Afghanistan has become a launchpad for China’s accelerated propaganda offensive against the Uyghurs. Pakistan is also an important part of it.
by Ruth Ingram
Beijing’s crusade against its largely Muslim minorities, that has seen up to three million innocent people corralled into internment and forced labor over the past four years, co-opted a surprising ally: the Taliban.
The alliance was prepared during face-to-face pre-coup discussions in Beijing to discuss the way forward, assuming the inevitability of a Taliban overthrow.
Taliban pre-takeover promises that they would not breed terrorists who harm China, and would cooperate with repatriation demands of “troublesome” Uyghurs, have given the CCP another weapon in its arsenal in its so-called “War on Terror” that relies on the cooperation of its closest neighbors and the silence of Muslim nations.
Crusades to ban a literature accused of “brainwashing the masses” show how far faulty theories of mental manipulation could go.
by Massimo Introvigne
In a previous series on Bitter Winter, I discussed how “brainwashing” theories were used to promote certain political ideologies against others (originally, the CIA invented the word “brainwashing” to criticize Communism, and describe what the evil Communists allegedly did), and to discriminate against religions labeled as “cults.”
In fact, some proponents of “brainwashing” theories claimed they were engaged in an epic battle against the “three Cs.” The first two Cs were Communism and “cults.” Almost forgotten is the third, comics. Remembering the era in which “brainwashing” accusations were directed against comics is useful to show that almost everybody and everything can be accused of “brainwashing.”
For a number of reasons, criticism of popular culture as a way of “brainwashing” both children and the working classes into a black-and-white totalitarian worldview focused precisely on comics. Frankfurt School theorists of mental manipulation did notice comics at a quite early stage, and focused their criticism on the two most popular genres in the 1930s and 1940s: superhero and horror comics.
