“The Atlanta shooting is a legitimate revenge for the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19)!”
It seems that racial hatred cultivated in some online places is behind the rapidly increasing anti-Asian violence incidents in the United States, including the Atlanta shootings that killed the lives of Korean women.
According to the New York Times (NYT) on the 20th (local time), conversations with anti-Asian groups have increased since last November, focusing on Telegram, the far right online bulletin board ‘4chan’, and the far right bulletin’The Donald’. .
After Democratic Party Candidate Joe Biden won the presidential election at the time, postings stating that President Biden would become a “puppet of the Chinese Communist Party” were spread on the bulletin boards, and unfounded hatred toward Asians seems to have increased.
A survey by Rutgers University’s Network Proliferation Research Institute (NCRI) found that in December last year, insults against Asians such as’Kung Flu’ at Telegram, Pochan, and The Donald surged 65% from the previous 11-month average.
The anti-Asian sentiment started to become a’second epidemic’ online after last spring, the beginning of the Corona 19 pandemic.
In the second outbreak, incitement to violence against Asian Americans became commonplace and began to lead to actual incidents of violence, NYT analyzed.
A telegram channel posted a picture of a dog with a gun in the head, saying, “Philippines are not Asian, because Asians have good hair.”
Hundreds of people participated in a group that was opened on Telegram in January this year, including pictures that exaggerate Asian appearance, memes that demean Asians eating dog meat (photos or videos that are popular on the Internet), and violence against locals during the Vietnam War. I uploaded photos of the soldiers of the U.S. military.
In particular, immediately after the Atlanta shootings, the Telegram group asked,’Are you shocked by the recent attacks on Asians?’, with 84% of the most responding as “just revenge against Corona 19”.
NCRI analyst Alex Goldenberg told NYT that “increased anti-Asian remarks online means an increased risk of actual events targeting them.”
It is analyzed that the false claims that China created and spread Corona 19 with biological weapons and the inflammatory comments of some politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have had a great influence on hatred toward Asians.
For example, on the day that Congressman Paul Gosa (Republic of Arizona) tweeted “Chinese virus” in March last year, the term “Chinese virus” exploded 650% on Twitter, and the next day it increased 800%.
According to media analysis company Signal Labs, since March of last year, a whopping 8 million cases of anti-Asian mentions, mostly false, have been posted online.
(Yonhap News/Photo = Getty Image Korea)