The Patriot Post® · Barr Blasts Hollywood, Big Tech Hypocrisy on China
In a stirring speech given at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday, Attorney General William Barr blasted Hollywood and Big Tech hypocrites for kowtowing to and assisting the Chinese Communist Party in its “aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent superpower.”
“American companies must understand the stakes,” Barr pointedly warned. “The Chinese Communist Party thinks in terms of decades and centuries, while we tend to focus on the next quarterly earnings report. But if Disney and other American corporations continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has allowed them to thrive.”
“To tilt the playing field to its advantage,” Barr explained, “China’s communist government has perfected a wide array of predatory and often unlawful tactics: currency manipulation, tariffs, quotas, state-led strategic investment and acquisitions, theft and forced transfer of intellectual property, state subsidies, dumping, cyberattacks and industrial espionage.”
Barr used Disney as a prime example of how the CCP’s tactics have gotten Hollywood to kowtow, leading to the company willingly compromising itself. “I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he founded deals with the foreign dictatorships of our day,” he observed.
Due to Hollywood’s financial greed, Barr noted, “Chinese government censors don’t need to say a word, because Hollywood is doing their work for them. This is a massive propaganda coup for the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Appeasing the [People’s Republic of China] may bring short-term rewards, but in the end, the PRC’s goal is to replace you,” he warned. “A world marching to the beat of Communist China’s drums will not be a hospitable one for institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of ideas.”
Barr did have some praise for tech companies in their recent efforts to stand against the CCP. “If they stand together,” he stated, “they will provide a worthy example for other American companies in resisting the Chinese Communist Party’s corrupt and dictatorial rule.”
Finally, Barr closed by calling on all Americans to resist the CCP’s efforts to destroy our freedom, which has made our nation the envy of the world: “The CCP has launched an orchestrated campaign, across all of its many tentacles in Chinese government and society, to exploit the openness of our institutions in order to destroy them. To secure a world of freedom and prosperity for our children and grandchildren, the free world will need its own version of the whole-of-society approach, in which the public and private sectors maintain their essential separation but work together collaboratively to resist domination and to win the contest for the commanding heights of the global economy. America has done that before. If we rekindle our love and devotion for our country and each other, I am confident that we — the American people, American government, and American business together — can do it again. Our freedom depends on it.”