It’s always click bait, but sometimes* it’s based on real problems that could lead to those things. Let’s take three examples because I like to piss off sycophants everywhere:

1. CHINA’S ECONOMY WILL COLLAPSE WITHIN FIVE TO TEN YEARS BECAUSE OF THE EVIL COMMUNIST REGIME AND NOTHING CAN SAVE IT.

Gordon Chang is a racist far-right white supremacist that uses this supposed Chinese ancestry to doomsay about China, and has done for literally decades. He has always been wrong. Every single prediction he has ever made. Every single one has been proven wrong. He has not ever had a single thing he has ever published come true.

Despite this, he is one of the US Media’s foremost experts on China, having been featured by every single major media outlet for the last nearly 30 years. Nearly every single story you have ever read on ‘China’s imminent economic collapse,’ or ‘The Chinese Stock market just collapsed,’ or ‘China’s economy is a paper dragon,’ or ‘China just ended their real estate market,’ or ‘China has five years left to kowtow to western demands before it collapses,’ is based on his work, as well as a select group of others that claim to be experts on China, have published work on China for decades, and have never once gotten a single prediction correct at any point in their careers.

Why is this narrative being pushed so hard and why does half of lemmy (and easily 70+% of western audiences) still fall for it day after day, year after year, despite the link I used being TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD?

Well one, racism, but two, if western media allows the concept that another way of life could work, and is working better than the current status quo, those that benefit from the current status quo might lose something. So hundreds of billions are spent every single year making sure that headlines from people like this keep coming. Constantly. And no one is allowed to question why or point out that their predictions have always failed to come true and are based on nothing more than the ‘feeling’ that communist rule leads to failure and suffering.

2. JAPAN’S POPULATION IS COLLAPSING AND SOON GLORIOUS NIPPON WILL HAVE TO HAVE FOREIGNERS!!11!!!

This is real. This is real data. Japan’s population has declined every single census for two decades now. The average age of Japanese citizens is only going up, and it is going up exponentially quickly, suggesting it is not just a lack of new births, but also a lack of resources to keep younger people alive longer. Thought honestly, I repeat myself.

Now why does it get so much news coverage, especially in the west?

2a. Japan is what a lot of racists want the west to be. As a far-right ethnostate dedicated to profit and social order above all other possible concerns, it is a blueprint for how a lot of western fascists want the west to be. Similar to Israel. So if it is failing, then that means that ideology might be a failure – liberals who do not want fascism like pointing this out, and point out the ‘solution’ is immigration and more open borders which solves the totally random and not at all concerning declining birth rate. Which ignores the roots of the problem.

2b. Racism. Japan is failing not because of its socioeconomic system or politics; but because the japanese cannot handle the superior white idealized socioeconomic system; and clearly white men need to come in and save the Japanese from themselves, both through ‘marriage’ and through taking over the government. Don’t worry, it’s not miscegenation if it’s white people doing it.

3. THE UK IS COLLAPSING AND IT’S THE IMMIGRANTS FAULT.

The UK is collapsing. Literally. Its economy cannot survive the next ten years on its current trajectory, as reasonably predicted by people who were against Brexit.

But it’s not because of immigrants. It’s just capitalism again. And it’s being blamed on immigrants because of racism.