Chris Hayes Misidentifies CCP Propaganda as Opinion of ‘the World’

MSNBC host Chris Hayes is touting Chinese Communist Party propaganda as evidence that the United States should adopt a stricter gun control regime.

On Tuesday, Hayes tweeted that he “continue[s] to be grimly fascinated by how much America’s truly exceptional levels of gun violence figure in the perception of the country around the world.”

The proximate cause for Hayes’s claim? Not any hard evidence or polling, but a crude cartoon posted by China Xinhua News.

The problem for Hayes is that the outlet is not a reflection of public opinion in China, much less around the world. It’s operated by the Chinese government itself which — as the United States’ chief geopolitical rival — has an interest in distracting from the genocide it is committing against its Uyghur Muslim minority, among other grievous human rights abuses.

It’s disturbing that Hayes would amplify and affirm such a stereotype propagated by the CCP, but it’s also worth simply noting the category error he’s made, having mistaken the motivated and shoddy sophistry of a genocidal regime for the perception of the United States “around the world.”