The three governments are pushing a host of matching messages, including that the novel coronavirus is an American bioweapon.
04/21/2020 04:30 AM EDT
China, Iran, and Russia are using the coronavirus crisis to launch a propaganda and disinformation onslaught against the United States. The report, which is not public, produced by the department’s Global Engagement Center identifies the following narratives:
– the novel coronavirus is an American bioweapon,
– the U.S. is scoring political points off the crisis,
– the virus didn’t come from China,
– U.S. troops spread it,
– America’s sanctions are killing Iranians,
– China’s response was great while the U.S.’ was negligent,
– All three governments are managing the crisis well,
– the U.S. economy can’t bear the toll of the virus.
Before the virus spread outside China, the report says, the overlap between the three governments’ messaging was fairly narrow: They all defended President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela.
By February 2020, according to the report, the messaging began to converge.
Some of the disinformation is produced by state-run media outlets, and some have been put out by the governments themselves. The Chinese government’s messaging was both defensive and offensive. In a short period the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) went from letting Russian disinformation claiming the U.S. was the source of the virus proliferate in Chinese social media, to raising questions on state media about the origin’s source, to promoting disinformation that the U.S. was the source of the virus. Also, included increasingly vocal criticism of how democratic countries were responding to the crisis. One core message has been that “China is a strong global health leader and the United States, meanwhile, is a weak ally”.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted the claim the “U.S. was responsible for the virus”. In a tweet, the spokesman Lijian Zhao posted an article claiming the novel coronavirus could have come from the U.S.
Russia’s Defense Ministry website highlights the conspiracy theory that billionaire Bill Gates played a role in creating the virus. A spokesperson for Russia’s Embassy in the U.S. flagged an embassy tweet claiming the country has not spread disinformation, as well as a Facebook post criticizing the Department of Defense for accusing Russia of disinformation efforts. “In these conditions, frantic #Russophobia persists in American mainstream media, obtaining inaccurate information from such briefings by the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of State.”
On March 3, a media company controlled by Russia’s armed forces ZVEZDA ran a story headlined “Bill Gates, a secret laboratory and a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies: who can benefit from coronavirus. ”The piece intimates that Gates had foreknowledge of the virus and claims that only people of “the Mongoloid race” can contract Covid-19. Russia Today’s article highlights a claim from the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that the virus could be an American bioweapon. Although, the RT story noted that there’s “still no official proof” of that conspiracy theory.
A spokesperson for Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the “U.S. is responsible for any propaganda or disinformation about the pandemic, not Iran.” Furthermore, in an email, he stated that “blaming others for its own mistakes is a hallmark of this U.S. administration.”
Some of the most intriguing narratives that internet users are mostly interested in are the Chinese and American foreign aid, as well as content about alternative medicine. “There’s a big increase in attention recently in the Arabic language to Western foreign aid, interestingly, where there had been hardly any attention focused on that at all.” The Hindi- and Persian-language internet users are increasingly interested in websites that “denigrate Western medicine and tout alternatives, including energy therapies and questionable supplements.” Internet users in Europe, including French, German, and Italian, “anti-vaxxer attention has spiked recently.”
***This article was originally published by Politico.com, and the link can be found here.
