For the last 30 years, the worst thing that a person in America could be called is a “racist”. If that label somehow got attached to you, whether true or not, it was a death knell. You could be canceled from society or fired from your job, no questions asked. So, for decades, people in America have been silenced from telling the truth on important issues for fear of being called a racist. Anybody who advocates for securing our southern border, and reducing the numbers of illegal immigrants that walk into our country is immediately called a racist. He is discredited and his objection to the United States government willfully compromising our national sovereignty is silenced.
If you support our law enforcement officials because you believe that law and order is vital to maintaining a civil society, you will be called a racist. The ACLU has stated publicly that supporting our police officers is a "dog whistle" for white supremacy. If disagree with affirmative action, believing the practice of using a person’s race as one of the criteria in the hiring process is wrong, you’ll be dismissed as a racist. If you support meritocracy, believing that people should be rewarded based on merit, not skin color, you are called a white supremacist. As anti-intellectual and dangerous that this tactic is, it has proven to be very successful in American politics.
This tactic has become so effective in America that the rest of the world which consumes American politics has started using the tactic against America. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, in which radical Islamic terrorists hijacked four planes and flew them into our largest buildings, killing 3,000 United States citizens, if anybody pointed out the shared religion of the terrorists and their motivation, they were immediately called Islamophobic. It didn’t matter if you qualified your critique of the Muslim hijackers with words, like “extreme” or “radical”, the mere mention of the words, Islam or Muslim in the same sentence as terrorist, elicited the charge of Islamophobia. So, Muslims attacked America and killed 3,000 Americans based solely on the fact that we have different religions than they do, but if we point that out, we are the bigots not them. And many people in the media and on the left fell for this tactic, because being called a racist or a bigot is as bad as anything you could be labeled.
In his first six months in office, President Barack Obama actually went on a tour of the Middle East, in which he gave speeches apologizing to the Muslim world for America giving them reasons to want to commit terrorist acts against America. In Cairo, Obama listed “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims” and that “modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam” as the reasons for the 9/11 attacks. The terrorist attacks were the fault of America’s racism, and if you do not admit it, you are a racist. He later chastised people who spoke truthfully about the 9/11 attacks by saying, “the future must not belong to people who slander the prophet of Islam.” In his mind, pointing out that the 19 people who murdered 3,000 Americans in a terrorist attack were all radicalized Muslims is slandering the prophet of Islam.
It is clear, you cannot criticize Islam. That is bigotry. You can criticize Jesus all you want. You can put a bull's eye on Jesus’ back, and the people screaming “Islamophobia” will cheer. President Obama never said, “the future must not belong to people who slander Jesus,” even though Jesus is slandered every day by America’s entertainment industry. Christianity is the most persecuted religion on the planet, yet the word “Christophobia” does not exist. Does the world not see that persecuting Christians based solely on their religious beliefs is the exact same thing as Islamophobia? America believes that standing up for Christianity is somehow attacking other religions, just as not denouncing your white skin color is taken as being racist against non-whites.
China is very in tune to this racial dynamic that has taken over America, and they know how to exploit it to their advantage. Any criticism of China, even if we make the distinction that we are not criticizing the Chinese people, but the Chinese Communist government, is immediately dismissed as being racist. China and the rest of the world can criticize the United States all they want, and we are not only expected to take it, we are supposed to heed their criticism and make the necessary changes. So, China can do whatever it wants, because any criticism of China is racist. So, they can have a million Uyghurs in concentration camps; they can use slave labor to produce their products; they can emit more greenhouse gases than any other country; they can have spies infiltrate our governmental and academic institutions; they can censor Hollywood and professional sports; they can even fly a spy balloon across our country, but if you criticize China, you’re a racist. You can criticize Russia all you want. Why is a criticism of Russia taken solely as a criticism of Putin and his government, but direct criticism of President Xi and the CCP, is taken as an attack on the Chinese-American store owner down the street? President Xi has learned how to weaponized the charge of racism in America.
The Chinese used this tactic when discussing the origins Covid-19. Merely stating that the virus originated in China would get you charged with racism. It made no sense. There is not racial component to stating the fact that the first cases of Covid-19 were in China. It has been common practice for centuries to name the pandemic virus by its place of origin. West Nile Virus, Lyme Disease, Ebola, MERS, Norovirus, Zika Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, German Measles, Spanish Flu, and others, were all named after the place where the first case was detected. That practice was never considered racist until there was a China-virus. For some reason, stating that fact is now racist. It became even more racist when anyone even suggested that the virus may have been man-made in a Chinese lab. Merely asking that question would get you banned on social media, and possibly canceled. China was able to use the charge of racism as a shield against their culpability in the Covid crisis.
But now after three years, it has finally been revealed that the most likely origin of Covid-19 was a leak from a lab in China. FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that classified information supports the conclusion that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese virology lab, in Wuhan, China. For three years, anyone who questioned or even suggested that this novel coronavirus which killed millions of people worldwide, may possibly have originated from the Wuhan lab was called a racist and a conspiracy theory nut job. It is interesting how most of the beliefs that have been called “conspiracy theories” recently are now being proven true?
The truth was so obvious, it was staring us right in the face. Miles from the first recorded infection of Covid-19 in Wuhan, China is a virology lab that experiments with and performs gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, but if you happened to point that out, or even asked questions about it, you were shouted down as a racist, and accused of being the cause of hate crimes against Chinese people. In order to live your life, you were forced to believe that Covid-19 came from a pangolin in a wet market. That is how masterful the Chinese government has been able to infiltrate our media and academia, and weaponize the charge of racism against us and to their advantage. If we were allowed to question and investigate the lab leak origin theory three years ago, and come to these conclusions back then, maybe our scientists could have received valuable information from the Wuhan scientists who created the virus and been able to produce vaccines that actually worked or some therapeutics that saved lives.
In China and the Middle East, they silence their critics by threatening them with imprisonment or even death. Being canceled is America’s form of imprisonment and death, so China has mastered the ability to use the charge of racism to send their American critics to an electronic prison or death. China has been able to shield themselves from culpability for crimes they have committed against America, the world and humanity, by hiding behind the charge of racism. They have read the Democrat party’s playbook and executed it to perfection. Labeling their opponents as racist is how the Democrats get massive numbers of people to support their disastrous, destructive and even corrupt policies. Covid-19 was just another example of how dangerous it is when you view everything through the lens of race. Blindly believing and acting upon any and every charge of racism is an act of prejudice that is equally as harmful as the charge of racism itself.
Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.