Comic Commentary丨If you can buy it, you can buy it, and if you can't grab it, you will destroy it: the United States hegemonically suppresses freedom of speech

What do you mean by "unwarranted"? What does it mean to "add sin to desire, and there is no excuse"? Lena Khan, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission of the United States, recently gave the world a living and naked demonstration on the social platform X -

Regarding the FTC's decision to sue TikTok and its parent company "ByteDance" to the US Department of Justice, Lina Khan explained that "we have reason to believe that TikTok has violated or is about to violate the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act." ”

When "may ......", "may ......", "will ...... soon" and so on can be used as "reasons", it is not difficult for the world to understand why Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee of the US Congress, can brazenly advocate to the media, "Our intelligence community has become accustomed to traditional espionage - you spy on the military, you spy on the government, (but) you (think) you don't have to pay attention to all the technology companies", "We need to continue to pay more attention to China, not only in the field of chips; Frankly, there are a lot of other areas that are the same."

In recent years, US politicians have generalized the concept of national security on China-related issues, using the ABC (Anything but China) mindset (that is, the "China must oppose" mentality) to impose all kinds of bizarre "threat theory" charges on China. Nowadays, the "persecution paranoia" of some people in the United States has reached the point of "demonic shock," and the false accusation that "China-related is equivalent to a threat" is constantly bubbling up in a paranoid and absurd way. The U.S. Congress passed a bill on TikTok's "ban or don't sell" on the grounds of "national security", and even packaged the "Apps for Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Control" specifically for Tiktok into the "21st Century Peace by Strength Act", which went through the entire legislative process in just one month as part of the law.

For a long time, the United States has occupied a dominant position in the international public opinion arena and has engaged in public opinion warfare. The "Voice of America" and "Free Asia" radio stations under the US Agency for International Media have had a strong ideological confrontation color since their founding. Taking the "Voice of America" radio station as an example, some scholars analyzed its coverage of China's "Belt and Road" initiative throughout 2023 and found that 93% of the reports were negative. In addition to these practices of going into battle in person and shirtless, the United States has also relied on hegemony in all quarters to export the "American-style news" fake routine to the whole world through some "white glove" manipulation. For example, in May 2022, Zimbabwe's Standard newspaper published a false report slandering Chinese miners for mistreating local employees because it partnered with an Information for Development Trust (IDT) that paid journalists $1,000 from the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe through an agency for every negative piece of news about China. The United States has also contributed $7.7 million to the so-called "Free Media Initiative", which it claims is "supporting an independent and free press and countering disinformation." To put it bluntly, it is actually "acting according to the orders of the US government and suppressing other voices".

I have to admit that money can make ghosts grind. The United States controls the media in many countries around the world, especially the new online social media, and they say everything the US government needs them to say. However, the U.S. government, which has always distorted the truth and tampered with facts through media monopoly, has hit a nail in the coffin in front of TikTok. The Ohio train accident caused a poison gas leak, and videos taken by local residents of the explosion of mushroom clouds and a large number of dead fish in the river went viral on TikTok; The fire in Maui, Hawaii, where residents posted videos of the escape and the tragic situation of the fire on TikTok in real time, shocking the world; In the new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the total number of views on TikTok has exceeded 50 billion (equivalent to more than 6 views per capita in the world), and the number of views of videos that truly reflect the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip is far more than that of videos with "pro-Israel" labels, with a ratio of 69 to 1...... The rapid dissemination of these facts, information, which had been deliberately blocked, deliberately erased, and wantonly reversed by the US Government, allowed the world to see more intuitively what the United States really was about with its bad record and negative credibility in the arena of public opinion.

Different from traditional online social platforms, TikTok uses its unique algorithm to give users' voices more opportunities to spread to the whole platform, rather than only big Vs and head accounts monopolizing traffic, or only getting involved in circles and hot spots can get attention, and it is also less likely to be used by third parties to use "robots" and fictional characters for disinformation and political manipulation. This objectively makes it difficult for the United States to control the dissemination of information and opinions on TikTok as easily as it manipulates mainstream social media in the West, and even influences the trend of public opinion. Seeing that a social app with such a huge volume (there are 170 million users in the United States alone) cannot become a tool for manipulating cognition by themselves, American politicians are naturally restless and want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

On June 20, TikTok and eight TikTok creators jointly filed a petition with a U.S. court, pointing to the fact that the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement negotiations with TikTok after 2022, emphasizing that the U.S. government's approach to TikTok was the result of "political demagoguery", "It would rather try to shut down TikTok in the U.S. and eliminate a speech platform used by 170 million Americans than continue to develop a practical, viable and effective solution, an enforceable agreement to protect U.S. users". Some mainstream media in the United States deliberately downplayed or avoided the truth and the essence of the problem when reporting, but deliberately used TikTok's "sharply increased attack on the Biden administration", "launched a legal challenge", "intends to completely overturn the ban" and other words to make headlines, in order to influence the audience's perception.

TikTok has done its best to address the U.S. government's concerns, and will even give the U.S. government an "emergency stop switch" that can decide to suspend TikTok's services in the U.S. at any time. In this way, the U.S. government is still unrelenting, "destroy it if you can't grab it", and make every effort to prevent TikTok from showing "international content" (that is, the truth that is not manipulated by the United States) to American users, and want TikTok to become an empty shell and an information island in the United States. This can only further expose the hegemony of the United States in suppressing freedom of speech. "It is better to defend the people than to prevent Sichuan", the truth cannot be blocked by blocking, and the people who are blinded by "American discourse" will always see the truth one day.

Produced by China Military Network WeChat (zgjw_81).

Text: Zhang Lingjie

Comic Creativity: He Shuyin Wang Cang

Comic production: Liang Yuxin

Editor: He Shuyin Chai Xiao