariel. “Ben Shapiro Denies Candace Owens Was Axed over Israel Comments.” New York Post, March 29, 2024. https://nypost.com/2024/03/29/media/ben-shapiro-denies-candace-owens-was-axed-over-israel-comments/.
Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes 
Leave a comment