 Dissidents or separatists? Clive Hamilton’s books exposing China “interference”, Silent Invasion and Hidden Hand, are important, not because of the quality of the content—paranoid propaganda—but because the influencers behind Hamilton’s crusade reveal his role as a cog in a vast narrative-management machine. The public, as well as MPs and other government officials, are being directed how to think about China by a small group of ideologically driven propagandists, funded by institutions of the section of the Anglo-American power establishment that seeks war without end, even risking nuclear warfare that would annihilate mankind.
(Read The China Narrative part one here; part two here; part three here; part four here; part five here; and postscript here.) In Silent Invasion (2018), Australian academic Clive Hamilton insisted Australian universities should invite dissident Chinese writers and intellectuals onto their campuses and take steps “to ensure that Chinese students [from mainland China] are removed from their ideological ghettos by having them attend courses on human rights and democracy….” Unchallenged testimony from Chinese “dissidents” and “democracy activists” is routinely used as evidence in the ongoing anti-China campaign. Closer examination reveals many prominent “dissidents” are in fact separatists, funded by Western “democracy” promoters intent upon regime change. The history of clandestine funding of Chinese separatist movements is long. In the 1950s, the US government authorised the CIA’s covert assistance to the “Tibetan internal resistance movement”: providing logistical support and training in guerrilla warfare; paying US$15,000 a month to the Dalai Lama, according to CIA veteran John Kenneth Knaus; and running a propaganda campaign, all intended to “confront, thwart or harass” the Chinese communist government. The program ran for almost two decades.
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War-machine propaganda Clive Hamilton’s books exposing China “interference”, Silent Invasion and Hidden Hand, are important, not because of the quality of the content—paranoid propaganda—but because the influencers behind Hamilton’s crusade reveal his role as a cog in a vast narrative-management machine. The public, as well as MPs and other government officials, are being directed how to think about China by a small group of ideologically driven propagandists, funded by institutions of the section of the Anglo-American power establishment that seeks war without end, even risking nuclear warfare that would annihilate mankind.
(Read The China Narrative part one here; part two here; part three here; part four here; part five here; and postscript here.) Clive Hamilton is a Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. His first book on China, Silent Invasion (2018), continued the obsession with Chinese spies, dissidents and foreign interference that had been escalating in Australia through 2016-17. Hamilton alleges growing, sinister influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Australian society, his case built with anecdotes from student newsletters and hawkish journalism. Hamilton sees espionage and influence everywhere: the Chinese diaspora can “transform Australian society in a way that makes us all sympathetic to China and easy for Beijing to control. Australia will then assist China to become the hegemonic power in Asia and eventually the world.” Hamilton’s CCP “spies” include church parishioners and uni students. His argument concludes with his assertion that between 20- 40 per cent of Chinese-Australians are loyal to Beijing first. How does he arrive at this figure? From the “guesses” of some of his Chinese-Australian friends. If Australia “pushes back” against the CCP, China will “mobilise its forces already embedded in Australian society”, he warns. |
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