The article actually doesn’t say any such thing. It simply assumes that a Chinese propaganda machine is focused only on “wokeism”. Dog forbid that they should seek to use propaganda to attack both sides - which is far more effective at spreading division.
"This notwithstanding, the passionate fervour that informs contemporary anti-racist rhetoric, and that of environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion, and the LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other) movements that share its goals and feed off its righteous
indignation, constitutes a calculated iconoclastic assault on the West’s history and culture."
"Culture war was, after all, one of the People’s Republic’s earliest exports to the West. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, for years, explicitly viewed it as its ‘magic weapon’. Why, then, this book asks, did a twentieth-century Chinese revolutionary ideology become so adaptable and spectacularly successful in the West?"
By the way, I've been censored multiple times on this site, for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and it's connections with the woke movement, by the way. It's awful.
My submission is now the top Google result for "beijing woke" and "woke propaganda war" right now, and the HN censorship is plainly visible for everyone to see worldwide.
It's the 7th result for the term "woke propaganda", by the way.
13:08 UTC: To any potential Chinese Communist Party trolls, the more you try to censor me, the more I'm going to be posting about you. Same for russian trolls. Your propaganda is destroying the lives of innocent people here in the West.
The massive amount of ignorance in your reply is quite galling.
It’s awfully apparent that you subscribe to a political extreme right wing view if you feel that Climate and LGBTQ issues are extremism.
Climate concern and LGBTQ pride were barely even a thing during Mao’s time, yet to listen to you you’d think the Chairman himself created and pushed those onto the public stage.
Meanwhile the MCPC is not the same thing as the CCP, despite your apparent belief to think they are.
And give us a break with this “poor me, I’ve been censored on this site” mentality.
Everyone here is free to say what they want. It’s up to the collective here to decide (by and large) if such messages are deemed worthwhile or not. If they’re not then they’ll get flagged and downvoted.
I have posted messages on right wing sites such as Gateway Pundit and Breitbart and have been moderated out of existence (as I suspected I would). Both strong right wing sites.
That wasn’t censorship and nor do I complain about it. I am however happy to observe it. They’re both privately run websites are and free to do what they like.
The trouble is that you have apparently mistaken the MCPC with the CCP.
The Maoists are an underground faction in China, and see the CCP are a political enemy.
Yet you’re so reverently “anti woke” (despite “woke” being simply an umbrella term used the the extreme right to group anything they don’t like together without it actually meaning anything), that you come accross as the same sort of person who thinks anyone to the left of Nixon can only be a Marxist/Communist/Liberal flag waving pinko.
Your position lacks nuance, empathy, and understanding.
I’ll have to admit, whilst I often see claims of me being Marxist or Communist because I’m trans, this is the first time I’ve been grouped in as a Maoist.
I dislike all forms of censorship of lawful speech, whether it's coming from the Left or the Right. And the spirit of the First Amendment is what matters. I do understand that private sites can censor your lawful speech legally, but I still think it's somewhat morally wrong to do so.
In the 2010s and 2020s the censorship[1] (and cancelling of open-source software authors) is coming mostly from the Left - and I hate it.
In the 1990s the censorship was coming from the Right - and I hated that as well. I still remember a group called "Focus on the Family" and its pressure on the government to adopt widespread Internet filtering.
I have no problem with trans people in any way whatsoever, what they do with their bodies and in their private lives is absolutely none of my business. I only get annoyed when segments of their political movement start to enact speech codes[1] and other means of impeding our right to freedom of speech. I understand it doesn't mean all trans people are doing this, it is just a vocal minority.
To clarify: When I complain about "Woke" I complain about those people within the movement who are trying to take our hard-earned Western liberties away, including freedom of speech and thought. These liberties were acquired over hundreds of years of hardship by so many people, throughout history. People who chose to suffer in the name of liberty, for the good of other people. And certain segments of the Left want to diminish or even eliminate them.
And by the way I agree with the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, yes there is a serious problem with discrimination against Black people by law enforcement. And other minorities too. Those with less power in society tend to be discriminated against the worst. It really does appear to be a "pecking order", almost something from the animal world, which is terrible.
But I still don't think censorship (and especially cancelling people) is ever a suitable response to discrimination or offensive speech. Offensive speech should be countered with further, lawful speech.
The quoted text in my first post above is taken from the book, it's not my specific personal opinion. If it were to be the case that Extinction Rebellion and other peaceful protest groups were to be labelled "extremist" I would be seriously considering that we are living in a police state. It's completely unacceptable to brand peaceful political movements as "extremist" to me. That has no place in a free society.
As demonstrated before by history, I'm worried that the left-wing Woke movement might provoke a right-wing backlash, and it's why Trump or someone even worse could get into power at some point. I think we need to keep protecting our individual liberties, so people don't end up voting a right wing party into power, as a knee-jerk reaction.
I hope I've thought it all through properly. So it looks like I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the matter, but are still strongly in favor of individual liberty.
By the way, many of my posts here are getting 50:50 with an almost equal number of upvotes as they are downvotes. Many just "0", or "1", but not -1 or any worse than that. So HN opinion seems to be split on it?
1. The "Contributor Covenant" code of conduct and others. These codes of conduct are the main censorship issue I'm bothered about nowadays.
To clarify: When I complain about "Woke" I complain about those people within the movement who are trying to take our long-earned Western liberties away“
I think you’ll find what’s really happening is that people are having to adjust to the real world, and are being held accountable for previously socially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination.
The irony in your statement is that you also say you support BLM, yet the same people who would agree with your statement above, are totally against BLM.
Gateway Pundit, Breitbart and Fox News are three very active right wing places that routinely silence left wing voices.
Trump’s own Truth Social advertises itself as a place of free speech, however it has been shown to be shadow banning posts up the yazoo that the moderators (whomever they are) feel don’t toe the party line.
You not experiencing something does not mean it doesn’t happen.
I wasn’t discriminated against as a trans woman until I came out as trans.
Since then I’ve lost a job, and been verbally abused, simply for being a trans woman.
You claim the the LGBTQ cause is extremism. As a member of the group I can tell you that given the huge amount of laws being made to legislate us out of existence, I’m seeing extremism on both sides.
I've submitted that link to the HN front page by the way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40263411