The Washington Post-The rise of Chinese Communist Party as a pejorative
September 28, 2023 4 min 784 words
这篇报道突显了佛罗里达州州长Ron DeSantis在政治话题上的变化和趋势。一开始，他将焦点放在“Fauci”上，试图与美国政府的传染病专家Anthony S. Fauci形成对比，强调他对遏制冠状病毒传播的建议的不屑。然而，随着大流行的减弱，这一策略逐渐失去了效力。 随后，DeSantis追随保守媒体的引导，将注意力转向“关键种族理论”和“醒悟一切”，并提出了一系列立法，旨在消除所谓的“醒悟主义”表现。然而，这一策略也在一定时期内失去了效力，因为民调显示，即使是共和党人也不再将与“醒悟主义”作斗争视为重要优先事项。 这篇报道指出了追随公众情绪而不是塑造情绪的挑战，同时与前总统唐纳德·特朗普进行了比较。特朗普不仅提升了右翼媒体的论点和言辞，还塑造了媒体讨论的主题，而DeSantis则主要追随潮流，潮流不断变化。 然而，在最近的辩论中，DeSantis没有再提到“醒悟”，而是使用了“CCP”（中国共产党）这一贬义词，将焦点转向了中国。这种表述在美国政治中批评中国共产党并不新鲜，但目前似乎正在流行。报道提到，这种表达方式在2020年冠状病毒大流行开始时变得更加普遍，因为人们开始质疑中国政府的可靠性。 不过，这一贬义词并没有因大流行的担忧而消失，因为中国仍然是美国的地缘政治威胁。此外，这个新的称呼在2020年及以后的政治辩论中也有其他用途：再次将美国与共产主义对立起来。共和党人（尤其是特朗普）一再将美国左派描述为共产主义者，意味着他们反对美国。 因此，这一贬义词在右翼社交媒体上流行起来，而DeSantis则将其应用。这也意味着“Fauci”和“醒悟主义”暂时退出了舞台。 总的来说，这篇报道突显了美国政治中话题的变迁，以及政治人物如何调整他们的言辞以适应当前的舆论氛围。同时，它也反映了中美关系在美国政治中的重要性，以及如何将中国共产党与美国政治和意识形态的对抗联系在一起。
2023-09-28T18:28:32.832Z
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination began with a focus on one specific word: “Fauci.”
“Don’t Fauci my Florida” gear went on sale as part of DeSantis’s bid for reelection to his current job in 2022. It was referring, as you probably know, to the then-chief infectious-disease doctor in the U.S. government, Anthony S. Fauci. Fauci made a convenient point of contrast for DeSantis as he played up his disregard for recommendations aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus. This was partly about his reelection, but also very obviously about drawing a contrast with Donald Trump before next year’s presidential primaries.
After a while, though, the potency of this wore off. The pandemic faded and so did the saliency of the issue. DeSantis shifted gears.
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Following the lead of conservative media, the Florida governor began focusing on “critical race theory” and decrying everything “woke,” whatever that happened to mean on any given day. He advocated legislation that passed through the Republican-led legislature in his state, including the “Stop WOKE Act,” which aimed at uprooting purported manifestations of “wokeism.” In practice, DeSantis’s push meant things like revising how the state taught about the history of slavery and eliminating state programs aimed at bolstering diversity.
But this also lost potency. By the beginning of August, the New York Times was pointing to polling that showed even Republicans didn’t see battling “wokeness” as an important priority. DeSantis mentioned the word “woke” on his campaign social media account four times in June and twice in July — and not since.
This is one of the challenges of being reactive to the public mood, rather than shaping it. Donald Trump, too, launched his first presidential campaign by elevating arguments and rhetoric from right-wing media, but he also shaped what the media was talking about. DeSantis has largely followed the trends, and the trends shift.
On Wednesday night, DeSantis didn’t use the word “woke” once. (He also didn’t say “Fauci.”) But he did use another pejorative term: “CCP,” referring to the Chinese Communist Party. At another point, he referred to his opposition to “communist China.” DeSantis has mentioned “CCP” or Chinese communism six times since the beginning of August — and numerous times before that.
He wasn’t alone in bringing it up during the debate. Vivek Ramaswamy, who is contesting DeSantis’s primacy in amplifying themes from right-wing media, similarly bashed China by way of its leadership: “The Communist Party of China is the real enemy.”
Criticizing China’s communism is by no means new in American politics, of course. But this phrasing, the “CCP” iteration of that criticism, seems to be in vogue at the moment. How did that happen?
As always, a useful way to answer such questions is to look at when it has been used on Fox News. Analysis of closed-captioning collected by the Internet Archive shows that use of “Chinese Communist Party” or “CCP” has been far more common on Fox News and Fox Business than on CNN and MSNBC. But there’s a clear point at which those references became more common: the start of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.
This is interesting, if not surprising. The pandemic spurred new attention to the reliability of the Chinese government as questions swirled about how and where the coronavirus first emerged. It was obvious that China was suppressing information about the virus and its effects on its population. There was reason to focus on China and on its leaders, members of the Communist Party.
Of course, President Donald Trump went further, seeking to blame China and those leaders for the spread of the pandemic in the United States largely as a means of exculpating himself. A database of Trump’s comments before and during his presidency shows that he began referring to the Chinese Communist Party only after the pandemic emerged.
The pejorative outlasted that concern about the pandemic. China remains a geopolitical threat to the United States, obviously, so this new appellation has applications that extend beyond how it handled the coronavirus. There was another utility to it in both 2020 and after, of course: it once again pits America against communism. Republicans (and particularly Trump) have repeatedly characterized the American left as communistic — meaning, in this reinvigorated context, that they are anti-American.
The term became popular on the right. DeSantis, an experienced purveyor of right-wing jargon, picked it up. So Fauci and “wokeism” get a moment out of the spotlight.