• cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 days ago

      https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xi-jinping-winnie-the-pooh-comparisons

      About

      Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh Comparisons refer to memes comparing the Chinese President and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping to the Disney character Winnie the Pooh. Originally spread by Internet users in China to mock the president, the meme saw wider recognition among the Western users after Winnie the Pooh was blacklisted by the Chinese censorship authorities in July 2017, which produced the Streisand Effect.

      Origin
      On June 8th, 2013, the Chinese President Xi Jinping and the United States President Barack Obama met at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California, with a photograph of them walking together and smiling made by an unknown photographer (shown below, left).[1] Before June 10th, 2013, Chinese social network Weibo user badtuzizi made a meme in which the two presidents were compared to an image of the Disney characters Winnie the Pooh and Tigger walking in a similar fashion (shown below, right). The Winnie the Pooh and Tigger artwork was drawn specifically for the meme

      You’re right, small correction, it was Weibo not WeChat

      • Sop
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        2 days ago

        The meme, as used by westerners, is a racist caricature regardless of its origin. Jewish people also used to make caricatures about themselves as inside joke, nazi’s appropriating those caricatures was and is still racist regardless of the origin of the caricatures.

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          Sorry but goverment leaders are not a protected class, regardless of their ethnicity. The pooh meme is not about the Chinese, but specifically about Xi.

          • Sop
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            2 days ago

            That’s irrelevant. If a nonjewish person draws a antisemitic caricature of Netanyahu it’s still racist and offensive to all jewish people.

            • OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              Yeah, because antisemitism is a form of racism. But you could still draw a characture of him without relying on racist tropes.

              I’ve never once seen Chinese people in general compared to Winnie the Pooh. Just Xi personally. Are you trying to argue that making a characture of a person in a different ethnic group from you is automatically racist?

              • TheAlbatross
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                2 days ago

                I’ve absolutely seen shitstains find out someone is Chinese then start posting or replying to them with Winnie the Pooh content or memes. I bet the original joke was meant to be specific, but when I see people use it in response to someone talking about China or being Chinese in general, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

                Like, Pepe the frog wasn’t intended to be an image associated with bigotry and the artist themselves has denounced it full-throatedly. That doesn’t mean it isn’t used as a dog whistle for racists.

                Shitty people are gonna be shitty, I realize, but I think broad sweeping generalizations in either direction aren’t useful.

              • Sop
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                2 days ago

                The yellow skin is the racist trope. And there might be other tropes there that I’m personally not aware of.

          • Sop
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            2 days ago

            Nowhere did I state that. In the context that white people have a history of dehumanising Chinese people through yellow caricatures it is pretty suspect that white people are jumping at the chance to joke about a Chinese person looking like a yellow bear, often while they repeat US state propaganda about China.