The Wuhan lab conspiracy theory: American capitalism’s “big lie”— Part 2

(Editor’s Note: This is the second part of the article released by the World Socialist International last May 28, 2021. Pinoy Exposé is reprinting it due to its relevance).

IN December 2017, the New York Times published an article, “Fingerprints of Russian Disinformation: From AIDS to Fake News,” which claimed that Soviet and East German intelligence agencies manufactured a conspiracy theory about the origins of HIV.

“Called Operation Infektion by the East German foreign intelligence services,” the Times wrote, “the 1980s disinformation campaign seeded a conspiracy theory that the virus that causes AIDS was the product of biological weapons experiments conducted by the United States.”

In 1985, an Internal KGB document noted that the Soviet intelligence agency was seeking to spread the view “that this disease is the result of secret experiments by the USA’s secret services and the Pentagon with new types of biological weapons that have spun out of control.” The KGB placed an article in an Indian newspaper titled “AIDS May Invade India: Mystery Disease Caused by U.S. Experiments,” claiming the disease originated in a US military laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

As a result of this disinformation campaign, a 2005 study by the RAND Corporation and Oregon State University revealed that nearly 50 percent of African Americans thought AIDS was man-made. The prevalence of this conspiracy theory around the world made it more difficult to launch a scientific response to the AIDS epidemic—including in the Soviet Union itself.

The Times quotes historian Thomas Boghardt to explain the disinformation technique: “Throw enough dirt, and some will stick.”

The Times, the Washington Post, and the other major media outlets, along with the Biden administration, are using this technique to spread the Wuhan Lab lie. While the Times article was intended to promote the “fake news” narrative of “Russian meddling,” the fact is that the American ruling class is now the biggest propagator of “fake news.”

The legitimization of the Wuhan Lab lie will have incalculable political consequences within the United States.

If the “weaponized virus” claim promoted by the extreme right is now legitimate, what about the other lies and conspiracies promoted by the Trump administration: Trump’s “birther” claim that Obama was not an American citizen, the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory that high-level Democratic Party operatives were engaged in a child prostitution ring, and, above all, the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which underlay the January 6 fascistic insurrection.

Significantly, the media is now hailing the “sophisticated” fascist Tom Cotton, senator from Arkansas, as an important voice in the “debate” over the origins of the coronavirus. The “history books will reward” Cotton for promoting the Wuhan lab theory, declared the Washington Post’s lead fact-checker Glenn Kessler.

Cotton infamously published an op-ed in July 2020 calling on Trump to “send in the troops” to suppress mass protests against police violence. He is a leading proponent of the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, and he objected to the certification of election votes on January 6 in coordination with the mob that stormed the Capitol.

Domestically, this lie will have the effect of delegitimizing popular opposition and preparing the grounds for mass censorship, with all those who criticize government policy being painted as agents of China.

Already, an article by the World Socialist Web Site exposing the Washington Post’s promotion of the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory was censored on Facebook for two months, leading to the suspension of the accounts that tried to share it. Facebook, meanwhile, has announced that it will no longer limit posts promoting the conspiracy theory that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory.

The World Socialist Web Site calls on all workers, scientists and intellectuals to oppose the colossal lie being propagated by the US government and media. Scientists have a duty to educate the public and oppose the xenophobic perversion of science. Journalists must seriously investigate and expose the efforts to promote and disseminate this lie.

Once this lie enters the political bloodstream of America, it will have poisonous and uncontrollable effects. It will trigger witch-hunts, threats and violent intimidation against scientists and all those who call for a scientific response to the raging pandemic. Already, incidents of anti-Asian violence are on the rise.

The Chinese government, for its part, cannot but interpret the promotion of this lie as preparation for war, responding in a way that will make escalation more likely, creating a deadly cycle of militarization. A military conflict between the United States and China—the largest economies and militaries in the world—would have catastrophic consequences for all of humanity.

The World Socialist Web Site calls on all workers, scientists and intellectuals to oppose the colossal lie being propagated by the US government and media. Scientists have a duty to educate the public and oppose the xenophobic perversion of science. Journalists must seriously investigate and expose the efforts to promote and disseminate this lie.

Working people must counter the lie of the capitalist oligarchs with the demand for true accountability. Those responsible for the “herd immunity” policy, along with the corporate executives who profited off of it, must be held to account.

We call on workers to reject the efforts by the ruling classes to lay the blame for the crimes of American capitalism at the feet of China. If workers are to stop the pandemic that has killed so many, they must reject the capitalists’ efforts to incite nationalist hatred, ignorance and violence through the struggle to unite the world’s working class on the basis of a socialist perspective.