Running Dog Propagandists

By Jamyang Norbu
July 13, 2008

In response to my recent piece Barefoot Experts some readers wrote in to say that Tibetans should not fritter away their energy picking on experts and journalists in the West but should focus on countering propaganda from China. A reasonable request, on the face of it, but perhaps not too cued to the actual process by which propaganda from Communist China influences the outside world. Consider the most recent Chinese epithets hurled at the Dalai Lama: “a wolf in monk’s robes”, “a monster with a human face and animal’s heart” among others. No one in the West could possibly take such Cultural Revolution style denunciations seriously. So much of Beijing’s propaganda is so unrelentingly extreme that without considerable re-working and expurgation, even bowdlerization of sorts, by outside agencies, it would have absolutely no impact on public thinking in the West. In fact the effect would probably be negative. Continue reading…