The most tarnished legacy of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be his introduction to U.S. foreign policy the racist dogma of the Christian Reconstructionist/Dominionist Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which, along with its sister Presbyterian denominations – the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARPC) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) – are rife with warnings of a “yellow peril” endangering Western Christian “civilization.”
This racialist dogma was proffered by the leading fanatic Presbyterian Orthodox Reconstructionist theologian, Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony. A founder of the far-right Chalcedon Foundation, a proponent of Christian Dominionism, Rushdoony and fundamentalist Presbyterian disciples like Pompeo argue that, as stated by Rushdoony, “all non-Christian knowledge is sinful, invalid nonsense. The only valid knowledge that non-Christians possess is ‘stolen’ from ‘Christian-theistic’ sources.” Rushdoony also believed, quite erroneously, that the U.S. Constitution was “designed to perpetuate a Christian order.” To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution emphatically separated church from state, a notion that has evaded the likes of Pompeo and others who pervaded the Donald Trump administration from its inception to its demise.
Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States got its start during the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the mid-1800s when Chinese laborers were imported into the western part of the country. Anti-Chinese laws were introduced by the Federal government—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 being the most notorious—and the states, most notably, California.
Christian Dominionist racist views about the “yellow peril” gained increased currency after the 1899-1901 Boxer Rebellion in China. The “Boxers” were anti-Christian and anti-Western Chinese nationalists whose intent was to drive Westerners, including Christian missionaries and diplomats, from China. News that the Boxers had killed Christian missionaries and their families began to be published in Western newspapers, giving rise to anti-Chinese anger and a belief that “yellow hordes” would sweep from Asia to conquer North America, Europe, and Australia.
Even The New York Times of August 2, 1900 played into such “yellow peril” fears. It referred to China as a “monstrum horrendum” (a horrible monster), a “decrepit old Flowery Kingdom,” that might bring about an Armageddon for the Western powers, which, intriguingly, then included Japan as part of the “armies of Christendom.” Japan has always posed a problem for “yellow peril” believers, be they far-right Christian Reconstructionists like Pompeo, Rushdoony, Rushdoony confederates Gary North, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, Peter Leithart, and Ray Sutton, or the former officials of the apartheid regime of South Africa. In the case of the South Africans and their racial segregation policy, Japanese were deemed “honorary whites” in order to inoculate them from the anti-Asian tenets of the South African Dutch Reformed Church.
During the Japanese invasion of China in the years prior to World War II, China’s Lobby in the United States, backed by missionaries and big business, shifted the “yellow peril” mantra over to the Japanese. These pro-China interests convinced Americans that the Chinese Nationalist General, Chiang Kai-shek, a convert to the Methodist religion, was the salvation for China and the leader that would vanquish, on behalf of the Western Christian powers, both the Japanese and the Chinese Communists. Soon, the China Lobby was convincing the U.S. government to provide military assistance to China even before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. officially declared war on Japan. During the war, Japanese were pictured on U.S. propaganda posters with unflattering racial imagery and as brutal occupiers. When President Harry S. Truman ordered two atomic bombs to be dropped on Japanese cities, there was hardly an outcry in the United States, where Japanese-American citizens remained interned until after the Japanese surrender.
After World War II and the coming to power of Mao Zedong and his Communist Party in China, the China Lobby was transformed into the “Formosa Lobby,” a powerful conservative political bloc that ensured U.S. military and diplomatic support for Chiang Kai-shek’s exiled Nationalist government on the island of Taiwan. The Formosa/Taiwan/China Lobby was funded by Chiang Kai-shek’s political party, the Kuomintang, through his billionaire brother-in-law, T.V. Soong. The lobby had the strong support of far-right groups like the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby, and the Young Americans for Freedom.
As Japanese economic power grew during the 1970s and 1980s and as the People’s Republic of China emerged as a major industrialized nation, the Christian Dominionists, represented by the likes of Rushdoony and others, began lumping together Japan, China, emergent economic powers South Korea and Taiwan, North Vietnam (which had, essentially, militarily defeated the United States in the Vietnam War), and the hermit nation of North Korea as all part of a “new yellow peril” that endangered Western Christendom.
Just as the Christian Dominionists sided with the Japanese against the waning Chinese Empire and, later, Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese imperialists, today we are witnessing neo-Dominionists like Pompeo siding with a bizarre coalition of Chinese exiles and fundamentalist Christian “yellow peril” believers against the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. On July 23, 2020, Pompeo announced the ending of what he called America’s “blind engagement” with the government of the People’s Republic of China. Christian Dominionism scored a major victory.
Pompeo’s attitude toward China has not stopped him and other “yellow peril” enthusiasts from forming an anti-Beijing coalition with the Falun Gong, a fascist-oriented Buddhist-Taoist cult with reported links to the Central Intelligence Agency, and its right-wing and pro-Trump media outlets, including The Epoch Times newspaper and Epoch Media Group, which advance various far-right conspiracy theories. Falun Gong is also allied with the Unification Church of its late Korean founder, Sun Myung Moon, and exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wen Gui, also known as Guo Haoyu, Miles Guo, and Miles Kwok. Guo has supported the efforts of former Trump chief political strategist Steve Bannon and his efforts to create a Fascist International, of which it is hoped that Guo’s proposed “New Federal State of China,” designed to replace the People’s Republic of China, would become an active supporter. Guo’s G News and GTV Media, which he operates with Bannon, is believed to have links with Falun Gong’s media operations, including New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television and the Unification Church-owned and Moon family-run “Washington Times” and United Press International.
Guo lives in Manhattan, where NTD Television is based. Falun Gong’s leader, Li Hongzhi, lives in the Dragon Springs compound in Deerpark, New York, an hour’s drive from Manhattan. Trump’s purge at the Voice of America (VOA) and other U.S. government broadcasters has ensured that problematic propaganda from GTV Media and NTD Television pervades VOA’s and Radio Free Asia’s Chinese language broadcasts. The Guo-Li-Moon alliance also includes pro-independence forces in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and the Xinjiang-Uighur region of western China.
Pompeo’s “yellow peril” Dominionist agenda has been successfully shopped by his State Department to countries around the world. Today, political parties around the world are being co-opted by a Dominionist-led campaign advancing the canard that the People’s Republic of China poses a “peril” (derived from the original “yellow peril”) to Western civilization. The lobbied political parties of the far right, center-right, center-left, and left that have taken the Falun Gong-Bannon-GTV Media-Unification Church bait include the Radical Civic Union, Republican Proposal, and Civic Coalition ARI of Argentina; the Australian Greens; the National Party and Liberal Party of Australia; the Social Democratic Party and The Greens of Austria; the Austrian People’s Party; New Flemish Alliance of Belgium; Socialist Party Differently of Belgium; Vlaams Belang of Belgium; Christian Democratic and Flemish Party of Belgium; Green Party of Belgium; Conservative Party of Canada; Liberal Party of Canada; Bloc Québécois of Canada; Green Party of Canada; Republican Party of Chile; Christian and Democratic Union (KDU-ČSL) of Czechia; Civic Democratic Party of Czechia; Czech Social Democratic Party; Czech Green Party; Czech Pirate Party; Danish People’s Party; The Alternative of Denmark; Red-Green Alliance of Denmark; Conservative People’s Party of Denmark; Socialist People’s Party of Denmark; Pro Patria and Res Publica Union of Estonia; Finnish Green League; Center Party of Finland; Finnish Left Alliance; Finnish Social Democratic Party; Swedish People’s Party of Finland; Regions and Peoples with Solidarity of France; Democratic Movement of France; La République en marche (LREM) of France; Radical Party of France; Alternative for Germany (AfD); Christian Democratic Union of Germany; German Social Democratic Party; Christian Social Union of Bavaria; German Free Democratic Party; Politics Can Be Different party of Hungary; Hungarian Momentum Movement; Democratic Party of Indonesia; National Mandate Party of Indonesia; Fianna Fáil of Ireland; Social Democrats of Ireland; Irish Solidarity–People Before Profit party; Irish Green Party; Likud Party of Israel; Zehut Party of Israel; Meimad Party of Israel; Israeli Green Party; Forza Italia of Italy; Lega Nord of Italy; Italia Viva of Italy; Italian Radical Party; Five Star Movement of Italy; Cambiamo! of Italy; Italian Democratic Party; Brothers of Italy; Liberal Democratic Party of Japan; Japan’s Nippon Kaigi, Democratic Party of Japan; Latvian National Alliance; Latvian Unity; Latvia’s First Party/Latvian Way; Latvian Association of Regions; Lithuanian Freedom Party; Lithuanian Homeland Union; New Zealand Labor Party; ACT New Zealand; Netherlands Forum for Democracy; Socialist Party of the Netherlands; Denk (Turkish) Party of the Netherlands; People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy of the Netherlands; Conservative Party of Norway; Polish Civic Platform; Polish Law and Justice; Polish Union of European Democrats; National Liberal Party of Romania; Ordinary People Party of Slovakia; Freedom and Solidarity Party of Slovakia; Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party; Vox Party of Spain; Spanish Popular Party; Més per Mallorca; Swedish Moderate Party; Swedish Christian Democrats; Sweden Democrats; Swedish Left Party; Swedish Social Democratic Party; Swiss Christian Democratic People’s Party; Swiss Green Party; Swiss Social Democratic Party; Swiss People’s Party; Swiss Liberal Green Party; Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan; UK Conservative Party; UK Labor Party; Green Party of England and Wales; Plaid Cymru of Wales; Voluntad Popular (VP) of Venezuela; and the Republican and Democratic Parties of the United States.
While it comes as no surprise that the far-right parties would support the efforts of a “Yellow Peril” neo-fascist alliance embracing a military showdown with the government of China, the fact that parties of the center-right, center, center-left, and left would support such a fascist contrivance is both shameful and ignorant in the highest degree.
This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
