Rupert Murdoch-Owned Press Calls for Quad To Support a Coup Against Xi

Sept. 22, 2021 (EIRNS)—Anglophile Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper on Sept. 17 called on the Quad to pursue a coup against Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, RT reported prominently today in an article by Damian Wilson, which has been picked up by press worldwide. The article essentially repeated the demand for a coup against Xi put out by NATO’s Atlantic Council on Jan. 28, 2021, in a declaration called “The Longer Telegram: Toward an American China Strategy.” Thus it is striking that London’s Chatham House, also today, published a call to bring down Russia’s President Vladimir Putin using charges of vote fraud against his right-wing opponent Alexey Navalny’s supporters—also a pillar of the “Longer Telegram” strategy.

RT’s story is headlined, “Overthrow Xi? Hostility towards China Is on the Rise, but the Aussies’ Extraordinary Demand for a Coup Is a Step Too Far.” Damian Wilson is a U.K. journalist, former editor for Fleet Street/City of London publications, financial industry consultant, and political communications special adviser in the U.K. and the EU. He asserts that anyone who has ever worked for the Murdoch press, as he has, knows “nothing big goes to print without the boss’s final okay, particularly where the political or business interests of his global media empire are concerned.” Therefore, Wilson argues, the article was published with Murdoch’s approval.

Wilson writes that Paul Monk, the author of The Australian’s Sept. 17 article “China Is the Main Game, and Removing Xi Is How To Play It,” suggests that the only way to avoid a devastating conflict with China is to remove President Xi, and suggesting it should be on the agenda at the Sept. 24 Quad conference at the White House, with Australia, United States, India and Japan, “described as Asia’s NATO,” writes Wilson. He quotes Monk as writing: “Xi needs to be removed from power and a broad path to democratic reform opened up at long last in China. The Communist Party must make the shift to democratic rule that Taiwan and South Korea made from the late 1980s. The Quad should openly call for such a transition.”

Wilson points out that Monk paraphrases former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is now president of the Asia Society, in an Aug. 6 article for the CFR’s Foreign Affairs, that “the Quad ... can provide a rallying point for all those concerned about Xi’s jingoism and arrogance. Warming to his topic, Monk declares, ‘Xi must go, and with him the reactionary dictatorship and hubris he espouses. This must be our stance. It must be the stance of the Quad. It must be the mantra of all those seeking a peaceful, prosperous future for Asia and the world.’ ”