Banning TikTok Won’t Save America

By Cliff Kincaid

March 25, 2023

Members of Congress from both major political parties were beating up the CEO of TikTok, Shou Chew, on Thursday, mostly over the firm’s links to Communist China. But while TikTok may gather data from teenagers and make them into zombies (or worse), it does not create a generation of communists. That has been the job of colleges and universities, or what I call “Marxist Madrassas.”

I was in the midst of several hundred young communists in Washington, D.C. on March 18, when they rallied in support of Russia, China, and Cuba and against aid for Ukraine. They were not created by TikTok. Most of them were probably created by Marxist professors in America.

Let’s face it: a lot of what we heard during Thursday’s hearing was posturing from politicians trying to look tough on China.

Terminating access to TikTok will benefit other social media companies such as YouTube, which eliminated my 500 anti-communist videos all at once, claiming they violated “community guidelines.” The social media companies use derogatory information about conservatives that is supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and their smears of people like me are prominently featured by Google, owner of YouTube, on their search engine.

YouTube offers “short” videos, their answer to TikTok’s attractive way of enticing young people and others to use their app. If you followed the Wall Street markets on Thursday, as TikTok came under fire, you saw that the American-based Big Tech companies benefited from the turmoil.

Replacing one app with another will not solve our problem.

The real answer is something that Trump promised but never carried out – the break-up of the Big Tech companies. In Trump’s defense, as we know, he spent much of his time fighting for his political life.

Interestingly, Shou Chew is from Singapore, not China, and made a very interesting point when asked about whether TikTok somehow encourages young people to use the app to get illegal drugs. He responded that Singapore has a much tougher approach to the use of illegal drugs and doesn’t have a similar problem.

Politicians bear much of the responsibility for kids using drugs since they seem united in making mind-altering drugs such as marijuana available to more young people in many states. Of course, parents bear responsibility as well, if they fail to monitor what their children are doing.

But there is a Chinese connection here, as the publication Politico recently noted, in a story headlined, “The growing Chinese investment in illegal American weed.” In essence, the Chinese are trying to take advantage of the marijuana market in the United States, which is growing rapidly as more and more young people are getting addicted to the product.

We were told the legal marijuana market would displace the illegal market but that it clearly not happening, for the simple reason that the illegal dope is cheaper. The Chinese communists have decided to get a piece of the action and have moved into the market without a peep of protest from our self-righteous politicians.

Politico’s report added, “Mexican cartels have a long history of importing, growing and redistributing illicit cannabis in the United States. But Chinese investors, owners and workers have emerged in recent years as a new source of funding and labor for illegal marijuana production.”

If the politicians want to discourage illegal drug use, let them hold hearings on Joe Biden’s exchange of a Russian arms dealer for the lesbian WNBC pothead who got busted in Russia for carrying dope.

Critics of TikTok on Capitol Hill complain that the Chinese parent company uses the app for legitimate educational purposes in China while pumping addictive filth into the minds of American young people.

Welcome to the world of “cultural Marxism.”

Marijuana is just the latest weapon. “Much is still unknown about Chinese-funded cannabis cultivation — including whether the money is coming from groups with connections to the Communist Party, and how much of the cannabis produced through Chinese-funded grows stays within the U.S. or leaves the country,” said Politico. “It’s also not clear how deeply involved Chinese organized crime syndicates are in American cannabis cultivation.”

This seems like grist for a congressional hearing. But too much money is still to be made from “legal” marijuana sales in the United States and political donations to the politicians who make it all possible. A hearing focusing attention on China could backfire on the American politicians pushing weed and its natural consequences, mental health problems and violence.

Meanwhile, China continues to supply the chemicals to the Mexican cartels who make the fentanyl for export to the United States. Nothing much will be done about this, either, as politicians posture in public as tough on drugs and crime by threatening military strikes against Mexican targets. It’s business as usual since their legislation to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations stands little chance of passing. Even if passed, China Joe wouldn’t wage war on the Mexicans or the Chinese.

Only Trump demonstrated any inclination to take the war to our enemies. He levied trade tariffs on China and even tried to ban TikTok. But the Democrats opposed his policies with Russian-inspired charges from a dubious dossier, dragging him through the mud for almost his entire first term, and they now want to put him in jail. Then, in another effort to sabotage his presidency, the Chinese unleashed coronavirus disease, just a “lab leak” or accident, we are told.

Even facing these political trials and tribulations, Trump promises that, if elected in 2024, he will deploy “all necessary military assets” including special forces, cyberwarfare capabilities, and a “full naval embargo on the cartels, to ensure they cannot use our region’s waters to traffic illicit drugs to the U.S.”

That’s a good start and it goes far beyond banning TikTok.

The bottom line is that TikTok’s suicide videos and the sale of illegal drugs on the platform are serious dangers. But this app is just one weapon in the communist Chinese arsenal.

If we’re going to hold China accountable, and we should, let’s identify those politicians who fiddled while America burned. Let them explain why handing TikTok’s business to America-based social media platforms makes life any better for anybody.

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net