Well, the analogy might in fact be better than I thought: suspicion was initially cast at the Dutch and French since there were recent real wars with these countries (never mind “soft” combat like blocking investigations etc).

As an aside, I’m not taking a side in “blame” on China. I’m really only talking about the public opinion side of things. The cause of the fire was found through an investigation, and had nothing to do with the mob “crowdsourced” sleuthing. And the mob kept changing its mind as to who is to blame.

Sounds to me a lot like NYTimes saying one time “of course it’s not China you bigoted racist” to “ooh questions are being asked and it’s suspicious we don’t have answers” without any real change in available evidence.