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There are layers to it. Western capitalists are afraid of not being the dominant economic forces in the world. Look at the Tiktok thing. Do Western companies really care if it spies on people? Fuck no. Because Western apps spy on people. They’re just mad it threatens the social media domination of SV. If China has killer apps, then Zucc can’t take over (and therefore America can’t take over).
Then you have the military shit, which is related to the capitalist shit. If the US military isn’t the dominant world power that everyone uses, that’s a financial loss. The US also can’t just wave its dick around every time it needs to secure a resource rich area or a socialist government is poised to take over a region.
Both of those things trickle down into the population and the culture. You get your chauvinism, racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and moral panic. I would argue most people at this level don’t really understand why they’re afraid. It’s just some vague panic based on the top two layers filtering through corporate media and commentators. You even get people on the left caught up in this for various reasons. Which I guess there are some valid arguments even if they’re not widely agreed upon. But your average person doesn’t get much past the ism stuff.
I also increasingly get a feeling that we in “the West” are so used to politicians talking shit for their own gain that it’s hard to believe that any political party actually believes in their own ideology. It’s nearly impossible for us to look at someone like president Xi and not think “he just wants power” and look at China’s foreign policy and not think “they just want raw materials” because that is the world we grew up in. Where we are told one thing but the actions of the powerful reveal something completely different. That might also be a factor that scares the ones in power. It sets a different précédent and thus holds the world to a different stander.
That may be true in the west but it’s also true for pretty much all of human history. Most ideology exists in the first place to justify unjust hierarchies.
