The Washington Post has descended into a mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. The latest example is a WaPo columnist with so much contempt for GOP presidential candidates that he was willing to shill for the Chinese Communist Party.
The day after the second GOP presidential debate, Philip Bump of WaPo didn’t bother to objectively analyze the candidates’ performances or inform readers of the ideas the candidates shared. Instead, he wrote a hit piece on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate, by focusing on the frequency of DeSantis’ mentioning of “the Chinese Communist Party,” the “CCP,” or “communist China” during the debate. Bump took a swipe at another GOP presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, for saying, “The Communist Party of China is the real enemy.”
Bump regarded any of these references to the CCP as “pejorative,” even though “the Chinese Community Party” has been the official name of the party since its founding in 1921, and this title and its various references have appeared in both internal and external documents produced by the party itself. Furthermore, these variations have been internationally accepted and widely used for nearly a century (the phrase “communist China” has been circulating since the CCP took control of China in 1949).
No references to the CCP can bring up warm and fuzzy feelings because domestically, the party has committed numerous atrocities since 1949, from the Great Famine (1959–1962) that killed an estimated 45 million people to the ongoing genocide against Uyghur Muslims, just to name a few. Internationally, the party has been harassing China’s neighbors over territorial disputes, deploying economic coercion to impose its political will and silence dissenting voices, and aggressively conducting intelligence gathering and political interference in other countries. Can Bump name one thing the CCP did that warranted our love and respect?
Bump apparently deemed the GOP’s references to the CCP “pejorative” because his analysis “shows that the use of ‘Chinese Communist Party’ or ‘CCP’ has been far more common on Fox News and Fox Business than on CNN and MSNBC,” especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of course, no hit piece against the GOP is complete without assigning the ultimate blame to former President Donald Trump. Bump accused Trump of calling out the CCP “for the spread of the pandemic in the United States, largely as a means of exculpating himself.” Bump blamed Trump for popularizing references to the CCP on the political right because “the database of Trump’s comments before and during his presidency shows that he began referring to the Chinese Communist Party only after the pandemic emerged,” and now “the pejorative outlasted that concern about the pandemic.”
Differentiating Between the CCP and Chinese People
Bump was correct to notice that the Trump administration began to reference the CCP more frequently than previous administrations, but he clearly missed the strategic reason behind such a shift. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained why making a clear distinction between the CCP and the Chinese people was essential during his foreign policy speech on July 23, 2020, at the Nixon Library.
As a one-party state, the Chinese government and the CCP are the same because the party controls the state, and party members occupy all leadership positions to carry out all policies the party dictates. They do not represent the interests of the Chinese people. As Pompeo put it, “Communists always lie, but the biggest lie is that the Chinese Communist Party speaks for 1.4 billion people who are surveilled, oppressed, and scared to speak out. The CCP fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foe.”
Yet the CCP’s propaganda insists any criticism of the party is a criticism of the Chinese people and would “hurt” people’s feelings. Thus, the most effective way to rebut the CCP is to distinguish the party and the Chinese people when speaking about China: criticize the party, but “engage and empower the Chinese people — a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party,” as Pompeo described them. Such an approach was especially essential during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the hysteria about the coronavirus led to some discriminatory incidents against ethnic Chinese overseas.
Given that Bump’s employer, The Washington Post, is known for publishing the CCP’s propaganda, it should surprise no one that Bump sees the GOP’s distinction between the party and the Chinese people as unnecessary and disparaging to the CCP.
The Left as Communist and Anti-American
Bump concluded his hit piece by claiming that another utility of the GOP’s references to the CCP since 2020 is to pit “America against communism. Republicans (and particularly Trump) have repeatedly characterized the American left as communistic — meaning, in this reinvigorated context, that they are anti-American.”
Maybe Bump should grab a copy of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, co-written by one of CRT’s founders, Richard Delgado, who describes CRT as questioning “the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Or Bump should have consulted Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who described herself and her fellow organizers as “trained Marxists,” or the recently disgraced “anti-racist” Ibram X. Kendi, who claimed: “The origins of racism cannot be separated from the origins of capitalism … in order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” Compared to Bump, these intellectual leaders whose ideas dominate the American left at least had the honesty to spell out their adherence to Marxist ideology (communism), and what they are promoting is anti-American.
Americans’ trust in corporate media has reached a historic low because outlets such as WaPo are more interested in supporting an ideology and reinforcing one party’s political positions than informing the general public with balanced views. Bump’s hit piece against DeSantis while shilling for the CCP is the latest example that corporate media aren’t interested in winning Americans’ trust back.
