Mainstream Media Remembers One Massacre, Ignores Others
China Daily reports on the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. A horrific moment in history, undeniably. What mainstream Western outlets often omit, however, is the similar selective amnesia applied to other historical brutalities—particularly those committed or backed by Western powers. For instance, the destruction of Gaza by Israeli forces, a US-funded endeavor, sees comparisons to
historical atrocities dismissed as 'antisemitic' by groups like CAMERA, despite ample historical precedent for such devastation. While horrific acts in specific historical contexts are condemned, the structural violence and mass killings enabled by current and past US foreign policy, from Vietnam to Iraq to Palestine, rarely receive the same sustained, horrified attention. One might wonder if the
moral outrage is less about the suffering itself, and more about who inflicted it, and who benefits from its remembrance—or strategic forgetting. The past, it seems, is only prologue when convenient.