The liberal establishment loves terms like racism and xenophobia, for it can employ them to deflect attention from the real evils, be it jihad or the coronavirus. They have already started doing that.

Whenever Muslim terrorists strike in a Western country, the mainstream media and public intellectuals, even as they issue pro-forma condemnations of terror, begin worrying about hate crime against Muslims, rise of ‘alt-Right’ and neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. More often than not, the real subject—the rise and spread of radical Islam—gets obscured by such shibboleths as racism and xenophobia.

Eventually, liberals end up as the saviors of the apologists for jihad. Now, they are doing the same for China.

Human Rights Watch, for instance, reported on May 12, “Government leaders and senior officials in some instances have directly or indirectly encouraged hate crimes, racism, or xenophobia by using anti-Chinese rhetoric. Several political parties and groups, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, and Germany have also latched onto the Covid-19 crisis to advance anti-immigrant, white supremacist, ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic conspiracy theories that demonize refugees, foreigners, prominent individuals, and political leaders.”

Notice the stock-in-trade adjectives—anti-immigrant, white supremacist, ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic. But how on earth can an anti-China person be accused of being anti-Semitic? Jews don’t live in China; at any rate, they have not been held responsible for Covid-19. Such a term appears in this passage because what liberals write is formulaic, almost mechanical; they just let loose a barrage of expletives against anybody they dislike.

Also notice how any truth about China is distorted as “anti-Chinese rhetoric.” Any critical comment about Beijing becomes racism, despite the indisputable fact that the coronavirus not just came from China but also spread because of a deliberate attempt on the part of China.

However, it was not some ‘xenophobic’ American politician but the prestigious science magazine, <em>Nature</em>, that reported about a model simulation by Lai Shengjie and Andrew Tatem, emerging-disease researchers at the University of Southampton, UK. The model showed that “if China had implemented its control measures a week earlier, it could have prevented 67 per cent of all cases there. Implementing the measures three weeks earlier, from the beginning of January, would have cut the number of infections to 5 per cent of the total.”

Thankfully, no fatwa has been issued against <em>Nature</em>, but you never know when it happens.

Typically, another trick employed by liberals is that of moral equivalence. As I mentioned in an article earlier ‘Left-liberals are washing away the sins of China, WHO’ (<a href="https://indianarrative.com/opinion/left-liberals-are-washing-away-the-sins-of-china-who-1486.html">https://indianarrative.com/opinion/left-liberals-are-washing-away-the-sins-of-china-who-1486.html</a>), “Moral equivalence is a despicable strategy deployed by the Left and liberals to shield somebody or something they like. Their favorites at present are China and the World Health Organization, so the thought leaders are using moral equivalence to the hilt.”

Moral equivalence is about obliterating any moral hierarchy. Jumping a red light is an offence, killing a man is an offence, so both are equally bad. This is what liberals do all the time. Earlier, they were doing it for Islam; now they are doing it for China.

Consider this paragraph from an article (<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/15/media/china-coronavirus-global-media/index.html">https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/15/media/china-coronavirus-global-media/index.html</a>) from the CNN website, “Of course, China is not alone in spreading confusing and conflicting information about the virus. US President Donald Trump has shared dubious medical claims, unverified origin theories, and attacked state governors over coronavirus testing capabilities, comments that have been amplified by the megaphone of sympathetic media outlets such as Fox News.”

Notice how Trump is equated with China’s leaders. The US President may have erred in some of his statements and actions—something that all politicians do—but comparing him with the psychopathic leaders of the Chinese Communist Party is logically untenable and ethically egregious. This is the reason he calls the mainstream media ‘fake news.’

It is time people in democracies didn’t get misled by the liberal establishment that has developed a penchant for being an accomplice of evil..