Bannon Cooks Up a Vat of Poison; Will Americans Drink It?

The “China Responsibility Theory” has emerged recently in the United States from some dark corner of public opinion. A considerable portion of the theory’s rumors can be traced to one source: Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist.

The word “notorious” aptly describes Bannon. The COVID-19 pandemic is like a stimulant for the American right wing, where Bannon is very active. He uses every opportunity to spread baseless claims, such as China concealed the pandemic, that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory, that China is profiting from the pandemic, that the World Health Organization is siding with China, among other charges. Bannon also has connections with certain hawkish politicians who are plotting to introduce anti-China measures in Congress, threatening to investigate, and asserting huge claims against China.

Anyone who has heard of Bannon knows that short of divine intervention, he will not miss an opportunity to participate in attacking China. This is because he has a predetermined and incomparably stubborn position against China. Moreover, his extreme involvement has rendered this wave of the “China Responsibility Theory” attacks excessive, absurd and even slightly mad. In the eyes of experts and those who hold fast to rational thinking, Bannon has lost all seriousness and credibility. In other words, Bannon has already become a symbol. One automatically labels many of the things he gets involved in as untrustworthy.

Bannon combines extremism, racism, sexism and white supremacy in one person. Even in the United States, mainstream intellectuals have long despised him. It was only by chance that he was able to briefly work in the White House, gaining a kind of influence that does not match his level of genuineness or morality. But his morality did not line up well, and he was quickly expelled from the White House. Subsequently, Bannon allowed himself even more range, roping in a number of marginalized Americans and resurrecting the Committee on the Present Danger, a Cold War-era organization opposed to the Soviet Union. He focused his own negative energy on liberating this organization in order to target China, regardless of the possibility that doing so could seriously harm the U.S. itself.

As in the past, Bannon’s current round of slandering China is baseless and unscrupulous, and in the eyes of experts, he is not worth refuting. But considering there are still people in the U.S. today who believe drinking disinfectant can kill the coronavirus, and people in Europe today who believe 5G will spread the disease, we should not be too surprised that Bannon’s conspiracy theories still have a certain market in the U.S. and Europe.

According to a number of American media outlets, disinfectant therapy came from an old-school U.S. religious group, and the rumor that 5G spreads the coronavirus also originated from an American doctor. These two absurd claims are easy to verify: Americans who drank disinfectant have been hospitalized, and even died; Europeans have burned down 5G towers, yet the coronavirus continues to spread. In contrast, the misinformation Bannon produces is more obscure and destructive. Won’t this spoil China-U.S. relations? Although Bannon has left the White House, Peter Navarro, Mike Pompeo and Washington’s anti-China policy still remain. These people are holding the White House hostage, which is truly detrimental to China-U.S. relations and even more so, is a loss for the U.S.

According to real-time data from Johns Hopkins University, as May 5, 1.2 million people had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 68,934 people have died. This tragedy continues, and the U.S. is facing severe and unprecedented challenges. Adhering to its humanitarian ideals, China is continuously providing as much aid to the American people as it has the capacity to do in the hope that this will save more lives. But at such a critical juncture, as Bannon and the like are cooking up a vat of poison, how many more Americans will drink it?