The Republican-led US House of Representatives commenced “China Week” this week, pushing scores and scores of bills comprehensively targeting American relations with China. The bills passed included a ban on DJI drones, a potential closure of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices in the United States, restrictions on Chinese-made electric batteries, a ban on US federal cooperation on biotechnology with China, further restrictions on Confucius Institutes, congressional vetoes over US-China scientific agreements, investing money to push “negative publicity” against China overseas, and a ban on Chinese buying US agricultural land.

Amid all this, the Congress members pushing the bills demonstrated a poisonous mix of extreme hysteria and overt ignorance pertaining to China. DJI drones were labeled, without evidence, “communist spy drones”, absurdist propaganda was pushed about Confucius Institutes claiming that these Chinese language classes “steal military intelligence and intellectual property” among numerous other things.

The common denominator is that not one of these accusations is even remotely based on fact and all rely on an appeal to extreme fearmongering and the lowest common denominator. It is reminiscent of McCarthyism.

There are a few things we should understand. First of all, American politics is not known for its appeal to facts, reason or balanced argument, quite the opposite. US political discourse is premised on extreme, theatrical dramatization of everything, trading in the overt weaponization of fear, mass hysteria and intentional smear campaigns.

It does not matter what the truth is, as the culture of such a system is about creating smears and exaggerations which are aimed to stick, in order to discredit, undermine and attack, creating make-believe stories the public buy into. Hence on a partisan level, American politics is now more aggressive than ever before and covert campaigns are waged by both parties to destroy the political reputations of their opponents by all means possible.

On a foreign policy level, the US actively cultivates mass paranoia among the population to manufacture consent for its foreign policy goals. American democracy and freedom is always deemed to be under threat in every way possible by adversaries that are described as all encompassing, all powerful and all knowing, using every avenue they can to undermine the US system in what is described as a mad Hollywood conspiracy. Hence whatever the policy machine decides is “the threat” becomes subject to such stories, such as for example Saddam Hussein and his “weapons of mass destruction”, “Russian interference”, the “threat” from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), and now, China.

I can only express great regret about the abhorrent institution the US Congress has become; and in such a climate, it is going to be impossible to stabilize the relationship between the US and China because there are simply too many people committed to pushing for a cold war at all costs

But this narrative, while a product of mass hysteria, is deliberately cultivated by cynical politicians who weaponize it in the direction they seek in order to further their objectives. Behind the opportunistic and often baseless accusation of labeling everything from China as spy-related, usually lies geopolitical, strategic and economic goals. For one, the US has deliberately over the past few years weaponized the guise of “national security” to eliminate Chinese technologies and products they deem to be competitors, the most obvious example being Huawei 5G.

No matter what the facts are, the discourse of anti-communism and the unproven accusation of spying becomes the conclusion in every case. Hence, Chinese investors aren’t buying American land so they can export agricultural goods back home, they are doing it to “spy”, and the accusation goes on. Fear is deliberately designed to cultivate market exclusion, and if national security does not fit the production, the discourse of human rights is used instead. The mass media machine then depicts these claims as factual “concerns” as if there is not a cynical, opportunistic goal behind it.

Hence in reality the US is completely committed to trying to rewrite global supply chains in its favor, contain China’s rise in high-end technologies and weaponize fear to block educational and cultural engagement. After all, the premise of Chinese language institutes engaging in “spying” is not just absurd, it’s outright ridiculous.

Yet in America, this is what passes, because US politics is now engulfed by “post-truth culture”; people do not follow facts or reasoned arguments, they follow emotions and believe what they want to believe about those they dislike. Hence in such a world, the Republicans are controlled by Russia, and China has also infiltrated everything simultaneously.

In conclusion, I can only express great regret about the abhorrent institution the US Congress has become; and in such a climate, it is going to be impossible to stabilize the relationship between the US and China because there are simply too many people committed to pushing for a cold war at all costs.

The author is a British political and international-relations analyst.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.