Most every day, my Beijing-born wife checks social media for new scares.
Sure, there’s worsening news of the ever-present coronavirus, but there’s another unhealthy shock to the system.
New and continued attacks against Asians, in particular the Chinese.
The COVID-19 virus has launched a new war-on-earth that’s as old as the planet itself.
Xenophobia. Racism. Baseless hatred.
Ethnic-based fear and loathing.
On walks, Asians admit they’re particularly afraid to sneeze, fearing that it will illicit looks-to-kill and perhaps reprisal from anyone in hearing distance.
They have good reason to be afraid. People have developed a seething anger over a virus they cannot control.
So they’re lashing out against each other.
In San Jose, two Chinese restaurants were vandalized while a white-owned business between them was left untouched.
In San Francisco, a man approached an Asian woman on the street and accused her of spreading the coronavirus. Then he spit in her face.
In New York City, a man assaulted an Asian woman wearing a face mask, calling her a “diseased bitch.”
In Los Angeles, a subway rider shouted that Chinese people are filthy and that “every disease has came from China.”
In Midland, Tx., a man slashed the faces of an Asian — not Chinese, but Burmese — man and his son outside a Sam’s Club.
In Seoul, a sign posted at the entrance to a seafood restaurant declared in red Chinese characters, “No Chinese allowed.”
Many food delivery workers there refused to make deliveries in neighborhoods dominated by Chinese.
Like the spores of COVID-19, that old fusty fear of the “Yellow Peril” seems to be everywhere and, if Seoul is any indication, even among other Asians.
And elected politicians and those in leadership positions aren’t making it any better.
They’re playing a dangerous international Blame Game.
In a recent press briefing, Donald Trump substituted the word “Chinese” for “Corona.” It wasn’t accidental. There is a photo of his marked notes.
“I didn’t appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them,” he said. “I think saying that our military gave it to them creates a stigma.”
Trump was responding to rumors on Internet chat rooms in China that sick American soldiers or athletes first spread the virus, which many Chinese have now decided originated in the U.S.
The hysteria has been subtly stoked by the Chinese government, along with further rumors that the U.S. government initially covered up its mounting cases, and perhaps thousands of deaths, by classifying them as regular flu.
Posts on such Chinese websites as WeChat and Weibo claim that COVID-19 is a viral weapon released by the U.S.
There are press reports that also suggest that the Russians are gleefully jumping on to this anti-American disinformation campaign.
Earlier this month, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, fired off this cyber volley. “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” he tweeted.
“Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
He later followed up with another tweet urging his 284,000 Twitter followers to share an article arguing that the virus originated in the U.S.
The New York Times reported that Zhao’s statement was “posted on a website promoting conspiracy theories, including articles lambasting the ‘Vaccine Deep State’ and questioning whether Osama bin Laden ever existed.”
Back and forth, back and forth.
As Rome burns.
On Fox News, GOP Sen. Tom Cotton has repeated a debunked theory that the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan lab that researched dangerous pathogens.
Amid a U.S. foreign policy already dominated by xenophobia, America’s higher institutions are throwing fuel to the nationalistic fire.
UC Berkeley’s health services center this month listed xenophobia toward Asian people as a “normal reaction” in an informational post on Instagram focused on “managing fears and anxiety” about the pneumonia-like sickness.
Officials later retracted the sentiments. But the damage was done.
I lived in Asia for four years as a newspaper correspondent. One thing I learned is that blind nationalism is ugly, no matter which flag it flies under.
Chinese nationalism. Japanese nationalism. Korean nationalism. U.S nationalism.
It’s all the same.
And it’s not good.
Many Chinese are apparently irate that history may single out their nation as the cause of the worst global pandemic in more than a century.
So they lash out.
A good offense is a good defense.
“They can’t cure COVID-19so they’re trying to pin it on China!” read one anti-U.S. post.
Others mocked the U.S. for not being able to produce as many as masks as China.
In the U.S., those hateful words have led to hateful actions.
Fearing reprisals, Chinese residents of San Francisco are stockpiling guns and ammunition, a move that flies on the face of their culture.
They’re doing so on the advice of some Chinese police officers, who reportedly warn that hey may not be able to protect them during any riots.
Once the shit goes down.
Let’s hope the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse, a mutant-state fueled by hatred and fear, featuring those Walking Dead of political bigotry, is not upon us.
If so, let us pray.
