It is no accident that the opponents of racism are also often the opponents of war. That's because war causes racism, racism causes war, and warmongers have the moral character of the most violent racists.
Anti-Asian hate crimes in New York City rose by well over three hundred percent, in December. In San Francisco, they rose by over five hundred percent. Such attacks are taking place after Donald "the China virus" Trump left office.
Is this a random occurrence, or could it be tied to the that hate-filled rhetoric against China - or, to use the preferred term - "the Chinese"? Could it be the work of those who want us to believe we live on the verge of some great and imbecilic call to arms for the nation? 1914, repeated as farce?
Jingoism and violence
The endless, riotous war talk against "the Chinese" and "the Russians", portraying people's nationality as an inherently negative feature, deliberately peddled by politicians in the US and the UK, whips up paranoia and hate. Ironically, it will engender bigotry towards Eastern European people as much as the Russians, and towards Pacific Islanders as much as the Chinese.
Jingoistic hate speech, protected by things like parliamentary privilege in the UK, is typical of political discourse one might expect a hundred years ago. Skeletons are crying out to us to shut up and learn something from the past.
The disease of warmongering
If the purpose of democracy is to elect moral representatives, it has proven to be an ineffective filter in the US and UK, instead collecting some of the most vile specimens who can be summoned in human form. Those we flatter as "hawks" are better characterised as boils on the flesh of humanity.
Many of the warmongers in the US Senate and Congress have stocks in American defence contractors and are essentially war profiteers. Those who don't, yet still pursue the militarist rhetoric of interference and domination in foreign conflicts, are more contemptible. They, for the sake of the flaws of their own narcissistic personalities, perpetuate suffering and prejudice for nothing more than personal glory and machismo.