this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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I'm almost sure I won't get a serious answer but how is a joke about a specific person racist? It's not about stereotypes, just similarity to a cartoon figure. I live in Europe and my head of state looks like Mr Burns (he really does). Is that racism against white people? What is the difference?
You should be staying humble, because there is A LONG and storied history of hatred and violence against chinese people and anti-asian (which includes poles & russians) hate in general in germany. The fact that you don't think using a yellow-skinned bear as a caricature for an chinese person isnt is evidence for societal normalization of anti-asianism and Orientalism.
The difference is calling an Asian person yellow has a long and very racist precedent. It would be akin to saying Obama looks like Curious George because A) he fucking doesn’t and neither does Xi look like Winnie and B) there are similarly obvious racial connotations between saying a black man looks like a monkey and that an Asian man looks like a literally yellow character.
When I think Winnie the Pooh I think round face much more than yellow. Yellow is a very common color in cartoons. You can't deny that. If that was the only reason, there's a whole pool to chose from.
Comparing black people with non human monkeys plays on the historical "scientific racism" that puts white people on the top and black people somewhere close to apes and Asians somewhere in between (depending on political affiliations). Nowhere in history has anyone put Asians close to bears. Even if the motivation is skin color (which I cannot disprove), the comparison to black people as monkeys falls flat.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/21791130
It doesn't matter what you think. It what it's received as. Also check out the first instance of the meme which has 💯 racist connotations. The one with xi and Obama compared to Winnie and.. ? To which racial slur does the other character sound similar to?
From what I found, Obama was compared to T*gger. Sure, I see the rhyme and I'm sure it doesn't matter what I think but I think this is far fetched. Other leaders were compared to other figures in the franchise. If you try to find something, you will. source
Also, this seams to be huge within China. Chinese people mocking their leader and the state censors it. And when people mock their leader, I side with the people, not the leader.
Racist dog whistles tend to sound like they are far fetched. They also have plausible deniability built into them e.g. the OK sign, pepe the frog memes, etc
Fact is: whenever you see some "anti-authoritrian" post the Winnie meme only to "criticize the CCP [sic]" you get a fuck ton of sinophobic comments from western libs below it and the OP never distancing themselves from it and often times doing it themselves too
This at least makes sense. I never encountered it so I'm still not convinced. Can you link some?
Also, this gives me "critiquing Israel is antisemitism" vibes. Might be a false tho. I think it's important to question all power and all states and I would never be offended when someone mocks my head of state (who does not only look like Burns but resembles him in other ways too)
Just go on Reddit or yt or anywhere you see the Winnie meme posted.
When youd "critique Israel" using an octopus or a cartoon character with a large nose, etc. it would be antisemitic tho
Sure and I agree, but using a racist dog whistle is not mocking. Regardless of head of state. And in this specific instance it's mostly western liberals doing so, being also running dogs for the western imperial project
John Oliver said so, which means it's true.
Oh yes, this is the kind of reaction I expected from the start. Thank others that they proved me wrong.
People pointing out that a claim has no basis or evidence is proving it wrong
my understanding is that China's population is largely satisfied with their government, and I can understand that since I've seen nothing but endless improvements year over year for the last ten years now, despite constant "china's about to collapse" and other actually insane propaganda about China so yeah pardon me for thinking you should back up your claim that "calling xi jinping winnie the poo is huge in china (even though the GOVERNMENT will KILL YOU FOR IT)"
how many citizens in how many countries do you know readily mock their leaders when shit is going good, and what would you think would motivate them to do so?
I'm not talking "shit is going good" like in America for the last XX years where "the economy" is "doing well" but wages are stagnant and costs for basic goods and services inflate exponentially year over year, I'm talking "the government planned on insane infrastructure investments that would take 5 years but actually got it done in 3, now you can go across the country in 4 hours on a high speed train, 90%+ of the country owns a home, and wages and real benefits are increasing exponentially at the same pace you see their depreciation in western countries"
which like no fucking shit, they actually plan for the future (which western countries have literally used as propaganda i.e. 15 years ago the "ghost city" bullshit where they alleged China built fake cities to juice their GDP. Surprise 10 years later people fucking live in them!) and aren't beholden to the golden principle of "nothing can happen unless it makes the already ultra rich ultra richer"
anyway, going back to you backing up your claim that "it seems huge" in China to "mock Xi Jinping" as being Winnie the Pooh, yeah, you wanna do that? Or are you just a bloviating piece of shit shit-lib two steps away from becoming a fascist?
Every single anarchist.
Can confirm
Let's just face the fact that we are too far away to convince each other. If you don't belief that censorship is real and people fight back, none of my sources would ever convince you. I came here to understand, not to convince or be convinced
You have not proven that there are people "fighting back" against the CPC. They have over 90% support from the people. The "Winnie" joke is far more popular in the west, not only because anti-China sentiment is higher in the west but for the reasoning given by others regarding its racist undertones.
And I specifically said I'm not going to. I'm not going to spend energy to research a point just to give y'all the opportunity to reject my sources anyway. I know what to expect from an online discussion and what not and this is an agree to disagree situation. I see now how it can be read as racist which I didn't get before and that's more than I expected from this.
If you are unable to reinforce said claim with a source, you should not be making said claim.
Surely that's more of a reason to research approval rates in China, no? One of the biggest tools of western imperialism is manufacturing the idea that the CPC is an iron dictatorship, and that the people yearn for freedom from them. The fact that the opposite is the case is certainly important, no?
You came here to bullshit
cool story
Thanks
Yeah what the hell was that person thinking, asking you to show any evidence for the garbage that you spew without any regard for accuracy
You are literally in the meme. You're the racist liberal.
Please leave and don't come back.
Oh, don't worry. I usually stay away from .ml and I'm reminded about why that is. This time I wanted to know something and it makes a little more sense than before so thanks to everyone included in this conversation
You stay away from .ml because you have dogshit opinions and dislike being told that your opinions are dogshit
Nerd ass.
If you want to be treated with respect, behave in a way deserving of respect.
If you want to be treated with respect, don't use ingroup language with outsiders
What ingroup language? Asking you to cite a source? Do communists have a monopoly on facts now? (I mean yes we do but I didn't expect a liberal to be the one to say it)
You can't just throw an emoji on people popular on your instance and expect people to understand the reference is what I'm saying. I mean, I know citations are in brackets and I even know the podcast but I still didn't make the connection
You base this on....?
I'll try to provide a serious answer.
The difference is the long racist history of refering to Asian people as yellow skinned, phrases like "yellow peril" describing fears of Asian immigrants, so it's not a stretch to see how depicting a Chinese man with cartoonishly yellow skin is racist as fuck.
It would be like depicting a black politician as a monkey, it's difficult to defend something like that as just a joke against a specific person when there's such a racist connotation/history there.