US sanctions 24 China and Hong Kong officials
Incidents hit new high in 2020, report says
HONG KONG – The U.S. sanctioned an additional 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials over Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on political freedoms in the semi-autonomous city, just ahead of the Biden administration’s first face-to-face talks with China.
The step reflects Washington’s “deep concern” about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy following changes to its election system endorsed by China’s ceremonial legislature last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday.
Foreign financial institutions that deal with the 24 officials would be subject to U.S. sanctions, the State Department said.
The planned changes to Hong Kong’s electoral law give a pro-beijing committee power to appoint more of Hong Kong’s lawmakers. The move will reduce the proportion of those directly elected and ensure that only those determined to be truly loyal to Beijing are allowed to run for office – effectively shutting opposition figures out of the political process.
The U.S. announcement was made during a visit by Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea, both of which are wary of China’s growing economic, military and political heft.
The imposition of new sanctions “fully exposes the U.S. side’s sinister intention to interfere in China’s internal affairs, disrupt Hong Kong and obstruct China’s stability and development,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday.
“China will take strong measures as appropriate to resolutely defend national sovereignty, security and development interests,” Zhao said.
While in Tokyo, Blinken and Austin delivered a joint statement with their Japanese counterparts expressing concern about Beijing’s human rights violations in the western Xinjiang region against ethnic minorities and China’s determination to alter the status of a group of uninhabited islands administered
by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing. The two arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for talks.
On Thursday, Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan are scheduled to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the foreign affairs chief of China’s ruling Communist Party, Yang Jiechi, in Anchorage, Alaska.
The White House has set low expectations for the meeting. A senior official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the two sides would not deliver a joint statement and no major announcements were expected.
The U.S. has said Thursday’s meeting will be an initial opportunity to address intense disagreements over trade and human rights in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang as well as the coronavirus pandemic.
China has rejected all criticism of its policies toward Hong Kong, accusing foreign governments of interfering and saying political tightening was necessary following months of anti-government protests in 2019.
Last June, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the city, and Hong Kong authorities have arrested most of the prominent pro-democracy supporters and outspoken critics. Many others have fled abroad and renewed their calls this week for members of the Hong Kong diaspora to keep up the fight for freedoms promised to the city.
Incidents of white supremacist propaganda hit an all-time high in 2020, according to a new report from the Antidefamation League’s Center on Extremism, which has tracked racist propaganda for decades. anti-semitic, racist and ANTI-LGBTQ posters, flyers and graffiti were recorded 5,125 times in 2020, according to the report, almost twice the number of incidents recorded in 2019.
The report, released today, details incidents in every state excluding Hawaii. It includes 130 incidents of white supremacists putting up banners, 56 inperson white supremacist events and 283 incidents of anti-semitic language or propaganda that specifically targeted Jewish institutions, a 68% increase from 2019.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism, said the increased propaganda is another indication of how divided America has become.
“As if a pandemic, social justice protests and a polarizing election were not enough, one of the other things we’ve been dealing with is a significant increase in efforts by white supremacists to spread their messages around the country,” Segal said. “What the numbers suggest is a doubling down on what they view as a successful tactic.”
At least 30 different white supremacist groups distributed flyers, put up posters or graffitied public and private spaces last year, the report says. The messaging varied from overt neo-nazi propaganda to coded language that disguised white supremacist messaging inside expressions of patriotism and nationalism.
Three organizations were responsible for more than 90% of propaganda incidents. The most active group by far was Texas-based Patriot Front, headed by white supremacist Thomas Rousseau, which was behind 4,105 of the incidents. Patriot Front masks its racism in vague phrases like “America First” and “Reclaim America,” but the group’s official manifesto makes its white supremacist goals clear.
The @Patriotfrontofficial Channel on the secure messaging app Telegram also regularly posts openly racist and anti-semitic messages, as well as documenting the group’s acts of white supremacist vandalism.
Sarah Vinson, a forensic psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Morehouse School of Medicine, said white supremacist propaganda has a dual impact on the communities where it appears:
“When you see these signs up, it can make you less trusting of the white people you’re around, because you don’t know who it is that put it up, and you don’t know who is tolerating that,” Vinson said. “White people who harbor those beliefs may also find those signs validating and reassuring.”
In recent years, white supremacists have increasingly gathered online using social media, message boards and chatrooms. It may seem surprising, therefore, to see such a spike in old-school techniques like putting up posters and distributing flyers.
But Segal said the increase in propaganda isn’t an alternative to online activity, but a reflection of how technology is helping white supremacist views propagate.
“The ability for white supremacist groups to crowdsource their propaganda online results in the increase that we’re seeing on the ground,” Segal said. “Anybody can access these materials online and then go out into their community and post it there. So while it’s an old tactic, it’s being helped by modern technology.”
The propaganda factor
The increase in white supremacist propaganda mirrors an overall national increase in both the number of hate groups in the United States and hate crimes over the last few years.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual audit of hate groups showed a slight dip in the number of groups counted in 2020 from 2019. But experts were quick to point out that the number of hate groups remains high by historical standards.
The most recent statistics on hate crimes from the FBI, a tally that is deeply flawed but offers some historical perspective, suggested fatal hate crimes rising to record levels in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
More recently, there has been a surge in hate crimes toward Asian Americans, stemming from racist tropes about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hate crimes against Asian Americans rose almost 150% in 2020 in a study of America’s 16 largest cities by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
A failing grade on hate
Another report released this week by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human rights organization, assessed social media platforms’ policies for targeting hate online.
It concluded that not one of the major platforms should receive an A grade.
The report criticizes social media companies for being too slow, and too selective, in tackling white supremacist, anti-semitic, ANTI-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant content.
“It is worrisome to see us moving in the wrong direction at this juncture in history,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who has led the center’s digital terrorism and hate project for nearly three decades. “Social media giants, who for decades moved slowly and incrementally against online hate, suddenly entered the political arena, impacting on elections and Covid-related health issues.”
The report gave the “Big 5” tech platforms – Facebook/instagram, Twitter and Youtube/google – all B-minus grades. Telegram, which has seen a surge of new users who were kicked off Facebook and Twitter, got a D-minus grade. White supremacists’ favorite social media site, Gab, got an F.