How did the word for a canned meat product become the basis for describing China's most recent attempts to spread disinformation and foment discord in America?
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By way of the Vikings, of course.
This requires an explanation.
In 1937, Geo. A. Hormel & Co. (now Hormel Foods Corp.) began selling a 25-cent concoction consisting of precooked pork shoulder, ham, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar and sodium nitrite, dubbing it Spam, apparently short for spicy ham. It was popular during World War I and the Great Depression as an inexpensive and versatile time-saver, not requiring refrigeration.
During World War II, Hormel shipped over 100 million pounds of Spam to feed American troops overseas, and as a result, Uncle Sam became known as Uncle Spam. Spam is still popular, with Hormel having sold more than 8 billion boxes of it over the past 87 years, now in 44 countries around the world.
Canned spam meat displayed in a market. Spam became popular and famous during wartime and is popular all over the world.
And the Vikings?
Here's the scene: Mrs. Bun and her husband are at a greasy spoon, the Green Midget Café, for breakfast. Every menu item includes Spam as a key ingredient. Here's a sample: egg and spam; Spam, bacon, sausages and spam; and Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam. You get the idea.
Even though Mr. Bun loves Spam, Mrs. Bun can't stand it and so asks for a spam-free dish, much to the waitress's disgust.
The Vikings in the cafe interrupt by singing loudly about their love of spam, repeating the word over and over: Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam. Nice spam! Wonderful spam! Spam, Spa-aaa-am. Spam, Spa-aaa-am, Spam. Nice spam! Spam, spam, spam, spam!
This is the famous Monty Python sketch from 1970, which may have been inspired by the ubiquity of spam during rationing in the United Kingdom after World War II.
From Spam Boxes to the Cons of Spam
Fast forward to 1993, when Richard Depew, administrator of Usenet, a network of Internet newsgroups, inadvertently posted the same message 200 times in a newsgroup. This gaffe was quickly labeled spam, based on this Monty Python sketch. By 2023, almost half of all emails in the world were spam.
In 2023, almost half of all emails in the world were spam.
Today, the Chinese, including using artificial intelligence and social media accounts on X, TikTok, YouTube, Medium and dozens of other forums, websites and social media platforms, are focused on the election presidential election to disenchant voters, portraying America as full of societal problems. dysfunction. Many messages support Donald Trump: Trump's anti-hero status makes him invincible and Trump is indicted again: America's dark day.
What to call it? Spamouflage a portmanteau mixing spam and camouflage (from the French to camouflage, to disguise).
Is Xi Jinping behind this proliferation of spam, a campaign that began in 2017, but has more recently focused on our presidential election? Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 40 employees of China's Ministry of Public Security's 912 Special Projects Task Force for their involvement in this malign influence campaign. According to the indictment, it is coordinated from Beijing and implemented in offices across China.
This explains how the Chinese president ended up having breakfast with the Vikings, at least virtually.
