Covid 19 coronavirus: theory that Chinese propaganda encouraged closures in western countries

As the global community continues to grapple with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic catastrophe caused by the associated “lockdowns” imposed by governments around the world, a chilling new theory has emerged.

It goes like this: China, in a massive disinformation campaign spread through social media and through committed voices in Western politics, science, and medicine, aggressively lobbied for other nations to follow suit, aiming to intentionally destroy their economies.

That’s according to Michael Senger, an Atlanta, Georgia-based attorney and investigator. In an article for Tablet Magazine, Senger has presented a disturbing timeline of evidence that, if true, points to what could be the most effective and devastating psychological operation ever conducted by a world government.

“By promoting fraudulent data, aggressively deploying disinformation and flexing its institutional influence, Beijing transformed the snake oil of lockdowns into ‘science’, crippling rival economies, expanding their influence and sowing authoritarian values,” Senger writes on Twitter.

The science of confinements is far from being solved.

Sweden, which infamously rejected calls to close schools, bars and restaurants because of the pandemic, according to some experts, has been largely “vindicated”. Despite registering more than 5,800 deaths, one of the worst near the beginning of the crisis, the daily death toll in the country is now negligible.

However, other experts, including Professor Peter Collignon of the Australian National University, caution against the Swedish model.

When the CCP first moved to place Wuhan, the city of 11 million people in the eastern Hubei province where Covid-19 first emerged, under mass house arrest in late January, the World Health Organization (WHO) described it as “unprecedented in public health.” history “and” new to science “.

A month later, the WHO enthusiastically endorsed China’s closure strategy as a framework for governments around the world to follow. “Copy China’s response to Covid-19,” Canadian WHO official Bruce Aylward said Feb. 26.

Meanwhile, social media had been flooded with terrifying “leaked” videos that appeared to show apocalyptic scenes from the epicenter of the virus: bodies piled up in hospital corridors, people collapsed in the street.

The New York Times revealed in June that Twitter had removed tens of thousands of fake accounts that were being used in a coordinated effort to spread the CCP’s message, with a particular focus on Italy, the European nation with the closest ties to China.

Senger described the New York Times article, which showed how vast networks of shady accounts began touting the benefits of China’s response in early March, as “irrefutable proof of the genesis of the coronavirus lockdown.”

“The fact that the CCP’s disinformation campaign focused on Italy is crucial,” Senger wrote. “The rest of the world followed the example of Italy.”

On March 9, Italy became the first country outside of China to implement the WHO advice. Chinese officials who visited Italy a few days later reported that the lockdown “was not strict enough” and “there are still too many people and behaviors on the street to improve.”

At the same time, Italy was bombarded with Chinese propaganda: an analysis of tweets from March 11 to 23 found that almost half of all posts used the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia (go China, go Italy) and more than a third of those that They had the hashtag #grazieCina (thank you China) came from bots.

And it wasn’t just Italy. The New York Times noted how a Twitter user @manisha_kataki posted a video on March 12 of Chinese workers disinfecting streets. “At this rate, China will be back in action very soon, it may be much faster than the world expects,” the tweet read.

The relatively benign video was shared hundreds of thousands of times, with “dating tweets” in multiple languages ​​using nearly identical phrases to complain about governments simply telling them to “wash our hands”, in contrast to China’s strict blockades.

Twitter removed more than 170,000 accounts linked to the activity, flagged by an Israeli analytics company Next Dim as likely state sponsored, but Senger shows how hundreds of similar examples can still be found with a simple search.

“This is what the UK should be doing. Not just washing our hands,” still reads a tweet from March.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week announced a series of new coronavirus restrictions that are expected to last six months.

Senger notes how Johnson, who imposed a lockdown on March 23, appears to have been a target after initially choosing to follow Sweden’s “herd immunity” strategy.

“On March 13, suspicious accounts began to attack his Twitter account and compared his plan to genocide,” he wrote. “This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were barely active before that date.”

But China’s propaganda efforts went far beyond social media.

In July, FBI Director Chris Wray revealed that the CCP had explicitly reached out to American politicians to support China’s strategy.

“We have heard from federal, state and even local officials that Chinese diplomats are aggressively calling for support for China’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis,” he told the Hudson Institute.

“Yes, this is happening at both the federal and state levels. Not long ago, we had a state senator who was recently even asked to come up with a resolution supporting China’s response to the pandemic.”

Last month Australia announced a broad investigation into Chinese infiltration of the university sector, after The Australian newspaper revealed that dozens of the country’s top researchers had been inducted into the CCP’s secret “Thousand Talents” program.

In the US, major scientific and medical research institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and Harvard University, have been rocked by disclosures of undisclosed financial ties to the Chinese government.

In May, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the esteemed medical journal The Lancet, told Chinese state television that China’s blockade was “not only the right thing to do, but it also showed other countries how they should respond to their faces.” of such an acute threat. “

As citizens of the US, Australia, the UK, and other Western countries struggle through various degrees of lockdown, China, it seems, may be laughing the last.

Last month, thousands of people were seen huddling together at a water park for a huge summer pool party in the original epicenter of Wuhan, where there has reportedly been no community broadcast since May.

This week, the young revelers were photographed together on the dance floor of a Wuhan nightclub.

The key question in all of this is why China went to great lengths to spread propaganda about the success of its blockade strategy, and why it was so keen that other countries follow suit.

“The most benign possible explanation for the CCP’s campaign for global blockades is that the party aggressively promoted the same lie both internationally and domestically: that the blockades worked,” Senger wrote.

“And then there is the possibility that by closing the world, (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, who … imagines a socialist future with China at the center, would know exactly what he was doing.”