What makes anti China propaganda so effective is that people want to believe it.
Believing that western system is fundamentally better allows justifying all the horrors we see day to day by saying that the alternatives are even worse, and so we shouldn't even try to change anything.
Accepting that China managed to find a better path that the west is actively fighting against means having to accept that the west is on the wrong side of history. That's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people.
Also, the officialdom gives license to hate. It’s a rubber stamp on bigotry, you can be a bigot all you like, but for Good™. Now you can dehumanise Russians, Chinese and any other targets of imperialism for free and remain a progressive liberal, shielded from any negative judgement.
And if on the rare occasion you are called out on it, you can just say that you hate the governments, not the people, ignoring all polling figures and support for these governments. After all, those support stats are fake anyway, you stupid tankie.
This is spot on. It’s wild how easily prejudice gets normalized here, seems like all it takes is a few news cycles for large swathes of the population to advocate for genocide.
Also, the officialdom gives license to hate. It’s a rubber stamp on bigotry, you can be a bigot all you like, but for Good™. Now you can dehumanise Russians, Chinese and any other targets of imperialism for free and remain a progressive liberal, shielded from any negative judgement.
And if on the rare occasion you are called out on it, you can just say that you hate the governments, not the people, ignoring all polling figures and support for these governments. After all, those support stats are fake anyway, you stupid tankie.
This is spot on. It’s wild how easily prejudice gets normalized here, seems like all it takes is a few news cycles for large swathes of the population to advocate for genocide.