Opinion | Greenest Olympics in modern history proves resilient to US-led smear campaign
By J.B.Browne
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics shall be remembered by what name? The Genocide Games? The Green Games?
Perhaps The Cognitive Dissonance Games is more appropriate.
From the opening ceremony to the closing ceremony, the level of vampiric Western propaganda offensives fanged at China and the Chinese people (just the government, not the people!) was the most morally deplorable smear campaign on a host nation ever.
The coordinated attacks started sprouting en masse like clockwork when four of the Anglo-American Empire's "five eyes" dream team — Canada, Australia, Britain, and the United States — declared a "diplomatic boycott" back in December. Japan and a handful of small north European countries followed suit. But the core of these participants is an Anglo-Saxon heritage that has always been about white supremacy, settler colonialism, Indigenous genocide, and enforced global hegemony via sanctions and war.
By unironically weaponizing moral and political virtue, western politicians blinded themselves with god-tier hubris that their opinions held much sway to impact the event negatively. Instead, it showed their self-importance as sour grapes, petty-minded individuals languishing in the embers of Empire and sports imperialism. Laughably, after all the noise, the US backtracked and quietly requested and received (without fuss) visas for 46 consular officials.
Nevertheless, those determined to be unable to rejoice or even acknowledge the success of the first non-white nation and city to host the Summer and Winter Games — in particular, the first Global South nation to host the Winter Olympics (the historical preponderance of Europe and North America) — tried and failed to discredit it over false claims of genocide in Xinjiang and a maelstrom of whatthef**kism aimed at China's zero-covid policies.
Unperturbed, the China Olympic organizers moved ahead with final preparations during a global pandemic, making the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games a spectacular and memorable success with carbon neutrality, high-tech finesse, and expertise.
We've seen these types of narrative explosions before. During the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, a coordinated media campaign over Tibet played a pivotal role in turning a generation of young Chinese suspicious of the West's now trademark virtue-signalling. More recently, the BBC's hyped but baseless claims that China is encroaching on Nepal's territory, which both countries have repeatedly denied, is part of yet another alt-reality campaign in the wake of the Beijing Winter Olympics' success.
The desperate attempt to maintain narrative control at such a wide-reaching global event scraped at all and any detail that could be spun into negativity. From the portrayal of a "dystopian" Olympic bubble with human robots in hazmat suits serving athletes and participants; to the vilification of the cute mascot Bing Dwen Dwen as "joyless," "mute," "sexless," and "insidious;" to western journalists who live in China sent cheaply to find fault with Western food; to the Eileen Gu situation with unhinged slander and racism from the US corporate media with an untethered chauvinistic nationalism all aimed at an 18-year old who decided she wanted to ski for China; to the arrogance of late-night neocon midwits like Bill Maher who call China "a shithole country" while calling Eileen Gu "hot" on national television (in the same sentence).
Not only does such behavior promulgate a negative image of China or even its government, but the Chinese people themselves. The Empire's core aims are to stop China's progress by splitting it apart. Sowing the seeds of public approval for yet more prejudice and dehumanization solidifies a collective mindset for more war, ready for when the US military-industrial complex clicks its bloody fingers.
But the failure of the West's smear campaign to delegitimize a momentous occasion for China and Beijing comes at a cost. Because of the global attention, these Games have revealed a cognitive dissonance between on the ground reality and reality rewritten. The solidarity among athletes was evident through social media, despite the media hostility, proving to the world that a chasm existed between words read and experiences felt.
For example, US Olympian Aaron Blunck praised the Beijing Olympics and China's COVID protocols and criticized biased media coverage.
"Being stateside, you heard some pretty bad media, and that is completely false," he said.
"It's actually been phenomenal. It's one of the better Olympics we've been to."
Blunck's Twitter account got suspended after telling the truth about his experiences.
The vitriol against China is due to the dying embers of an Anglo-Saxon Empire hell-bent on maintaining its bid to be a permanent hegemon and imperial power with no visible rival. The false equivalency of China being an equal imperialist power is wrong. Yet, the US and its coterie of vassals, corrupted elites, and economic assassins push an amplified image of China as today's irredeemable bogeyman.
But the main threat here is that China is a country of 1.4 billion non-white people who proudly espouse the merits of an alternative system of being and governance: socialism with Chinese characteristics.
At home, China's economic model is setting an agenda of poverty alleviation. Globally, it promotes South-South cooperation among Global South countries that have been historically colonized, impoverished or sanctioned. Massive infrastructure and trade projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are fundamentally more humane and "people-centered," encouraging self-agency and economic development without conflict or interference in a country's political affairs. Non-anglo humanity looks to China's success for what the West historically refused to provide and which it now cannot provide.
Thanks to the West's unhinged propaganda war, China is more united than ever. The Green Games were a carbon-neutral success and a model of covid management, symbolizing peace, international friendship, and solidarity.
Lastly, the Beijing Winter Olympics wrapped last Sunday, so we'll have to wait another couple of weeks to know, but the ultimate gold medal of these games would be in containing all covid cases from spreading outside the Olympic bubble to the rest of the population.
Little wonder that as Western journalists found enough safety to find fault with their "dystopian cocktails," "chewy steaks," and "weird chocolate fountains" within the bubble over the past two weeks, about 40,000 Americans died.
But that devilish mascot, yeah? At what cost?
As he would refer himself, J.B. Browne is a half "foreign devil" living with anxiety relieved by purchase. HK-born Writer/Musician/Tinkerer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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