To cement his leadership, the supreme leader of North Korea -- Kim Jong-Eun -- needed to send a message that would speak to his people and the world; he used the skills of manipulation, intimidation, and coercion that the multi-generational neo-Confucian/neo-socialist regime has by now perfected into a system of brainwashing which at its core relies on the fear of outsiders and of death in a horrible war, a war which -- conveniently for the regime -- is always around the corner.
Marshal Kim needed to show his people that though he appeared young, he was willing to order the destruction of press offices in South Korea because they insulted him and his grandfather. In a Confucian society, parents and elders must be revered. In April of 2012, North Korea interrupted its normal TV programming, letting the people know that actions would soon lead to the obliteration of media buildings that had doled out insults against the North. The threat was not idle because Marshal Kim and his father had just a couple of years earlier torpedoed a South Korean warship.
The people understood the message: their Marshal was willing to turn the Korean peninsula into a sea of nuclear ashes because someone insulted him. The people thus understood that they themselves could at any moment be brutally destroyed by their warmongering leader. The United Nations has just recently accused the North Korean regime of committing brutalities not too unlike those committed by the regime of Adolph Hitler, telling the world what the people already knew.
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| WWII propaganda poster |
During War World II, the United States' propaganda apparatus strongly dedicated itself to demonizing the Japanese, convincing many Americans that anyone who looked Asian was dangerous and untrustworthy.
America has a history of demonizing minorities, of making "the other" seem dangerous, and since Dennis Rodman became America's most famous envoy to North Korea, the media has dedicated itself exclusively to telling Dennis and the rest of America that Kim Jong-Eun is responsible for so much evil, that Rodman is doing a disservice by taking basketball to the North.
Kim Jong-Eun is consistently compared to Hitler, but Hitler didn't fraternize with eccentric African Americans; and perhaps history would have turned out for the better if Hitler had a boy-crush on an American star of a different race.
When it comes to the American legacy surrounding people of color, we have conveniently forgotten that the Asian was -- starting even before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 -- always depicted as a danger to the average white American. And before the Japanese became a direct threat to the United States, movies like The Mask of Fu Manchu entertained audiences with quotes such as: "Would you have maidens such as these for your wives? Then
conquer and breed! Kill the white man … and take his women!"
The South China Morning Post just last May noticed the Fu Manchu stereotype resurface in a Canadian commercial for General Motors. It makes perfect sense when a corporation retracts a commercial that is offensive to people and also issues an apology.
We live in an increasingly globalizing world, a world of instantaneous global outrage. When an American corporation in Canada markets something for local consumption, it must be aware that they could cause offense in China.
Just recently, a student at McGill University decided to send a short video to his classmates. In that video, His Excellency Barack Obama was depicted kicking down a door. Some students took offense to the video, seeing it as a "microaggression" that possibly demanded expulsion or suspension.
The student was forced to issue a public apology. In his apology, he wrote: "The image in question was an extension of the cultural, historical and
living legacy surrounding people of colour — particularly young men —
being portrayed as violent in contemporary culture and media."
Though Obama is not young and is a drone-assassin who brags about being really good at killing people, a student in Canada was forced to apologize for portraying the violent side of a man responsible for thousands of "collateral" deaths. But that killer is black so depicting him in a manner that makes him seem violent is wrong because it's insensitive to all the black people who are constantly depicted by our media as violent.
During his reign of terror, Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo ran what he dubbed "the public forum." In these newspaper columns, "anonymous Dominican citizens" would write letters criticizing anyone the regime disliked. An article only had to hint that someone was a communist, and it would result in the destruction of that person's public life.
Though McGill is a Canadian University, similar incidents of "microagression" have been reported across American universities. We have as a people come to the point that someone's life can be destroyed by "concerned citizens" denouncing "racism." We have created a system of paranoia that has artistically crippled and intellectually silenced a generation.
McCarthy convinced many Americans that everyone was a closeted communist. There are Americans in college today fully convinced that everyone is a racist in the closet. But the tyranny of biology, in its majestic equality, makes it so that some black men, and some Asian women can be just as racist and tyrannical as any member of the white patriarchy that has ruled over America.
When Bush tried to bring tyranny to America, he wrapped it in Flag & Bible. When Obama's successor brings further tyranny to America, it will be wrapped under the banner of equality. In their masterful brilliance, Americans now expect to live in a socialist paradise where everyone is equal and everyone with wrong associations and wrong ideas can be reeducated. The Soviet Union didn't die; we became the Soviet Union!
