"The Chinese Government Will Lie to You!" said the U.S. Government the Day It Was Caught Lying to Us.
On the ceasefire, TikTok, and Red Note.
After fifteen months of slaughter, a ceasefire deal has been announced in Palestine. Hallelujah!
If the deal stands (and that is still an “if”), this will be the first opportunity for the world to see the true nature of Israel’s genocide. While Israel’s crimes have been apparent to those who looked upon Gaza with honest eyes, now that the bombs have stopped, doctors, investigators, and journalists (ones Israel can’t assassinate) will enter Gaza and tell the world what they find. Uncovered mass graves and starving children won’t be news to anyone who reads this newsletter, but it will be to those who consumed legacy media, which has refused to cover known and accused atrocities. According to
journalist Ryan Grim, fear of this transparency kept Israel from accepting previous ceasefire deals.
Before the ceasefire was announced, there had already been slight admissions from the media walking back its earlier claims. Earlier this week, 60 Minutes aired an interview with State Department officials who were “concerned” about America’s culpability in the genocide. During the spot, CBS used footage from May 2024, meaning its producers and executives had firsthand knowledge of the destruction but sat on it for eight months.1 Even The New York Times began to indicate it was changing its tune. After over a year of downplaying and ignoring the Gazan death toll, it now admits more Palestinians “may” have been killed than previously thought (“may” is doing a lot of work here). This was obvious to any objective observer, as the official death toll climbed to 45,000 and then stopped — because Israel had killed so many people, it was impossible to count the bodies.
Now that Donald Trump has strong-armed Netanyahu into accepting a deal, the monumental level of deceit that the U.S. government and its media lackeys have spoon-fed to the American people is no longer deniable. Since October 8th, 2023, the Biden Administration has told Americans that Israel wanted a ceasefire, but Hamas rejected it. In the words of Tyler the Creator: “So, that was a fucking lie.” And not even a convincing one. At every iteration of ceasefire negotiations, it was clear which party was prolonging the conflict. According to Haim Rubinstein, the former spokesman of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an advocacy group started by the families of Israelis taken on October 7th, Palestinian fighters offered to release the hostages on October 9th, 2023, in exchange for Israel not invading Gaza.2 Israel refused.
“We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the [Gaza] Strip, but the [Israeli] government rejected the offer.” — Haim Rubenstein
In a statement released moments ago, President Biden took credit for the ceasefire, claiming it was a variant of his proposal from May last year. Biden also said the truce was the result of “extreme pressure on Hamas,” implying it was the party blocking a ceasefire.3 Inspection of the May 2024 proposal and why it fell apart shows this, too, is a lie.
The May 2024 deal Biden referred to was a three-stage, hostages-for-ceasefire proposal. At the time, Biden described it as an “Israeli proposal.” According to Israeli media, Israel agreed to the deal on May 27th. When the other parties signed off, Netanyahu destroyed it with an eleventh-hour demand that the deal include “the destruction of Hamas.” Obviously, calling for the death of the other party is not a “ceasefire” and would never be accepted. Instead of pointing out Israel scuttled the proceedings with a poison pill, Biden and Secretary of State/aspiring jazz musician Anthony Blinken fraudulently claimed it was Hamas who was to blame.4
"My message to governments throughout the region, to people throughout the region, is if you want a ceasefire, press Hamas to say yes.” — Anthony Blinken, June 10th, 20245
Blinken knew Israel was at fault for the deal’s collapse, yet still chose to lie to the world and the American people. Biden even slipped up and admitted this to TIME magazine. When asked if Netanyahu was the one prolonging the war for political reasons, Biden said: “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.” As the interviewers note, Biden’s aids immediately tried to end the recording, likely fearing their boss’s cognitive decline had caused him to forget he was supposed to be propagandizing.
There are countless other examples of the blatant lies I could point to, but you get the point. For fifteen months, Israel has carried out a genocide in Palestine under the political protection of the United States government, the Biden Administration, and Western media. Their untruths were not “mistakes” but a long, drawn-out propaganda campaign to shift blame for the thousands of dead civilians from Israel, the offender, to Palestinians, the victim. Those who rightfully suspected this and called out the falsehoods and genocidal acts were smeared as unserious leftists, America-haters, and, most egregious of all, anti-semites. Well, we were 100% right, and everyone who excused Biden was 100% wrong.
There’s no longer any doubt Joe Biden could have ended Israel’s attacks long ago. The current ceasefire came to be after Donald Trump, not even in office, sent his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to tell Netanyahu the war was done. In what the Israeli media described as a “tense” discussion, the Israeli Prime Minister took his orders and agreed to a ceasefire deal.6 Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. After all, Israel is a colonial outpost of the U.S. We provide their weapons and political cover, meaning there’s little the Zionist state can do without the approval of the President. That’s why people like myself relentlessly called on Biden to do what Ronald Reagan did when Israel invaded Lebanon in the 1980s. — pick up the phone and tell them it’s over. For months, we were told that wasn’t possible. Well, Trump just did it, so it clearly was.
As if the government that routinely claims to be following “the rules-based international order” engaging in this deceit wasn’t enough to prove its hypocrisy, all of this is happening amidst the pending TikTok ban. Signed into law by Biden last year, the ban is driven by claims the Chinese Communist Party is harvesting American user data and manipulating algorithms to promote criticism of the U.S. Currently, the ban is set to go into effect on January 19th, and last-minute challenges before The Supreme Court are likely to fail.
As a result, many users have migrated to Red Note, the Chinese social media app, making it the #1 downloaded app in the Apple App Store. This has brought a wave of condemnation from the Very Serious People, who seek to educate us simpletons that China is The Bad Guy and America is The Good Guy. Writing about the need to ban TikTok, Noah Smith warned his readers, “The Chinese government is not our friend, and it is coming to get us.” (Even reading the Wikipedia page for Maoism would tell Noah that the Marxist-Leninst variant has no ideological interest in global domination, but that seems to be too much work.) Center For New Liberalism founder Jeremiah Johnson has declared this the personal hill he’ll die on, arguing those who oppose the ban are “enormous dipshits.” (That’s the classic liberal charm we know and love!)
In an act of oh-so-precious bipartisanship that only dorks care about, former National Review editor David French appeared on The New York Times' “The Opinions” podcast to argue that TikTok is a national security threat and that the ban should be enforced. All of this is done with the classic elitist contempt. Politicians and pundits treating average Americans like children who are too stupid to know what’s for their own good, explaining that we just don’t “understand” the danger! But here’s what they don’t understand: Gen Z, progressives, and everyone else in the social media migration knows the Chinese government controls TikTok and Red Note. We just don’t care.
What exactly are the claims against using these apps? That the Chinese government could get my data? You mean, like how Meta sells my online behavior to the highest bidder? Or how the U.S. government has been monitoring everyone’s online activity 24/7 since 9/11? Or maybe the concern is that the CCP would manipulate the algorithm to make me more critical of the American duopoly. Beijing is free to try, but I doubt they can increase my ire for those who rule over me.
The American Government spent the last year lying to its citizens about its role in the Gazan genocide. Our tax dollars bought the bombs, and our “democratic” government ignored the widespread calls for a ceasefire because the fifteen people guarding the sundowning Joe Biden thought they knew better than the rest of us. New polling from YouGov shows it was the leading reason Democratic voters stayed home, likely costing Kamala Harris the election. Voters told the DNC they didn’t want the slaughter to continue, but they said, “Hush now! The Very Serious People are talking!” Well, they lost, and now a very unserious man is taking office, and I might have to buy a fucking gun because he wants to sic the military on the “radical left.”7
Additionally, Americans know that American-made social media is just as controlled towards American interests as Chinese media is towards Chinese interests. Not only did all the mainstream outlets help the government lie about the nature of ceasefire talks and the number of innocent Gazans killed, but social media apps are rife with suppression of pro-Palestine voices. Human Rights Watch chronicled “systemic censorship of Palestine Content,” and Meta’s policy chief for “Israel and the Jewish Diaspora (fakest job I’ve ever heard of) was caught trying to silence posts from Students for Justice in Palestine.8 I can tell you from personal experience that messages critical of the U.S. state and its policies are suppressed on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But I’m supposed to be afraid the CCP won’t let me talk about who rightfully owns the South China Sea? As if that’s an actual problem in anyone’s life.
Those unconcerned about TikTok and Red Note’s ownership have little illusions about the Chinese government. It’s common knowledge the CCP censors topics it doesn’t like and promotes content critical of America. American lawmakers who banned TikTok should ask themselves, “Why are our citizens interested in criticism of our country? Have we failed our constituents?” Instead of asking this question, which is core responsibility of their job, they’re saying I only dislike them because Xi Jingping told me so. I’ll tell you what: I’ve been on TikTok for far less time than I’ve despised the United States government.
The difference between younger and left-leaning Americans who don’t fear the Chinese boogeyman and the center, right, and older Americans who do is that we recognize the American government is already doing what it accuses China is of. The TikTok ban was passed under the banner of “national security,” the catch-all code word the U.S. government has used to suppress, discredit, and sometimes imprison citizens it doesn’t like. The same excuse was used to justify the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, the illegal torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, mass incarceration, the police beatings of anti-war protestors, COINTELPRO, and the PRISM spying program that took a shit on every civil liberty in the Constitution. All of this was covered up by lie upon lie, from Presidents, CIA directors, politicians, and the journalists who serve the interests of the American state. Meanwhile, American troops were sent to so many countries, Congresspeople were surprised to hear one was killed in Niger. American has over seven hundred and fifty military bases on foreign soil.9 China has three.10 It certainly looks like one country wants to dominate the world, and it isn’t the one speaking mandarin.
This is why the claim that “America has its faults, but China is worse so we need to ban TikTok!” just doesn’t hold up to our reality. How is it worse for average Americans? Did China just kill at least 60,000 Palestinians? Did they send fascist cops to beat student protestors? Did they refuse to raise the minimum wage above $7.25, condemning millions of Americans to grapple with poverty? Did they fail to prepare for a climate-change-induced wildfire that burned down America’s second-largest city? No. That was all the U.S. government. I’m sure Chinese people have plenty of complaints about their government, but Americans aren’t mad at Congress because China manipulated our social media algorithms to make it so. We’re mad because our government has spent fifty years sacrificing us to capital, taxing us to bomb innocent children, and then telling us how fortunate to have them lie to our faces. That’s why we’re mad. And no amount of fear-mongering or censorship is going to change that.
I leave you with a paraphrase of the words of the great Carl Sagan, who, in his only fiction work, Contact, offered this antidote to the fallacy of high-minded American supremacy.
Dr. Eleanor Arroway: “Well, in America, I was at least allowed to protest my country’s illegal Vietnam War.”
Vaygay Lunacharsky: “Well, in the Soviet Union, I, too, was allowed to protest your country’s illegal Vietnam War.”
JoeWrote is a reader-supported publication that analyzes current events unconstrained by the establishment attachments of legacy media. Like (click the ❤️), share, and subscribe to support my work. If you think my message is valuable, consider becoming a premium subscriber. It’s only $5 a month, so if you get at least one coffee cup worth of value from it (and I hope you do), please consider it.
In Solidarity — Joe
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-state-department-officials-concerned-about-us-role-israel-war-in-gaza-60-minutes-transcript/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-hostage-deal-charges-ex-spokesman-of-families-forum/
https://il.usembassy.gov/statement-from-president-joe-biden/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-full-offer-said-to-include-permanent-truce-before-all-hostages-return/
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/blinken-set-arrive-egypt-gaza-ceasefire-push-2024-06-10/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-official-trump-envoy-swayed-netanyahu-more-in-one-meeting-than-biden-did-all-year/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/could-trump-use-military-go-after-radical-left/story?id=114806253
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/13-countries-most-overseas-military-070800473.html
https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-military-bases-us-intelligence-1878183
"The difference between younger and left-leaning Americans who don’t fear the Chinese boogeyman and the center, right, and older Americans who do" Um, can we make that some older Americans? Or maybe, center, right, liberals or all ages?
There are some of us in that "older" category who remember very clearly, that US oppression didn't just begin with The PATRIOT Act, and can actually recall Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, HUAC, and the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, The Black Panthers, George Jackson, and Fred Hampton, AIM and Leonard Peltier, still in prison, after all these decades. We know that before those I just listed were the infamous Palmer Raids, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs. The list of those whose lives have been destroyed in the name of Manifest Destiny is endless, unfortunately, most Americans don't know this now, because they didn't hear about it then. They never learned about what the US government was actually doing. Looks like things are changing when it comes to what the populace can and cannot be allowed to learn.
Appreciate the info on Haim Rubinstein. I was unaware of the coverup of the almost immediate Hamas hostage release/exchange offer. Though I'm not surprised at the offer, the lack of publicity about it, or the rejection of it.