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Notes -
Trump opposes TikTok divestiture
We may be seeing the GOP becoming pro-China in real time.
Recently there’s been a bill advancing through Congress that would force a divestiture of TikTok from its Chinese parent to some sort of Western company. Many are abbreviating this as a “TikTok ban”, but that’s not accurate. It’s more of a forced severing of the app from ByteDance in particular, although the precise details following the bills passage remain to be seen.
The TikTok Question
You could list all the typical issues that social media creates and they’d almost certainly be true for TikTok like they are for Facebook or X. But in addition to this, TikTok has two unique issues from being beholden to the CCP.
The first, less pressing issue is data security. China has a law that allows their government to require any Chinese company to give them any personal information they request. ByteDance has been caught a number of times doing bad things with American users’ data. They spied on journalists who criticized the company. The American arm forwarded data to the Chinese arm, which forwarded it to the Chinese government.
The second, bigger issue is of propaganda. Nearly a third of Americans age 18-29 regularly get news from TikTok. This news is subtly and invisibly controlled by a foreign adversary government. Noah Smith summarizes the broader implications:
So why does this matter? Suppressing Americans’ access to videos about Tiananmen Square might or might not sound like that big of a deal, but consider what TikTok would be able to do in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The U.S. would have to make a very rapid, highly consequential decision about whether to come to Taiwan’s aid. Imagine anti-Taiwan videos flooding TikTok, threatening to send the President’s poll numbers plunging. Imagine the U.S. government hesitating in the face of that concerted flood of manipulated public opinion, and thus losing a critical confrontation with its most powerful foreign adversary.
Trump Opposes Divestiture
As a result of the above issues, forcing ByteDance to sell the app to a Western company is one of the few issues that has broad bipartisan support. Well, it did have bipartisan support until Trump did a 180 and suddenly opposed the bill. This was after Trump met a wealthy TikTok investor who promised to support his campaign.
Now, a politician changing his views wouldn’t normally be that much of big deal. After all, voters generally choose people whose views align with theirs, so for a normal issue Trump would usually either be forced back to his initial position or risk a fall in the polls. We recently saw this with his Social Security reform proposals. However, foreign policy is unique in that the public largely takes its cues from trusted partisan elites. This is a broadly replicated finding that basically translates to “the people are sheep”. Most individuals know that foreign policy is really important, but it doesn’t affect their lives that much, so it’s harder for them to get an intuitive understanding of how things are going compared to something like, say, the economy. Thus, they look to people they trust to get their views, and then say they formed their views by “looking at the evidence”.
An example of this is Russia. There has been a pro-Russian undercurrent in the GOP for the past decade or so, but it was mostly limited to a few fringe individuals. It started becoming more mainstream when Trump feted Putin during his presidency, and then it became even more pronounced in 2023 when Trump used Ukraine aid as a cudgel against Biden. Republicans were quite hawkish towards Russia as recently as the 2012 election when Obama told Romney that “the 80’s called, they want their foreign policy back”. Now here we are a decade later, with Tucker Carlson sniffing chocolate cake in a Moscow parking lot to prove the superiority of the Russian political system and how it’s a “bastion of conservative values”. Russian propaganda about the villainy of NATO is repeated as mainstream conservative talking points, and the Republican base largely goes along with it.
Could the same happen vis-à-vis China? I don’t see why not. Granted, it wouldn’t happen all at once, but I believe a gradual shift in that direction is certainly possible. China is an orderly society with a strongman leader. It doesn’t recognize same-sex unions. As an opponent of America, it could be presented as an opponent of vaguely defined “globohomo”. Simply ctrl+c, ctrl+v the standard talking points used for Russia, as most of them fit just as well if not better for China.
Trump has been hot or cold on China just like he was on Russia. He criticized both countries if he thought the democratic president was doing something that “made us look weak”. But then he quickly changed his tune after having a few inconsequential meetings with Putin/Xi. Eventually, the forces of negative partisanship pushed him to become clearly pro-Russia, and presumably it could happen with China as well. Trump’s clout means much of the Republican elites are following him:
• Tucker Carlson has long been against anything that would hurt TikTok, and could very well be where Trump is getting his views.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene is against the bill.
• Elon Musk is against the bill.
• Kim Dotcom is against the bill, and repeats much of the “America is bad” rhetoric previously seen in pro-Russian arguments.
From this, we’re starting to see the base’s opinions change. For instance, a UCLA Republicans group posted a picture of Trump, Xi, and Putin together, praising them as “three conservative patriots”. Something like this being posted unironically would have been a fever dream 10 years ago. The ironic force would have been so strong that it would have reanimated Reagan as a zombie, given him strength to hunt down whoever made it and punch them in the face.
If tiktok is forced to sell, that would legitimize China's stance against facebook and google years ago, which wasn't a ban either. The million dollar question is how much American soft power will the move cost? What will be the new equilibrium on foreign-aligned social media in all the other countries once the dust settles?
These were already legitimized when China became the only country (barring maybe Japan) that has a tech sector that could plausibly broadly compete with that of the US. If the US doesn't do this, it's just unilateral disarmament. Democracies are losing the propaganda war badly since they're unwilling or unable to use similar tactics that dictatorships like Russia have been using.
What propaganda war is Russia winning?
That the West is the villain in Ukraine, despite Russia being the aggressor. Russian propaganda flows freely through Western societies, while the reverse is not true. Russia is scoring more and more wins because of this fact.
Who believes that in the US, besides the dissident right (most of whom believe that for entirely domestic tribal reasons)?
It mostly is the dissident right as you say, but you shouldn't just handwave them away. They altered the outcome. They prevented Ukraine aid from being passed. It might eventually pass, but it will come delayed and probably quite a bit less than was originally intended.
Ukraine aid got blocked on domestic political considerations -- namely that Biden wants it and wasn't willing to provide anything of value in return. Russian propaganda wasn't related.
First, there shouldn't need to be a quid pro quo for initiatives that are just generally good for the country, which Ukraine aid is. We're providing assistance, building up our own withered defense-industrial base for a potential future hot conflict against China, and inflicting losses on an ally of China who has very explicitly stated anti-American and anti-Western views. FDR didn't need to give Republicans a bunch of concessions to fight WW2.
Second, Biden was willing to give concessions on immigration by signing the most conservative immigration bill in a generation, something Republicans were on board with until it looked like it could actually pass, then Trump sabotaged the agreement.
Russian propaganda isn't the only reason why Republicans dislike Ukraine aid, but it's certainly a part of it. I've debated the Ukraine issue a lot, and Russian arguments like "James Baker pinky-promised not to expand NATO eastward" have been prominent, even on this very forum.
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I’d say it’s winning the propaganda war in the non-aligned world.
Even if so, banning TikTok in the US would help that how?
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I have no idea what you and Smith are talking about. Ever since I became politically aware, the presence of western propaganda was obvious and inescapable. Particularly recently, with the close proximity of MeToo, BLM, Covid Mania, and "Ukraine is like the Avengers", it sounds like it's coming from a parallel universe.
Maybe western propaganda doesn't work as well as it used to, there's a reason Uncle Klaus keeps crying about "regaining ze trust", but it's more likely because people have noticed, consciously or otherwise, that every time they jumped on fthe bandwagon, they ended up worse for it.
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I wonder where does this end. Like in Ukraine stopping elections altogether.
New drafts as some figures have started calling now.
The process of machiavelian behavior of what are called democracies is not new. Especially of lobbies that control politicians and the CIA with its fronts and reach in media, social media. Another problem has been western elites refusal to follow public demands on certain very immportant issues, especially mass migration. Rule by the people, FOR the people most importantly has been a massive problem while in certain issues, Putin and Xi who also have ruled more for their people. At least in terms of being more supportive of a positive identity for their people.
I am sure you would still be giving them the label democracies as they adopt the authoritarian methods that you see other goverments you label dictatorships including Russia (which is in theory also a democracy). In substance if you are trying to get democracies to adopt the authoritarian methods of what you call dictatorships, then you are advocating for them to continue transforming into authoritarian states that only wear the skin suit of democratic free societies.
The end of said transformation, even if the kind of thing that comes of that wins, it would be a victory of something totalitarian, ugly and a loss for those under its rule. But I don't think it can win, the way China has been investing and coordinating with so many other countries, can't really be shut down. I don't see why people should prefer a world seperated in big power blocks fighting each other, over more reasonable compromise.
I prefer the time when the Russians sell natural gas to europeans, the trouble with Ukraine didn't started, and we had mutual beneficial relationship and liked each other more. European manufacturing benefited from that and the whole Ukraine issue has been a destructive mess. Blindly hating the Chinese and Russians is unwise and lead the world to unnecessary conflict.
Trying to have mutual beneficial relationship with the Chinese too, is the best choice for non American powers as well. Especially if you want to be a real democracy, keeping down those who see permanent war and national security crisis against foreign powers to promote authoritarianism abroad is important. And there is a relationship between being a democracy and restraining excessive bellicose warmongers, and not adopting their anti-freedom agenda. Ironically, some of what I argue does have some crossover with mid 2000s liberalism, and really I am not against that. I have a problem with the liberal tribe for how extreme they are but I find that if you try to take the opposite position to any group on all issues and purity spiral in opposite direction, you get an idiotic extremist wildly unreasonable viewpoint. Plus, liberal tribe and liberalism has also its association with neocons.
I hope people who claim to value freedom here try to genuinely understand the reality that the neocon threat to your freedoms, supposedly to fight foreign threats (maybe Iran will be added to the mix) is greater than the influence those foreign countries have on you. And bills giving power to the goverment to ban as they please will be weaponized against domestic enemies of an establishment captured by ideological extremists.
I still wouldn't oppose punishing western companies for say censoring western media or forums, in relation to the preference of China. The same idea I mentioned above where it isn't sensible to be purity spiraling in opposite direction. There isn't any surgical wise policy here however but a slippery slope towards further tyranny under the idea of permanent war, and permanent national security threat. Of treating legitimate opponents of already tyrannical excesses like Tucker Carlson, as suspected traitors. Tucker Carlson isn't by accident perhaps the most popular/higher reach (especially when one considers suppression) journalist. He does promote some kooky stuff but has his reach by also often talking truth to power and saying things that are unsaid by others but are necessary to be said. A regime where coordinating deep state creatures shut down dissent and where more overltly bills banning it is done, is a totalitarian regime and certainly one ruled by an oligarchy for the oligarchy. Not one by the demos, for the demos.
Stopping elections is common in longstanding democracies during existential wars. For example, Britain didn’t have an election for 10 years between 1935 and 1945.
They don’t have schedules though. There was nothing to suspend, they just didn’t call an election.
If America decided to skip an election it could lead to states not recognizing the president.
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