“GENOCIDE GAMES”: DECONSTRUCTING “FORCED LABOR IN XINJIANG” DISCOURSE DURING THE 2022 BEIJING WINTER OLYMPICS
“种族灭绝游戏”：解构 2022 年北京冬奥会期间的“新疆强迫劳动”话语
A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF WESTERN MAINSTREAM MEDIA SUPPORT FOR UYGUR NGO HISTORICAL REVISIONISM & THE NARRATIVIZATION OF “GENOCIDE” SURROUNDING THE 2022 BEIJING WINTER OLYMPICS AND COMMENCEMENT OF THE 2022/02/23 RUSSIAN MILITARY OPERATION IN UKRAINE
西方主流媒体对维吾尔非政府组织历史修正主义支持的批判性话语分析以及围绕 2022 年北京冬奥会和俄罗斯于 2022 年 2 月 23 日开始在乌克兰开展军事行动的“种族灭绝”叙事
ABSTRACT
"Since 2017, “forced labor in Xinjiang” has been strategically deployed alongside two related (emotionally charged) terms - “genocide” and “human rights abuse” - as rhetorical constructs framing Western mainstream media [MSM] discourse on CPC land reform, poverty alleviation and transformation-through-education policies in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region [XUAR]."
Strategic discursive deployment of these rhetorical constructs (within an identity-politic episteme’s core concept of “religious freedom”) systematically integrated a historically / historiographically revisionist account of XUAR so as to correspondingly frame populist discourse on the CPC leadership under Xi Jinping as “authoritarian”. During the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, however, this cumulative discursive framework on “authoritarianism” coalesced Western MSM into an engineered moral panic over what was coined “genocide games” in a deliberate effort to undermine and ultimately dismantle China’s position in “global supply chains” by calling for the sanction by the World Bank of IMF financial support for vital BRI infrastructure in XUAR. Underlying a US political platform launched during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, this initiative used a coordinated international Western MSM publicity campaign based on a strategic historical analogy to WW2 Nazi Germany’s 1936 Berlin Olympics to manufacture consent for “financial decoupling” from China on the basis of “human rights”. This paper commences a deconstructive analysis of this contemporary Western MSM “forced labor in Xinjiang” narrative before, during and after the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, delineating 1) its origins, 2) its sequential strategization and politicized dissemination as an economic weapon against China, and 3) its engineered moral panic to rally populist support behind US State Department policy. It does so to explain how the moral panic so engineered became the basis for what is now (following the post-Olympics 2022/02/24 special military operation by Russia in Ukraine) a justification for potential future economic warfare, intentionally platformed to influence CPC decision-making in relation to the forthcoming 2022 20th National Party Congress, itself shortly ahead of the 2022/11 US Senatorial mid-term elections. To do so, this paper deploys illustrations and concept mapping exploring the primary inter-communication networks used by the parties and organizations involved in the formulation, construction and dissemination of this cumulative “genocide games” discourse. CAUTION: This paper contains graphic images of Western MSM propaganda that may be offensive to Chinese readers - they are used purely as sequenced illustration in the critical discourse analysis of their function in socially engineering a moral panic.
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