Washington, notorious long-term public opinion manipulator

BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Over the past few years, some U.S. politicians have been slandering China over such issues as Xinjiang, Hong Kong, human rights and COVID-19 origins tracing, trying to manipulate public opinion, mislead the world and preserve U.S. hegemony.

These are exactly the same tricks that they have been playing over the past century.

The United States has one of the earliest structural and government-led propaganda machines, which could be traced back to the Committee on Public Information under the Woodrow Wilson administration during World War I.

From the Office of War Information under Franklin Roosevelt's regime to Barack Obama's National Framework for Strategic Communication report, the U.S. propaganda machine has never stopped expanding its coverage and enlarging its toolbox, which now "boasts" a developed system of brainwashing and mind-control.

From Hollywood films to media outlets, from NGOs to online spammers, different parts of the U.S. propaganda chains are cooperating closely to indoctrinate people around the world with hollow and ideology-biased slogans and fallacies they have made up, aiming at distorting facts and fanning flames.

In December 2021, the U.S. government revived the Truman Doctrine by piecing together a so-called "Summit for Democracy" and creating a binary narrative of so-called "democracy vs autocracy" in an attempt to stoke new divisions and fuel ideological confrontations -- a political farce that resulted in a lot of criticism and doubts from both within and without the United States.

Washington also claimed it had ranked top in the world's efforts to fight the pandemic, citing a Bloomberg "Global Anti-epidemic Ranking" last year, in complete disregard of its world's highest caseload and death toll.

The U.S. playbook aiming at manipulating public opinion is actually an open secret.

Colin Powell is a case in point. The former U.S. secretary of state presented fake proof at the United Nations conference in 2003, lied to the world that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and paved the way for the Iraq War.

Adrian Zenz is another example. Supported by the United States, the so-called "researcher" concocted Xinjiang-related rumors and lies for the United States' own ulterior political purposes, attempting to use fake news to grab attention and vilify China.

Julian Assange knows all about this. The founder of WikiLeaks and whistleblower could face life in prison -- even kidnapping or killing by the CIA, media reported -- for exposing U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The United States often tags its actions as "public diplomacy" or "strategic communication" in order to cover up and whitewash its dirty tricks. But the truth will finally come out. Washington can fool all the people part of the time, or fool some people all of the time, but it cannot fool all people all the time.