The good vs the bad narrative in the American elections

3 min read

Barely a week ago, amidst a heat wave hitting most of Europe and a heated election campaign hitting the U.S., Reuters published a strongly worded article about a secret American military disinformation campaign against the Chinese Covid vaccine back in 2020/21.

To refresh the memories, in the first months of 2020, Chinese “Covid Diplomacy” was roaring at full power. For most of the world, Beijing was the main source of face masks, tests, gloves and other crucial materials. Much like the famous “Panda diplomacy”, supplying Covid-essentials became a tool for “brand building”.

This (obviously) irked Western governments, all lagging behind in deliveries and in developing a working vaccine. The Reuters article reveals that the disinformation project was started during the Trump administration (and got blocked a few months after President Biden moved into the White House, more on this later).

Using classic disinformation tactics, the Pentagon’s covert campaign tried to undermine Chinese efforts to distribute Covid-19 vaccines, focusing on the worst-hit countries (think the Philippines, for example), or the ones who were not on particularly good terms with Washington. Hundreds of fake social media posts were used to spread lies about the quality of the face masks or test kits.

The anti-vax (understand: anti-Chinese-vax) campaign claimed that the Chinese vaccine contained pork gelatine, thus was haram (forbidden) to Muslims. Other tactics included fear-mongering (e.g. claiming that the Chinese vaccine was unsafe and caused severe side-effects) and visual propaganda (image of a pig constructed from syringes or hijab-clad women separated from pigs by a curtain, while a figure, “China”, carried syringes).

The project extended beyond Covid-19 to broader anti-China narratives, too. It criticized the general quality and authenticity of Chinese medical supplies.

And did so in a moment when the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, was fighting a literal war against anti-vax propagandists at home. (And in the same moment when the far-right began its upward march, partly because of what was seen as government overreach.)

Officially, the project was a retaliation against Beijing’s own disinformation campaign, that suggested that the virus was created at a U.S. Army lab in Fort Detrick, Md.

Ironically, the efforts to undermine China’s advancement backfired at home.

The Reuters article quotes an American expert, who claimed that “the effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including the U.S.-made vaccines that became available later”.

Probably this was one of the reasons why the Biden administration decided to stop this particular project.

It wasn’t the Reuters which reported first about it, though. Back in 2022, Washington Post already wrote about the Pentagon’s review of its clandestine psychological operations, including the anti-China fake accounts. That article also pointed to the fact, that the Biden administration didn’t like the use of Facebook and Twitter to spread disinformation.

Only, the Reuters’ revelations are much more detailed, bringing to light more about the supposedly secret operation.

The timing of the report’s publication is curious, and the publisher, as well.

Reuters was traditionally considered a more or less neutral media venue, and, up until a couple of years ago, it indeed received about the same amount in contributions from Republican and Democrat donors (though, except for one year in 2014, it has always gotten more from the latter). The tide started to turn in 2016, when Democrats gave almost four times more. Since 2022, the Republican contributions can be considered negligible.

It is interesting that it decided to publish a story, right in the middle of the presidential campaigns, that could potentially undermine the credibility of the (next) American government(s). Exploiting religious and cultural sensitivities (think: claims about “haram” ingredients”) could easily be perceived as a gross violation of respect and trust, further alienating Muslim-majority countries.

More than that.

Anti-American sentiment could grow in other countries of the “Global South”, as countries all over the world can easily start to question the sincerity of Washington’s approaches, in light of its willingness to undermine their public health efforts and sovereignty. Solidarity among the BRICS nations or elsewhere could get inadvertently strengthened, while their collective stance against Western interference could be reinforced.

All would give extra chances to China to fill the gap.

Except, of course, if the blame could be put on one of the candidates, while the other can be shown as the “fair play champion”, fighting against disinformation everywhere.

As an interesting development (independent of the Reuters article) the Supreme Court has just rejected a bid to curtail the Biden administration’s efforts to pressure social media companies to remove content that officials claimed to be misinformation.

With this, the Supreme Court overruled the decisions of a federal district judge in Louisiana and a federal appeals court, both of which agreed that certain White House officials and the FBI unconstitutionally coerced platforms to supress content related to COVID-19 vaccines and the 2020 election. In the case known as Murthy v. Missouri, the court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs relied on “allegations of past government censorship” which proves nothing as regards the future.

The message is clear: the Biden-administration doesn’t tolerate campaigns (conducted by Americans) based on lies, neither at home, nor abroad.

A couple of recent analyses published on Foreign Affairs falls into this line, as well.

The first, published on June 26, is Victor Cha’s lengthy article that paints a bleak picture, warning America’s Asian partners to worry about the return of Trump.

According to this narrative, Asian countries should be aware that Trump would “prioritize America’s narrow self-interest and do less to help”, or that his second term is “likely to be far more disruptive for Asia than the first one was”, as Trump is “much likelier to forgo experience and expertise in favour of loyalty when he selects … his national security team”.

On the other side of the coin would stand the Biden-administration, that “over the past four years” has been “the benevolent patron that has long supported the liberal order in the region”.

A similar narrative is suggested by Ben Rhodes (former deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama) in his June 27 analysis, who claims that Biden’s second term would be marked with a “clear-eyed view” about the limits of American influence and that the administration would work on a foreign policy “for the world as it is”.

Thus, American citizens with links to Asia should choose wisely at the ballot box (if they care about the futures of their relatives there), while Asian countries should choose well whom they support or attack, openly (or with clandestine psychological operations).

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