The ‘Chinese cover-up’ stories is actually a good case study of the power of American propaganda brain washing. However, it’s effectiveness could actually massively backfire in the medium to long term and do massive damage to American soft power.
Now, firstly, it wasn’t an omission to call this an American propaganda drive, because other than some fringe extreme pro-US publications, these stories are gaining zero traction in Europe. Not even the British BBC is reporting on it, at all. Censoring this news is about as far as they are willing to stick their necks out to help America in this, because they know that if they reported on this, the overwhelming response from the British public would be massively negative towards this America move.
In the past, western and American propaganda worked so effectively because they were smart and subtle. They played the long game with small, hard to spot nudges and nods that gently shaped public opinion without leaving any obvious traces or damaging evidence. They built up the desired narrative and impressions over years and decades, alongside the reputations of the news organisations they created and nurtured for this mission.
This current drive is pure brutal-force disinformation force-feeding and outright lies. It is apparently working, but only in America, and only thanks to the insular nature of most average Americans who don’t care much about international news and won’t have been following the outbreak in real time.
For all who has been following this outbreak in real time, this new American narrative will clash jarringly with what they have seen with their own eyes, so the harder America pushes the narrative, the more they will see it for the propaganda lies that it is, and maybe start wondering what else they have been told by the western MSM are also lies.
Trump doesn’t really care how much damage is done to America’s information warfare directorate aka the western MSM, so long as he can brainwash enough Americans into not blaming him for the disastrous way his administration has handled this outbreak to re-elect him in November. This propaganda drive is focused at American voters only.
Hence why America’s traditional propaganda partners in Europe and the rest of the world are not really jumping on this bandwagon. It will be too much of an ask since their own populations are far more clued up about the outbreak because of the earlier outbreaks in Europe; and Europeans don’t get a vote in America’s election, so this message wasn’t intended for their audiences so why would they trash their reputations for no reason?
Censorship is the best way they are helping their American partners right now, but hiding the propaganda drive from their domestic audiences, they are helping to limit the amount of reputational damage American MSM is doing to themselves. But still, a lot of people around the world are now getting a first hand glimpse behind the curtains of western MSM informational warfare, and many of them will never treat western MSM the same again because of it.
As others have pointed out, America hasn’t got a leg to stand on to take any formal action against China, so the damage they are doing to China is negligible and certainly nothing beyond what the western MSM does at every opportunity anyways. However, the damage they are self inflicting on themselves and their reputations will be much more significant and long lasting.
In my view, this is very much another Iraqi WMD level incident, whereby people’s around the world will forever reference back to this episode to discredit American MSM in the future, and it will be just as damaging to their reputations as the Iraqi WMD fiasco was for the reputations of American MSM. The big difference is that America conned the world into allowing it to invade Iraq to offset the price it paid in reputation. It will gain nothing with its slandering of China.
