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Tag: anti-asian racism

GOP Lawmakers Get Free KN95 Masks — And Respond With Racist Anti-Asian Attacks

House Republicans are returning to the sort of rhetoric that experts say has fueled thousands of racist incidents against people of Asian descent in the United States since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The latest object of their ire is their receipt of free KN95 masks intended to protect them from the coronavirus.

After the nonpartisan Congressional Office of the Attending Physician urged lawmakers and their staffs this week to wear N95 or KN95 masks to curb the spread of the Omicron variant, masks were distributed free of charge to congressional offices.

Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted on Friday that he was outraged that the KN95s — a common face mask recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help curb the spread of COVID-19 — were made in China.

"KN95 masks distributed to House members stamped with 'MADE IN CHINA'. Fitting for the Democrats to hand out masks that are made in the same place the virus originated," he wrote.

Other House Republicans made similar comments.

North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy baselessly attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, "We are fighting a virus that came from China, yet the Speaker is comfortable with publicly supporting a Chinese manufacturer, sending our taxpayer dollars overseas and further advertising our dependency on China … on the faces of Congress."

Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup said, "The fact that the masks we are mandated to wear in the U.S. Congress are made in China is just one example of our inabilities to protect and treat Americans without relying on adversaries."

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Republicans have used racist rhetoric about the coronavirus to blame it entirely on China and the Chinese people. Former President Donald Trump frequently used racist terms like "the China virus" and "kung flu," even after public health experts warned that doing so would cause stigma and discrimination.

Researchers pointed to this terminology as a key reason for a large spike in racist incidents against people of Asian descent since the beginning of the pandemic. The group STOP AAPI HATE documented at least 2,700 incidents of workplace discrimination, denial of service, spitting on, verbal abuse, and physical assaults against Asian American people in just the first eight months.

Other GOP lawmakers followed Trump's lead and repeated the terms.

The Wall Street Journal recently documented that N95 and KN95 masks are far more effective at halting the spread of the Omicron variant than cloth or surgical masks.

"We need to educate the public and say that different quality masks offer different protection," University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill clinician and infectious disease specialist Megan Srinivas told the paper, noting that she and her family wear KN95s and that she recommends them for others.

In the past two weeks alone, more than a dozen members of Congress have tested positive for the virus.

While Republicans continue to treat the global pandemic as entirely China's fault, scientists have still not reached any consensus about where and how the coronavirus began.

According to a September 2021 National Geographic report, the U.S. intelligence community agreed that it was "not developed as a biological weapon," but there is no agreement on any other theories about its origin.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Fox News Pushes To Defund PBS After 'Sesame Street' Adds Asian American Puppet

Fox News is promoting a conservative campaign to defund the Public Broadcasting Service for "bringing race into" its programming and encouraging viewers to get vaccinated. At the center of conservatives' latest culture war is Sesame Street, the iconic children's television show.

In a Thursday Fox & Friends First appearance, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp called to defund PBS over the network's attempts to make its programming more inclusive of race and gender identity. Schlapp specifically attacked the producers of Sesame Street for recently adding an Asian American puppet to its regular cast of characters.

"They're trying to bring race into Ernie and Bert," Schlapp said, referring to two male puppets who live together on the fictional Sesame Street.

On Monday, Sesame Workshop announced that it would introduce the character Ji-Young — the first Asian American puppet in Sesame Street history — as part of an upcoming special titled See Us Coming Together. The show's producers told the Associated Press that the new character is part of an effort to teach children how to be a good "upstander."

"Being an upstander means you point out things that are wrong or something that someone does or says that is based on their negative attitude towards the person because of the color of their skin or the language they speak or where they're from," Wilson Stallings, executive vice-president of Creative and Production for Sesame Workshop, told the news outlet.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has seen a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans. Bystanders have often played witness to such attacks without stepping in to stop them, leading some advocacy groups to organize bystander intervention training sessions. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, has fanned the flames of racist violence by repeatedly using the term "China flu" to refer to the virus.

Mike Huckabee Tweets Weirdly Racist Attack On ‘Chinese’ —And Gets Hosed Down

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Former Arkansas Governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee chose Easter weekend to sink to an unimaginable low, practically spitting in the face of Asian American communities, apparently because Republicans lost a presidential election. Democrats argue that the 2020 defeat, coupled with twin losses in Senate runoff elections in Georgia. triggered more restrictive voting laws throughout the country and especially in the Peach State, where a recently passed law makes it illegal to give water and food to voters standing in line to cast ballots. Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian and Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey spoke out against the law and Major League Baseball vowed to move its 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta because of the law.

Applying the usual nonsensical GOP logic, Huckabee decided those moves were somehow connected to an outpouring of support for Asian Americans following a spike in racist and violent acts against the community. "I've decided to 'identify' as Chinese," he tweeted sarcastically on Saturday. "Coke will like me, Delta will agree with my 'values' and I'll probably get shoes from Nike & tickets to @MLB games. Ain't America great?"

The tweet earned Huckabee well-earned criticism on social media. Rep. Ted Lieu tweeted on Saturday: "Hey Mike Huckabee, I asked around and Coke likes me, Delta agrees with my values, I wear Nikes and my hometown Dodgers won the World Series. But it's not because of my ethnicity. It's because I'm not a sh*thead like you who is adding fuel to anti-Asian hate. #StopAAPIHate" Comedian John Fugelsang tweeted: "Yes except for the part where racist Mike Huckabee fans accuse you of spreading a virus."

Democrat Jake Lobin tweeted: "I can't believe Mike Huckabee's job has been to actually govern people. Holy shit." Author and unitarian pastor John Pavlovitz tweeted: "Mike Huckabee motivated me to do this work. The day of the Sandy Hook shooting he inexplicably used the murder of children to spread a cancerous religion. It made me realize as a pastor that I needed to explicitly oppose monsters like him who bastardize my faith tradition."

"He and his party are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and adversarial to diverse humanity," Pavlovitz added in another tweet. "Good people can simply not allow them to steer this nation into the abyss—and we won't."

Black corporate leaders have advocated for other corporations to take a stand against the restrictive new Georgia law, The New York Times reported. "There is no middle ground here," former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault said. "You either are for more people voting, or you want to suppress the vote." His remarks followed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's decision to sign into law a bill state Republicans rushed through the legislature in the final hour, slithering just outside of the public eye after earlier criticism for similarly restrictive voting bills.

With only eight days left in the state legislative session, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein tweeted that the Georgia House adopted the measure on a party-line vote working to "restrict drop boxes, require voter ID for mail-in ballots and gives the Republican-controlled Legislature more authority over local elections officials." The state Senate followed suit.

Merck pharmaceutical company CEO Kenneth Frazier told The New York Times he and other executives began emailing and texting each other following the passage of Georgia's law. Their goal is to stop other restrictive voting bills from passing across the country. "As African-American business executives, we don't have the luxury of being bystanders to injustice," Frazier said. "We don't have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines when these kinds of injustices are happening all around us."

Giuliani Still Promoting Disinformation On YouTube — Despite Suspension

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Months after social media giant YouTube promised to crack down on misinformation, former President Donald Trump's lawyer and election conspiracy theorist Rudy Giuliani is still pushing conspiracy theories on the platform.

A Media Matters review of Giuliani's YouTube channel found a mountain of election-related conspiracy theories and misinformation that has largely remained intact, despite the platform's stated policy that it will remove content which undermines the election results. And after taking a roughly one-month hiatus from the platform, from January 6 to February 3, Giuliani is back on YouTube, this time promoting racist conspiracy theories.

Giuliani's channel, which hosts his Common Sense podcast and boasts over half a million subscribers, has continued to publish videos which violate YouTube's policies. In January, he was suspended from YouTube's Partner Program, which allows creators to split revenue earned by YouTube through advertisements that run before his videos. (He still apparently has the opportunity to appeal this suspension. Around this same time, Giuliani also tweeted that three of his videos were removed from his channel. His videos regularly rake in hundreds of thousands of views, and some of his videos which spread election conspiracy theories have more than a million views each.

The disgraced former New York City mayor has recently come under more fire for his role in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That day, at the "Save America" rally preceding the riots, he called on Trump supporters to engage in "trial by combat." Since then, Giuliani has been the target of three high-profile lawsuits related to his role spreading misinformation. The lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems heavily cites Giuliani's YouTube channel as the main platform for Giuliani's alleged defamation.

At least some of Giuliani's videos on YouTube remain monetized, meaning YouTube is directly making money from his lies. It is unclear whether Giuliani himself is taking home any of that revenue, as media outlets have reported he was suspended from the YouTube Partner Program. But he nevertheless still financially benefited, as there were direct advertisements on his show for companies selling earbuds, gold, and cigars.

Despite YouTube's stated policies, multiple Giuliani videos spreading conspiracy theories remain up. In these videos, Giuliani lies about Dominion Voting Systems, tells viewers former Vice President Mike Pence would overturn the election, and commands viewers to "stand up" against imaginary election fraud.

Since his return to posting videos on the platform, Giuliani has pivoted in his content to promoting racist conspiracy theories about China deliberately releasing the coronavirus to spite Trump and false claims about undocumented immigrants voting in the 2020 election.

Giuliani's False Election Fraud Claims Still On YouTube

In the post-election period before the "safe harbor" date when the Electoral College results were finalized, Giuliani used his YouTube channel to promote false claims that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election through "fraud" and pushed his viewers to "take a stand."

While the votes were still being counted, Giuliani asserted on November 6, "Pennsylvania is Trump's. If for any reason that vote total changes, it has to be a fraud."
On December 4, Giuliani told viewers, "It's time for patriots to stand up." He asked them, "How do you want to live your life? You want to live it as a patriotic American or do you want to live it as a sniveling little coward?" He ended his podcast by saying, "Biden deliberately stole this election and actually lost it to Donald Trump by a fairly wide margin."
On November 20, Giuliani warned viewers that Dominion Voting Systems is a "Venezuelan company built to cheat." He was echoing widely mocked conspiracy theories put forth by Trump attorney Sidney Powell at a press conference the day before in which Giuliani infamously spoke with hair dye leaking down his temple. In the podcast, Giuliani added, "We've got to make a stand here. ... I don't care how much they intimidate us. I don't care how much they threaten us," because Democrats are "trying to take away from us rights that were given to us by God."

YouTube's Stance Against Election Misinformation Didn't Affect Giuliani

On November 9, the day after the Electoral College confirmed Biden's victory in the presidential election, YouTube introduced a new policy titled "Supporting the 2020 U.S. election." The policy promised to remove "any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election."

This policy apparently did not apply to Giuliani, who continued using the platform to espouse lies until his suspension following the January 6 insurrection. While YouTube eventually removed three of Giuliani's podcasts following the coup, the platform left up videos of Giuliani claiming widespread voter fraud was achieved through a covert Democratic Party conspiracy to steal the election from Trump.

On December 18, Giuliani falsely asserted that Dominion Voting Systems "has had a long history of involvement with other companies, in particular with a company known as Smartmatic." Giuliani also claimed that Smartmatic's "original investors" were "two Venezuelans who were close to Hugo Chavez."
On the same podcast, Giuliani claimed that initial counting errors by Dominion Voting Systems machines in Antrim County, Michigan, "virtually means there was no election."
On December 30, Giuliani falsely claimed, "The Democrats stole the election in Georgia. … We allowed them to take from us a good deal of our freedom of speech. We allowed them to take a lot of our freedom of religion, freedom of movement. Well, I'll be darned if we're going to let them take our free, fair, and transparent vote from us."
On his January 1 podcast, Guliani said that Democrats "were intent on winning that election no matter what they had to do, including steal votes," and that they did so by "demoniz[ing] medicines like hydroxychloroquine."

When Giuliani was suspended in early January, YouTube removed two videos from his channel that had been posted in early January and contained multiple violations of YouTube's new policy.

On January 5, Giuliani told listeners that not only could then-Vice President Mike Pence decide the 2020 election on January 6, "a day that will live on in history," but also there was a "really good chance" the election results "will end up in the Supreme Court."
During his since-removed January 8 podcast, Giuliani cited a claim by white nationalist "groyper" Nick Fuentes that the attempted coup on January 6 was a "leftist, deep-state globalist operation." Giuliani added, "I guess I could summarize Nick Fuentes in my own words: It was clearly a frame-up."
On that same podcast, Giuliani referred to the January 6 rally prior to the riots as "very, very uplifting" and a "rally of love," defending the inflammatory rhetoric of the speeches by asserting, "They didn't create any anger or excessive anything. There was no violence at the speeches. None. No hint of it. No taste of it. No feeling of it."

Giuliani Continues To Promote Bigotry On YouTube

Since Giuliani started posting on YouTube again in early February, he's continued to promote bigotry and misinformation. In his most recent uploads, Giuliani's use of hateful rhetoric and conspiracy theories related to China are especially concerning given the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. The former mayor also insinuated that a recent executive order by the Biden administration undoing a Trump-era policy of not counting undocumented immigrants in the census was actually part of a conspiracy to increase Democratic votes — a bogus claim that clearly violates YouTube's stated election misinformation policy.

On his February 10 podcast, Giuliani claimed that the Biden administration "seems to be more favorable to China than the U.S.," saying, "I knew America wasn't going to be first. Biden told us that. I didn't realize that China was going to become first."
Giuliani spent his February 10 podcast repeatedly calling the coronavirus "the CCP virus" (short for "Chinese Communist Party virus") and the "Wuhan virus," complaining about how Trump was "attacked as a xenophobe or racist" for using identical language.
Giuliani spread a racist conspiracy theory that Democrats are "including illegals in the census" to increase Democratic representation in Congress — all a way of "moving them along the road to voting, to voting openly." Giuliani added, "Look, they vote anyway."

Giuliani's continued presence on YouTube despite repeated violations of the platform's policy raises the question: Why is Rudy Giuliani's YouTube channel still up? Furthermore, why did YouTube remove only two Giuliani videos after the January 6 insurrection, yet leave up many of his other videos promoting the exact same lies? And why give this "human hand grenade" a platform of a half-million subscribers anyway?

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

GOP Lawmakers Get Free KN95 Masks — And Respond With Racist Anti-Asian Attacks

Fox News Pushes To Defund PBS After 'Sesame Street' Adds Asian American Puppet

Mike Huckabee Tweets Weirdly Racist Attack On ‘Chinese’ —And Gets Hosed Down

Giuliani Still Promoting Disinformation On YouTube — Despite Suspension

Giuliani's False Election Fraud Claims Still On YouTube

YouTube's Stance Against Election Misinformation Didn't Affect Giuliani

Giuliani Continues To Promote Bigotry On YouTube

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