• DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
    10416·
    10 个月前

    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.

    • AmarkuntheGatherer@lemmygrad.ml
      564·
      10 个月前

      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.”

      • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
        601·
        10 个月前

        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

          • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
            34·
            10 个月前

            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

            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’)

    • ReadFanon@lemmygrad.ml
      381·
      10 个月前

      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

      • Dkarma@lemmy.world
        411·
        10 个月前

        “The watermelon originated in Africa. That doesn’t mean that the vile caricaturised depictions of black people eating watermelons is somehow not inherently racist.”

        That’s not what is happening here tho. You can’t claim that every cartoon where a black person interacted with a watermelon is racist.

        Just like here you can’t claim it just cuz the character is yellow it is racist.

        Pooh is used cuz dude looks like Pooh… Not cuz he’s yellow. The fact that Pooh is yellow too doesn’t suddenly make it racist.

  • sinovictorchan@lemmygrad.ml
    6310·
    10 个月前

    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’.

    • Eat_Yo_Vegetables69@lemmygrad.ml
      672·
      10 个月前

      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.

      • SovereignState@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        53·
        10 个月前

        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.

        • huf [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          40·
          10 个月前

          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.

          • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
            18·
            10 个月前

            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.

            • olgas_husband@lemmygrad.ml
              11·
              10 个月前

              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.

        • olgas_husband@lemmygrad.ml
          8·
          10 个月前

          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

    • mayo_cider [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      511·
      10 个月前

      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”

      • crosswind [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        39·
        10 个月前

        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.

        • mayo_cider [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          26·
          10 个月前

          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

          • crosswind [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            19·
            10 个月前

            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.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      471·
      10 个月前

      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.

    • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      463·
      10 个月前

      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.

  • big_spoon@lemmygrad.ml
    545·
    10 个月前

    -burguer liberals using a dumb, fat foodie as an insult

    -they don’t see the irony

    pottery

  • commiespammer@lemmygrad.ml
    5911·
    10 个月前

    “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”

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      15·
      10 个月前

      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

  • Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee
    406·
    10 个月前

    I always thought it was because xi Jinping is a fat fucking moron who actually looks like whinny the Pooh’s genocidal twin. It never occurred to me that it might be a race thing.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    343·
    10 个月前

    Huh, never even thought about him being yellow, I always thought the joke was he was fat and stubby (and I guess oh-so-cuddly)?

    Plus it’s not a good meme so much as he Streisand Effect’d the shit out of it. Like, the shiiiiit out of it…

    • smollittlefrog@lemdro.idEnglish
      822·
      10 个月前

      It’s not deliberate

      Your point is mentioned by the meme.

      (But I disagree with the meme. Saying you are not allowed to satirically compare asians with characters that happen to be yellow is a problematic statement in itself.)

      • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
        161·
        10 个月前

        Except that centuries ago the Europeans decided to start the Yellow Peril campaign to strip Asians of their humanity by calling them the ‘yellow danger’, which still has its effects today. Other than being a yellow bear there is nothing noteworthy comparing Xi to Winnie. Do better. Would it be okay for you to satirically compare black people with characters that ‘happen to be black’?

        • 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠@programming.dev
          48·
          10 个月前

          The comparison stems from the general physique and perceived mannerisms that supposedly match between the two. I’m not sure the colour was an original part of the meme anyway. The origin was that image of Xi and Obama walking alongside each other, with the drawing of Pooh and Tigger to show how similar of an image it was. Xi was not coloured yellow in those earlier images, that started after the CCP cracked down on those memes.

          • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
            121·
            10 个月前

            The origins of the meme may very well be harmless. It started on Chinese social media AFAIK. Westerners going on a run with the meme is what made it problematic.

      • randomname01@feddit.nl
        39·
        10 个月前

        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.

        • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          401·
          10 个月前

          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.

          • randomname01@feddit.nl
            24·
            10 个月前

            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.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      582·
      10 个月前

      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”

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      531·
      10 个月前

      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.

    • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      505·
      10 个月前

      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”.

      • randomname01@feddit.nl
        28·
        10 个月前

        It matters because this meme implies that it’s always racist. I don’t mean to say that it can’t be racist.

        • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          61·
          10 个月前

          shrug-outta-hecks 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

    • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      4911·
      10 个月前

      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.

        • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
          26·
          10 个月前

          Tigger

          I remember that meme showing up on r/blursedimages, and Le Aberage Redditors were absolutely making the connection.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
            192·
            10 个月前

            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.

            • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              15·
              10 个月前

              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.

        • ButtigiegMineralMap@lemmygrad.ml
          22·
          10 个月前

          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.

          • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.netEnglish
            20·
            10 个月前

            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.

        • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          213·
          10 个月前

          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.

    • ReadFanon@lemmygrad.ml
      271·
      10 个月前

      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.

  • z00s@lemmy.world
    174·
    10 个月前

    So then it’s also racist to compare Obama to Tig…

    Never mind.

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
    122·
    10 个月前

    On a note outside of the racism discussion, I don’t think Winnie the Pooh is yellow. He’s not orange like Tigger but he’s definitely not yellow like Rabbit.

  • wahming@lemmy.world
    2212·
    10 个月前

    Chinese here. Thanks everybody for fighting racism on my behalf. I’d just like to point out that I’ve never considered, or met any other Chinese person who considered, the Xinnie meme racist.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      244·
      10 个月前

      And I know Indians who don’t think swastikas are racist. Doesn’t mean racists don’t use symbols and images as a trojan horse for racism.