Niall Ferguson gets it wrong on TikTok and drinking Coke
Right-wing historian Niall Ferguson has opined in his latest Bloomberg column (link below) that TikTok, a video sharing App, is a key weapon in a Chinese culture war with the US.
I’ll write more on the wider point.
In the piece he uses a couple of entertaining references to how such culture wars have worked in the past. They are similar to the way Eric Hobsbawm illustrated historical points with topical examples.
Hobsbawm’s examples were sharply drawn, Ferguson’s less so.
Perhaps the US culture Ferguson refers to did persuade French youth that the Red Army wasn’t the way forward. However the practical impact it had on the world was to inflict Johnny Hallyday on us:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Hallyday
Further as Ferguson must have noticed whether or not the French were drinking coke and enjoying US and UK soul and rock music it hasn’t stopped them protesting
In 1986, the French leftist philosopher and comrade-in-arms of Che Guevara, Jules Régis Debray, lamented, “There is more power in rock music, videos, blue jeans, fast food, news networks and TV satellites than in the entire Red Army.” The French Left sneered at “Coca-colonization.” But Parisians, too, drank Coke.
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