Pandemic of Heat- Feature Article

In January 2020, the first reports of COVID-19 began filtering out of China. At first, the virus seemed unlikely to affect populations beyond the Chinese mainland, so in the American and British media, news from Wuhan was mainly filler between stories of escalating tensions between Iran and the US, mass shootings, Brexit, and whatever inflammatory remark Donald Trump had made that day. Just over a year later, COVID-19 has killed more than 2.56 million people worldwide, including 518,000 Americans and 124,000 in the UK. In each country, hate crimes against Asians have been steadily rising since the start of the pandemic, fueled at least in part by political leaders deflecting blame for virus mismanagement back to China.

Although vaccines are at last showing tired citizens of each country a glimmer of light at the end of a dark tunnel, the early months of 2021 have seen hate crimes against East Asians trending more steeply upwards than ever, suggesting that getting COVID under control might not be enough to turn back the tide of racial hatred. Only yesterday in Atlanta, a shooting left six Asian-American women dead, whether it had a racist motive is still to be determined; however, there are no doubt crimes against East Asians in America and the UK have become a major concern.

COVID struck the world during a time when racial hate was already on the rise in many Western countries. Right-wing politicians had tapped into the growing economic dissatisfaction of mainly uneducated white voters, decrying liberal policies and scapegoating immigration as a major cause for their nations’ woes. In the UK’s Brexit referendum of June 2016, Nigel Farage, then leader of UKIP, the UK’s white nationalist Independence Party, convinced a narrow majority of voters that leaving the European Union was a good idea. A Lord Ashcroft poll shortly after found that a third of Leave voters admitted their main reason for doing so was the belief that Brexit “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders." Five months later, Donald Trump squeezed out a win in the U.S. on a campaign of fear and hate that heavily targeted immigrant.

When he assumed power, Trump kept resentment against immigrants stoked with a Muslim ban and constant reminders of the wall he was building to keep Central and South Americans from flooding the country via its border with Mexico. Between winning the election on November 6, 2016, and the end of January 2020, Trump’s Twitter archive reveals more than 200 references to the border wall. During Trump’s tenure in the White House, his racism became more and more brazen. His embrace of White Supremacy went from the insistence that there were "very fine people on both sides" when the Unite the Right rally of 2017 led to the murder of a young counter-protester, to telling the white nationalist Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" during an interview shortly before the 2020 election.

The upcoming Presidential election was on Trump’s mind in August 2019 when he began attacking the main contenders for the Democratic nomination, including Joe Biden. Trump’s efforts to smear Biden via his son Hunter’s business relationship first with Ukraine and then with China, landed him in trouble and in November 2019 earned him his first impeachment. Trump defended himself by doubling down on baseless accusations about the Bidens. Trump survived, and the impeachment became a distant memory in the slew of corruption and scandal emanating from the White House. In the first two months of 2020, Trump tweeted occasionally, in positive terms, about China’s handling of COVID. But in March, COVID became a global pandemic, shining a stubbornly harsh spotlight on Trump’s ineptitude. Again, he defended himself by going on the attack, this time against China.

East Asians have been targets of hate crimes for as long as they have lived in the US and the UK. However, 2020 saw a dramatic increase of hate crimes against them in almost every major city in America, Including, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, an 833% rise in New York City, home of America’s largest East Asian population. Even before COVID reached NYC, Chinese store and restaurant owners reported up to 40% drops in business because of customers’ fear and by March, reports of racial attacks were surfacing. Fear of COVID had a similar effect on East Asian businesses in the UK. Then, on March 13, 2020, in a tweet defending his mismanagement of COVID, Trump fanned the flames with his first Twitter use of the term “Chinese Virus.” That same day, he retweeted a reference to the “Wuhan Virus.” In a speech that month, Trump defended one of his officials using the term “Kung Flu,” adding incorrectly that “100 percent” of Americans agreed with his use of the term “Chinese Virus.” Trump tweeted about the “Chinese Virus” over twenty times between March 16 and 30. The deflection game was going full throttle when, in late March, Der Spiegel reported that Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had unsuccessfully pressed leaders at a G7 meeting to adopt the term “Wuhan Virus.”

Meanwhile, in the UK Nigel Farage adds his racist tuppence, declaring, “When President Trump has talked about the ‘Chinese virus’ (others have called it the ‘Wuhan Virus’) he has been met with waves of criticism and accusations of racism…but Trump is right.” Around the same time, the British government leaked reports that Boris Johnson was “furious” with China for their handling of the virus.

There is little doubt the advent of COVID added to anti-Asian sentiment in the US and UK, and politicians made things worse for East Asians in their countries by using China as a scapegoat for their own mistakes handling the virus. The Independent reports that in the first two weeks after opening its reporting center on March 19, The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council “fielded 1,135 self-reported incidents of abuse towards Asian-Americans.” And in a letter in mid-April 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted the problem, warning that his agency was "concerned about the potential for hate crimes by individuals and groups targeting minority populations in the United States who they believe are responsible for the spread of the virus." In the UK, increased violence against East Asians “compelled” London’s Metropolitan Police “to create an online community reference group involving some local Chinese cultural groups across London… to alleviate community concerns on this issue and promote online police messages in Chinese languages to report hate crimes.”

Then, on April 10, Trump tried the catchier “China Virus” for size, retweeting a suggestion that COVID was developed in a Chinese lab. Later that day, he composed the first of forty-four “China Virus” Tweets that appeared before his Twitter account was suspended on January 8, ,2021. Trump’s message was amplified by supporters in government and out, and his followers soon firmly believed that America was suffering, not because of Trump’s ineptitude, but because of China – and by extension, Chinese Americans.

Before that, in April 2020, Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee and Trump’s attacks against him resumed, focusing in part on his supposed nefarious relationship with China. Since the fall of 2019, right-wing outlets like the New York Post had been stirring the pot about Biden being China’s favorite candidate. After Biden’s nomination, Trump ramped this up, pushing the connection between Biden and China. In regards to trade deals, he accused China of "the greatest theft in the history of the world," telling adoring crowds, “We can't continue to allow China to rape our country.” Trump’s supporters lapped it up and hate crimes against Asian Americans continued to tick upwards.

Racially motivated attacks on East Asians in the US and UK have always been a problem. In New York City, home to America’s largest Asian American population, they are the “only racial group that experienced increased victimization across all offense types between 2008 and 2019.” According to the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, “anti-Asian hate crime in 16 of America’s largest cities increased 149% in 2020 …with the first spike occurring in March and April amidst a rise in COVID cases and negative stereotyping of Asians relating to the pandemic.” Unofficial numbers for the beginning of 2021, suggest attack figures continue to rise, even as COVID gets under control.

During the run-up to the 2020 election, criticism of mainland China also featured heavily in Trump’s campaign speeches. An election slogan popularized at Trump rallies and amplified on Twitter was “If Biden wins, China wins.” One of Trump’s most popular ever tweets came on the morning of May 29, 2020. “CHINA!” racked up 143k Retweets and 765k likes. In a more fleshed-out tweet of July 6 that year, Trump claimed, “China has caused great damage to the United States and the rest of the World!” This earned 107k Retweets and over half a million likes. Trump’s followers were lapping it up, and on the eve of the election, Trump fired one last salvo in an attempt to bring home the win: “Joe Biden is a corrupt politician who is bought and paid for by China!” Nevertheless, Trump lost.

After the election, Trump used Twitter to obsessively rage-tweet about the stolen election. And China became more and more embroiled in his false narrative. Then on January 8, Trump’s Twitter account was silenced, but the damage had already been done. Many of his supporters firmly believed Biden an illegitimate president and also thought that China was involved in stealing the election for him. Trump’s supporters’ devotion to their leader and their anger and frustration was displayed to the world in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. It was clear that even out of office, Trump remains a very dangerous man.

The immediate wake of the Capitol attack saw Trump a bit more circumspect with his opinions, especially as it became clear that another impeachment and possible criminal charges were possible because of it. Then on January 23, Trump gave his first speech post-Biden’s inauguration, and he just couldn’t restrain himself. The speech was riddled with references to election theft and included fourteen negative mentions of China.

In the UK, at the end of December 2020, Brexit was about to happen, and its disastrous consequences were becoming evident. Architect of Brexit, Nigel Farage, Trump cheerleader and the UK’s main mouthpiece of hate, took a leaf from Trump’s book and diverted attention that might bring him to blame for not bringing the restoration of Albion he had promised his supporters. He published an op-ed in Newsweek titled “Christmas is Cancelled in the UK, and it's China’s Fault.” “As the saying goes,” he wrote, “China lied, People died.”

In the UK and US, hate crimes targeting East Asians have been rapidly rising in the first three months of 2021. Some politicians have suggested causes unrelated to COVID or political spin. In response to the uptick in violence, Andrew Yang, candidate for Mayor of New York City, diplomatically stated, “The social and mental health declines stemming from a year of overlapping crises are having terrible consequences including an increase in racial violence. Hurt people hurt people. There is a lot of pain right now and it is spreading in virulent and heartbreaking ways.” And Oakland, CA, Mayor Libby Schaaf ``blamed the violent incidents on defunding the police and budget cuts made to public safety.” There is truth in what each politician says. For example, budget cuts to the Oakland police department have led to fewer deterrent foot patrols in that city’s Chinatown, where many of the hate crimes occur. However, there seems little doubt that without violent rhetoric and embrace of white supremacy by politicians like Trump and Farage, East Asians wouldn’t be taking such an unequal brunt of each country’s burden of pain.

During last month’s U.S. Senate hearings about the threat posed by right-wing extremists, FBI director Christopher Wray was pressed by Senator Maisie Hirono of Hawaii to “agree that calling COVID 19 the ‘Kung flu’ or the ‘China virus’ adds to the kind of targeted hate crimes that we’ve seen arise.” Tellingly, Wray deflected the question but didn’t disagree. It remains to be seen how long the British right can use an anti-Chinese narrative to deflect from their broken promises. In the US, though, it seems certain that right-wing hate isn’t going anywhere soon, and until another ethnic group becomes more convenient, East Asian Americans are in for a spreading pandemic of racial abuse.