 |
| Former US Ambassador to China Gary Locke welcomes Vice President Joe Biden to China. |
If a new campaign ad is any indication, it appears the Trump camp is going to make China the new whipping boy in the GOP's 2020 presidential campaign.
A new Trump ad meant to show that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is too cozy with China appears to imply that former Washington Governor Gary Locke is a Chinese official, reports the Washington Post.
The picture was taken in Beijing when Locke was the US Ambassador to China during the Obama administration and when Vice President Biden was on an official visit to China.
The image is one of several with other images of Chinese officials with Biden and video clips of Biden taken out of context making diplomatic statements praising China's leaders, a standard practice in previous Republican and Democratic administrations when US representatives visit a foreign country.
“During America’s crisis, Biden protected China’s feelings,” the ad states.
To be clear, Locke is an American of Chinese descent.
“Gary Locke is as American as the day is long,” tweeted former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. “Trump rewriting history as if he effectively responded to the virus is utter garbage. We lost 70 days and thousands of lives due to his incompetence and disregard for what was happening overseas.”
In a statement, an angry Locke said Trump was “fanning hatred.” The first Asian American governor of a state other than Hawaii, Locke said with hate crimes and discrimination on the rise across the country, “the Trump team is making it worse. Asian Americans are Americans. Period.”
“It is racial stereotyping at its worst. Asian Americans—whether you’re second-, third-, or fourth-generation, will always be viewed as foreigners,” Locke told The Atlantic. “We don’t say that about second- or third-generation Irish Americans or Polish Americans. No one would even think to include them in a picture when you’re talking about foreign government officials.”
In a statement sent to AsAmNews, Frank Sharry of the group America’s Voice states:
The picture was taken in Beijing when Locke was the US Ambassador to China during the Obama administration and when Vice President Biden was on an official visit to China.
The image is one of several with other images of Chinese officials with Biden and video clips of Biden taken out of context making diplomatic statements praising China's leaders, a standard practice in previous Republican and Democratic administrations when US representatives visit a foreign country.
“During America’s crisis, Biden protected China’s feelings,” the ad states.
To be clear, Locke is an American of Chinese descent.
“Gary Locke is as American as the day is long,” tweeted former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. “Trump rewriting history as if he effectively responded to the virus is utter garbage. We lost 70 days and thousands of lives due to his incompetence and disregard for what was happening overseas.”
In a statement, an angry Locke said Trump was “fanning hatred.” The first Asian American governor of a state other than Hawaii, Locke said with hate crimes and discrimination on the rise across the country, “the Trump team is making it worse. Asian Americans are Americans. Period.”
“It is racial stereotyping at its worst. Asian Americans—whether you’re second-, third-, or fourth-generation, will always be viewed as foreigners,” Locke told The Atlantic. “We don’t say that about second- or third-generation Irish Americans or Polish Americans. No one would even think to include them in a picture when you’re talking about foreign government officials.”
In a statement sent to AsAmNews, Frank Sharry of the group America’s Voice states:
“Leave it to Trump and his gang to fear monger and point fingers at those he wants to ‘other.’ As hate crimes against Asian Americans across the country spiked in recent weeks, the FBI issued a warning to local law enforcement that such crimes will escalate ‘based on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations.’ Now, President Trump’s campaign is spending money on ads to help make sure his acolytes make the connection with Asian Americans.”
It's a risky strategy with grave implications for the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The danger is the spillover effect of the racially tinged ad will affect Asian Americans at a time when they are already being blamed for the coronavirus by the bigots and white supremacists of the radical rightists. That anti-Asian racist sentiment was given a big boost when Trump began feferring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" or the "Wuhan virus."
"The comments made by President Trump intensifies the xenophobia and racism that's become rampant against Asians and Asian Americans globally," Rosalind Chou, a sociology professor at Georgia State University, told Salon last month. "He's fueling fears against Chinese, specifically. However, people of Asian ancestry across the globe may face collateral damage. These statements are dangerous and erroneously assign blame to people who are as susceptible to the disease as anyone else worldwide."
Trump’s campaign defended the controversial ad (below) to the Post without acknowledging that the ad gives the impression that Locke was a Chinese official or apologizing for the inference.
Tim Murtaugh says the ad “specifically places Biden in Beijing in 2013” with his son Hunter Biden who Trump’s campaign said benefited from his Chinese investments.
Trump's campaign may be setting up China as the 2020 bogeyman, just as it did with immigrants in 2015 when Trump declared his candidacy for President.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you," Trump said while raging against illegal immigration. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
The nefarious ploy was used in the Southern Strategy to win over white Southern voters in the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, Republicans used amped up conservatives in 1974's Ronald Reagan campaign's "welfare queen," the black rapist Willie Horton's portrait was used in the first George Bush's successful 1988 campaign to stoke the fear of black men.
President Barack Obama's entire presidency was a daily exercise in disrespecting the first black Presiden -- from the birther conspiracy to accusations of his Muslim leanings to the heckling during Obama speeches to the refusal to hold hearings for a Supreme Court nomination. From the first day of Obama's tenure, Republicans vowed to oppose every single policy proposed by the President.
Its an old tried and true tactic used by Republicans to stir up the latent racism of white Americans to get them to vote. The late Republican strategist Lee Atwater captured the racist and shocking nature of the GOP strategy in an infamous 1981 quote:
If there is one thing we'e learned in the last three years of Trump, it is when faced with criticism, he doesn't apologize. He doubles down. His offense is to become more offensive.
If the GOP chooses to move in this direction, the rise of anti-Asian hate attacks spurred by the coronavirus -- as alarming and dispiriting as they are -- will be nothing compared with what's to come.
ASAM NEWS contributed to this report.
"The comments made by President Trump intensifies the xenophobia and racism that's become rampant against Asians and Asian Americans globally," Rosalind Chou, a sociology professor at Georgia State University, told Salon last month. "He's fueling fears against Chinese, specifically. However, people of Asian ancestry across the globe may face collateral damage. These statements are dangerous and erroneously assign blame to people who are as susceptible to the disease as anyone else worldwide."
Trump’s campaign defended the controversial ad (below) to the Post without acknowledging that the ad gives the impression that Locke was a Chinese official or apologizing for the inference.
Tim Murtaugh says the ad “specifically places Biden in Beijing in 2013” with his son Hunter Biden who Trump’s campaign said benefited from his Chinese investments.
Trump's campaign may be setting up China as the 2020 bogeyman, just as it did with immigrants in 2015 when Trump declared his candidacy for President.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you," Trump said while raging against illegal immigration. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
The nefarious ploy was used in the Southern Strategy to win over white Southern voters in the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, Republicans used amped up conservatives in 1974's Ronald Reagan campaign's "welfare queen," the black rapist Willie Horton's portrait was used in the first George Bush's successful 1988 campaign to stoke the fear of black men.
President Barack Obama's entire presidency was a daily exercise in disrespecting the first black Presiden -- from the birther conspiracy to accusations of his Muslim leanings to the heckling during Obama speeches to the refusal to hold hearings for a Supreme Court nomination. From the first day of Obama's tenure, Republicans vowed to oppose every single policy proposed by the President.
Its an old tried and true tactic used by Republicans to stir up the latent racism of white Americans to get them to vote. The late Republican strategist Lee Atwater captured the racist and shocking nature of the GOP strategy in an infamous 1981 quote:
This anti-China ad may be a harbinger of future GOP ads for Trump's 2020 campaign. Asian Americans could become the next Willie Horton. Let's hope it is just a trial balloon to see how it plays.You start out in 1954 by saying, “N----r, n----r, ni----r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n---r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N----r, n----r.”
If there is one thing we'e learned in the last three years of Trump, it is when faced with criticism, he doesn't apologize. He doubles down. His offense is to become more offensive.
If the GOP chooses to move in this direction, the rise of anti-Asian hate attacks spurred by the coronavirus -- as alarming and dispiriting as they are -- will be nothing compared with what's to come.
ASAM NEWS contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment