Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal insulted China, calling it “the Real Sick Man of Asia”. China retaliated, and then the U.S. counter-retaliated. Emotions have been running high, journalists got deported.
Suddenly, various Chinese officials expressed publicly what many in both China and Russia have been, for weeks, articulating in sotto voce: that it was perhaps the U.S. military establishment, which brought the new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) to Wuhan, in order to harm China and bring the world back, through complex backroads, under the West’s control.
Suddenly, the world feels very uncomfortable. The way it is governed is clearly perverse. People do not always know why, they just feel frightened, prickly and insecure. Actually, they always have, during the last few decades, but this is somehow becoming “too much”.
Countries do not trust each other. People do not trust each other. People do not trust their governments. Capitalism is despised, but nations have been robbed of alternatives.
I work all over the world, and I observe all this. What I see, I do not like.
Increasingly, I am fearful that what has been set in motion by Washington and London, may not end well. That a tragedy is waiting right around the corner.
***
For many years I have been warning that imperialism is murdering tens of millions of people, annually. Predominantly Western imperialism, but also its offshoots in some places where the elites learned from their former colonialist master how to brutalize conquered territories, such as Jakarta, New Delhi, or Tel Aviv.
Genocides and modern-day slavery have become the vilest reflections of modernity. Not the only ones, of course, but the vilest.
I recently wrote for this magazine (NEO), that I have never seen the world so fragmented.
Travel, Internet, Social Media – they all were supposed to improve the world, and to bring people closer to each other. They did not. I see confusion and disinformation all around me. People travel but do not see or understand. They stare at computer screens for hours each day, as they used to stare at the television screens, but they do not have any clue how the world functions.
People used to come to us, philosophers, for advice. We used to interact. Not anymore. And look at philosophy itself: it has been reduced to a dry, controlled university discipline by the regime. Before, to be a philosopher used to be identical with being a thinker. Now, pathetically, a philosopher is an individual with a university degree in philosophy, which is issued by some college that is part of the establishment.
And anyway, now almost each and every individual, at least in the West, believes that he or she is a philosopher; self-absorbed, posing and posting on social media, using selfies, with grotesquely boosted egos.
Something has gone wrong. Almost everything has. Humanity is facing tremendous danger. Why? Because it does not understand itself. Its dreams have been reduced to some low, pathetic, sad ambitions. Its lofty ideals that were formed over long centuries have been belittled by the Western nihilist narrative.
***
And then, a new coronavirus hit.
Do not underestimate the coronavirus! It may have the mortality rate of an ordinary flu, but it is much more dangerous than that. Its danger is predominately psychological and philosophical, much more than medical.
It arrived, unexpectedly, and illustrated to the world, that there is no global unity, no solidarity, anymore.
Countries are acting and reacting in extremely brutal ways. It is frightening. It all feels like some of the bad, second-rate horror films produced by Hollywood.
Governments are pointing fingers at each other, irrationally. Airlines are lying, robbing customers, while claiming that they are protecting them.
I recently “escaped” from Hong Kong, after Korean Air unceremoniously cancelled flights to China, doing nothing to re-route stranded passengers. I flew for 5 days to South America, home, through several Asian airports, by the most bizarre routes, north and south and north again, then via Amsterdam and Suriname, zig-zagging through Brazilian cities, before reaching Chile. Peculiarly, at one point along the way, I ended up in Seoul, where I was earlier told I was not supposed to be to begin with, experiencing the proverbial South Korean racism on my skin, and going through outrageous humiliation and interrogation after uttering, at the gate before departing for Amsterdam, that North Koreans definitely treat people with much more respect and dignity than Seoul.
I will write much more about this, in the near future, but this is not supposed to be the main topic of this essay.
What is essential is that the logic itself has collapsed. The behavior of many countries has become irrational, if the rationale is supposed to be synonymous with the advancement of humanity and improvement of the lives of human beings. Now things make sense only when seen from the point of view of the desire to control and usurp, plunder and humiliate.
And the coronavirus?
Is the United States trying to take advantage of the situation, to monopolize the cure, and to save its economy and currency, at the expense of billions worldwide?
On March 15, 2020, The Sun reported:
“Donald Trump aides ‘offered huge sums to a German company in a bid to grab the coronavirus vaccine for Americans only.’”
One day later, on 16 March, 2020, the Mail Online, amplified the story:
“German officials are trying to stop the Trump administration from luring German biopharmeceutical company CureVac to the US to get its experimental coronavirus vaccines exclusively for Americans.
President Donald Trump has offered funds to lure the company CureVac to the US. The German government has made counter-offers to make the company stay, according to a report in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
An unidentified German government source told the paper Trump is trying to secure the scientists’ work exclusively, and would do anything to get a vaccine for the United States – ‘but only for the United States.’”
The behavior of the Empire could easily make one sicker than the coronavirus would itself.
***
The United States occupies and antagonizes countries and then it punishes them when they try to protect themselves. Israel does the same. And so, do Indonesia, India, and NATO as a block. Turkey is turning into a maniac. Iran, Venezuela and others are screaming, brutalized for absolutely no reason by sanctions and embargoes. Russia is being constantly smeared, just for helping injured nations, in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
I watch all this and I wonder: how much further can all this go? Is all this banditry and idiocy going to go on from now on, and forever accepted as a normalcy?
But back to the coronavirus. It is all connected to what I mentioned above, isn’t it? Billions of people are now being stripped of their rights and will, pushed around, and fully controlled, everything justified by a disease with the mortality rate of an ordinary flu? And do people notice that the victims are now being treated like criminals, something that would have been unimaginable just a couple of decades ago.
China, infected by the U.S. or not, is being continuously insulted, isolated and smeared. Western anti-Chinese propaganda kicked in, almost from the start of the epidemy. How ugly; how monstrous!
Western propagandists are alert, waiting, monitoring the world. Like piranhas, they attack with lightning speed, whenever blood is spilt, or a piece of flesh gets exposed.
When disaster strikes, they take full advantage of the weaknesses of their opponent. They go for the kill. And there is nothing human in their behavior. It is a calculating strike against the victim. It is the surgical swing of a scalpel, designed to kill, in the most terrifying way.
China reacted in totally the opposite way: when Italy got infected, Chinese medics offered their help. They flew to Italy with medicine and equipment.
And China is not alone. Whenever disasters strike, anywhere in the world, Cuban doctors and rescue commandos take off, as long as they are allowed to travel and help.
Venezuela, too. It used to supply cheap fuel, even to needy people who happened to be citizens of its arch-tormentor – the United States.
And Russia, in whatever form (as the biggest Soviet Republic, or as the Russian Federation), it has been helping dozens and dozens of decimated nations: by treating their sick, educating their students, building infrastructure, spreading culture through books and music, all in local languages.
Russia does not talk much: it just does, performs, helps. And so do China, Cuba and others.
***
I want to see the world united. I want to experience humanity embarking on a beautiful project: improving the planet, searching, together, for an egalitarian system, with no misery, no incurable illnesses, no depravity.
But I am not naïve. I see what the West and its extreme capitalism and imperialism are doing to the world.
And I am convinced that only the classic isms are capable of evoking compassion and solidarity in the people. Propagandists in Washington and London tell you the opposite; they will lie to you that Communism and socialism are dead, or at least totally outdated. Do not trust them; you know that their goals have nothing to do with improving life on our planet. Whatever you hear from them, trust the opposite.
Right now, our human race is like a sick, very sick person. Not because of the coronavirus, but because of the response to the coronavirus.
China is not at all the real sick man of Asia. No matter how it happened, China got infected, but then it rose to its feet, fought with great determination and courage, and began obliterating the disease. Chinese doctors, Chinese people in general, are now celebrating. They are ecstatic. They are winning, their first hospitals dedicated to the coronavirus patients are now closing down in Wuhan. Their system is clearly victorious, created for the people.
Almost simultaneously, China has started to help other countries.
Actually, China and its people are behaving like human beings are supposed to behave. And, if that is called “sick”, then what is “healthy”?
Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”