TikTok and Israel

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

20 Mar 2024

Image - Anson Chan for the Intercept

The TikTok social media platform is an indicator of U.S. imperialist angst and an incentive for greed. First China was a political target and now Zionists are on the attack in an effort to suppress information about Israel’s war crimes. Of course stealing this profitable company is also a goal of U.S. capitalism.

“We want Congress to tell TikTok that their time is up. We’re done with the lies the platform spreads about the Jewish people and Israel.”
The Jewish Federations of North America

The TikTok social media platform is used by millions of people in the United States and all over the world. Most often they share videos of their families or their pets or their latest dance steps. Sometimes they share political opinions about the news of the day, and therein lies the latest ginned up panic over TikTok.

The reasons that most people access TikTok seem rather harmless but TikTok’s corporate owner, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing, China, a fact which makes the company a political and economic target. China hatred was originally the purview of the right wing of the Republican Party, whose representatives engage in endless screeds about the Chinese Communist Party, which ironically doesn’t even exist. There is a Communist Party of China, but incorrectly stating the name appears to be an important element in the politically motivated theatrics.

On March 23, 2023 TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew endured five hours of testimony before a congressional committee. The pretext for the hearing was concern about data privacy and accusations that TikTok is some sort of outlier in gathering personal information about users. The concern is a legitimate one for every platform but congress doesn’t act to protect consumers from social media, news platforms, or the U.S. government, and all of these entities have troves of data on every man, woman, and child without exception.

The attack on Chinese tech is a futile effort to diminish that nation’s economic prowess and political power. The claim may be made that the government of China is accessing our data or that TikTok causes children and teens to take part in dangerous activity but the goal as always is to destroy U.S. competition. Donald Trump began the war on Chinese technology by severely limiting Huawei’s ability to operate in the U.S. and then proceeded to bully its European puppet states into doing the same thing.

Attacking TikTok for alleged Chinese government influence is now old news. The latest anti-TikTok witch hunt is all about Israel. It is the pro-Israel lobby which admits as much. In a leaked phone call, Anti Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is heard saying, “We really have a TikTok problem in the U.S.”

Indeed they do. Thanks to social media, millions of people know that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. They know that the Israeli Defense Forces blow up hospitals and universities and bomb civilian homes and target journalists for assassination and withhold supplies of food and medicine. Thanks to social media, the corporate media blackout is far less effective than it would be otherwise and so are the pro-Israeli statements and actions of the Biden administration and congress.

Now that interested parties are no longer restricted in their access to information about the U.S./Israeli genocide, the attack on TikTok began anew. On March 13, 2024 the House of Representatives voted by a margin of 352 - 65 to force ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operation within six months or lose access to the American market. The Senate has yet to act but Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the legislation.

U.S. imperialism, racist China hatred and Zionism have combined to create the theft of a multi-billion company. No sooner had congress voted than Steve Mnuchin, who served as Secretary of the Treasury in the Trump administration, announced that he will put together an investment group to buy TikTok.

The Biden administration faces crises on multiple fronts as it is losing the anti-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, but continues to ask congress for billions of dollars in the lost effort. They have now made the U.S. and its ally Israel reviled domestically and internationally. They cannot control the narrative and are instigating a wider conflict in the Middle East. Millions of voters, even some who supported Biden in 2020, are refusing to vote for “Genocide Joe” on election day.

Of course there are ways out of these messes but none of them allow the U.S. to continue trying to dominate the world and to make enemies of anyone who stands in the way. They spin stories about parachuting aid or that building a fake pier controlled by Israel will end the suffering of the people of Gaza. They are so desperate they have even shoved Benjamin Netanyahu under a rhetorical bus to defend themselves after giving a green light to an invasion of Rafah, the last refuge for 2 million people. No one believes them any more and as always more overreach is seen as the only solution.

Unless ByteDance calls America’s bluff and shuts down its operations in this country, someone will get rich, but the people will be worse off with one less independent source of information. That outcome is what we should expect from a greedy state, bent on domination. Surrender or be destroyed is the U.S. motto with TikTok and with most of humanity.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at [email protected].