 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we're joined by K. Pritzker of Breakthrough News and we're going to be talking about the aftermath of the horrifying shooting on March 21st in Atlanta where eight people were killed, of whom six were of Asian descent. And now this has led to a lot of debate and discussion, of course, on racism against Asians in the United States. There's been, from certain sections of the media, a narrative that is being talked about in which, of course, there's a lot of blame-pressed on Donald Trump. But a lot of other key factors that have contributed to this racism definitely being learned as well. So K is here to talk a bit more about this. So, okay, first of all, could you maybe take us through this narrative that's being spun, which is true, of course, to some extent that, you know, it's Trump and his recent campaigns and his racism, which have been responsible for these attacks. But there is something more deep-rooted and deep-seated and there's a historical context to this as well. So could you maybe take us through that? Yeah, of course, you know, the main narrative that we're seeing in the media is that this is Donald Trump's fault and that Donald Trump obviously blamed the coronavirus on China. He called it the China virus. He called it the Kung Flu, all these horrible things. And that certainly stoked a lot of anti-Asian racism in the United States. Of course, none of these claims are true. But you know, to chalk it up just to this one thing is just an incomplete picture. Donald Trump was attacking China. He was attacking Asian people before coronavirus. He's been attacking Asian people throughout his administration. And then, you know, if you look at the larger picture, it's really like the United States has been attacking China for decades now. You know, you could say many decades. You could say since 1949, it's been attacking China. So what we really wanted to point out with this video and at Breakthrough News is that this is not just about Donald Trump. It's not just about, you know, white male shooters, which is another huge problem in the United States. But it's also the reason these hate crimes, this larger phenomenon of Asian anti-Asian hate crimes is happening is not just because of these, you know, one or two factors. It's because of this Cold War with China. It's about these war drums banging against China. And what we really want to demonstrate is that the United States has been talking about, has been aggressively trying to encircle, has been demonizing, has been trying to ostracize China. Because China is beginning is really challenging the US's position as the world superpower, as the unquestioned world superpower. China's economy, for example, is set to overtake the size of the US economy in terms of GDP by 2028. You know, Chinese phone manufacturers, Chinese car manufacturers are starting to rival US companies. You know, Huawei, for example, Huawei is actually the largest phone manufacturer in the world now. You know, just a few years ago with Samsung, Apple was second. But now it's Huawei. They're the number one phone manufacturer. A lot of people don't know that. But this is a huge challenge to the United States, not just because, you know, the US wants its phone manufacturers out in front. It's aware that this is, you know, just one part of a larger trend, which is that the Chinese economy, the Chinese, you know, nation is really going to overshadow and overtake the United States in a lot of, not just economic, but also political and diplomatic spheres. So the United States is afraid of this and, you know, their plan really is to attack China, to demonize China and to ostracize China before they have a chance to really, you know, change the framework and the layout of the global system. So the shooting we saw in Atlanta and all of these anti-Asian hate crimes, by the way, in New York City where I live, anti-Asian hate crimes have gone up 1900%, 1,900% in the last year. All of these hate crimes are a consequence of this, you know, anti-China sentiment of these anti-China stories, the anti-China propaganda in the media. And with this comes a lot of racist depictions of Chinese people, of the Chinese president, of the Chinese government. So, you know, people are seeing these images on TV, they're seeing it on Saturday Night Live, they're seeing it on the news, and that subconsciously affects people, they see some Asian person on the street, whether or not they're Chinese, they might be Korean, they might be, you know, Indonesian, they might be Filipino, whatever, and they get attacked because people associate them with China, they associate Asian, they think all Asian people are Chinese and then they get attacked. So, yeah, you know, this hate crime phenomenon is really inseparable from the US war drive against China. Absolutely. It's very important to point that out because, like you said, there's this sense of threat that's being built up and it's an ever-present, looming threat that's being sort of built up in people's minds. And I want to ask one of the key questions connected to this, which is regarding the responsive, especially progressive movements and people's movements, which have been working on this issue. So, could you maybe, you've been talking to them as well, so could you maybe take us through what are the key demands in this aspect and how are they kind of mobilizing against this hate crime? Yeah, well, first in regards to this hate crime and in regards to the Atlanta shooting, there's a, there's a nationwide call for protest on March 27th, that was called the the Answer Coalition. And they're demonstrating in 50 cities around the country against the racist and sexist terrorist attack in Atlanta. But, you know, the Answer Coalition, as well as many other organizations in the United States, Code Pink, Pivot to Peace, Black Alliance for Peace, you know, a lot of different groups have been talking about this Cold War with China for some time now, for years now, really, because people are reading the writing on the wall, just like the US ruling class, the imperialist class is reading the writing on the wall, seeing that they're not going to control the world order for much longer. Protesters, progressives, socialists are also seeing the writing on the wall, they see the war propaganda, they see the lies about China escalating, and they see the increasing attacks on China. And in response to that, there's really been a call not just to, you know, end the racist caricatures and the sexist caricatures of Asian women and of Asian people, but also to end this Cold War with China, to stop, you know, this drive to war with China, because this, a war with China would be, I mean, it's hard to even imagine what that would mean for not just for the US and China, but for the world, for every human being. I mean, this would probably be one of the worst conflicts, you know, in human history. So this is not something anyone wants except for the rich elites in our government, you know, no one in the US is really, I don't think anyone really wants war with China except for a few rich people. So that's been the demand of the protest movement. And we've seen the Pentagon under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden identify China as the number one security threat, you know, more than ISIS, more than al-Qaeda or whoever, more than Russia and Iran. They see China now, absolutely, they see China as the number one threat to US national security and US safety, whatever. And you know, you got to ask yourself, well, what has, what is China, what is China done? You know, it's not like China's invaded the United States. It's, you know, it's not like China's invaded any countries really. You know, China has one military base abroad in Djibouti. Meanwhile, the United States is, you know, bombing several different continents. It has thousands of military bases around the globe. So the protest movements are really trying to to bring forward these critical questions about the threat that China really poses, which is none. Right. And this context also wanted to ask you, such situations often lead to, you know, further demands for strict policing. There is, you know, a subliminal say agenda pushed by the state and, you know, those in power in terms of, you know, how this calls for more resources for the police and all. So has such agenda also been pushed at this point of time? Yeah, definitely. You know, that's, that's one thing that I think, you know, there's, there's some more conservative elements in the Asian American community that have said, oh, well, you know, we need more police now. We need, you know, we need people to, we need police to protect Asian people. And we say that's, that's ridiculous. I mean, the police have never really protected Asian people in the United States. And, you know, the police don't really protect anyone, they protect property. That's the role of the police in the United States. You know, it's interesting that this call for more policing, which is really a small one, but it coincides with this showdown in Echo Park. It's a park within Los Angeles where homeless people have stayed for quite some time because housing in Los Angeles is absolutely unaffordable. And this weekend, you know, just a week after the Atlanta shooting, we see the police being deployed to tear gas protesters to crack down in the most brutal way, arresting people for trying to protect people from being swept out of the park for, for not being able to afford a home. So, you know, that just goes to show you the police aren't there to protect people. If they were there to protect people, they would be protecting these homeless people in Echo Park, but their job is to protect property in the United States. So, to that, you know, I and everyone else in the movement is saying, hey, you know, this is not the right call. We don't need more money for the cops because they're not here to protect us. Period. Absolutely. So finally getting that, your key point being here that you really cannot disconnect these acts of violence, which are of course definitely very brutal with the larger narrative, larger reality of course, larger reality of imperialism itself. And that seems to be the key point that the movements are making here because otherwise, it just becomes a question of say, of individual incidents of aggression, which of course need to be dealt with in a number of ways. But the larger political context definitely missing that. Yes, exactly. You know, there are of course, particularities to every incident. There are particularities to this incident. You know, this shooter is his own individual and he had his own motives. Obviously, he went into some of these massage parlors and shouted, I'm here to kill all the Asians. And he also talked about wanting to relieve his like sexual temptations by killing women. So he obviously had very deep seated misogynistic and racist motives. But, you know, that's not to say that every racist killer has, well, they're motivated by racism, they all have particular, you know, reasons why they did what they did. But all of these motives are rooted in this larger drive to war with China. You know, the racist motives of this one shooter is really, you know, how can we separate it from the fact that the United States has been putting out this racist, you know, caricature of the Chinese people of the Chinese government for the last three years. It's hard to imagine that, you know, all of the rhetoric around COVID-19, which is not just coming from Donald Trump, but it's coming from the capitalist media. It's coming from other politicians. It's coming from Democrats. All of this rhetoric, how could it not have influenced his decision to shoot up this massage parlor? So, you know, what we're saying is that we really have to examine the way imperialism affects our psyche at home. We have to examine the way it affects the way we see other people in other countries here at home. Because imperialism is fundamentally based on lies, and that's ultimately what this video is about, is you can't just go to war, you can't go to war honestly. You can't go to the American people and say, hey, you know, we just want, can you just give us three trillion dollars? And can you go off to this country and die and kill innocent people so we can protect the profits of US corporations? People would say, no, we don't want to do that. That's ridiculous. So they have to say, oh, well, China's attacking you. China's hacking, you know, the electoral system or whatever. They have to make up all these lies and create a racist caricature of Chinese people in order to justify their imperialist plunder. So, you know, if we want to understand racism in the United States, what we really have to do is understand capitalism and imperialism and the reason why the United States is going to war on so many different continents first. Absolutely. Thank you so much for talking to us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. That's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.