When you start from the axiomatic assumption that the anti-China propagandists cannot be lying, you have to assume that it is reality itself that is lying to you.
It can be that. But more often i think it’s western chauvinism. The belief that whatever its flaws, the West’s system has to be ultimately morally superior, and therefore any system that is different has to be somehow worse. You have to believe there is something about those other systems that is sinister or evil, or else it would be too painful admitting to yourself that you live in the worse system, and that the suffering you endure (and cause to others) is not actually necessary and unavoidable because the alternatives are not all worse.
So you can admit that the government and media are lying to you about the things they are doing in your country, but surely they cannot be lying about other countries too, because then you would no longer have anything to hang onto that makes you feel superior.
China is just the biggest of the foreign “others” in the present day, but it’s not exclusive to China. You see the same willigness to believe propaganda about Russia, Iran, DPRK, etc.
The amount of denial that props this mentality up also props up a huge worldview full of predicates and presuppositions. It’s like cracking through the Kariba Dam, the resulting flood has a cascade effect, but since this dam neither can’t hold nor should be maintained indefinitely it’s better to break it earlier rather than later to clear away the wreckage.
When you start from the axiomatic assumption that the anti-China propagandists cannot be lying, you have to assume that it is reality itself that is lying to you.
And that has to come from a racist bias against China. How else do you account for this kind of mentality?
It can be that. But more often i think it’s western chauvinism. The belief that whatever its flaws, the West’s system has to be ultimately morally superior, and therefore any system that is different has to be somehow worse. You have to believe there is something about those other systems that is sinister or evil, or else it would be too painful admitting to yourself that you live in the worse system, and that the suffering you endure (and cause to others) is not actually necessary and unavoidable because the alternatives are not all worse.
So you can admit that the government and media are lying to you about the things they are doing in your country, but surely they cannot be lying about other countries too, because then you would no longer have anything to hang onto that makes you feel superior.
China is just the biggest of the foreign “others” in the present day, but it’s not exclusive to China. You see the same willigness to believe propaganda about Russia, Iran, DPRK, etc.
The amount of denial that props this mentality up also props up a huge worldview full of predicates and presuppositions. It’s like cracking through the Kariba Dam, the resulting flood has a cascade effect, but since this dam neither can’t hold nor should be maintained indefinitely it’s better to break it earlier rather than later to clear away the wreckage.