curator’s Statement: American Peril
President Trump first referred to COVID-19 as “Chinese virus” in a Twitter post on March 16, 2020. In the year that followed, Trump and other conservative pundits continued labeling the virus as “Kung Flu” or “Wuhan Virus,” meanwhile anti-Asian hate crimes spiked over 400% from pre-pandemic levels. Since March 2020 over 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents have been documented by the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center, ranging from verbal assault to violent attacks. The mounting violence directed against Asian elders has reached a fever pitch, and most recently the Atlanta area shootings demonstrate a clear and present danger to Asian American women and all persons of Asian descent.
Rhetoric becomes propaganda when it is knowingly used with malicious intent. Donald Trump proved time and time again that he understood the impact of his words. As a candidate, Trump offered to pay the legal bills of supporters who beat up opposition members at his campaign rallies. As President, Trump exacerbated racial violence in his unwillingness to disavow white supremacy. During his presidency, Trump actively spread misinformation about the virus to deflect blame from his own failure to lead the American public through this unprecedented crisis.
Although he has now left office, the conservative media narrative inspired by Trump continues to scapegoat immigrant communities. What is perhaps unique to the current situation is how Chinese disease scapegoating rhetoric has transcended discourse and led to the creation of physical propaganda, which in turn has led to violence. A cursory search of Ebay reveals dozens of online retailers selling “China virus” merchandise such as t-shirts, bumper stickers, and window decals. A few choice examples of the slogans being used are, “China lied, people died,” “COVID-19 Made in China,” “Coronavirus China’s #1 Export,” and “Even the End of the World Was Made in China.”
Given the current climate of anti-Asian hate, we decided to bring back the American Peril exhibit on the history of anti-Asian racial propaganda for a special virtual engagement with Twelve Gates Arts.
The original exhibit held at Twelve Gates Arts in November 2018 spanned nearly 150 years and included sections on the Chinese Exclusion Era, US imperial conquest in the Pacific, WWII anti-Japanese Propaganda, 1970s-1990s Japan-bashing, and post-9/11 Islamophobia. Our intent was to educate contemporary audiences about the long and interconnected history of xenophobic bigotry that subsequent generations of Asian immigrants and their descendants have faced in this country.
In a second phase of the American Peril exhibit that showed at Philadelphia City Hall in February-March 2020, our goal was to more intentionally connect these ideas to the present. The second phase titled, “American Peril: Faces of the Enemy” was expanded to include a series of portrait photograph produced by film programmer Sunny Huang and shot by Philadelphia-based photographer Justin Chiu. Chiu’s series juxtaposes individuals who have been targets of racial propaganda with exhibit artifacts to highlight the impact of propaganda on members of the Philadelphia community. Little did we know how relevant this project would become, as the spike in anti-Asian violence began concurrently with this phase of the exhibit.
I hope that this virtual exhibit will be useful in some way to the millions of fellow AAPIs who are suffering the implications of this latest wave of anti-Asian violence amidst the COVID-19 backlash, so that we may learn from our collective past and strategize ways to overcome these tools of oppression in the future. I also hope that this can be used as a resource to educate AAPIs and other BIPOC communities about our shared histories so that we may continue working together towards our collective liberation.
Rob Buscher is a film and media specialist based in philadelphia.
Rob Buscher is a film and media specialist, educator, arts administrator, and published author who has worked in non-profit arts organizations for over a decade. As a person of biracial Japanese American heritage who is deeply involved in his community, Rob also has an expertise in cultural sensitivity training, community organizing, and advocacy issues related to the Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
Robʼs expertise is Japanese and AAPI Diasporic Cinema although he has worked as a professional film programmer, critic, and lecturer across a variety of fields. Some of his career highlights include growing Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival into an internationally recognized leader in the film festival circuit, developing the Japanese Cinema and Asian American Studies curriculum at Arcadia University, and co-founding Zipangu Fest - the United Kingdomʼs first Japanese Film Festival. Rob currently lectures at University of Pennsylvania, and is a contributing writer at Pacific Citizen and Gidra Magazine.