Chinese state affiliated media's POV and cartoon Satire of Trump admin Covid response

[Milos Uzelac]

I found this satirical cartoon very cute (probably for the purpose of appealing to average Asian or Western viewer) and fun with nuance of obvious propagandistic connotations for the Chinese state. 

Will see to edit later for the purpose of my thoughts of how this satirical cartoon showcases the subtlety and sneakiness of state propaganda in garb of today's consumer media cutsie looking aesthetics for appealing visually to most consumers and cultivating a naive and insulated world outlook in them towards the benefiter of the propaganda (a state appartus in this case) and to the wider world that's in  some sort of a relationship with that state in general. 

[Lindsay]

Call it propaganda if you want. I thought it was entertaining. Biased? Sure. Wrong? Nope. 

[Rilles]

LOL, its not propaganda if its true. 

[Consept]

Seems pretty accurate to me, obviously exaggeration for comedic effect but what was not true about it? 

[Milos Uzelac]

On 8/9/2020 at 10:51 AM, Lindsay said:

Call it propaganda if you want. I thought it was entertaining. Biased? Sure. Wrong? Nope. 

 

On 8/9/2020 at 11:44 AM, Rilles said:

LOL, its not propaganda if its true. 

 

On 8/9/2020 at 1:19 PM, Consept said:

Seems pretty accurate to me, obviously exaggeration for comedic effect but what was not true about it? 

Yes, that's the precise purpose of any propaganda to create the state in people where they won't call-out or spot distinctions between the reality of an event and a distorted way it's retold.

Its aim is to distort and frame an event in such a way so that the people who are it's targeted audience can't tell and spot a meaningful difference between how an event is retold from a POV of an actor (that's directly or indirectly benefiting from the reframing and/or tweaking of an event in a specific way, generally to suit his own (in this case geopolitical) interests and use it, to introduce through it a wider narrative that he wants to cultivate among his audience) and it's actual unfolding of it in reality observed through evidence and raw data, with no intent to distort, frame and twerk it in such a way, so as to fit it, as better as a possible, to a larger narrative from which one actor/source benefits (from which's reproduction and telling in society is aimed for the actor who forwards it to get approval and gain public consensus for telling future narratives involving him or a an issue relating to him in this way and for the actor who is the subject of criticisms in it (in this case through satire) to lose both of these things).

I don't want to immediately recall a Goebbels quote on the socio-psychological intent and the way successful propaganda often works, but I think it is relevant for this topic I opened up:

"The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative." - Goebbels, Signals of the New Time p. 17., Munich: Eher, 1934. redirected from American Fascists by Chris Hedges.

Yes, it does seem on the outset that there is nothing propagandistic about it, since it is, with the purpose of comedic effect, just presenting a slightly exaggerate and caricatured version of the unfolding course of events regarding the course and the response to the pandemic of officials in the U.S.

However precisely framing it in this veneer of an aesthetically cute and funny cartoon satire on the dissonance between how the US state officials tell and demand from the Chinese state not to infringe on the rights of its citizens (calling them out on human right's abuses) with their response to the pandemic and with their overall treatment of their other minorities under their laws (which violate and go against the majority of internationally  recognized laws regarding human rights) and their own apparent human rights abuses and violations of international law (regarding the required obligations of creating and upholding medical safety measures in the state, that state conduct must comply with it and uphold in its treatment and protection of citizens rights during a pandemic outbreak - I think these are the WHO guidelines that go into the UN international law - correct me if I am gravely mistaken on this last part)  regarding their pandemic response measures and demands and treatment of their citizens still during it (which they argue at the end constitutes a violation of international law regarding human rights).

So the main points, in the framing of this narrative in this cartoon satire, regarding the US state officials own national COVID pandemic outbreak response and the U.S. demands from the Chinese state regarding their national COVID pandemic response or some other international law violating conducts an action's that the Chinese state perpetuates against its citizens, which I saw as propagandistic in their initiative, are the following:

1. The title of the cartoon satire: US democracy versus US hypocrisy. 

Connotates (in the context of geopolitical and economic rivalry between China and the US) that the US is not really a nation that values and upholds democratic values and citizen's rights truly at home or abroad, so how can it generally demand from the Chinese state or other states in the world to act democratically and respect the rights of its citizens if it does not uphold those same values at home. The U.S. therefore as still the most influential and powerful country internationally is not really a or trying to be a democracy and is in fact capable of equally bad treatment of its citizens as other states that the U.S. says are not democratic as itself. So, in the end, the U.S. can't demand from other rivaling states to be or strive to be more democratic since it is not itself fulfilling the same criteria at home towards its own citizens - and therefore one can argue that very act of it forwarding such demands to China is just masked belligerence towards it and deliberate interference in its own internal affairs since the actor who does it isn't really democratic or cares about democracy.

My view on this narrative: This is a false equivalency. Since a country being un-democratic in one area doesn't mean it's un-democratic at all and further, the demands of some countries for other countries to be more democratic or to respect the rights of its citizens, as per is guaranteed in a democratic society, has nothing to do with those countries wanting to just implement their democratic model into another country covertly but it has to do with current existing international laws created by the U.N. regarding rights of citizens in a state and what are the allowed international legal boundaries of state treatment towards their citizens and citizens of other countries.

2. 0:20 - The claim from hypothetical US officials in the video that state-managed COVID medical treatment facilities in China were equivalent in their treatment and managing of infected patients to some sort of concentration camps for the Chinese population.

 I have not heard during the pandemic US state officials in the U.N. or elsewhere forward that claim (correct if I missed it or am wrong) and I admit this sounds like an exaggerated and malicious claim.

However, the intent and initiative of behind this narrative point in the video is to spin the overall narative of the context behind the U.S. and international institutions problematic economic relationship with China and accusations forwarded by them against the Chinese state regarding the treatment and placement of the Uyghur minority population in the province of Xinjiang, in what it seems, from evidence resurfacing, from statistical measurements of demographic change in the composition of the population in Xinjiang and rapid  year-by-year demographic declines of domestic Uyghur people there  to eyewitnesses and victims testimony, are most likely concentration and state re-education camps for that minority population, in which, it seems that from more above evidence resurfacing, that the young female Uyghur population is forced to go through sterilization program created by the Chinese state to intentionally force them to have a limited number of children that wouldn't exceed the number of children from the native and newcoming Han Chinese population in Xinjiang (a settler colonial project it seems, that is created by the state), who are the dominant and largest ethnic group in China and who often recognized just as the mainstream Chinese people by foreigners, that is an infringement on their human rights that are supposed to be guaranteed and protected by international law.

The underlying choice of focusing on this narrative point of this video is to satirically forward a claim that the U.S. and other international institutions and organizations that are in agreement with its view, are actually deliberately hyperbolizing the term and maliciously using the term concentration camp so to make it sound that every sort of mandatory Chinese state initiative or program regarding the movement of citizens from their residential area is, in fact, akin to it placing them in concentration camps in order to delegitimize the ruling Communist Party and the Chinese state apparatus in it's hold. By choosing the present the term concentration camp and it's contemporary use this way, as banal and hyperbolized, to mean any massive Chinese state initiative and program, they simultaneously want use this rhetorical tactic to de-legitimize the use of the term concentration camp completely in order for it not to be adequate to be able to describe in what sort of areas the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are placed and what kind of treatment they are going through in them. In, short to divert and spin the narrative regarding the illegitimate use of the term concentration camp.

3.  1:34 - U.S. state officials only care about the stock-market not being down, doing well and growing and about the privileged few (mostly wealthier and white) who engage in transactions and have stocks in it and not protecting the rights and health of most its population, middle-class to working citizens, as per WHO guidelines, and therefore U.S. state apparatus in the times of economic crisis that would severely affect the stock and business of big transnational or successful companies or wealthy individuals are no longer democratically conducting to the majority of its citizens and therefore the U.S. overall is not a democracy.

Again this is a false equivalency, that uses as a narrow understanding of what the term democracy encompasses and what citizen's rights encompass to de-legitimize an entire claim of the country to democracy. The claim goes that the U.S. is not democratic because it:

a) doesn't provide free government healthcare (as most countries in the world do) (and when it's needed the most),

b) social safety-net protections for the majority of its citizens during a surge in unemployment and joblessness and

c) because it isn't enforcing state-wide infection prevention medical measures in order to protect its citizen's overall internationally guaranteed humans right's (against bodily harm and the right to life), that are not being protected because of the demand to re-start economic activity and their going against Constitutional provisions regarding individual's rights to freedom of choice and other rights regarding the free and legal pursuit of wealth

is in itself not enough to write off a country as not being democratic for not having these things or to prescribe to a country that has these things, that the U.S doesn't, as being more democratic and free than it in this regard. It's selective cherry-picking in order to delegitimize overall the concept of democracy in a country since it excludes overall objective criteria such as wide of variety of other Constitutionally-guaranteed citizen's rights (to privacy, to independent private property, to fair hearing or trial for example) that a lot of countries in the world such as China don't uphold or have.

Additionally focusing on the narrative that in the U.S. only cares about the Big Bussiness and the Stock Markets and therefore that state doesn't really want to, interfere in the market and invest in large public projects such as in China, it acts as an indirect point of narrative approval for the Chinese state partially managed and controlled economy and it's a merger with the large corporate business that is being slightly regulated and surveilled by it (by being forced to share its business information with the state),  that it is better at protecting its citizens and their human rights during a pandemic than the U.S. economic and legal model and therefore the claim of the U.S. officials that the Chinese state is violating human rights is again being de-legitimized by falsely equating an economic and legal's model inept response in protecting its citizens during a pandemic outbreak with more severe and brutal human rights violation elsewhere in the non-developed world and in developed states such as China for example.

That is what I spotted as symptoms of being propaganda (there a couple of more which I think also go into forming a propagandistic narrative) for benefiting one actor at the expense of the other, by falsely framing an actor and falsely defining, prescribing other untruthful characteristics and claims as truthful statements into the main narrative about an actual unfolding of an event.

Sorry for the long-winded response in terms of why I think this is skit constitutes a propaganda piece, I started writing yesterday and then stopped because I haven't finished some of my study work. My intent is primarily not to argue but to point of what they might have missed that is not truthful or deliberate spinning or twisting in a way a certain narrative is told.

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Milos Uzelac

[Consept]

Can you sum up what your point is in a few lines por favor? 

[Milos Uzelac]

@Consept Will do, intended to do that but I started writing this yesterday in long bulky way and wanted to finish it today. But I will extrapolate the main points of why this is constitués a propaganda piece, and not just a satirical cartoon and how you can tell its a wider propaganda piece for the Chinese state, and not just about ineptitude of the US state admins Covid response. 

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Milos Uzelac