MSNBC, which frequently accuses its critics of spreading foreign propaganda, saw one of its own prime time hosts share a Chinese government “news” agency’s image intended to denigrate the U.S. as it celebrated Independence Day.
Chris Hayes, who anchors “All In” during the 8 p.m. Eastern time slot opposite Tucker Carlson, retweeted an image from Xinhua News Agency that presented American constitutional liberties as the gateways to mass violence.
Xinhua tweeted a message on July 5, the legal observance of Independence Day this year, saying, “How a gun-happy nation spends its #FourthofJuly weekend.” The accompanying editorial cartoon shows two well-to-do men toasting while a wild-eyed street thug stands on a blood-spattered grave firing an AR-15 with one hand and a semiautomatic pistol with the other. The caption reads, “To Freedom … Of Shooting!”
Hayes seemed to take that example of state-run media at face value, indicating that it could help Americans understand what the rest of the world genuinely believes about the U.S.
“Continue to be grimly fascinated by how much America’s truly exceptional levels of gun violence figure in the perception of the country around the world,” he commented.
Continue to be grimly fascinated by how much America’s truly exceptional levels of gun violence figure in the perception of the country around the world. https://t.co/axcW21Pp18
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 6, 2021
Twitter users immediately reacted with outrage. Matt Whitlock of the National Republican Senatorial Committee replied, “Respectfully I’m not entirely sure the CCP’s propaganda arm is a great representation of what the rest of the world thinks of us. But I imagine having American journalists amplify their efforts without criticism or qualification is quite a coup.”
Progressive journalist Zaid Jilani said, “We have too much violence…but this is state propaganda from China. It is not an honest perception of the United States, it is a crude attack.” And Daily Wire editor Ian Haworth quipped, “Of course, Chinese officials wouldn’t have any incentive to misrepresent reality when it concerns their greatest adversary…”
Of course, Chinese officials wouldn’t have any incentive to misrepresent reality when it concerns their greatest adversary…
— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) July 6, 2021
Hayes’ regurgitation of Chinese propaganda conflicts with his voluble concern that his political opponents have become puppets of hostile foreign powers. Just last month, he lamented the “way that we’re watching propaganda shape the sense of reality among, you know, half our fellow citizens.” His guest, New York University history professor and authoritarian scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, described alleged areas “where the GOP, and Russian propaganda and the far-Right, are converging.”
Authoritarian disinformation campaigns seek to portray freedom as creating civil strife, unrest, perhaps even violence, she said. “One of them is that liberal democracy is a failed system. It brings chaos and anarchy, and so you’re trying to build an appetite for authoritarian rule,” she told Hayes. The same logic likely applies to totalitarian regimes opposed to the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to private gun ownership.
The sharing of official CCP-produced images also leaves his network looking embarrassed. The lead-in to Hayes’ show, “The ReidOut,” named Senator Ted Cruz “the absolute worst” last month because he “shared a Russian propaganda recruitment video on his Twitter account.” Cruz retweeted a montage created by a U.S. citizen which compared uber-masculine Russian military recruitment ads with a Woke feminist U.S. military advertisement rolled out by the Biden administration.
But Hayes shared an anti-American caricature, on the nation’s birthday, produced by an official Chinese Communist propaganda organ. The Chinese Communist Party, which established the Xinhua News Agency in the 1930s, expanded its reach as Beijing’s global mouthpiece. “Like most of the news media in China, it operates under governmental control, and its releases reflect official policies and promote state programs,” according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
As China continues double-digit increases to military spending every year and its economy threatens to eclipse that of the United States, disinformation campaigns have helped play a vital role in its emergence as a rival superpower. “The facts are indisputable,” Heritage Foundation expert Lee Edwards explained, “Communist China is waging a sophisticated ‘soft’ war against America with a two-fold goal: to challenge the United States as the world’s leading superpower and to supplant its dominant position in China’s neighborhood. Communist China’s strategy touches every aspect of our society—economic, technological, educational, political, even cultural.”
Chris Hayes played a small role in promoting the CCP’s global propaganda strategy because it advanced his own anti-gun agenda. When Chinese Communists and MSNBC hosts repeat the same talking points, who is exploiting whom?
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.