How China’s ultra-loyal, nationalist web users silence Beijing’s critics

 Among their targets are celebrities, scientists, feminists and public figures, who can suffer censorship, blacklisting or loss of income

Chinese virologist Zhang Wenhong, is among a slew of recent high-profile targets in a campaign by nationalist web users to harass anyone they deem critical of China’s government and pressure officials and websites to censor them. They say Zhang undermined Beijing’s Covid-zero strategy by suggesting that China must learn to live with the virus. Internet users dug up his 20-year-old thesis and accused him of plagiarism. His alma mater, Fudan University in Shanghai, later said the allegation was false.

Zhang’s case shows the widening scope of China’s keyboard nationalists who scour the web for posts or individuals they deem unpatriotic or subject to foreign influence. Among their targets are celebrities, scientists, feminists and public figures, who can suffer censorship, blacklisting or loss of income. Frequently, the irate netizens are backed by government agencies that endorse the extra-judicial shaming.

“To some extent it is a cyber-Cultural Revolution — mass mobilization, abusive language, ‘conviction’ by the mob without any proper evidence or logic, canceling people’s right to speech just because they have been labeled by the mob as bad guys,” said Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor at the school of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. But there’s also a commercial interest: “Many nationalistic social media accounts gain traffic by participating in these kinds of attacks.”…