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Parallels between CCP shills and Hasbara trolls

4 min read

There is a large intersection between the methods of CCP shills, and those of s.^[Israel’s online troll army]

Commonly Used Tactics

Hasbara social strategies

  • Tactics/arguments

    • This is antisemitic / sinophobic!

      • Something that often shows up. Equating criticism of the state with racism etc.
      • Saying criticizing Israel for oppressing Palestinians is antisemitic —%3E Saying criticizing China for oppressing Muslims is sinophobia
      • Trying to equate hating the state with hating the people.
      • Harking back to racist charicatures.

    • Name-calling

    • Whataboutism

      • What about the terrorists!
        • Equating defense of Palestinians with supporting Hamas ⇒ Equating defense of Uyghurs with supporting “ETIM”
      • What about Darfur/American crime
        • CCP shills often bring up American crimes
      • Israel/China has a right to defend itself!

    • Muslim countries support China

      • They support Israel as well.
      • Asking how Israel can oppress Muslims when they have good ties with Muslim countries ⇒ Asking how China can oppress Muslims when they have good ties Muslim countries

Twitter thread

  • Introduction
  • Name-calling - Linking people to bad words
  • Simple insults
  • Co-opting social justice movements
  • Harping on the past
  • What about these other countries!
  • The muslim countries support us
  • Spooky scary terrorists
  • Equate hating the state with hating the people
  • Seeing is believing/have you been there
  • Misc
    • Population grew by XXX%
      • https://twitter.com/NZleftrightout/status/1393739650636783616

        Have you ever been to Israel? Because if you have, you must know everything you just wrote is just made up in your head right? For a start the Palestinian population grew by 28% in the last decade, Gaza itself has one of the fastest growing pops in the world, strange genocide?

    • We are indigenous to this region
    • My favorite artist is Uyghur/Palestinian

If you spend enough time listening to CCP shills defending China’s actions in Xinjiang, you’ll notice a lot of low grade arguments that seem to come almost directly from hasbara trolls’ defenses of Israel. Learn to identify them!

Stand4Uyghurs

While many Israel shills have support from orgs like , I’m not accusing CCP shills of being directed by anyone. Most of them are just zealous Chinese nationalists, or leftists who pick China as their bulwark against US hegemony.

CCP shills are very active online. On any popular post about Xinjiang, you can find they’ve already overrun it to shift the narrative in their favor. Take the comments of this tweet for example: https://twitter.com/SWP_Britain/status/1459507706184839174

As for their actual tactics, first up:

Name-calling

Make sure to always connect your opponents to negative terms. Always connect “Norman Finkelstein” with “self-hating Jew.” Always connect “Rushan Abbas” with “Guantanamo torture” and “Arslan Hidayat” with “extremist.”

Insults

This is a simple one. The accusation of antisemitism or sinophobia is a wildcard that can be used anywhere and anytime. Classic hasbara insults: neo-nazi, antisemite, white supremacist CCP shill insults: sinophobe, Amerikkkan imperialist

Harping on the past

Augment the accusation of antisemitism or sinophobia by linking back to antisemitic blood libel or yellow peril propaganda from history. Bonus points if it’s against a political cartoon.

Hating the state = Hating the people

To really cement the link between anti-government and bigotry, try to equate

Co-opting social justice movements

The same way attacks on Jews in the US were used to deflect from Israeli airstrikes this year, CCP shills tried to link anti-China news to StopAsianHate

Whataboutism

This does not need much explanation. Ask “what about X country” to distract from the topic. It’s especially funny when Israel and CCP shills point to each other in their whataboutism.

” The muslim countries support us”

Failing to account for political realities, the CCP shills point to the silence of muslim countries on Xinjiang. Can we also point to the countries who started normalizing ties with Israel (đŸ‡Č🇩, đŸ‡žđŸ‡©, 🇧🇭) to disprove Palestinian oppression?

Spooky Scary Terrorists

“You don’t understand. We need to airstrike/re-educate these people because of Hamas/ETIM.” “Don’t agree? You must be a terrorist supporter then.”

That’s all for now. Shoutout to @Shack_Rat for noticing this trend!

Huthaifa Shqeirat @Shack_Rat Seeing Palestinian communists take deceptive Israeli talking points about Palestine, repackage them, then present them as “rational discourse” in order to dismiss China’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims is why Palestine won’t be freed via an effort divorced from the Islamic framework. 2:30 AM · Nov 7, 2021

Adding this anyway:

Seeing Is Believing

Demanding someone to ‘see it « in real life » before making a judgment’ is an attempt at setting the bar for justified belief unreasonably high. But does visiting a region actually make you an expert on the situation?

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