At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

  • @salamandermander
    39•5 months ago

    Yeah all the photos and film of Tiananmen Square are surely just propaganda right? That event was just made up by the US and definitely wasn’t witnessed by and broadcasted by several different countries’ news services.

    The US has done some bad shit, and still does. But do not let that blind you to the crimes of other countries. There’s a reason why the Chinese government censors mentions of June 1989 and the mass deaths due to famine during the great leap forward.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      0•5 months ago

      Yeah all the photos and film of Tiananmen Square are surely just propaganda right?

      The crazy thing about Tianamen was that the Tank Driver stopped and tried to move around the protester.

      It was a remarkable moment of humanity between two people who clearly did not want to be in conflict with one another.

      I can’t imagine a modem day officer treating any protesters the same way.

      There’s a reason why the Chinese government censors mentions of June 1989 and the mass deaths due to famine during the great leap forward.

      That’s completely untrue.

      Here is an exhaustive response from a Chinese national. Not only is it not illegal, its documented in Baidu, China’s most popular social media site.

      The claim that Chinese schools and leaders simply don’t talk about the First Five Year Plan is entirely fictitious. On par with claiming Americans don’t teach their kids about the Founding Fathers owning slaves.

      It’s pure Western propaganda.

        • @Shyfer@ttrpg.network
          1•5 months ago

          Tbh, I had always thought Tank Man was run over until extremely recently (like this year) so I’m sure there are lots of people like me who had just assumed that. I remember seeing a picture with red circles over all the supposedly dead bodies that had been run over by tanks. It’s still an impressive image, a single man bravely stopping a tank, but not quite what I thought I was looking at.

        • @HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
          -1•5 months ago

          Just remember that you can’t trust every anonymously sourced photo on the internet. Don’t forget to try to evaluate the genuineness of what you’re seeing.

          For example, ask yourself if you can actual see identifiable features of Tiananmen Square in the background of these photos. (You would expect to be able to, right?)

          Especially with an emotive topic like this. These photos inspire strong visceral reactions, and sometimes they’re counting on that. They want you to be so overwhelmed with disgust that you don’t stop to realize that some of the photos are obviously fake or mislabelled.

          Like the ones that show piles of meat claiming to be the bodies of students run over by tanks. A moment’s thought will make it obvious that they are fake, because people’s clothes do not disappear when they are run over by tanks. But they want you to be so overwhelmed by disgust and anger that you don’t think about it.

          Sometimes they rely on sheer quantity, but don’t mistake quantity for quality.

          Anyway, I’m not going to push a side in this post. I trust that you can think for yourself.

          • @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
            1•5 months ago

            I mean like, whether the guy who looks like paint on the road is really “squished by a tank” or not, the whole “Tiananmen didn’t happen” defense sits from anywhere between “300 people, mostly soldiers died” to “nothing happened at all”. I’m noticing you didn’t explicitly say what happened, only what didn’t, so likewise I think you’ve shown you actually know what went down that day.

            • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
              2•5 months ago

              I’m noticing you didn’t explicitly say what happened

              Consider the Kent State shooting. Imagine if we had a slew of Chinese language publications with interviews from dubiously sourced individuals asserting that hundreds of students were gunned down. Imagine a slew of articles every May 4th, asserting that American schools aren’t teaching about the Kent State Massacre. Then a slew of Op-Eds about how Americans were covering up the thousands of dead students by only releasing four names.

              Now, try to have a coherent conversation about Kent State. What actually happened?