Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Why the 'Woke' Corporations Back China

Think there’s a contradiction between ‘woke’ corporate titans like Apple and Disney silencing anyone opposed to China’s crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong?

It’s not hypocrisy, it’s synergy.

The same forces that made the major brands scattered around your kitchen, living room and garage broadcast their support for gun control, gay marriage and illegal immigration are fueling their support for the People’s Republic of China pulling another Tiananmen Square in Hong Kong.

The lefties in Beijing and Berkeley used the same set of ideological tools to force companies to toe the party line. They roped off access to an appealing customer base, the population of mainland China, urban millennials with huge amounts of disposable income, in exchange for ideological compliance.

Communist China is one entangled oligarchy which mingles political party and company. Sound familiar?

The CEO of Nike sits on the board of Disney. The CEO of Disney until recently sat on the board of Apple. The CEO of Apple sits on the board of Nike. Good thing we have a “free market economy” isn’t it?

Disney, Apple and all the rest have no problem understanding their Chinese Communist counterparts.

ESPN smears democracy protesters in Hong Kong for the same reason that it celebrated Colin Kaepernick. There’s a fundamental contradiction in principles between supporting a Communist police state and denouncing American police officers, but a perfect synergy of political expediency.

Disney, ESPN’s parent company, has embraced identity politics from the top down, even as its head honcho, Bob Iger, remains whiter than vanilla ice cream, not because it really believes in this stuff. The Chinese Communist Party believes in One China. Its American counterparts believe in A Thousand Genders. Lefty power in China is built on unity and solidarity. Lefty power in America is built on divisive minority coalitions. But it’s only a difference if you focus on the means rather than the ends.

And the Mouse didn’t eat the entire entertainment industry by being unable to see the endgame. Avengers Endgame brought in $612 million in China. That’s the real endgame that it cares about.

In America and China, a lefty political elite controls the culture. Chinese and American lefties interlock cultural, economic and political power. Disney, once seen as a square family friendly studio, can rule the box offices in America and China because it advances the cultural goals of their political elites.

American corporations went ‘woke’ because their ideal customer base, wealthy millennials, were reprogrammed by academia. Getting access to young people with lots of money required ritual virtue signaling, first by cultural industries, which didn’t need much encouraging to function as gatekeepers, censors and reeducators, and then by all the other industries which bowed to the culture.

If Disney didn’t advance the party line, its comic book movies would be ridiculed, dismissed and denounced, and its cartoon remakes would be accused of racism in America. And in China, where the loci of political control are even simpler, they would never be released in the country’s movies theaters.

China’s Commies control the entire economy. America’s lefties control the cultural economy. And our few real exports to China are either agricultural or cultural. And soybean farmers aren’t tweeting about Hong Kong. The ‘wokest’ parts of our economy, entertainment and tech, are that way because they depend on the cultural sanction of the same political movement that killed millions in China.

If you’re going to sell thousand-dollar phones made by slave labor in some dusty factory town where the air is poison, you need the sanction of the Communist Party of China and the culture industry of California. And if you’re going to dump your cultural garbage in American and Chinese movie theaters, both owned by the same Chinese corporations, you’ll need to run the stuff by cultural censors.

Chinese censors are concerned about portraying their leaders as powerful and discouraging insurrection. American censors want to push their identity politics. That’s how you end up with ESPN cheering Colin and booing Hong Kong protesters. Chinese and American commies both get what they want and ESPN gets a foothold in the Chinese market and among the Ivy League’s wealthy woke grads.

The Hong Kong protesters won’t be too happy, but how many Avengers movies do they watch? How many iPhones can they buy? How many copies of Battlefield do they play? That’s the real question.

The ‘enemies of the people’ in Hong Kong are free market Christians who don’t want a police state controlling their lives. Funny coincidence, those are also the ‘enemies of the people’ in America.

Giant multinational monopolies don’t like free markets. They encourage competition.

The last thing the NBA, Disney, Apple, Nike and the rest of the ‘megas’ want is competition. What they want is a walled garden tended by a kindly Zen-Communist tyrant who will give them a virgin territory in exchange for a huge slice of the pie to be shared with local political partners. And, of course, slavish devotion to the tyranny of whatever it is the locals believe in, dialectical materialism, the transcendence of gender, which is a small price to pay by people who don’t have any principles or believe in anything.

It doesn’t really matter if this walled garden is in China or California. Either way, the ideal outcome is a totalitarian leftist state and the enemies are Christians who believe in a free market economy.

Can you think of anything a soulless ‘woke’ monopoly would hate and fear more than religious believers who also believe in personal freedom? That’s why Disney, Apple and the ChiComs are on the same page.

Apple, Disney and all the rest are about brands. A brand is a form of identity.

Brands don’t make good products. Instead they churn out overpriced junk and use advertising to fuse consumer loyalty to their brand. And that brand, a sports team, an Apple logo, becomes part of the identity of the people who are brainwashed into identifying with it even to their own detriment.

That’s why ad agencies have gone gaga for identity politics. And why every other ad you see is virtue signaling so hard that it would make Mao roll his eyes. They’re all in the manufactured identity business.

Identity politics manufactures identities and then convinces its dupes that their lives are hopeless and incomplete until they also implement open borders, gun control, and a ban on fossil fuels.

Sound familiar? Buy into the revolution now. Organizers are standing by to take your call.

That’s also why religious believers are the enemy. They don’t make ideal consumers.

People who have a form of meaning in their lives that isn’t for sale on Black Friday aren’t good consumers. Lefties with thirty genders and a hole the size of Cleveland where meaning should be, are.

So are Communist drones in a society drifting away from Communism while suppressing religion.

That’s why California and Communist China are the capitals of ‘Capitamunism’. And why free market Christians are the enemies in both of the capitals where identity politics are their own religion.

In China, it’s nationalism. In America, it’s anti-nationalism. But those are just different identities. And advertising is in the business of monetizing identities. The militant Chinese nationalist vocally insisting that everything in Asia belongs to Beijing and the furious Black Lives Matter activist demanding that we build Wakanda in Oklahoma are two sides of the same coin and ESPN will market to both of them.

And if a few protesters in Hong Kong or police officers in Dallas get shot, that’s also the same coin.

What really matters is the next game, the next movie, the next phone and the next crackdown. What matters is that you can buy governments, shut down protests and suppress the truth. What matters is that more people, in China and America, are realizing that what they want isn’t a sale: it’s freedom.



Thank you for reading.


Anonymous said...

From Mao's "Little Red Book": "The United States has set up hundreds of military bases in many countries all over the world... and all military bases of the United States on foreign soil are so many nooses round the neck of U.S. imperialism... and it is they themselves who have put these nooses round their own necks, handing the ends of the ropes to the Chinese people, the peoples of the Arab countries and all the peoples of the world who love peace and oppose aggression. The longer the U.S. aggressors remain in those places, the tighter the nooses round their necks will become." Speech at the Supreme State Conference (September 8, 1958)

61 years later Mao's prophecy has come true and China and Islam hold the ends of the ropes of the noose around America's neck (and the necks of all remaining free people in hiding around the world). Globalist-Corporate-Feudalism marketed the noose to the Western World as a necklace (Winnie Mandela's "necklace" of burning tires) and the decadent living dead all put it on of their own free will. It was a choice.

The Beast, the Dragon, the False Prophet. The UN, China, Islam. The noose tightens.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant, as usual. I would post to my facebook friends, but too many of them are gay and would want to strangle me.

Anonymous said...

Well, yes; the Disneys and Chicoms guard the
gates to production, consumption, perceived
identity of sheeple. But with billions of
believers in tow, Pope Francis is also eager
to bow to China, Islam and all Wokedom.
Many Protestant sects preach Eco-Apocalypse,
Islamic Ecumenism. Heaven forbid that Prince
Charles become King.

Any leader; political, religious, cultural,
commercial; who can “deliver” followers is a
tempting target for compromise. Best to assume
that the Chicoms, Mullahs, CEOs have all read
Alinsky and Macciavelli. Caveat Emptor.


The Conservative Curmudgeon said...

And then we have the TRUMP FAMILY corporation which China not only makes numerous products for but it gets away with paying little or no tariffs on these products. That my dear Trump supporters is the definition of "ELITE" treatment.

Unknown said...

I think the difference stems from what Yuri Bezmienov said about communist take-overs: first they sow division and chaos, then when the trap is sprung, diversity is squelched. China is just further down the communist road than we are.

Anonymous said...

More from Mao on American blacks. Note Mao's 1963 separation of white people into two categories, majority non-racist proletariat whites and minority ruling capitalist racist pig imperialist whites. 60 years later leftists now claim that all whites are racist colonizers especially formerly proletariat whites -- the "Deplorables". Also note the last sentence where Mao states that colonialism began with the slavery of blacks but he implies it is the fault solely of white American imperialists and not the Islamic slave trade which began black slavery -- and of course no mention of China's own slave trades and the slave trades of indigenous peoples all over the world since Cro Magnon yoked Neanderthal into doing all their dirty work.

"Statement Supporting the American Negroes In Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism (August 8, 1963) Mao Tse-tung"

"I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of all colours in the world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practised by U.S. imperialism and support the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the Negro people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United Slates, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than 10 per cent of the 3,000 million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that, with the support of more than 90 per cent of the people of the world, the American Negroes will be victorious in their just struggle. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people."

112 said...

Another brilliant analysis.

Jeff Z said...

Great piece! I hope that your observation "The ‘enemies of the people’ in Hong Kong are free market Christians who don’t want a police state controlling their lives. Funny coincidence, those are also the ‘enemies of the people’ in America" will receive the publicity it deserves.

One request: It may sound trivial, but I think it's important. I'm a former Lefty, and the one thing about real Leftists that always impressed me was a genuine devotion to the protecting the helpless, which happens to be the opposite interest of the Chinese and American powers your describing here. Could we call them by their more historically and descriptively accurate names of "Chinese Fascists" and "American Progressives?"

Thanks again for a terrific piece!

Anonymous said...

Dear well-meaning Conservative Curmudgeon;
I get it; Trump family, money and annoying

FAMILY: Bobby Kennedy was A.G. Hillary was
Bill’s Health Czar. Trump knew he had few
trustworthy, capable in government, so
recruited (no pay) family.

MONEY: For a pure president, your only choice
is a Buddhist monk who never touched money,
OR a Billionaire Capitalist who has already
checked that box.

ANNOYING CHUTZPAH: Rough tweets, rude firings,
ketchup on filet mignon are all unabashed
Trumpisms. At last, forgotten Americans knew
they had a gritty WINNER. Choir boys like
Dole, McCain, Romney are worthless on the day
after election. Check his results so far,
then let his ego take a bow; well earned!


Anonymous said...

The mother of all NGOs: Elitists Without Borders...

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