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Saying "This isn't racist because it is based off of a similar meme that originated in China" has big "I can't be racist when I say the N-word because I have a black friend." energy.
It's less that and more "ohh, it's fine when they say it, but when I say it, it's racist" which isn't reasonable in the first place for the n-word, but doubly so in this case since we know there's a lot of racism going around in the HK independence "movement."
Daily reminder HKs minimum wage is 1 dollar for servants and 5 dollars per hour for workers, they have the highest rent in the entire world yet some of the worst living conditions and historically have only had 49% of there parliment able to be elected, the other 51% is 8 western buisnessmen.
HK separtists advocate for the above because they are the lucky enough ones to be above the slave class and they want this relationship to continue, and for things to remain the same rather than for things to get better via intergation with china, which would give the HK working and underclass access to cheap housing via mainland China, who have 90% house ownership rate vs HKs like 17%.
Source;
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/1/not-enough-hong-kongs-low-paid-get-32-cent-minimum-wage-bump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_domestic_helpers_in_Hong_Kong
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Does that mean the entire Parliament in HK is just 15 people?
Nah, they basically split there highest democratic chamber into two, with one half being elected and the other half appointed unelected people to represent UK buisness interests, they have a majority over the elected half.
Also to clarify the small minority of the other half have more voting power than all of the other elected members, to effectively give them a majority.
HK has essentially been a autocratic imprealist state serving the bougie of HK and UK interests since it changed hands to the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_development_in_Hong_Kong#Under_British_rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Council_of_Hong_Kong
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As you can see here, they 'permitted' HK residents to elect half of the people in the chamber, with them (the UK) retaining control of the other half (while still retaining the deciding vote) and that China actually offers them full democracy, unconditionally.
The founding members of what is reffered too in HK as 'ExCo' (with the other chamber usually its 'LegCo')
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No, it's worse than that. It's "I can say the n-word because Black people say the n-word."
I challenged this notion with a lib the other day.
The watermelon originated in Africa. That doesn't mean that the vile caricaturised depictions of black people eating watermelons is somehow not inherently racist.
You can also look to the origin and continuing usage of the swastika, especially in Asian cultures, as another example here - you aren't going to tell me that the right-angled unicode swastika being used by westerners on the internet isn't done in service of fascism 99% of the time.
And on that matter, don't let erm-ackshually dorks tell you that the 90 degree swastika wasn't used by Nazis and isn't representative of them. One of the most famous depictions of the Nazi swastika is a right angled one:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1214749781387436032/pu/vid/450x360/o0Nxlts0lffM8lUv.mp4
It's got "Trump's mugshot will inspire POC to vote for him b/c they like criminals" energy.
I'm on hexbear so I can't see the downvotes lmao 🤣
I just see the overall score
This is why disabling downvotes is good. Make those cowards show themselves.
Racists who know enough not to talk openly shouldn't be able to passively influence discussion either.
I was somewhat against removing downvotes when we initially did that, but wow was I wrong. Terrible reddit-tier feature that needs to be trashed.
Don't worry! Downvotes are only for flagging content that doesn't belong here. It will never be used as an "I disagree" button.
This is also why we at Reddit don't have a report button, because the free marketplace of ideas will naturally sort out posts and comments that are appropriate. Wait, I'm receiving a new update, you DO HAVE A BUTTON TO REPO—
But then how will I feel my comrades hands on my shoulders telling me I made a good post?
Nothing quite like checking your profile and seeing a throwaway comment you made a few days ago have 50 upbears on it
mfw getting rid of downvotes but keeping upvotes is a half-measure
Honestly I've begun coming around to the idea specifically bc cracker liberals downvoting like punkasses instead of standing on their square and speaking what they believe with the whole chest
One of the places Lemmygrad should take a leaf from y'all's book
No, no guys, it’s cause Xi doesn’t wear pants and east honey all the time. SMH tankies make everything about race. They’ll even get angry when you compare the Asians to yellow charecters. Woke or go broke, ya know
for background info, the chinese government does not ban the actual associate of winnie pooh to xin unless it is used to promote racism contrary to the claim by the red fascist tankiejerkers, liberal sloganists, and the NATO-backed hong kong rioters by young students who never know about the period before the return of hong kong to chinese rule. The liberal sloganists justify the racist act on the claim that it is directed towards an oppressive dictator, but they cannot explain why they attack a 'tyrant' for their chinese ethnicity and appearance instead of their morality. For more suspicions, the winnie pooh association of Xi Ping in chinese hate crime propaganda are from people who contradict their hong kong independence slogan with return to british colonial rule and who believe that british immigrants are the only true 'hong kongers'.
These colonial worshipping kids have been kneeling so long that they've forgotten how to stand.
Their beloved 'prime minister' Churchill has quotes that wouldn't feel out of place in Hitler's collection:
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”
[the Pashuns] needs to “recognise the superiority of race”
“I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails. I don’t like the look of them or the smell of them — but I suppose it does no great harm to have a look at them.”
We shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them… as civilised nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China—I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.
The last one still rings true with the "just the government not the people" libs nowadays.
The last one is utterly jaw-dropping, not necessarily because I'm surprised Churchill said it, but how this sentiment has hardly suffered a dent in the contemporary "western" zeitgeist.
Replace a few words, trade "Aryan" for "European", "civilized" for "developed", and "barbaric" for "authoritarian"... boom, you've got a chart-topping WaPo OpEd.
it's also pure 100% undiluted projection.
nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations
the west is the one that's done all that and keeps doing it.
Reminds me of how white Americans say they "don't want to be a minority in their own country." It's guilty projection. They just assume anyone in their position would act as beastly as they have.
that is very interesting, the though that they internalized that though so much thay they are afraid other people are like then.
i saw a person saying once that most west science fiction is about alien invasion, beings from far away with technology beyond our comprehension to massacre us to steal our resources, they project themselves into their stories, the colonizing monster.
while soviet scifi the aliens are communists, they surpassed many contradictions from their society, them they go roaming the universe help other races in surpassing those contradictions.
Yep. The guilt is buried deep but it festers and finds its way back to the surface.
good to find a like minded person, i was just thinking something like that, that democracy x authoritarian is just rebranded colonial thinking, you paint a target in a country to justify intervening in it
After some scrathing you can also quite often hear the three previous too, maybe except the pigtails part.
It's the same as those homophobic memes of Putin in makeup or kissing Trump, "bigotry is fine if it's used against someone I don't like"
Exactly. Sometimes people will defend it with some supposed high-minded origin, like "it's not saying being gay is wrong, it's using trump's homophobia and insecurity against him and turning it into a vulnerability that we're using to trigger him". And maybe some of the people repeating it actually believe that, but the images don't come with a paragraph explaining the nuance. They're just supposed to be an easy shot at trump, you're supposed to laugh and keep scrolling. Most people liking or sharing them aren't thinking about it any more than "haha, he's owned cause he's gay".
You can spend all day convincing yourself that your specific way of thinking about it isn't racist/homophobic, but when you share this shit online all that stuff stays in your head, and you're just spreading bigotry.
Yeah, and even if they genuinely believe it, the message is still "gay = bad". They are either telling on their internalized bigotry or willfully ignoring the hurt it causes to the actual victims of that bigotry
And the same libs are the first to cry "reverse racism" when they hear even the slightest criticism of whiteness
It really falls apart any way you look at it, but some of them seem to believe they’re the one person who is immune to propaganda and has complete control over their biases and associations. Like, okay even if that’s true, what happens now that you shared it with people that aren’t as big-brained as you.
also depicting Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh isn't banned in China because it personally offended him and he's like a petty tyrant king. It's because misrepresenting the government is illegal and they take that seriously. Maybe from my stupid western perspective it's going a little too far, but also China wouldn't tolerate something like a Qanon movement, or orther wild ass conspiracy theories, so at least they have that going on.
How is a meme "misrepresenting the government" is someone going to look at the picture and think "yes, that's clearly literal, China is run by a anthropomorphic teddy bear from literature".
it's a blanket ban on anything that could be considered defamation or caricature of government officials. Like I said I actually think it's going too far, but I get the idea. It's to stop conspiracy theories and wild rumors before they start. Like I don't know, a person doesn't have to believe it's literal. A confused person could come to any weird conclusions like that Xi Jinping works for Disney or that he played Winnie the Pooh in a movie. I don't know the exact argument but it otherwise tracks with the ban on misrepresentation. Take it up with the Chinese state, not me, but it seems like something very minor to even care about. "I can't call the president a cartoon bear" yeah ok do something else with your time then, who gives a shit
You don't think not being able to mock and joke about your countries leadership is an issue?
Why does it have to be a binary? It's possible to have freedom of speech and a well run nation. In fact, of China are doing as well as you all seem to think, they have nothing to worry about with criticism or mockery since they can point at their record to disprove it.
Do you think China proving its accomplishments will make the CIA leave? Will building another hospital make the Falun Gong stop accepting money from foreign intelligence? Is this simply a question of winning hearts or is this a country trying to defend itself?
Does a country benefit from having a free press that makes shit up and acts as a vector for hostile foreign governments?
Why does it have to be a binary?
Because you just now framed it as me framing it as one? I'm just pointing out that the right to criticize is A) sometying they have in China and B) Not actually a useful tool for making change on it's own. We can complain all we want here about how our kids are hungry, but start actually feeding them, start taking real action and improving the lives of the impoverished, and the feds will straight up kill you like they did Hampton. In America, our "right to free speech" is a consolation prize for living in a giant human blender, and we are raised to think that the right to complain ineffectually about the blender is just as good as not living in one.
Well, that shit is allowed in the West and the West is garbage. Maybe living in an actual decentralized democratic country where you have actual influence is more important than being allowed to make memes?
There is a reason that Western leaders don't give a shit, and it's that they know any criticism or parody of them has no influence whatsoever.
Literally only a year since public outcry over Boris Johnsons behaviour saw him ousted as PM, then Liz Truss after him.
Leaders doing a good job don't feat parody as they can point at their record to disprove it, if China is a brilliant as you say, why can't they do similar?
Liz Truss replacing Boris Johnson is like replacing cyanide with arsenic. It's hardly anything to point to as an accomplishment.
And no matter how many accomplishments the CPC and Xi Jingping have, it seems like they're still under threat of external aggression and foreign misinformation campaigns. The ban on misinformation is a tactic to fight internal sabotage as much as it is a fight against the USA and Europe. Imperialist countries have been drooling for a way to instigate revolt in China for decades now and I'm gonna try to understand why they take such tactics.
I think being able to give serious criticism based on concrete claims is incomparably more important and that actually is allowed
Well I'm not Chinese, so I'm not gonna tell them how to run their country, but I can understand how widespread of a problem misinformation can be.
Personally as a desperate American if I had even a sliver of what people in China have, the better urban planning, the robust train system, the widespread home ownership, 40 years of rising wages, better healthcare system, etc. If I had all of that I'd agree to never speak again.
So you're asking the wrong person, I've got deeper priorities than what kind of jokes I'm allowed to make. A dozen members of my family died of covid, and in China they arrested people for nonsense conspiracy theories about covid, the same kind of misinformation that killed my family. That's where I'm coming from here..
I don't think freedom of speech and good public services need to be a binary. Many Scandinavian countries manage to have both.
In terms of misinformation, the answer isn't to ban speech, it's to have a better educated population who can recognise and not get fooled so easily. For what it's worth, we had people spreading Covid misinformation in the UK, I didn't lose one family or friend to it, so maybe the issue isn't the information itself?
Perhaps your individual situation is different? I'm American and also lost zero family members, though it fucked some of us up.
But I think it's a liberal brainworm to think protecting misinformation is important. It's a misunderstanding of how ideology works to think that simply being better-educated will solve the issue.
Yea America has pretty well proven that if you let people "do their own research" the majority of them are just going to believe bullshit that allows them to live their lives without confronting the consequences of their actions.
A bunch of people want to keep going out and getting their treats so they sought out information that confirmed their belief that they can do whatever they want and that makes them a good American and a free thinker.
Then a million people died
Thank God we have the freedom for half our country to refuse to wear a piece of cloth that could have saved people lives.
Unsure how better education will keep my relatives from consuming horse dewormer to prevent covid.
These people have university degrees. Post graduates even.
Do they need another ten years of schooling? Or do we need to stop the misinformation by force?
Clearly academic education doesn't mean common sense. Like I say, that misinformation was available in other countries, but people weren't doing it. Maybe it's a US issue rather than a misinformation issue?
The US has it particularly bad but no it's not just a US issue. It was an issue all over Europe too, I know plenty of people believing in nonsense related to Covid, educated people too. Look at how Austrians reacted when the government mandated vaccines.
Also what the fuck does "common sense" even mean? Clearly it's not that common, or there are competing "common senses". I'd rather have mine state-enforced because mine doesn't involve people dying of an easily preventable disease.
The "Xi got butthurt and banned all of Winnie the Pooh in China" thing is mind numbingly easy to disprove. Just search the phrase on literally any Chinese internet service. If they still spout that claim, they've obviously not done even one minute of research or fact checking and are so clearly just blindly regurgitating propaganda (which they also accuse people who support China of doing, funny how that works) that all of their opinions on China can be safely ignored.
You know what I did when I first heard that claim? I went straight to Baidu and searched up Winnie the Pooh, in English even, and surprise surprise it returned results like any other search engine. And this was when I was still a liberal who didn't like China.
An Imgur link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
"Yeah guys I'm totally not racist, I just think those dirty yellow ching-chongs are ugly and inferior to our superior white race and we should nuke all those subhumans to make way for more lebensraum for the white race !1!!1111!!1!111"
Anti-Asian Racism
A liberal once made an anti-CPC song with the lyrics "They say ching chang chong and oppress Hong Kong"
That sounds like something I would have found funny back when I was an idiot eleven-year-old.
Reminds me of a popular kindergarten birthday song in The Netherlands where you squint your eyes with your fingers and sing 'Hankipanki Shanghai, Hankipanki Shanghai, Hankipanki Hankipanki, Hankipanki Shanghai' to the tune of Happy Birthday To You.
It's not done anymore in most schools these days AFAIK but only since recently
Hey we can't expect that much of a country where they blackface once every year despite decades of black people asking them to stop
Can I offer you some Belgian chocolate [CW: disfigurement, discussions of racism] in these trying times?
Controversial product indeed. Doesn't help that the man who invented it, Mr. Hakker, would be called Chopper if translated to English as well.
IDK, if you want to see this eyesore just look up the "Chinese Censorship Song"
-burguer liberals using a dumb, fat foodie as an insult
-they don't see the irony
pottery
The image that was part of one of the communities in the shit just works Lemmy is just a straight up racial caricature and somehow people still defended it...
https://hexbear.net/comment/3884036
Yeah, it does, I'm just linking to show the evidence that's its just a racial caricature from the user Othello on hexbear. Not to say you shouldn't post the meme.
First they ban the letter N, now they ban the letter Z, soon there will be no letters left!
It had to be done when they continued to see N's all over the place when they read while lying down.
it's obviously racist but also Winnie the Pooh is a loveable and adorable bear and we should draw many memes of seething pink-wojak americoids losing their shit because a generous honey bear is improving the lives of his forest friends
lol he's FAT and STUPID too!!!! XD 🤣 😂
Peak liberal critique and humor.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/why-does-china-persecute-the-uyghur-muslims/
Did you read your own source? Where does it provide actual evidence for a genocide? It's primarily an anti-chinese think piece which claims that "up to one million" Uyghurs are in interment camps. It also makes sweeping claims about the intentions of the Chinese state, without ever actually providing any evidence for their claims (other than mentioning "leaked documents" which they interestingly never provide or link to).
Do you have any actual sources?
Would you trust any source that wasn't spoon fed to you by xi Jinping himself?
If you knew how to examine sources you'd know that is the originator of every single genocide claim against China. Absolutely hilarious when the same people who are the most enthusiastic to bring up the bogus accusations don't even know who their boy is. That is Adrian Zenz. He works for a fascist org. He says he was sent by god to destroy Beijing. He can not speak or read Chinese.
I actually can buddy. Not a native speaker, but picked up a degree in Mandarin while in college a decade ago. I struggle to hold full speed conversations about anything that isn't topically conversational, but that is a much higher level than Zenz has ever reached.
Really weird angle to go with here though. I'm not the source of any claims. My Mandarin proficiency doesn't matter. Adrian's does though, and he can't speak it as proven by his numerous and extremely basic mistranslations through the years.
i see you left with your tail between your legs rather than continue to get fed your own shit
pathetic.
A deep desire not to close trade with the Chinese capitalist party doesn't equate to a lack of belief. Also the reason they didn't find a massive weapon in Iraq is because you live outside of Iraq, you weapon.
Aye, sounds about right https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=weapon
Yes we know you're filthy anglo scum, your filthy anglo slang has no power here
from your link the latest dated entry:
Weapon
The epitome of sexy
That girl Kate is an absolute fucking weapon
by JOEFCKINGBLOGGS March 13, 2018
The cowards who've upvoted this but have not posted come out and answer for your
Xi Jinping is stupid
the chinese state is supposedly a ruthless machiavellian cunning genocidal dictatorial power structure but the guy who climbed to the top of it is dumb?
Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
I don’t use it at all, but I don’t particularly like the implication that it’s definitely racist in all contexts. It just feels reductive.
No, it is simply rascist in the context we are going to be using it. If we were posting on doyen in mandarin it woudl be diffrent. This is some reddit runoff we are filtering.
Tbf, most times I’ve seen it posted it’s by people who think they’re totally owning him and who would have done the exact same if it had been any other character. Is it racist in their understanding of China? Probably. Is it racist because Pooh is yellow? I honestly don’t think so, and it doesn’t seem to be vaguely relevant for those posters.
Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised to see 4chan and related sites use it like that, so I’m not saying it definitely doesn’t happen.
The image in the OP is about a banner picture on sh.itjust.works where Xi was literally colored yellow. It's not about the meme in general.
I'm pretty sure the original context was like "Hey this picture of two presidents walking kinda reminds me of this children's book. That's cool."
And the current context is "Xi Jinping is a dirty [slur slur slur] and he's yellow"
Rap music also started in the black community but that hasn't stopped white racists from using tropes and out of context snippets from rap music to attack black people.
Not exactly, because the meaning changed from "hey look Obama and Xi loojs kinda like this silly little picture of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger" to "the Chinese people yearn for freedom from this censorship-loving yellow man sure hope Xi gets angry about my crackkker posting".
It did, as a light-hearted joke comparing Xi and Obama walking side by side with a resembling image of Tiger and Pooh. Of course, westerners then proceeded to take it and turn it into their own distortion and elaborate some story about how China is banning Winnie the Pooh and that is why painting a chinese man yellow with photoshop is a sign of resistance against a government on the other side of the globe and totally not racist.
It resembles a lot the same thing that happened with that image that floated the internet around a few years ago of Putin photoshoped as a stereotypically and comically flamboyant homosexual man, which is totally not homophobic even if the punchline is "he's gay" because you can always make it up that the image is banned somewhere and thus is a sign of resistance and contains no reactionary sentiment behind.
I wouldn't really called the original "light hearted" since Obama was compared to character named literally "Tigger".
Tigger
I remember that meme showing up on r/blursedimages, and Le Aberage Redditors were absolutely making the connection.
I'm not really convinced that they would be making a reference like that that only works in English (and is a bit of stretch even then imo).
Well, as JucheBot noticed le average redditor instantly connected the dots so i would say it's purposeful by and for those kind of people. For all we know it might be made by some shit like Serpentza or some local colonized lib. Their numerous presence is confirmed even in China. Also i don't think i like the suggestion that Chinese don't know english.
Le average redditor is probably a native English speaker
Also i don't think i like the suggestion that Chinese don't know english.
"Knowing English" and "making subtle references that only work if everyone thinks of a cartoon character's English name" are very different things. I assume that most people seeing Tigger will think of whatever his name is in their native language, regardless of how many languages they speak. You generally don't cycle through different words in every language you know every time you see an image looking to find a pun.
It's possible but it's a really big stretch. It's definitely not the main thing to be criticizing when people are painting an Asian person's skin yellow.
Yea that one is pretty easy to connect the dots, I think it’s safe to say people from China, the most populous country on Earth, can be racist, just as any individual from any other country can be.
Yeah, there's a huge network of far-right media run by/targeting Chinese diaspora, some of which filters back into mainland China. It's how BLM got roughly translated into "black people are expensive" in chinese media.
But whether chinese people made that connection or not is irrelevent, this isn't about chinese people on wechat, it's about westerners on reddit who absolutely did make that connection.
I didn't catch that (in my language he's just called the name of the animal, translated). I am unsure if that was intentional or not, however.
Given that it was written by a British gentlemen in the past there is probably a bunch of rascism unintentionally at least.
Is that context crucial though?
It gets brought up every time its pointed out how this is rascist, and it doesn't make the use of this mene less rascist
It matters because this meme implies that it’s always racist. I don’t mean to say that it can’t be racist.
okay, but that distiction doesn't really seem that important. It seems to only be relevant if you're trying to provide cover for its rascist usage.I'm not saying that's what you're intending to do. Just pointing out how it gets used by people who want to claim its not used in a rascist way at all
Yeah and that meme had Obama as "tigger". Wonder why...
The meme starting in China doesn't mean much. Pretty sure Chinese people can make racist memes too.
Would you be comfortable calling Obama a tigger? You realize in a bar that would get you beat up right?
The original context for Xi being Pooh probably wasn't racist either, unless there's a similar connotation to yellow skin in Chinese culture. Therefore you could also dismiss the yellowface concerns because the original meme wasn't meant to be racist.
Of course we shouldn't do this, and instead accept that the meme is now racist because it's mainly used by Westerners who are well aware of the racist implications.
No, but there a good chance there is one drunk one that would.
Who's in Paris? It isn't for us to say
When you are talking about the hundred acre wood in a bar what do you call him? Tiao Tiao Hu?
I am not taking to the person who invented the meme. I am talking to you.
I don't wanna get all streamer about it but I think you could say numur in a gamer way
Yeah racists hate deniability, we all know they definitely don't love to play their little "teehee you're overreacting" games. OK sign anyone?
Yeah but they're not the ones who colored a Chinese man's skin yellow.
It's strange that this concern for context only ever goes in one direction. Symbolism, like words, develop meaning through their usage.
If I were to say that I ejaculated during intercourse with your wife last night, would you take that to be an insult or would you be dying on that same context hill that the verb to ejaculate used to refer to suddenly making a statement and that intercourse used to refer to having a discussion with someone?
Probably not.
Would you say that the swastika isn't a Nazi symbol because it originated in Indo-European religious and cultural symbology?
Maybe. I can't speak for you.
The origin of something doesn't determine its usage.
You dont even have to like Xi to think racism against Chinese using his face is bad. Its like respecting Ezra Miller's pronouns. It doesnt matter what you think of the person, bigotry isnt ok.
Also this post is literally defending racism with homophobia which is very big brain.
?
liberals are so good. So ignorant yet so confident
