Really weird (/s) how quickly it went from a couple of Chinese tourists asking politely not be filmed to the guy embracing the racist Winnie the Pooh stereotype and talking about how oppressed Hong Kong and Taiwan are.

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    The Winnie the Pooh thing is just such nonsense to me. Even if we’re going to pretend that it’s banned in China and if you post it you get sent to an organ harvesting factory how in the fuck is it a valid form of protest while safely in the west? They aren’t even burning them in effigy. It’s just like the “ARE YOU TRIGGERED YET?” bullshit but for turbolibs. The bears are probably made in China. Fucking idiots.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      It’s not even a good caricature. You’re saying Xi Jinping is a very polite bear who eats honey and has lots of friends? Everyone loves Pooh, so the only comparison I can see is racist. They’d rather call Xi Jinping a bunch of slurs

      Libs all think they’re Charlie Chaplin dunking on Hitler, or like I don’t know…Dante putting all his political enemies in hell

    • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      It genuinely is the most brainwormed and pathetic thing. Worse than the ‘ok’ symbol thr right briefly popularized and then had the lubs freak out over.

      In a way it is sort of fascinating though as a sort of expression of zombie politics. It’s a sort of performative political act for in-group people and a countries where there is no real ideology in politics and they’ll never actually any kind of tyranical oppression.

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    i don’t know if it’s funny or depressing the way western media convinces rubes they’re “speaking to power” by soapboxing against state enemies in their own country.

    a) how is Xi affected by this action b) how are you at risk for this action

  • Magician [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Oh yeah, it was weird reading the comments on reddit-logo .

    Like people saying ‘fuck the ccp’ as though it meant something. Or that a few people asking not to be filmed represented the whole Chinese government.

    It’s terrifying that the US has a division of the military dedicated to killing people remotely with drones and such an easily manipulated population who would do so on Reddit in a heartbeat.

    • Teekeeus [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Chinese scientists and researchers are already starting to leave the west in significant numbers, and this trend is probably going to accelerate

      Western racism will help china deal with brain drain the same way their sanctions helped russia become more self sufficient

  • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    “From that Reddit post the other day”

    Wait we’re still using Reddit? I have no idea what the context is

  • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    Winnie the Pooh is now racist? I could have sworn it was just a jab at the Chinese president because he hates it.

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      haha chinese president is yellow animal because he’s totalitarian (i love my political system founded by slave owners which produces millions of homeless people; it is a paragon of freedom and efficiency)

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      It was originally Chinese people comparing Xi and Obama to the characters because of the way they walked. That’s fine. But then westerners decided to make it some protest symbol.

      Would you agree that political cartoons depicting Obama with big monkey ears and lips are racist even if political cartoons caricaturize all their subjects to the extreme?

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        If black people had made those cartoons originally it would just be black people doing something that’s ok among black people. For example it’s not particularly uncommon for black people to call black shoplifters a bunch of animals or apes or whatever. They’re not doing it racially they’re using it because they’re just calling them animals. Same shit I do about football hooligans wrecking the town.

        It completely changes context when it’s white people saying it.

    • coeliacmccarthy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      yeah xi lies awake at night seething over some fucking racist nerds on the other side of the planet memeing that he looks like an archaic cartoon bear

    • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      the original meme that was reportedly censored used a picture of Xi as Pooh and Obama as a character whose name rhymes with the N word

    • PeeOnYou [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 months ago

      i never actually got the connection before now… i just thought it was because he’s kinda chubby and pooh is a little bit dopey… didn’t realize the yellow thing at all… wow

      • Originally it was a meme about the way he and Obama looked while walking in a picture, and was innocuous. It began to be used as a way to refer to Xi Jinping in negative propaganda without directly putting his face on it and grew the racist connotations implicitly quickly after by new users of the meme, and the explicit usage with dog-whistled racism followed quickly thereafter with the excuse “we only do it because he doesn’t like it.”

        If I had to guess he didn’t care and maybe found it funny originally (if he even saw it early on) but using a caricature for politics instead of good critique is dumb and good to ban. And that’s all this was

        • Teekeeus [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          thinking about this stupid online phenomenon more generally, i dunno if westerners will ever realize that:

          1. nobody in china or russia gives a shit about winnie the pooh or putler memes

          2. posting such memes isn’t going to stop the relative decline of the west

          3. their own governments are much greater threats to their personal well-being than china or russia

          • I see it as a result of the way that imperialism gives Americans the feeling that whatever they do is influential because of the status given through imperialism. A hybrid which grows every time America announces that they will do something on the global stage and is received by vassals as god-given words.

            So, no, they won’t realize any of that until a significant shift in material circumstances allows for some class consciousness to grow, and that depends on Americans fighting to deepen and work out what that will look like.