[News] TikTok and Israel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 TikTok and Israel <https://www.blackagendareport.com/tiktok-and-israel>
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive
Editor and Senior Columnist>
20 Mar 2024

<https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.blackagendareport.com/tiktok-and-israel>
  <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=TikTok and
Israel&url=http://www.blackagendareport.com/tiktok-and-israel>
[image: Israel]
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2024-03/Tik%20Tok%20845x400.png>
Image - Anson Chan for the Intercept

*The TikTok social media platform is an indicator of U.S. imperialist angst
and an incentive for greed. First China was a political target and now
Zionists are on the attack in an effort to suppress information about
Israel’s war crimes. Of course stealing this profitable company is also a
goal of U.S. capitalism. *

“We want Congress to tell TikTok that their time is up. We’re done with the
lies the platform spreads about the Jewish people and Israel.”
The Jewish Federations of North America
<https://x.com/jfederations/status/1767989253735133673?s=20>

The TikTok social media platform is used by millions of people in the
United States and all over the world. Most often they share videos of their
families or their pets or their latest dance steps. Sometimes they share
political opinions about the news of the day, and therein lies the latest
ginned up panic over TikTok.

The reasons that most people access TikTok seem rather harmless but
TikTok’s corporate owner, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing, China, a
fact which makes the company a political and economic target. China hatred
was originally the purview of the right wing of the Republican Party, whose
representatives engage in endless screeds about the Chinese Communist
Party, which ironically doesn’t even exist. There is a Communist Party of
China, but incorrectly stating the name appears to be an important element
in the politically motivated theatrics.

On March 23, 2023 TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew
<https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165579717/tiktok-congress-hearing-shou-zi-chew-project-texas>
endured five hours of testimony before a congressional committee. The
pretext for the hearing was concern about data privacy and accusations that
TikTok is some sort of outlier in gathering personal information about
users. The concern is a legitimate one for every platform but congress
doesn’t act to protect consumers from social media, news platforms, or the
U.S. government, and all of these entities have troves of data on every
man, woman, and child without exception.

The attack on Chinese tech is a futile effort to diminish that nation’s
economic prowess and political power. The claim may be made that the
government of China is accessing our data or that TikTok causes children
and teens to take part in dangerous activity but the goal as always is to
destroy U.S. competition. Donald Trump
<https://blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-tiktok-and-war-china> began
the war on Chinese technology by severely limiting Huawei’s ability to
operate in the U.S. and then proceeded to bully its European puppet states
into doing the same thing.

Attacking TikTok for alleged Chinese government influence is now old news.
The latest anti-TikTok witch hunt is all about Israel. It is the pro-Israel
lobby which admits as much. In a leaked phone call
<https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/03/14/tiktok-us-israel/>,
Anti Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is heard saying, “We
really have a TikTok problem in the U.S.”

Indeed they do. Thanks to social media, millions of people know that Israel
is committing war crimes in Gaza. They know that the Israeli Defense Forces
blow up hospitals and universities and bomb civilian homes and target
journalists for assassination and withhold supplies of  food and medicine.
Thanks to social media, the corporate media blackout is far less effective
than it would be otherwise and so are the pro-Israeli statements and
actions of the Biden administration and congress.

Now that interested parties are no longer restricted in their access to
information about the U.S./Israeli genocide, the attack on TikTok began
anew. On March 13, 2024 the House of Representatives voted by a margin of
352 - 65 to force ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operation
within six months or lose access to the American market. The Senate has yet
to act but Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the legislation.

U.S. imperialism, racist China hatred and Zionism have combined to create
the theft of a multi-billion company. No sooner had congress voted than Steve
Mnuchin
<https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-mnuchin-house-senate-ffdf37776e63a09bb6966d741df7093b>,
who served as Secretary of the Treasury in the Trump administration,
announced that he will put together an investment group to buy TikTok.

The Biden administration faces crises on multiple fronts as it is losing
the anti-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, but continues to ask congress for
billions of dollars in the lost effort. They have now made the U.S. and its
ally Israel reviled domestically and internationally. They cannot control
the narrative and are instigating a wider conflict in the Middle East.
Millions of voters, even some who supported Biden in 2020, are refusing to
vote for “Genocide Joe” on election day.

Of course there are ways out of these messes but none of them allow the
U.S. to continue trying to dominate the world and to make enemies of anyone
who stands in the way. They spin stories about parachuting aid or that
building a fake pier controlled by Israel will end the suffering of the
people of Gaza. They are so desperate they have even shoved Benjamin
Netanyahu under a rhetorical bus to defend themselves after giving a green
light to an invasion of Rafah, the last refuge for 2 million people. No one
believes them any more and as always more overreach is seen as the only
solution.

Unless ByteDance calls America’s bluff and shuts down its operations in
this country, someone will get rich, but the people will be worse off with
one less independent source of information. That outcome is what we should
expect from a greedy state, bent on domination. Surrender or be destroyed
is the U.S. motto with TikTok and with most of humanity.

*Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the
Presidents <https://steerforth.com/product/prejudential-9781586422486/>.
You can support her work on Patreon
<https://www.patreon.com/margaretkimberley> and also find it on the Twitter
<https://twitter.com/freedomrideblog>, Bluesky
<https://bsky.app/profile/margaretkimberley.bsky.social>, and Telegram
<https://t.me/MargaretKimberley> platforms. She can be reached via email at
margaret.kimberley at blackagendareport.com
<margaret.kimberley at blackagendareport.com>*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20240320/c5be902d/attachment.htm>