BBC: “…a deep desire to always think the worst of Israel” | Natasha Hausdorff

 

The BBC’s deliberate and wilful hatred of Israel, its support for every Hamas lie and swallowing of all Hamas propaganda has shaped world opinion against Israel. Against Israel's legitimate war against the worst, the most barbaric terror organisation on the planet: its neighbour, Hamas. 

Natasha Hausdorff describes her own experience as a commentator in the BBC. It’s damning. 

Right at the beginning of this Gaza war there was the story of the bombing of the Al-Shifa hospital. 

In reality it was the result of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket falling short and accidentally landing near the hospital. But it was presented as a perfidious and  deliberate air attack on the innocent hospital by Israel's IDF. The BBC didn’t want to know the true story, even though it was known early on, as Natasha describes. The BBC published the false narrative and promoted the false narrative. A kind of "publish and be damned"; in this case "publish and damn Israel". 

I remember the incident. I remember how it coloured people’s perceptions at the time. How could it not? If you believed those horrid Joooz deliberately bombed a hospital!? With children in it?? Of course you're going to think they're war criminals. 

It's the BBC, not Israel, who's criminal. It's the BBC who's against the Good. It's the BBC who's pro the Bad. It's the BBC who's anti-western. 

Why? 

I can only assume it's the neo-Marxism that they're steeped in. I mean you just have to listen to some of them talk. Reminds me of my early days in Mao's China; and the lectures from my teachers on the wonder of the Cultural Revolution. 

The BBC neo-marxist world views lead them to support anyone who they judge to be "oppressed" by anyone they judge as horrid "oppressors", no matter the rights and wrongs of the issue at hand. 

The BBC see Palestinians as being oppressed and Israel as the oppressor. No matter the rights and wrongs of that issue. No matter the rights and wrongs of the narrative the Palestinians spin. No matter the rights and wrongs of the actual true history of this Holy Land. No matter the rights and wrongs of the establishment of Israel. No matter the number of times the Palestinians have been offered land for peace, and rejected every offer. No matter the rights and wrongs of that.

======================

As I write this, I hear the news of a plane load of Palestinian "refugees" that have landed in Tambo airport in South Africa. The SA government is not allowing them in. Why? Pretoria won't say. 

But we know. We can make a pretty good guess. 

South Africa is not letting them in for the same reason that Lebanon won't take them in. That Jordan won't take them in. That Syria won't take them in. That Egypt won't take them in. 

Because in each of those places, when they've let in Palestinian refugees, the Palestinians have created murderous havoc. Civil war in Lebanon -- that continues to this day. Massacres in Syria. The Black September terror attacks in the Jordanian kingdom. Terror attacks in Cairo. 

The only places accepting Palestinian refugees are western: We silly billies in Australia and some in Europe. More fools us. More virtue-signalling fools us. 

Tal Oran has some views on the South Africa thing. 

Trump v Zelensky: the full record; and poll results

There's a new word in the Urban Dictionary: To Rupar. 

Which means "to deliberately mislead or mischaracterise a video to show a false picture". Comes from Aaron Rupar, the leftie Vox reporter, famous for putting out the video of Trump saying "There are fine people on both sides", after the Charlottesville troubles back around 2018. 

Trump was talking about people on "both sides" of the debate over whether some famous statues of Confederate Generals should be removed from a local park, or let stay in place. He was not talking about the neo-Nazis who were marching that same weekend. Indeed he specifically said "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and White Supremacists, who should be condemned totally". 

But Rupar put out a video in which he cut out Trump's clarification (underlined above), making it seem that Trump was in fact talking about the neo-Nazis. So that it came out just as "there are fine people on both sides", one of those sides being the neo-Nazis. 

This was very damaging to Trump for years. Biden said that it was for that "very fine people" statement that he went into the presidential race in the first place. 

"Rupar" became a word for this sort of deceptive editing of videos. 

And now we have another case of Ruparing. 

In the wake of the February 28th Trump-Zelensky meeting in the White House, most channels put out only the final few minutes of the talk. Which made it look like Trump and Vance had bushwacked Zelensky. I was caught up in the Rupar myself. 

But if you watch the whole video, which is about 50 minutes long, it's a very, very different picture. For the first 40+ minutes the talks in the Oval Office are friendly and cordial. Then it becomes clear that it was Zelensky who goaded first Vance, then Trump. At one point he claimed Trump's comments on destroyed Ukrainian cities were just Putin propaganda, as if the president didn't have other sources of intelligence on what's what in the country. 

I've now watched the whole video twice. Once the whole vid, and another time with a body language expert. And here's more from the Blackbelt Barrister, which is specifically on this point I'm making: namely that the early clips misrepresented the way the meeting actually went. 

You must have a look at the whole video before buying into any narrative, either the left or the right. It's certainly more complicated that just "Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky". 

Then we see Zelensky visit UK PM Keir Starmer in the UK. Starmer said that the "whole of the British people stands with Ukraine whatever it takes". The whole of the UK parliament is behind you, Starmer assured Zelensky. 

But the people don't. Polls show steadily declining support for a "whatever it takes" stand. Most people want a negotiated settlement. That is, the Trump approach. According to both YouGov polls and GBNews polls, 63% to 73% of the British people do NOT support the idea that they stand with Ukraine "whatever it takes". 

Grok again: 

The December 2024 YouGov poll reveals a clear trend: while support for Ukraine remains, the appetite for a drawn-out conflict is fading across these seven countries. Sweden and Denmark retain the strongest backing for Ukraine’s victory (50% and 40%), while Italy and Spain lead in favoring negotiation (55% and 46%).

 

The UK, France, and Germany fall in the middle, with growing support for a settlement (38-45%) outpacing the desire for a decisive win (25-36%). This shift suggests that, as of late 2024, Western European publics are increasingly prioritizing peace over victory, a sentiment likely shaped by war fatigue, economic pressures, and battlefield realities.

United Kingdom: 36% backed Ukraine winning outright, down from 50% in January 2024, indicating a significant shift away from prolonged engagement. 

Karps about Kamala on the eve of the election

On the eve of the election. 

Though the election has been going on for weeks now, with early voting and absentee ballots. 

Of the two candidates, I really, roooly don't like Kamala Harris. 

Let's recall that until five minutes ago, noone liked Kamala. Not Democrats. Not Independents. And certainly not Republicans. Like: “Please, Kamala, quit…” in the super pro-Left Washington Post.

The Democrats only came to "like" her after she was installed in coup against the sitting president, orchestrated by Obama, Pelosi, Schumer and Kamala herself. Then they decided to "like" her, instantly, because the Party told them to. Via the compliant media, which carried out the propaganda operation, which continues to this day. And that was just hunky-fine for the Left.

The rest of us meanwhile, we non-Dem, continue to find her a risible candidate. 

She's a liar. This is not the worst of the failings, but it's sure clear and up there, obvious and clear. She's lied about every hoax nonsense the Left has pushed since 2016. Russia collusion, Trump saying Nazis are "fine people' (he didn't), January 6 was an insurrection (it wasn't), Joe is "sharp as a tack" (he isn't). And do on.

She's bad on the policy issues. Summed up as: Crime, Border control, Inflation and the Economy. On all of which the electorate is clear. They prefer Trump to Kamala, based on how he did in his first term, vs how she and Joe did in their first term. This is pretty much acknowledged across the parties. The polls show that 79% of Americans think it's "on the wrong track". And large majorities say the trust Trump more on those four issues. 

But the main concerns are these two:

1. Free Speech: she and her running mate are not believers in the First Amendment. If they get back in power, they will go after free speech more than they have already done. Not just to clamp down on free speech, via all sorts of "misinformation and disinformation" laws, but also by weaponising the FBI and CIA to go after social media, as they did before Musk opened up the Twitter Files. 

Which of course brings to mind the way that the FBI and the DOJ have been weaponised to go after Trump and his supporters. This is undeniable and has been acknowledged even by Dem supporters, like the CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria.  

2. The One-Party state: The Biden admin are in the process -- right in front of our eyes --  of stacking illegal immigrants into swing states, giving them all sorts of freebies and giving them fast track to citizenship so they can vote Democrat. They don't even need to be citizens, though, as there's no voter ID law. The figures for numbers shipped in to swing states is on the government website, DHS.gov, so it's no secret. In some states the numbers imported have increased 700%.

As Elon Musk points out this makes the whole of America like California, a one-Party state. I've seen with mine own eyes how California has gone downhill under one party rule of the Democrats. Dirt, filth, crime and inefficiency aside, it's deeply corrupt and the corruption can't be revealed because of the one-party control. 

So: “Vote like your life depends on it”.

I find all this deeply worrying. I lived in a one-party state in the 1970s in China. It's not nice. 

ADDED: “My case against Kamala” by Matt Walsh.

==================

All of the above is not even to mention that Kamala has said she wants to stack the Supreme Court, to do away with the filibuster, to make Puerto Rico a state (which would give two more Dem Senators). 

Or to consider her views on Israel, on which I'm a die-hard Zionist, strong Israel supporter. Trump showed himself a much stronger ally of Israel than Kamala has. As for Ukraine, she wants to keep the war going, to placate the neo-cons, amongst them, Liz Cheney, which Trump wants to "stop the killing". 

So, I'm very much hoping for a Trump win, a landslide if possible -- "too big to rig" -- tomorrow. Though somehow I doubt it will be clean and I doubt that the Dems will accept a Trump win without a severe allergic reaction. Recall that to this day Hillary Clinton still calls Donald Trump's first term election win "illegitimate". So much for "election denial" being something of the Right. 

==================

Voting system:

This business of election denial brings to mind the fact that America now has a mish-mash of 50 different systems that needs to be reformed. The EU holds elections, with paper ballots, and things are decided in one day. The reform needed is simple. Or simple to state, at least. Not so simple to get agreement. Still, here it is:

• Have the voting on One Day only. Election Day. No early voting. 
• Valid photo ID required. 
• Election Day is a holiday. 
• Paper voting, no voting machines. 
• Reduce the absentee vote to those who are overseas. and require a verifiable ID

The fact that the Dems are dead set against any change like this, speaks volumes. They want to continue to be able to cheat. That's it. 

"The Atlantic" sullies itself with more made up nonsense

Click above for the video

I've been a long time subscriber to The Atlantic magazine. Always readable and refreshingly liberal. 

Until it was bought by Steve Jobs' widow and it became an unrecognisable propaganda samizdat. 

But still I subscribe. 

The latest has a story by Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg about how Trump allegedly stiffed the family of a Mexican-American soldier killed by a fellow soldier. The story is in the above video by Greg Foreman. 

The family has denied the story. They say Trump treated them with sympathy and respect. 

The person who was in the Oval office when the remarks were allegedly made, Mark Meadows, says Trump never said what is alleged in the article. 

Despite which the people in the video above, all with severe TDS, being told these denials, carry on as if nothing was said, and the story still true. They're like "why don't people believe us?". Answer: because you're always doing crap like this. 

As Glenn Greenberg reminds us, Jeffrey Goldberg was the guy who gave us the nonsense "Saddam Hussein is allied with Al-Qaeda", which sounded nonsense even then, and proved so subsequently, but which helped to justify a war that killed hundreds of thousands ("mass death").

More at Glenn's X post here

And it was Goldberg who gave us the nonsense story of Trump saying that veterans were "losers". That was debunked by none other than John Bolton, who was there when it was allegedly said, but who denied that Trump ever said it; this from Bolton, a major Trump-hater. 

So, this is the "October surprise". A BS story, retailed as BS, and printed is a BS propaganda outlet. 

“Only Israel can be attacked on 7 fronts and still be considered the aggressor”

 

That’s the feeling of the world, from the US to the EU and Gulf States and of the UN. And even the feckless Pope. And, sad for me, includes my own country Australia. The belief that Israel is the aggressor, in Gaza and now against Hezbollah. And so they are calling for “ceasefire” as soon as Israel begins any self defence. They were calling for “restraint” on October 8!

Their line is: “ Israel is entitled to self-defence, BUT…” followed by a litany of warning of what israel must not do. What Netanyahu must be sure to avoid doing. 

Bibi, the Lion of Israel, has wisely shut his ears to the capitulationist surrender monkeys. Which capitulationism has only given the Middle East 75 years of war, by Arab Muslims trying to kill Jews. This is no “land-for-peace issue” or “occupied territories” issue.  It’s a “get rid of all Jews from the Middle East” issue. A “Kill all the Jews” issue.

Instead, the Lion of Israel has the balls to kill the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. And change the very face and momentum of war in the  Middle East. 

Donate:

• I am donating to savingLivesInIsrael.org 
• And also to the food charity

Related:

Israel is on a roll. Caroline Glick 

This changes everything. Ollie Annisfeld. J-TV (feat BBC correspondent bursting into tears on learning on air that Nasrallah had been killed)

A tour of Judea and Samaria. The Israeli guys

Massive air strikes. Erick Stakelbeck

NOTE: I’m deliberately showing only pro-Israel and Zionist views here. If one wants the “other side”, critical of Israel right through to pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, pro terrorist, “peacenick”, one needs only go to the BBC, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, on cable, or the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post where all those views are loudly and endlessly bruited. This here is just a bit of balance. Just a tiny bit. Especially since many pro-Israel think that Israel has been losing the media/propaganda war since October 7.

"Media Elites Are So Self-Obsessed And Power-Mad They Lie Even To Themselves” | Michael Shellenberger

Click above for the video

Transcript, Michael Shellenberger speaking;

You might have seen this amazing exchange between CBS Late Night host Stephen Colbert and CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins on Monday night.

Colbert: I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.

[loud audience laughter]

Collins: Was that supposed to be a laugh line?

Colbert: It wasn't supposed to be but I guess it is.

What was so amazing about it wasn’t that everybody laughed. After all, just 32% of the public trusts the media to be objective. What was amazing was that Colbert really appears to believe that CNN is objective.

On the one hand, we shouldn’t be surprised by this. Both Colbert and CNN are anti-Trump and liberal. It’s natural that Colbert would agree with CNN’s point of view.

But does Colbert really believe that the public views CNN as “objective”? After all, just 7 percent of the public told Gallup last year that they have a “great deal of trust in the media,” while 38% say they have no trust at all.

And yet Colbert not only thinks CNN is objective, he must have thought that his audience would agree with him. Witness how surprised he was and the discomfort it caused him, which led him to quickly change the subject.

History: How important is it for Israel to win “public opinion”?

From Benjamin Netanyahu’s book “Bibi: My Story”. 

“My conversations with Father [Benzion Netanyahu] were eye-opening. He put forward a stark proposition: in today’s world, you can’t defend a military victory without a political victory; you can’t defend a political victory without a victory in public opinion; and you can’t win public opinion without an appeal to justice. (My underlining).

"If your adversaries succeed in portraying your cause as unjust, they will gradually erode your position. It didn’t matter if your cause was a genuinely moral one if you didn’t present it as such. Some of the greatest aggressors in history portrayed themselves as just and their victims as unjust. 

"This happened to Israel time and again. Israel kept winning on military battlefields and losing on political ones. Israel’s clearly just war of self-defense in 1967 was portrayed by Arab propaganda as an aggressive war of conquest. They conveniently hid the fact that they laid a siege of death on the tiny Jewish state, choked its trade route to Asia and formed a tristate military pact that openly called for Israel’s annihilation. 

“Arab propaganda systematically covered up the true root cause of the Israeli-Arab conflict—the persistent Arab refusal to recognize a Jewish state, whatever its borders.”

-- p. 103 of 724 in Kindle version, Chapter 13. 

Some thoughts on the nice formulation above by Benzion Netanyahu, Bibi's dad, back in the 1970s. 

1. Israel lost the public opinion war in those days of the 1970s and it’s still losing that battle today in the war in Gaza.

2. Hamas has been much more effective in winning over hearts and minds in the west. Especially, but not only, amongst the youth. 

3. This is all the more incredible given the brutality of the October 7th attacks on Israel. 

4. Hamas has done so on the asymmetric warfare tactic of the “Dead Babies strategy". They make the most out of all civilian deaths on their side. Especially dead babies and children. Of which there are many because of deliberate “Human Shield” tactics. And which they then give to western media, which replays them on the nightly news every day in every way and with no question. (“a photograph is not an argument”. Except, well... it kind of is). 

5. The western media is also complicit, in accepting every word and every picture from Hamas, as if true. And if it turns out not to be true, there’s never a retraction. 

6. Given all this, I wonder if the above advice by Bibi’s father to his son -- from Benzion to Benjamin -- is relevant any more. 

7. I suspect that Bibi is still working on that advice. He does seem to care about the public opinion to the extent of putting off war aims that he should have carried out. For example, he held off attacking Rafah during Ramadan because of “public opinion”. Many are saying that that lost the momentum of the war, and perhaps even lost the war itself, given that the Biden Administration is now pushing a “Comprehensive Ceasefire deal” that amounts to Israel surrender. 

8. Therefore, there is now a case that Israel should simply ignore “public opinion”. The opinion of the world, the opinions of the United Nations, of the ICC, of the ICJ, of the protesters on elite campuses around the world. There is nothing that Israel could do, no care and concern for Gazan civilians enough for them to think that Israel has done enough. No matter what Israel does it’s never enough. Ergo don’t worry about trying to do enough. Just worry about the war aims. 

9. The “appeal to justice”, that Bibi’s Father mentions above, hasn’t worked. Israel has done that, all its supporters have done that. And yet, the justice of Israel’s actions is dismissed, ignored, mocked. This, despite that it can be clearly stated, is convincing and is soundly based. It's as nothing to the haters of Israel. 

10. Any time that Israel does try to put its position, its justified position, to give facts and history, it is dismissed as “Zionist propaganda”. All that’s believed comes from Hamas. A clearly bad actor, a serial liar, a terrorist organisation, committed to genocide of Jews. And yet they’re the ones believed. “You can’t rationalise someone out of a view that they’ve reached irrationally”. 

That’s my own feelings about it. It’s just me being an "extreme, a horrid right-wing radical” (as I’ve been called by some OR’s). Well, yeah, I guess. I do plead guilty to wanting Israel to win this war. I can’t see any good coming out of capitulation. The capitulation that the Biden Administration wants and many in the west want. 

Winning means winning. It means demolishing Hamas. The only thing that’s standing in the way of Israel winning is that Israel, and perhaps Bibi too, are perhaps overly concerned about the “public opinion” that Bibi’s father drilled into him fifty years ago. 

Winning does not mean some BS "ceasefire agreement" foisted on Israel by a man -- Joseph Biden --  of whom Barack Obama famously said: “never underestimate Joe’s capacity to fuck things up."

ADDED: “Why Hamas supporters are winning the debate”

That’ll work, for sure! …”lighthearted patriotic quiz shows” free-to-air!

Today’s South China Morning Post and the 
bemusing news that we’ll be given free-to-air
“lighthearted patriotic propaganda programming”

My comment at the site: I for one, am looking forward to the weekly "lighthearted patriotic programming with Hong Kong characteristics". I'm sure it'll be very amusing!

Virtually all other commenters are mocking this whole project. And rightly so. Apparatchiks and their dopey dreams. “You will be happy!”

Meanwhile, some are getting their knickers in a twist over Chinese stand-up in Australia being self-deprecating. Online (50-cent army?) they call it being “race traitors”, for goodness sake! We’ve got “assistant professors of cultural studies” at the Chinese Univeristy of HK (my alma mater) telling us what’s funny, now? Bizarre.

I commented that in the US, stand-up originated with Jewish males, mostly, and blacks, all of whom make merciless fun of their Jewishness, maleness, blackness. 

China-based critics who yell “race traitor” at the Australian-Chinese stand-up comics need to grow up. The couple of snippets quoted are pretty funny. All women, by the way.

PS: I am looking forward to the weekly half-hour of “lighthearted patriotic programming” — with HK characteristics 🤔. I’m sure it’ll be pretty funny itself, if only unintentionally!

The need to disentangle from Chinese government bullying

There is a growing danger of malign Chinese government influence on the west via our universities. Largely via Confucius Institutes (CI) and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). I’ve worried about this for years and meant to write something. Seth Kaplan and Mohn Metz have done the work for me.

When the first CIs were founded, I welcomed them as a chance for foreigners to learn the wonders of Chinese language and culture. I rather like Confucius. I’ve studied his works in the original and done calligraphy of some of his Analects. 

I hoped the CIs would not turn political. But I was not surprised when they did. They are political with a very nasty twist. Pressure on universities to hew to Chinese policy and the Chinese world view: eg on Xinjiang and Tibet. Punishing China’s overseas students who step out of line; punishing their families at home in China. Communal guilt: very fascist.

This is happening all over the west. The vehicle of transmission to the CIs and CSSAs is the China United Front Works Department, not mentioned in this article, but established during the revolutionary wars and since grown into the largest covert propaganda body in the world.

Professor# Kaplan and Metz give a good account of what’s going on:

Shortly before the Winter Olympics in Beijing this past February, students at George Washington University (GWU) put up posters criticizing the Chinese government’s policies. The posters decried the internment and cultural genocide of Uyghurs, the crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, and China’s lack of transparency during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were quickly removed and would have gone largely unnoticed had it not been for the firestorm ignited by the university’s response to a student petition.

In the petition, which was sent directly to GWU’s president, Mark Wrighton, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) demanded that the university remove the posters, identify the students responsible, and “punish them severely” for “insult[ing] China.” In a leaked email response, Wrighton wrote that he was “personally offended” by the posters and promised to have them removed. Then, almost casually, he committed to “determin[ing] who [was] responsible.” There was a swift backlash both online, where freedom of expression advocates like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) condemned the email, and among GWU students, who organized a protest in response. Within days, Wrighton issued a statement promising not to punish the students involved.

Given the freedoms typically touted on college campuses, GWU’s reactionary effort to limit student criticism of the Chinese government might stand out as unusual. But it is part of a larger pattern — one linked to a multipronged effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to influence and control its image abroad. That image is particularly vulnerable now because, as the U.S. Department of State and numerous other countries have concluded, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is committing genocide against the Uyghur people, among other human rights abuses.[Read on…]

“Pentagon to review psyops after fake accounts exposed” | SCMP

I was sent the actual report a few weeks back by an Occasional Reader. The report that the US engaged in psychological warfare. After glancing through it my comments at the time were:

a. So what? As in, t’were ever so. We’ve always done it. And they’ve always done it. It was China wot invented spy craft. As the Pentagon spokesman says above “It’s an aspect of warfare as old as warfare itself”.

b. In any case, the report says (though not the news item above) that open and official government Twitter posts get more Likes and Retweets than any of the fake ones; so…“so what?” even more.

c. Who does this help, this Stanford Report, other than enemies of the west? To answer my own question, no-one. Stanford University, the authors of the report, may think they are helping bring peace to the world, or adding to the sum of human knowledge. But they are achieving neither because a) we already knew w eeyhing they reported and b) they are giving more free ammunition to the anti-western cabal.

Note the underlined bit above: 

…the accounts “consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China and Iran.” 

Shocking! Can’t you just hear the disdain dripping off that sentence.  To the authors, one feels, no aim is more ignoble than promoting the interests of the west.  And, to them, it is good that this effort is “facing scrutiny”.

Well done, Stanford! Pinning your colours firmly to a mast of lovely countries, Russia, China, Iran. Just surprised they didn’t add North Korea and Cuba for good measure. 

TERF Wars

Dave Chappelle sez he’s TERF and people go ballistic

I watched the show the day it first aired, 5 October. I liked it. As did 97% of those who actually watched it. The critics don’t like it because it doesn’t match a narrative: don’t punch down and trans is out of bounds. 

Rotten Tomatoes score

What’s going on?

China’s very own Cathedral of Light

Cathedral of Light, Berlin 1937

Cathedral of Light, Beijing 2021.Link

 

Now

Then

Now

Then

This only came to mind as I was talking to son John and he told me of Hitler’s massive gatherings at the Berlin Stadium, designed by Albert Speer and featuring 136 searchlights — the ones the Luftwaffe actually needed to pick out incoming ally airplanes — shining upward great columns of white light. A tremendous and awe-inspiring sight, no doubt. 

As are the steampunk solarpunk solar panels synchronised to pay homage to the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th birthday the other day. Which party, on reflection, is better called what it is, the Fascist Party, i fascisti. For it ticks all the boxes of the Cambridge definition of “fascist”.

And the only thing to celebrate about the CCP, and its 100 years of, mostly, mayhem, is when they’ve withdrawn from any area of public life things have gone better. When they’ve withdrawn from the economy, it’s boomed. That’s the reason for the miraculous 40 years of growth and lifting 600 million out of poverty. The private sector. Not the Communist Fascist Party.

A Different Kind of Army: The Militarization of China’s Internet Trolls - Jamestown

CAC = Cyberspace Affairs Commission

I've mentioned before the so-called "Fifty Cent Army" (无毛军) on the Internet in China. These are paid provocateurs in China, many very young, paid to push pro-Beijing propaganda, to counter foreign attacks on China, to peddle various CCP conspiracy theories (eg, Covid originated in American fish). Apparently, at least early on, they were paid fifty Chinese cents (five mao) per post — about a dime — hence the name.

The link here has a detained study of what China's now up to, by Ryan Fedasiuk, who does detailed amd good work at “China Brief”. [Important Note: China Bried uses links to original Chinese sources, including Chinese government. IOW, they don’t simply rely on secondary sources].

There's a lot new(ish) here, but the general situation is rather well-known. That if you displeae Beijing, an army of trolls is going descend on you. They gonna beat up on yo. The apparatchiks in Beijing are ever more easily offended. Just as the woke-erati are in the west, in an ironic mirroring of mutual victimhood. 

But because we know if them and because they often so obvious and crass, so we discount them. Just as we discount trolls in the west.

That said, I don't doubt they have some effect — H&M and the NBL, for example, have both kowtowed to Beijing and shame on them for that.

Downfall of the Gang of Four, Beijing October 1976

BBC Radio runs a program called "Witness", in which listeners are asked to give an account of an historic event they witnessed.  This week, of course, many about the downfall of the Berlin wall, 30th anniversary being today, or hereabouts.  I sent the Beebs something about our witnessing of a huge demonstration in Beijing in October 1976, which accompanied the downfall of the Gang of Four (remember them?).  I sent the note below, and they've responded by saying they are "very interested" in the story and want to ring me later this week.  Standing by....

My parents and I were witnesses to the huge demonstration along Chang-an Boulevard and Tiananmen Square in Peking in mid October 1976. Demonstrations that welcomed the downfall of the “Gang of Four”.  And the downfall of the "G4" led to the opening up of China and the remarkable transformation of its society and place in the world.

You may recall that Mao Tse-tung (“Mao Zedong” in Pinyin) died on September 9th 1976. Immediately after his death there was a fierce battle for control of China.  The leftists wanted to keep China along the socialist path set by Mao, centrally controlled and “self-reliant” – ie, to keep it the closed society it had been till then.  These leftists were led by a group who came to be known as the Gang of Four: Jiang Qing (Mao’s wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen.  Leading those against the leftists was Deng Xiaoping, who had been “purged” in April that year (the second or third of his career “purgings”).

The Gang of Four were arrested on 6th October 1976 and shortly thereafter there were national celebrations to welcome the arrest.  In Peking the major demonstration was in mid October (I can’t remember the exact date and can’t find it online).   That’s what we witnessed and took part in. 

I was new in Peking, sent there in early September 1976 by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (Australia’s FCO), for the first of two years’ full-time study of Mandarin at the Peking Languages Institute and Peking University.  My parents were visiting us (my then wife and me).

We were staying at the Peking Hotel, which is still there and still called the “Peking” Hotel, right on Tiananmen Square.  We had rooms overlooking Chang-an Boulevard and the square to our right (immediately south-west of the hotel).

We awoke to hear sounds outside.  Opening the window, we saw crowds as far as the eye could see to east and west and filling the huge square: millions of people, by later estimates.  There were happy people waving flags, letting off firecrackers, crashing cymbals, pounding drums on flatbed trucks and tricycles.

We went outside to get a closer look.  We were warmly welcomed by the crowds, who seemed genuinely happy, even deliriously so.  We were given little paper flags to wave.  They had hand-written Chinese characters on them.  I had only just started my study, so I didn’t know what the flags said, but later we had them translated for us and they were variations on the theme of “down with the Gang of Four”, and “down with the Jiang, Zhang, Yao, Wen clique”, some with crudely drawn pictures of the “gang”, and crosses through them.

A word on “Gang of Four”, the phrase: at the time, the translation into English “Gang of four” was not immediate.  The Chinese phrase is  四人帮, (Si Ren Bang in Pinyin; “Sir wren bung” phonetically), which is literally “four person gang”, or “four person clique”, or similar.  It was some time, some days, if I recall, before the western press settled on “Gang of Four” as the preferred term, and it has, of course, now become part of English lexicon. [check out Google images for "gang of four" to see just how much there is, including a number of bands with the name].

Deng Xiaoping was officially brought back to power some two years later, though he was certainly behind the scenes in all that led up to the arrest of the G4 and the aftermath. It was Deng who set China on a new path, to lead it to its present status as a major world power and major player in the international economic scene.  There are concerns about what China terms its “peaceful rise”, but there can hardly be any argument that we’re better off with a China we have now than the one we may have had under the G4 – witness North Korea as to what happens under that type of leftist extreme isolationism.

It was Deng who settled the course of China onto a “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, ie, a pragmatic China: he coined some memorable phrases: “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice” (to move China away from rigid socialist ideology), “Seek truth from facts” (ditto), “To get rich is glorious” (Adam Smith would've loved him!).

For the place where I now live, Hong Kong, he came up with the famous formulation of “One country, two systems”, which paved the way for the agreement on Hong Kong with Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and which has worked rather well for us since the handover in 1997.

There may be some “retrospective determinists”, who might claim that China would have gone this way in any case (ie: “this is the way China is, so this is the way it must have become”). I don’t think so.  If the G4 had prevailed, China could have proceeded along the same path it had to that time, just as North Korea has continued along its own ruinous path.  That would have been to the great cost of many hundreds of millions of people. In China alone, the World Bank has estimated that China’s economic rise has brought over 500 million people out of poverty.  It has, on any fair balance, been a stabilizing force in the recent financial crises: the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the current GFC.

What we have seen in China in the last 30+ years is unprecedented in world history.  It all started with the arrest of the Gang of Four, which was welcomed by the crowds in the streets of Peking we witnessed from our hotel window and then walked down to join, waving our flags to celebrate the downfall of the Gang, thirty three years ago.

P F Hong Kong

PS: my wife I met some 14 years ago in China. Turns out she was there at the demo too. She was a high-school student in Peking.  She remembers the day well.  They were driven to Tiananmen to take part in the demos, and though not given much info about it, knew enough of the basics to know that it was good news for China, the beginning of opening up.  Had we met that day, however, we would not have been able to talk as she knew no English then and I had only just started my Chinese.  My mother (88) is currently visiting us in Hong Kong and also remembers the day well.