The Politics of Hate

The Rhetoric Behind Anti-Asian Attacks

Mar 26, 2021

On February 19, 52-year-old Leelee Chin-Yeung was violently assaulted and pushed to the ground in one of the busiest streets in Flushing, Queens, a predominantly Chinese and Korean neighborhood. Minutes before the attack, 47-year-old Patrick Mateo was seen shouting racial slurs at Chin-Yeung who was waiting in line at a Chinese bakery. Mateo was eventually arrested after community uproar, but on the very next day, he was released without bail after the NYPD claimed it wasn’t a hate crime. When Mateo’s public information was later leaked online, I learned that he lived only a block away from me. Despite being aware of these attacks, I had never expected one to occur in my own community—much less one with such a heavy presence of Asian Americans. Yet, this incident happened on a street that both me and my family frequent, a place where I would never expect such a brazen crime to occur in public.

While it was disheartening to hear about an incident so close to home, it came as no surprise when there have been daily reports of Asians being beaten, slashed, and murdered. The incident in Flushing was disturbing, and it was infuriating to see another case where an Asian hate crime went unrecognized and unpunished. However, the acknowledgment of this fact should never mean passivity. It is our responsibility to make sure these incidents don’t repeat themselves. To do so, we have to examine the source of these crimes. Even though anti-Asian sentiments have always been ingrained into American history, this 150% increase in racially motivated attacks is no coincidence. The root cause behind these attacks becomes clear when we examine the political messages that have been peddled by government officials and media outlets over not just these past months, but also decades prior.

Asian Americans who were killed as a result of hate crimes and police brutality. Source: @subversiveass

Unfortunately, racism against Asians has been leveraged as a political tool. Trumpian phrases like “Kung flu” and “Chinese virus” have become a routine part of the Right Wing lexicon, operating as political statements above all else. This became evident, back in March, when former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scrapped a joint G7 statement on the Coronavirus after European officials refused to call Covid-19 the "Wuhan Virus" and when Trump explicitly crossed out the word "Coronavirus" in his speech replacing it with "Chinese" virus instead. When politicians and government officials say “China Flu,” it’s not because they aren’t aware of COVID-19’s official titles. Rather, it is parroted to push the false narratives that “the Chinese are responsible for the virus” and absolve fault from the American government. But such politicizing of Asian racism isn’t just exclusive to the Republican Party. Even beyond the virus narratives, we also have to question how our media and government portray China. More specifically, how Western media have portrayed China as a people, China as a government, China as a nation, and the dangers of ignoring such distinctions.

The vision of China in the minds of most Americans has been clouded by Western news sources that paint China as a merciless totalitarian state. According to a 2015 study published by the International Journal of Communication, media portrayals of China and the Chinese people were rarely accurate depictions and many publications overwhelmingly portrayed the nation as an "aggressive, brutal and dangerous place.” The reason behind such negative depictions seems to stem from China's ability to challenge the United State's global hegemony and foothold over East Asia. In recent months, the United States has used China's emerging economic and political power as a reason to expand military bases in Okinawa while also calling for the stationing of offensive missiles in Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Through these active attempts at strengthening military presence in East Asia, we're beginning the re-emergence of America's imperialist legacy upon Asian countries.

By depicting China as a country aiming to challenge U.S. power and refuting principles and values that Americans embrace, the American news media could lead their audiences to view China as a threat to the United States.
— LingLing Zhang, Professor at Towson University

However, when we account for the complexities of a nation with 1.3 billion people and 56 ethnic groups, it’s obvious that China can’t be viewed as a monolith. Yet, the overwhelming mainstream headlines tend to implicate Chinese citizens as either responsible or victims of the actions of the Chinese government. From stories of organ harvesting to extreme state oppression, these reports are often meant to serve a political purpose rather than make a real effort to flush out wrongdoing. These narratives make use of what can be regarded as “atrocity propaganda,” which is defined as the spreading of either real or fabricated atrocities that are used to dehumanize another nation. Currently, we can see the most recent attempt at atrocity propaganda with the narratives surrounding the Xinjiang internment camps, where stories of human rights violations regularly make the news. The problem with many Western reports on Xinjiang is that they often politicize accounts and publish unverified sources as factual. For example, “videos of people being tortured in Xinjiang” had circulated media outlets in these past months, only to be later debunked as videos from domestic abuse cases or acting performances.

Graphic: Leslie Kimura, *Social Media Strategist*

"For a start, it accomplishes nothing to exaggerate the Communist Party’s crimes in Xinjiang. Countless true stories of families torn apart and Uyghurs living in terror appall any humane listener."
— The Economist

One thing that should be made clear is that China isn’t innocent of authoritarianism, and human rights violations are in fact happening in Xinjiang. Western reports on Xinjiang have often been refuted due to the use of biased sources like far-right fundamentalist Adrian Zenz or reports from the ASPI, an Australian think tank funded by military contractors. But consistent testimonies from ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs detained in Xinjiang unequivocally confirm the existence and brutality of the Xinjiang camps. There are approximately one million Uyghurs who are unjustly detained in internment camps and those outside the camps are often subject to unreasonable police searches. Several accounts from Uyghur women reveal the horrific treatment and crimes being propagated by police including forced sterilizations, food deprivation, torture, and rampant sexual assault. These testimonies from two Uyghur women, Tursunay Ziawudun and Gulzira Auelkhan, who were imprisoned for countless months provide a harrowing look into the crimes committed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and are crucial to understanding the experiences at the Xinjiang camps.

(TW // sexual violence and torture)

"The woman took me to the room next to where the other girl had been taken in. They had an electric stick, I didn't know what it was, and it was pushed inside my genital tract, torturing me with an electric shock."
— Tursunay Ziawudun

We must always be critical of the narratives we hear when Western news media has had a history of publishing falsified claims of atrocities to further their imperialistic pursuits. However, suspicion against these Western narratives does not mean discounting the experiences of those oppressed and exonerating the actions of foreign regimes. Instead, critiquing the Western narrative is to identify how the U.S government has utilized the Uyghur camps for their own gains, like the justification of a Cold War and Sinophobic rhetoric. When most Americans hear “China” and words like “virus” and “evil” immediately enter their heads, it’s clear that this was an intended reaction coerced by our government. In fact, the vernacular choices made by government officials rarely make any distinction between the Chinese people and the Chinese government. This is especially problematic when the U.S. has a population of 18.6 million people who identify as Chinese, alongside an even bigger population of Americans that can’t differentiate between various Asian ethnicities.

When activist Shaun King posted a statement on Instagram condemning the anti-Asian attacks, one of the top comments was a statement calling to “end the Uyghur genocide.” Without explicitly stating it, these comments try to link all Asians with the Chinese government, and attempt to rationalize the Asian hate crimes in doing so. Instead of explicitly calling out the actions of the CCP, or leaders like Xi Jinping, government officials and news reporters often resort to phrases such as “the Chinese” or the vague label of “China.”

If we take a look at recent history, Asian Americans are now facing an eerily similar wave of hate crimes inspired by overseas policies. We saw this during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, when it was drilled into the American conscience that the people we were fighting were all terrorists or dictators. This had a clear consequence in our domestic culture, when Muslim hate crimes spiked and Islam became synonymous with terrorism—despite the fact that most domestic terrorists were white Americans. It was also wartime politics that “justified” the Japanese internment camps during World War II, and the state-sanctioned torture at Guantanamo under Bush and Obama. With China now threatening American supremacy and the start of a potential Cold War, I fear the Asian diaspora are next on the chopping block. When America goes to war, BIPOC communities get hurt. Now, we’re hearing our politicians regurgitate the decades-old “Yellow Peril, Red Menace'' narratives in which international students are viewed as “CCP Spies,” Chinese technology are all deemed spyware, and Asians are seen as responsible for the virus.

Many Americans have lost so much as a result of COVID-19, from losing family, jobs, and financial stability. With greater economic instability, crimes and conflicts will inevitably increase. However, we can’t allow the U.S government to throw us in the crossfire of an anti-China campaign and scapegoat Asians to distract from their mismanagement of the virus. It has been said that an idea is often the most dangerous virus. When these ideas transpire as hateful and racist messages meant to serve a higher political goal, we must reevaluate and be critical of the rhetoric spread by our government.

While the push-back against this wave of Asian hate crimes has been much needed, I also question its efficacy because movements and hashtags like #StopAsianHate have mainly identified Asian hate crime as an act propagated by racist individuals. Although true to a certain extent, it fails to hold the institutional powers responsible in their roles for channeling hatred towards Asians. This massive increase in Asian hate crimes has indisputable political origins, and was egged on by our politicians and news media. Even now, these attacks are being used as an excuse by Bill De Blasio to increase surveillance and policing in low-income communities. But more surveillance or police officers aren’t going to stop these attacks, nor are they what the Asian American community wants. And by the looks of the recent police statements empathizing with the Atlanta shooter that killed 8 victims, 6 of which were Asian women, law enforcement isn’t whom Asian Americans should turn to. Instead, we must turn to ourselves and our allies in order to demand legal protections and concrete political change beyond empty platitudes.

There are already several AAPI organizations pushing for such political action like the NAPAWF, Red Canary Song, and the MinKwon center. These groups focus on uplifting Asian voices in political circles alongside intersectional advocacy like promoting gender equality, defending sex workers, and securing immigrant protections. What these grassroots organizations reveal is that to counter this wave of Asian hate and government agitation, we must build political power among AAPI communities that can provide mutual aid and pressure institutions to hear our demands. Because until the official narratives and rhetoric change, we’re only retracing an endless cycle of hate in the name of politics.

What are your thoughts on American narratives surrounding China? How can our politicians call out the injustice in Xinjiang without demonizing Chinese people in the process? Let me know in the comments below, and thank you for reading!

Politically Invisible Asians

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