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Nobody Who Says "You Can Criticize Washington AND Beijing" Actually Does By Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2021-11-18 at 22:31:39 )
Nobody Who Says "You Can Criticize Washington AND Beijing" Actually Does By Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
Listen to a reading of this article:
Whenever I criticize the United States empires manipulations and aggressions on a nation which disobeys its dictates I always get comments from people saying "You know, Caitlin, two things can be bad at once. You can criticize both."
They say it like it is some kind of profound esoteric insight being passed down from on high instead of a generic response I hear from westerners every single day. Like, oh, you mean I can criticize two things instead of just one thing? You just blew my mind. Thanks for baptizing me with your magic wisdom sauce, Gandalf.
Of course it is possible to criticize both the United States and its targets. That is obvious to anyone with functioning gray matter between their ears. The issue is that westerners, especially westerners who hasten to urge you to be more critical of governments targeted by western imperialism, do not do this.
"I can think the United States and China-Cuba-Syria-Venezuela-DPRK-Bolivia are both bad!"
But has it occurred to you that the United States tells you that these other countries are evil specifically to distract you from the evil shit the United States is doing, making you less likely to fight against it?-Dubula (killerguerilla) November 17, 2021
Lately this happens most often with China, since that is where the propaganda brainwashing has been most concentrated lately. I will say something about how the United States empire is the clear and obvious aggressor in the escalating tensions between the two nations or how Australians are being brainwashed into supporting a war over Taiwan with astonishing forcefulness, and some internet genius will wheelbarrow his gigantic brain into my notifications with the comment "Caitlin it is possible to criticize both the United States and China."
And if there were enough time in the day for me to respond to all of these galaxy-brained intellectual giants I would tell them something like, "Okay. But you do not. Or if you do it is not in proportion to how deserving of criticism they both are."
The United States empire has killed millions and displaced tens of millions in its still-ongoing global "war on terror" since 9-11-01. It is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, its sanctions and blockades are starving people to death en masse every single day, and it actively works to destroy any nation whose government disobeys its commands.
Nothing China is doing rises anywhere near this level of evil, either within its own borders or on the world stage. This is evident even if you believe every single claim the western empire has been asserting about the Chinese governments behavior (which would of course be a very silly thing to do). The only way to make China look remotely comparable to modern United States murderousness is to dredge up events which happened decades in the past or speculate about things China might possibly do in the future, none of which is relevant to discussions about what is happening in real life as it actually presently exists.
These two power structures are not equally worthy of criticism. They are not even comparable. The United States and its tight network of allies are indisputably far, far more worthy of criticism than the government of China. But in the western world this reality is not reflected in the criticisms that are voiced; in fact it is as ass backwards as you could possibly get it. China is criticized far more, and United States imperialism is criticized far less.
"Neither Washington nor Beijing!"
"spends 90% of the time criticizing Beijing"-Maitreya Bhakal (MaitreyaBhakal) November 14, 2021
People who suffer conniptions over someones failure to adequately criticize China or any other empire-targeted nation universally embody this dynamic.
They do not criticize the United States empire, or if they do they do not do so in a way that reflects how worthy of criticism those power structures are. Washington,D.C. is plainly far, far more worthy of criticism than Beijing, but those who bleat "You can criticize BOTH" are never far more critical of Washington than Beijing. Typically, they are considerably less critical.
It is because of this extremely wild imbalance that you rarely if ever see me criticizing Beijing or any other empire-targeted government. It is not because those governments are perfect angels, it is because western propaganda already has the scales tipped far toward criticism of United States-targeted nations when a fair and impartial media would be criticizing the far more destructive United States power alliance far more. There is no reason for me to provide criticisms of a foreign government that people can get by simply switching on the nearest television and waiting a few minutes.
The only reason to find it outrageous that someone does not criticize a United States-targeted nation is if you have been conditioned to expect such criticisms to be the norm. This conditioning is not an accident; it is the result of decades of mass-scale media propaganda geared toward manipulating the public into accepting the existence of a globe-spanning empire which murders people by the millions with total impunity.
The correct course of action is not to go along with that conditioning, but to go against it. And, hopefully, open up enough cracks in it to let some light shine through.
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