Image Source: 4chan.
The novel coronavirus sheds light on activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). There is a lot of disinformation circulating in relation to the epidemic. It is hard to know what to believe, and in a sense, all versions of reality are true: the Party's Herculean humanitarian efforts to contain the spread of the virus contrast with their authoritarianism.
The Coronavirus, Anti-CCP Criticism and Disinformation
Chinese citizens have taken to social media to complain about the CCP. They are not political actors per se; rather, they are distressed individuals. Some personal videos may be faked. Given the misery of the woman in the video below, I do not think this is a fake source. But there is no proof that this is not an actress. Other social media examples of complaining citizens are here and here.
"wake up All China Citizen !!" she said (15 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
Violent, frightening coronavirus videos have been circulating for the past weeks. They show screaming people dragged from their homes, out of their cars and off the streets, all presumably in Wuhan. The most infamous of these shows a gang of quarantine men pulling a woman from her car and apparently having her neck snapped on camera.
Police in #Wuhan #outbreak #coronavirus (7 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
There are even videos which seem to show armed HAZMAT-suited teams shooting citizens outright rather than taking them to quarantine, although the presentation is ambiguous and probably false (as here).
ARMED PATROLS WALKING THE STREETS (16 February 2020). Video Source: Bitchute.
Leaked Video from China #coronavirus #wuhan #Covid2019 (15 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
Leaked Video from China #coronavirus #wuhan #Covid2019 (15 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
Leaked Video #coronavirus #wuhan #CoronavirusOutbreak (14 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
Background Broadcast: 'To anti-virus, residents must wear masks.' #coronavirus #CCP pic.twitter.com/1hwCnJhZZ7— Voice of Guo Media (@VOG_2020) February 16, 2020
I have not posted many of these videos because I cannot tell what is disinformation, what is staged, twisted, reedited, or real information. I cannot tell if the scenes were shot in Wuhan during the current coronavirus epidemic, or if they are from a different time or place. For example, one video shows people in shirt sleeves being rounded up by police, meaning that it was not filmed in January or February 2020.
One of the telltale signs is that in really worrisome videos - like that of the woman with the snapped neck, the person holding the smartphone camera is left undisturbed and allowed to keep video-ing the scene. Later viewers of the video passively ignore the presence of the camera person and assume the outrages are real.
There is no way that a smartphone user would be allowed to film state-engineered violence like that in Communist China. The violent gang of state enforcers would block passersby and confiscate the smartphones of stray individuals. That means that some of these videos, though not all, are faked and may have been staged by the CCP in Wuhan, or by CCP critics in Taiwan or perhaps another Asian location. I don't see why videos of violent quarantine actions would be staged by the CCP, but it is possible that they wish to intimidate dissidents.
Of course, CCP critics in Hong Kong and Taiwan and elsewhere are capitalizing on this disaster; some are citizen journalists and dissidents who are gaining international audiences for the first time.
Anti-CCP Narratives Surfacing
This is why we see deeper discussions and conspiracy theories about the CCP now surfacing. Deeper information about the CCP may stem from real intelligence activities or it may be conspiracy theory, or a combination of both.
This epidemic is rattling mainstream media cages and boosting members of the social- and alt-media. It is an opportunity for the latter to scoop the MSM. In a less positive sense, the alt-media can now capitalize on non-mainstream propaganda angles. Below, see interviews which speculate on China's aggressive expansion around the world, the potential development of the novel coronavirus as a bioweapon, and supposed covert plans for asymmetrical hybrid warfare. Of course, almost all respectable outlets have denied that the novel coronavirus is lab-made, much less is a bioweapon, or a partly-finished bioweapon which was accidentally released.
Nevertheless, this is the supposition of The Epoch Times in two videos, which seek to place that supposition into larger context. The Epoch Times is an international news outlet founded in 2000. It claims to maintain an old-fashioned moral standpoint and political neutrality, but it takes an anti-CCP viewpoint and - according to SF Gate - has links to the Falun Gong. Bear in mind that SF Gate (an online version of the San Francisco Chronicle) might have its own political reasons for dismissing The Epoch Times. SF Gate leans left. The Epoch Times leans right, and some would say far right.
The Novel Coronavirus and North America
One can only view the videos below with willing suspension of disbelief. The first video offers details on the possible development of Chinese bioweapons in relation to a North American invasion, through an interview between Epoch Times senior correspondent Joshua Phillip, "a recognized expert on unrestricted warfare, asymmetrical hybrid warfare, subversion, and historical perspectives on today’s issues" and Jeff Nyquist, a writer with an anti-Red perspective. Nyquist is a staunch critic of the CCP.
How to Deal With the Chinese Communists – J.R. Nyquist https://t.co/m80UklmrAH— Jeff Nyquist (@JRNyquist) February 15, 2020
In the interview, dated 17 February 2020, Nyquist links the coronavirus outbreak to lurid tales of China's biological warfare program. He speaks of a covert Chinese-Russian pact to take over North America in a Lebensraum action, which has been planned for decades.
Researcher Discusses China’s Biological Warfare Program (17 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
In this plan, the Chinese would acquire the United States and Russia would subjugate Canada. Some of these aggressions would be masked as attacks by supposed Arab terrorists, who would actually be Russian agents.
That means there is something juicy here for 9/11 truthers, who are always eager to hear something that supports their perspective. The story enhances President Trump's bid to build a US-Mexican border wall, since Nyquist's account postulates that ground troops would invade through that border. Nyquist also hypothesizes that in peace time, caches of nuclear and conventional weapons would be (or have been) secretly planted in the United States, masquerading as normal Chinese goods shipments in commercial trade. Chinese military uniforms would also be hidden around America for a moment of surprise attack. He takes all this from a rumoured early 2000s' speech made by the then-Chinese defense minister, General Chi Haotian.
Nyquist corroborates this anti-Chinese story with tales told by Russian defectors who divulged secret North American attack plans during the earlier, pre-1989 Communist Russian period.
Curiously, I encountered this very narrative about eight years ago, in the hairiest libertarian, survivalist, when-the-shit-hits-the-fan (WTSHTF) corners of the Internet. I never covered it on my blog because it sounded too outlandish.
One part of this rumour of a secret invasion plan is grounded in reality. It is easy for enlightened Europeans to scoff at backwoods American preppers, but frankly, they are one reason why the United States would be an extremely difficult country to invade. Contrary to the stereotype that the United States is full of fat, Netflix-hypnotized couch-potato suburbanites, America is packed with armed civilians who are ready at the drop of a hat to vanish into the hinterland with their guns and survivalist training. Even left-wing Americans are capable of this incredible transformation.
A potential aggressor state would have to take this aspect of American culture into account, because every little town has its own drilled militia and a sniper's respect for duck-hunting. It is this resourcefulness and edgy anti-statism which help to explain why a military invasion of North America has been, let us say, delayed.
As for armed, anti-statist civilians, one cannot say the same of Canada, culturally speaking. However, there is a nearly-invisible under-stratum of Canadian survivalists, who are rather different from the American variety. The point to understand is that both countries were carved out of the forests between 300+ and 100 years ago, and that homesteading legacy and memory persists.
The vast distances of the Canadian countryside mean that it would be nearly impossible to dominate the country's sparse population. As with the United States, and perhaps more so, an aggressor would easily capture Canadian cities, but a portion of the civilian population would militarize, and would disappear with part of the Canadian army into the wilderness, and become nearly impossible to smoke out.
This is why Nyquist describes secret Sino-Russian intelligence plans to weaken North America with biowarfare first, followed by pin-pointed nuclear attacks and sudden asymmetrical and unconventional attack combinations. He appears to assume that the coronavirus release was a botched vaccination experiment to protect the Chinese against a bioweapon. In a non-botched attempt, Nyquist guesses, the release of a weaponized virus could be part of a two-part effort. In the first phase, one bioweapon release would kill North American medical staff and swamp all hospitals, while weakening the population. In the second phase, a second bioweapon would be released, thereby emptying the vast continent of people prior to conventional invasion.
Again, I am not claiming any of this material is real, credible or constructive in the current crisis. But these videos show where popular discussions online are turning in relation to the SarsCov2 epidemic. These themes were once buried deep in the Internet Underground. They are now seeing the light of day on social media.
The Chinese and Latin America
Chatter about the strategic defense of North America brought Joshua Phillip to a second interview on 18 February 2020, regarding Chinese interests in Central and South America, where, in The Epoch Times's anti-Communist narrative, a soft spot for socialism makes locals susceptible to Chinese overtures. He interviews Brazilian journalist Allan Dos Santos of Terça Livre (Free Tuesday), an alt-media outlet founded in 2014.
China is Quietly Taking Over Latin America (18 February 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
You can see Terça Livre's Youtube channel here and news Website here; their coverage of the coronavirus is here. Dos Santos has been attacked as a renegade conservative blogger and head of a fake news network. Criticism of dos Santos as a nationalist is here. One of his Twitter campaigns can be seen at #SomosTodosAllan ('We are all Allan').
Dos Santos believes that many socialist parties in Latin America are funded or directly controlled by the CCP. The Brazilian blogger and alt-journalist also thinks that the Chinese are tangled up, through the creation of synthetic drugs, in the Latin America drug trade.
This issue taps into alt-media claims that the whole drug trade - no matter who runs it - is and was engineered to dominate and destroy North American civilians. A related argument maintains that the Chinese deliberately flooded North America with synthetic drugs over the past two decades, in a reverse version of the British imperial opium trade. In this view, a drug like fentanyl is classed as a chemical weapon, which leaves the soft footprint of a first wave invisible invasion. The spread of synthetic drug addiction is a terrible phenomenon, made worse (some would say, enabled) by its monetized implementation by pharma companies and legitimized by the medical profession.
Phillip observes that Guyana just found massive oil reserves in November 2019. The country is poised to exploit these reserves, but like Venezuela, there is a political fight between left and right-wing Great Powers to dominate that economy. China has indeed been heavily investing in Guyana since 2019.
Dos Santos, who is pro-Trump and aligned with Brazil's conservative President Jair Bolsonaro, argues that either Communist China will step in to support Bolsonaro's Brazil, or Trump's America will, and the political trends will change accordingly. The core question is, according to dos Santos, whether Latin America will flip from socialism to conservatism. Dos Santos believes that the latter outcome would alarm China. The leftist model, which would transform South America into a Latinized New World version of the European Union, is already under the strategic attack by American conservatives.
See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.
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