There used to be a time when European countries would conquer other continents to spread Christianity, i.e. to save the savages – as it was said – from eternal damnation. Since Christianity has been dead for many decades now, Western nations have rolled out a new religion: that of human rights. The advantage of the new creed is that it is supposed to be universal – as such was adopted by the United Nations – and does not require the different peoples of the world to renounce their religious beliefs. Rather, the religious leaders of all the other faiths fall all over themselves to show that their religious precepts have always been in line with the universal human rights or, indeed, that the human rights derive from their creed.
Be it as it may, the human rights religion is a political tool in the hands of the powerful for subduing others to their will. Under the pretext of defending human rights – wars are launched, missiles are fired, revolutions are staged and governments are toppled. Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan – you name it – have all been subjected to penal measures in the name of preventing humanitarian disaster from occurring or spreading. The countries were bombed in the name of saving the lives of – yes, yes – women and children and oppressed minorities of all types. Even when the Americans did not know what to do with the incorporation of Crimea into Russia, Victoria Nuland, while listing the alleged Russian violations of the international law and – how otherwise! – human rights, pointed to the alleged prosecution of the homosexual “community” as they say.
The human rights religion is only used when it becomes useful. The fate of Uyghurs in China was not a problem for the “international” opinion for decades until it fit Washington’s plans to use it as a pressure to be exerted against Beijing. Since China has been regarded as America’s rival vying for world dominance, the human rights card is being played more frequently. When you lend your ear the the Western media, then all the message that you get is that the Middle Kingdom is a den of perpetrators of the worst atrocities aimed against particular groups of people: Uyghurs, the Tibetans, Christians, political dissenters and so on, and so forth.
Diversity of civilisations or China’s response to the human rights religion. Source: CGTN.
It is like throwing tear-gas canisters at the crowd of rioters. The point is that the mob assailed with tear-gas canisters quickly learns the trick of protecting themselves with masks, picking the canisters up and hurling them back at the police. The same is happening with the human rights business. Beijing has learnt to use it against Washington in an attempt to beat it on its own turf.
China Global Television Network (CGNT), a media platform with a worldwide reach, is currently running a series of articles and sharing a series of documentaries that unmask American human rights hypocrisy. The same arguments that are otherwise directed against the Middle Kingdom are now used to critique the United States. The funny side of it is that American leaders have armed Beijing with all the necessary weaponry to effectively hit the United States where it hurts.
First, it is the United States that presents itself to the whole world as a country that is riven by racism, or systemic racism, as it is nowadays repeated. China does not need to go to great lengths to exploit it. It is American leftist activists who daily bring breaking news about American racism and who keep on reminding the world of the past events, like the one that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where in 1921 a racially motivated turmoil claimed the lives of several people. Of course, Chinese propagandists quote the largest possible number of the victims, but then they only follow the good example set by the Western countries which know no moderation when accusing the soviets or the “nazis” of killing millions of victims. Really the CGTN does not need to exert itself: its journalists need only to repeat what American democrats, what the CNN reporters keep saying. So they exploit all the stories about poor blacks suffering at the hands of evil whites, of the huge gap between the few rich and the many living in poverty, and so on, and so forth.
Second, the CGTN has an array of good journalists, mostly Chinese, who have been born, raised, and educated in the United States and can now render inestimable services for Beijing. They speak perfect American English, they know the United States inside out, they have access to things just as average Americans. That’s probably one of those instances how diversity strengthens the United States.
Teaching Chinese in perfect English. Source: CGTN.
Besides, it is without grounds that the CGTN accuses the United States of weaponising the human rights, of applying them selectively while pursuing political purposes. It is, indeed, one of the manifestations of hybrid war that is being waged, now against China, now against Russia, not to mention all the smaller countries. Admittedly, human rights organisations – like the Human Rights Watch – are activated and spring into action whenever pressure is to be exerted on a government, on a country. Much the same function is performed by all the environmental organisations. Indeed, the human rights and the environmental protection movements are the two battering rams with which the Western powers crumble the resistance of their political or economic opponents.
China has learnt how to respond to accusations of human rights violations. In lieu of the Western idea of diversity that is construed as a melting pot of cultures, Beijing proposes a Diversity of Civilizations, which implies separate ways of development that suit different nations. Chinese stance also lays stress on economic and social human rights – a right to water, food, education – rather than sexual or gender rights.
“Pointing fingers at over 190 countries but turning a blind eye toward human rights violations on its own soil” is the response that Beijing imparts to world viewers of the CGTN and – making the examination of American conscience – and lists the following grave sins:
– several thousand people killed in shootings in the United States each year;
– rise in hate crimes (the term propagated by Western leftist intellectuals, by the way);
– the fact that 1% of the American population control 38%-39% of social wealth (social injustice);
– the PRISM program that’s been in operation since 2013, which conducts surveillance of online activities of US citizens;
– gender inequality (again a topic suggested by American democrats);
– poverty of African Americans (suggested by the American Left);
– racism (of course), and the like.
The human rights weapon is like any other type of weapon. It works so long as the opponent learns to use it to his own advantage. The ideological weapon is more like the chemical, biological or nuclear weapon: it is a genie that once let out of the bottle, circumnavigates the world and hits at random here and there. One cannot limit it to time and place. When once Western countries tolerated, protected and supported Russian revolutionaries (the Bolsheviks and others spent years in Western Europe or the United States and were allowed to publish their ideas and political manifestos to their heart’s content) in the hope of disrupting Russia, the West’s number one enemy, they created a whirlwind of anti-Western ideas that infected not only Russian but also Western societies and resulted in the gradual change of the Western world. While the Bolsheviks were used to destroy the tsarist empire, they very soon built their own and let loose the Marxist and Leninist ideas upon the whole world, China included. Today it is the human rights and the worship of the planet that are applied as instruments in the rivalry between political entities to suppress the West’s opponents. They may afflict the target countries and be effective in one way or another, but they may as well rebound on those who have created them. Have the architects of this kind of hybrid war learnt anything from history?
