Fifteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

New information platforms, robust muckraking, and cross-border publics are among the compelling social and political tendencies of our time. It is claimed that the revolution is beset by politically threatening contradictions and decadent counter-trends. One of these alarming developments is the shift to a world of post-truth politics. Promoting the Lab leak theory hypes a global China threat and aims towards undermining the Chinese communist government. To perpetuate US hegemony and undermine China global stance as a responsible player whose unprecedented economic heft has astonished the world. Bob Woodward last book on Trump, in which Trump conceded that Xi had spoken to him early and warned him of the dangers as opposed to Trump public characterization of China misleading the US on the severity of the outbreak, which Trump then escalated to the outlandish claim that this was deliberate bioweapons attack on the US and him personally One can ascribe the lab leak theory to the emerging post-pandemic theory of post-truth politics which aims to amass and shape the public option using the media. One can point to how well-practised culture war tactics used with impunity by competing US factions as well as competing media, have taken root in America’s us vs them anti-China narratives. These developments permeate the fractured American psyche in the era of US decline and particularly after devastating governance failures associated with the pandemic. The focus is on the narrative battle over COVID-19 that has escalated between two competing major powers China and the US.