Citizen Jin Jianguo | Anti-American narratives, why are they getting more and more idiotic?

Previously, I said that the “kill line” was a false victory theory. Some people mocked me as a “curve to save beauty”, unable to refute the theory of “Laol A”, so they wanted to get to the root of the problem. After finishing, they blocked me and didn’t give me a chance to speak.

He obviously overreacted. I didn’t intend to speak at all. After all, this kind of story mixed with urban legends, fantasies, and conspiracy theories is not worth arguing about.

Moreover, living in an anti-American context for many years, those who don’t believe in the “kill line” are more like outsiders, and their voice is also lower. Persuasion and debate seem to be difficult and thankless.

In fact, in my opinion, the focus of the “kill line”‘s popularity is not on its content, but on what it reflects: the current intellectual degradation of anti-American narratives. Just like a friend said: “The most absurd thing is not the stories told by Laol A, but that so many people actually believe such absurd stories.”

China’s anti-American wave began in the 1950s. At that time, in the eyes of Chinese people, especially the democratic parties and intellectuals, the image of the United States was much better than that of the Soviet Union, but in terms of actual national and institutional construction, China was highly dependent on the Soviet Union.

As China was drawn into the bipolar confrontation of the Cold War, under the “leaning to one side” policy, in order to eliminate this misalignment and unite with the Soviet Union to resist the United States, it was imperative to reverse public opinion and even reshape cognition through high-intensity anti-American narratives.

Even by today’s standards, the level of anti-American narratives at that time was not low.

First of all, it has a mature theoretical foundation, rooted in Marx’s “Das Kapital” and Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, so it can logically deduce the conclusion about monopoly capital → financial crisis → war is inevitable.

In this framework, the United States is naturally defined as the strongest and most aggressive country in the imperialist group, so hostility towards the United States is not an accidental event, but an inevitable result of the development of capitalism to a specific stage.

In other words, it is not the American people who want to invade, but the imperialist system that inevitably leads to aggression.

With this set of theories, the Korean War, the Taiwan issue, and sanctions and blockades are no longer policy choices in a complex international environment, but the dying struggle of imperialism, the spillover of the capitalist crisis, and a part of the world revolution and counter-revolution.

Secondly, it forms its own system of discourse. If you systematically read the public materials from 1950 to 1955, you will find many highly consistent keyword combinations: US imperialism, monopoly capital, militarism, warmongers, reactionary ruling groups, etc.

These concepts are not randomly fabricated, but are a set of terms that are nested with each other and can be mutually demonstrated. In this set, US monopoly capital is the main enemy, the US government is the tool of aggression, the American working people are the oppressed, and the world’s people are potential allies.

This means that the audience receives not only fragmented narratives, but also a whole set of languages that explain the world. For this reason, even many intellectuals who have seen the world can readily accept this set of narratives.

Finally, there is institutionalized operation. Anti-American narratives do not only stay on the media side, but also become learning content. Party schools must teach, cadres must learn, and book content must keep up. At the same time, there are also mass movements, such as signing, donating, joining the army, and criticizing US running dogs, etc.

It can be said that although the anti-Americanism in the 1950s was mixed with strong ideological colors, it cannot be said to be anti-intellectual, and even quite rational (single rationality). It highly respects theory, highly emphasizes scientificity and regularity, and is extremely confident that it has grasped historical truth, so it is also extremely explanatory and persuasive.

Looking back at this history, I just want to explain one problem: the anti-American narrative at that time “respected” the audience and treated the audience as normal people.

You must know that the narrative system is designed according to the intellectual level of the audience. If the audience at that time was assumed to have a low level of logic and could only accept emotional stimulation, the easiest way would be to repeat the same inciting words, but what was done in the 1950s was far more than that, and there were a large number of long editorials and theoretical explanatory documents.

This is not to say that people at that time were so clever, but that the audience had changed.

The main force of the public opinion field at that time was the elite class led by intellectuals of all sizes. They had to persuade them first, and then use them as intermediaries to thoroughly influence the ordinary masses. However, the current public opinion field has been greatly de-elited. Many so-called “opinion leaders” are self-packaged low-threshold figures, like Laol A – who went to the United States twice to study at community colleges but failed to transfer to a bachelor’s degree twice, and returned to China in a sorry state, but claimed to be a third-year medical student, “college students”.

These “college students” themselves are of low level, and the anti-American narratives that suit them will naturally follow suit. This also explains why even official media are vigorously promoting the “kill line” – this kind of “inferior product” that was not put on the table in the past, that authoritative media kept their distance from, and that was only suitable for the masses to entertain themselves.

In addition to the intellectual degradation of anti-American narratives, there is also a strange phenomenon: although contemporary people have a higher overall education level and information literacy than people at that time, why do they appear to be more and more mentally retarded?

This is of course an illusion. In absolute terms, contemporary people are definitely much higher.

The key difference is that when information passes through high-level intellectual elites, complex concepts will be transformed into forms that ordinary people can understand and analyze, and the masses can participate in discussions under high-level logical chains.

And when information passes through low-level “opinion leaders”, it is equivalent to going through a round of dimensionality reduction processing, and the content becomes highly fragmented, emotional, and even extreme, not only with chaotic logic, but also filled with symbols and labels, such as Laol A’s stigmatization of female international students.

In this way, even if contemporary people are more intelligent, they can only participate in discussions at a lower logical level. Over time, people’s logical abilities will degenerate, and their thinking habits will also become binary. This is reflected on a macro level, which is the loss of rationality of the entire society.

A person who has lost rationality naturally looks like a mentally retarded person.

Of course, the intellectualization of anti-American narratives did not appear only now, but the popularity of Laol A is a turning point – some “opinion leaders” in the past, even if they made up stories, had to use video and picture splicing, and take content out of context to increase credibility, but Laol A made up stories entirely by mouth.

This marks that the anti-American narrative has begun to shift from the stage of “intellectualization” to the stage of “de-intellectualization”. Although this may not immediately trigger a permanent decline in the public opinion mechanism, it has broken through the intellectual bottom line of this narrative, and once this bottom line is lowered, it cannot automatically rebound.

In this view, the popularity of Laol A is not an exception, but the first model to be verified on a large scale, and his success means that there will be more Laol B and Laol C in the future.