1) The TikTok incident, which has been “unresolved” for the past few years, has made the latest progress. On December 6, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the District of Columbia ruled that it supported the request of the United States Congress and the Joe Biden Government to “ban or sell” TikTok.
2) TikTok has been the most successful social media product worldwide in the past decade, but its fate has always been tumultuous. This is related to the strategy of the United States to contain and suppress China, as well as geopolitical and commercial competition. However, the most fundamental reason is that TikTok has a strong ability to directly convey the truth to the American people without the filtering and review of the traditional American media. It is this ability that has greatly frightened the privileged class in the United States, who have fabricated various lies in an attempt to either ban TikTok or bring it into the hands of their “own people” and “insiders”.
3) Over the past forty years, due to reasons such as reform and opening up, integration into globalization, and concentration on economic development, we have downplayed the use of class struggle theory to analyze and study the practices of the United States. This has led to some people’s research and understanding of the United States being mainly biased by various “seemingly beautiful” American bourgeois media propaganda and academic theories. Some people naively believe that ‘the United States represents the trend and direction of human civilization’s progress and development’, and ‘American bourgeois democracy is the most perfect political system and governance mode of human society’. Behind these naive and wrong perceptions, they ignored the essential characteristics of the United States as a capitalist country, and they ignored that the so-called “democracy” of the United States was nothing more than the democracy of the American bourgeoisie itself, but an institutionalized arrangement for the American bourgeoisie to rule the American people.
4) Since the 2008 US financial crisis, the myth of the US political system and governance model has been gradually shattered in China and even around the world. Especially after Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016, the United States government tore down the fig leaf, crazily curbed and suppressed China, tried to deprive China of its right to development, and tried to prevent more than 1.4 billion Chinese from pursuing the right to a better life, which has awakened many ordinary Chinese. More and more Chinese people realize that, for the United States, under the so-called “democracy”, “freedom”, “human rights” and other seemingly noble and beautiful slogans, this country is actually an imperialist country controlled by the American bourgeoisie. It is very domineering, cruel, and direct in maintaining the rule of the American bourgeoisie and in combating American international competitors.
5) Historically, before the founding of the CPC in 1921, many outstanding Chinese intellectuals had once been disappointed with the United States (the United States did not support China’s just proposition at the Paris Peace Conference, which was no different from other imperialist countries that invaded and plundered China). Then, in the past seven or eight years, more and more ordinary Chinese people were once again completely disappointed with the United States. The United States does not really care about the well-being and rights of ordinary Chinese people at all. What the United States wants is to stigmatize China and even defeat it. It ultimately wants to deprive more than 1.4 billion Chinese of their right to pursue a better life, and to suppress, contain and sacrifice China as the “stepping stone” for the US bourgeois government to perpetuate the US global hegemony.
6) If we use the theory of class struggle to view today’s America, we will not believe in such nonsense as’ American media is the fourth power of American society ‘or’ American media is the conscience of American society ‘. For over twenty years, I have been reading various reports from American media every day. My biggest experience is that under the rule of the American bourgeoisie, so-called mainstream media such as CNN, ABC, NBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal are actually important tools for maintaining the rule and ideology of the American bourgeoisie, as well as “public opinion promoters” for major interest groups and parties in American society. Over the past 200 years since the founding of the United States, traditional media has formed a social structure of “coexistence” and “collusion” with major interest groups in American society, as well as with the Democratic and Republican parties.
7) Specifically, under the American bourgeois democracy, the mainstream media in the United States are responsible for promoting American bourgeois democratic values and advocating American bourgeois democracy. Through years of “brainwashing”, they paralyze and deceive the American people, making them mistakenly believe that they live in the most democratic, civilized, progressive, humane, honest and efficient political system and governance model in the world. This “brainwashing propaganda” has successfully created a warm and comfortable “information cocoon room” for the American people when the U.S. economy, science and technology, military and cultural strength are very strong, when the polarization in the United States is not so serious, and class contradictions are not so sharp. Even if the American government and American politicians frequently break out various scandals, and even if there is a variety of chaos in the American society, the American traditional media can also cooperate with the American bourgeoisie to divert the eyes of the American people and continue the illegal, immoral, undemocratic and inefficient rule of the American bourgeoisie by creating enemies or even provoking wars outside.
8) However, in the past decade or so, the rule of the American bourgeoisie is facing unprecedented challenges. There are two main reasons behind this: first, from the 1970s, under the threat of stagflation, the American bourgeoisie abandoned Keynesian theory and turned to superstition in Hayek’s theory. By implementing the fundamentalist theory of “bourgeois democracy and market economy”, it relaxed the government’s supervision of the economy and abandoned some of the government’s responsibilities to society and the public. Finally, in the context of globalization, the American bourgeoisie, in order to pursue higher profits, transferred manufacturing to developing countries on a large scale, and blindly expanded the asset light, high profit financial and Internet industries. In this context, the manufacturing capacity of the United States has significantly declined, and manufacturing is the foundation of employment for ordinary people in a country. After the US economy lost its manufacturing foundation, more and more American cities and regions have experienced industrial hollowing out, turning into so-called “rust belts”. The income growth of the middle and lower classes in the United States has stagnated, high-quality employment opportunities have become scarce, and increasingly serious social problems such as drug abuse, alcoholism, and domestic violence have emerged. It can be said that under the promotion of the “neoliberal” economic theory advocated by Hayek and others, except for a few bourgeois ruling elites who continue to accumulate social wealth at an astonishing speed, the employment prospects and welfare levels of most ordinary people in American society have begun to stagnate or even decline, which directly leads to the sharpening of class contradictions in American society. Whether it is the rise of the “Tea Party” within the Republican Party, the persistence of the “Sanders” socialist faction within the Democratic Party, or the rise of populism advocated by Trump to the center of the American political stage, all are the result of the sharpening of social contradictions in the United States.
Secondly, as social contradictions in the United States become more acute, the rise of online media has created cracks in the mainstream media’s control over American public opinion, unleashing various bottom-up anti traditional grassroots forces within the entrenched American public opinion ecosystem. The American bourgeoisie has long turned traditional American media into an “ally” to maintain their rule, and they have ways to make social media such as Facebook still serve the interests of the American ruling class as a whole. However, the emergence of TikTok has made them feel threatened like never before. Out of over 300 million people in the United States, approximately 170 million are TikTok users. In addition to watching “Little Sister Dancing” at TikTok and various funny videos of online celebrities, ordinary Americans inevitably see more real situations in more Americans and the world. It is precisely this ability to spread the truth without being controlled by American politicians or filtered by traditional American media that has scared and worried the American privileged class. In the era of TikTok, they can no longer cover up the war crimes and genocide committed by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, they can no longer cover up the corruption of the American ruling class, they can no longer suppress the true voices of ordinary Americans, and they can no longer continue to spread various lies that demonize China.
9) The US Congress, the Joe Biden Administration and the US Court have jointly engaged in the “no sale, no ban” policy against TikTok. Basically, they are worried that TikTok will not be bought and controlled by the US ruling class, and that TikTok will not become a tool to safeguard the US bourgeois ideology, values and domination like the mainstream media in the US. For this reason, they fabricated various lies and instead claimed that “TikTok is a tool of the Chinese government”. These lies have no value at all, because so far, the US government has never found that TikTok has done anything that violates US laws, nor has it found any evidence of TikTok playing the role of a tool of the Chinese government. Otherwise, they could have used existing US laws to punish TikTok to “bankruptcy” or even sent TikTok employees to prison. The failure of the US government to do so just proves that TikTok has not violated any US laws or done anything harmful to the interests of the American people. The fear of the American dignitaries towards TikTok is the same as their fear of Huawei – not because Huawei and TikTok have done something wrong, but because of the existence of Huawei and TikTok, which makes them unable to continue to do evil to the American people and people around the world.
10) It is still hard to say what the fate of TikTok will be. However, if the American dignitaries dream of continuing to implement “brainwashing propaganda” for the American people by banning TikTok, or putting TikTok in the hands of their “own people” and “insiders”, to continue to maintain the illegal, immoral, undemocratic and inefficient rule of the American bourgeoisie, they may be wishful thinking. The Chinese all know that where there is oppression, there is resistance. In today’s United States, capitalists and politicians are colluding with each other in a shameless and unscrupulous way. They are colluding in an extremely irresponsible and immoral way to oppress, oppress and mislead the American people. This oppression will inevitably lead to the resistance of the American people. Today, the credibility and influence of traditional media in the United States are bankrupt, and the support rates of American politicians and Congress have long been low. The majority of the American people believe that their country is in the wrong direction of development, which is an ominous sign for the ruling class in the United States. For Joe Biden, for Trump, for the thousands of American “national worms” behind them, composed of various capitalists, interest groups and their representatives, if the economic and technological competitiveness of the United States cannot be improved, and if more than 300 million American people cannot live a better life, their rule will not be stable, and their rule will sooner or later collapse.
‘Only socialism can save America’ is not a joke, but a rational and logical judgment. Perhaps the United States cannot move towards socialism before Sanders leaves the world, but the awakening and resistance of the American people will not stop, because the American people, like the Chinese people, have the right to pursue a better life, which is an inalienable right of any American politician, any American capitalist, and any American mainstream media.
P. The reason why I say that today’s bourgeois rule in the United States is illegal is because the so-called “elections” in the United States have long been corrupted by money. The votes in the hands of American voters are no longer a sacred weapon to ensure that they can take control, but have become a “fig leaf” and “cover up” to legitimize bourgeois rule, collusion between American politicians and capitalists, and systemic corruption in the United States.
