The Danger of Propaganda, Media Suppression, and Vaccine Passports

On April 19, 2021, Kim Monson explores the dangerous parallels between historical propaganda tactics and modern media suppression with Dana Cheng of the Epoch Times, and examines the growing threat of vaccine passports with Act for America founder Brigitte Gabriel.

Communist Media Tactics and the Attack on Independent Press

Start listening at 16:06 – Hour 1

Dana Cheng, co-founder of the Epoch Times, details how the Chinese Communist Party attacked her organization’s Hong Kong printing presses just days before this broadcast. Four intruders armed with sledgehammers broke into the facility, smashing computers and destroying printing machinery in an assault that took a week to repair.

The Epoch Times and Apple Daily remain the only two media outlets in Hong Kong that refuse to follow the communist narrative. Apple Daily’s owner Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 14 months in jail. Cheng explains that the CCP views propaganda as one of its two key weapons for ruling, alongside military force, which is why independent voices face such brutal suppression.

Cheng warns that American big tech companies are increasingly behaving like communist media, employing the same tactics: lying and misleading people, deliberately dividing society by pitting groups against each other, and suppressing dissenting voices while amplifying their own narrative.

“Yes, big techs are behaving more and more like a communist corporation, unfortunately. Unfortunately. It controls media. It controls the voice.”

Dana Cheng, Co-Founder, Epoch Times

The Totalitarian Threat of Vaccine Passports

Start listening at 32:51 – Hour 1

Brigitte Gabriel, founder of Act for America, draws from her harrowing personal experience growing up in war-torn Lebanon to warn Americans about the dangers of vaccine passports. Born in what was once the only majority Christian country in the Middle East, Gabriel survived radical Islamist attacks that destroyed her home and forced her family to live in a bomb shelter for seven years.

Gabriel points to Israel as the current model for vaccine passport implementation, where employers can fire unvaccinated workers, children cannot attend school without vaccination, and pregnant women face restrictions. She emphasizes that what the Israeli government is doing to its population is unprecedented for a democratic country, and warns that similar measures are being tested for American implementation.

Drawing a chilling parallel to her Lebanese past, Gabriel recalls how religious identification on national IDs led to Christians being pulled from cars at checkpoints and executed. She argues that giving the government access to medical records through vaccine passports opens the door to similar discrimination based on any criteria the government chooses.

“We are literally now entering a totalitarian state where the government wants complete control over our lives, including putting injections into our body.”

Brigitte Gabriel, Founder, Act for America

China’s Growing Aggression and the Taiwan Question

Start listening at 22:00 – Hour 1

Cheng analyzes China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, sending aircraft to circle the island as a test of the Biden administration’s resolve. The CCP has never abandoned plans to take Taiwan by force, she explains, only restraining itself because of American military strength and the alliance of free nations including Japan and Australia.

Gabriel reveals that China and Iran recently signed a 25-year partnership agreement worth $400 billion, dwarfing the $180 billion the Obama administration sent to Iran. This partnership includes military training, weapons research, and intelligence sharing between the world’s largest communist regime and the largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Both guests express concern that the Biden administration’s perceived weakness has emboldened adversaries. Gabriel notes that Russia is massing troops on the Ukrainian border with no fear of American intervention, while Cheng observes that Biden’s policy of selective cooperation with China fundamentally misunderstands that you cannot negotiate in good faith with a communist regime that never keeps its agreements.