Mbappe is memed as ‘the dictator’. He was asked by a journalist if he has seen the memes online and what he thinks of them. He said he likes the meme of his face photoshopped on an image of ‘I think, a Chinese dictator’, that he finds it funny.
What’s resulted is non-stop racial abuse on Chinese social media and annulment of contracts and sponsorships with the entire Spanish league. The government itself has condemned him. He apologized publicly for referring to Mao as a dictator and yet a lot of people online are just going whole hog on the racism.
Nationalism makes fools of us all, sadly
Even without any of the disgusting racial abuse hurled towards him, it’s a weird overreaction to what’s essentially a guy casually saying he enjoys the memes of him being depicted as Mao. It’s not like he was trying to publicly slander him. You’d think this would be important context in this whole thing, considering the average Westoid doesn’t know anything about Mao except for the usual clichés. I’ve seen popular figures say far worse things, with actual malicious intent behind them, and yet this is what makes them lose their shit.
Everyone would’ve literally forgotten about this interview within 5 seconds if they hadn’t decided to make such a fuss about it. Now it was boosted everywhere, and a boon for all the most annoying people I deal with to become even more insufferable than usual. This is not how you do soft power.
Yes! If anything, it was a borderline endearing comment by Mbappe, he didn’t even know who Mao was, he just found it funny that the biggest meme is his face on Mao.
Now it was boosted everywhere, and a boon for all the most annoying people I deal with to become even more insufferable than usual. This is not how you do soft power.
It’s really been blown out of proportion, and as you said, the worst people involved are fanning the flames while all official entities are providing it oxygen.
Terminally-online Chinese people suck too. Turn off the internet.
Tell that to the state as well as several corporations I guess, to log off?
Corpos should log off, yeah.
On the one hand, I understand Chinese people no longer giving the benefit to the doubt.
On the other hand, athletes are to singularly focused to expect good politics from.
Racism from Chinese people toward poc is considerably more common than people on here like to admit.
I had to stop using XHS after the auto-translation was added because of how Chinese people living in Australia kept describing first nations. Translation obviously isn’t one-to-one, but it was fucking vile.
Mountains of anti-Chinese sentiment in EVERY single part of western life and THIS is where Beijing and the nationalists decide to put their foot down?
Mbappe should’ve prefaced the joke by saying he got it from one of his white coplayers, guarantee he would’ve gotten more Chinese sponsorships
I don’t think the Chinese people should just accept that it is normal to refer to Mao as a dictator in Europe, the initial backlash shook the perception of many unknowing liberals which might be good. The fact that he apologised shows that is was an effective campaign, but after his apology there’s no reason to keep villainising him. Any racism against him is obviously completely unacceptable and gross.
Idk why their losing their marbles over a football player calling Mao a dictator. Mao being a “dictator” is the predominant narrative and like, he’s a fucking football player. Who’s expecting him to understand the material conditions of the early PRC? He didn’t even really say anything mean beyond just saying dictator, he liked the meme, what the fuck is this shit. Also he probably used the term dictator because that’s literally the fucking meme like good god this is some of the most terminally online shit I’ve seen in awhile, and I’M terminally online.
If we were talking about westerners you’d be right but we can’t expect PRC citizens who were taught about Mao being an important democratic leader in middle school to treat western anti-communism as a normal cultural difference
Fair, I’m not saying the systemic anti-communism is necessarily acceptable per se, but I feel this level of outpour is disproportionate. A football player said a lib thing, you can say it’s bad because it obv is, but resorting to racism and a condemnation from the PRC itself just seems like a lot for a little. Esp since I hear much worse drivel get spoken about Chairman Mao and the PRC from people of more importance and I don’t see outright condemnations from the government for those(I, granted, may have missed those so correct me if I’m wrong).
I agree, it seems disproportionate
What would’ve Mao done? I think he would’ve shot everyone involved in this
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Comments like “there is no structural racism in China” getting upbeared by this many dumb yanks whove never done one bit of research into the conditions of racial minorities in China or how they feel abt the subject are a good reminder to never take anything most of u say too seriously
Not a yank, but sure
Yankism is a state of mind. Also, we dont know if u upbeared ur own comment or not
What structural racism? Xinjiang?
So there is structural racism in China? Where can I read about it?
Structural racism is a fairly ambiguous and nonsensical term being used here
Also, if the government actually wanted to put a stop to the racism why wouldn’t they do anything to censor the racism, why not invite Mbappe for a state visit, why egg on the racists for a fairly innocuous comment by making him an example?
why wouldn’t they do anything to censor the racism
Can you provide examples in China of racism in media? Whether it be state or private media.
I did say they should be stricter about racism, unfortunately many Chinese netizens also spend time in western social media where they absorb those forms of racism.
He’s talking about Chinese social media platforms like Xiaohongshu. You’ll often see nationalists coming out of the woodworks whenever something controversial regarding Indians or Black people is in the news, and then the comments are full of the kind of blatant racism you’d expect to see on Twitter.
That was kinda my point, that you won’t find the racism in legacy media that we’re used to. Sure, they should increase efforts to eliminate racism in social media too, I agree, but it’s kinda what I meant, that they do have a policy of censoring racism, at least in the broader legacy media
I’m not sure why you want to make it about legacy media though. I don’t see how that’s relevant to someone pointing out racist comments on social media. You don’t always have to look for ways to try and defend something that deserves legitimate criticism.
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I didn’t see the original comment but evidently
why should china let slide a vile characterization of their national heroes?
they shouldn’t but they also shouldn’t be racist
What’s the vile characterization?
That he’s a dictator. I get Chinese citizens being a bit miffed but the state shouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.
obviously i don’t condone racist abuse on- or offline. that’s not what this is about.
i just watched this documentary yesterday so call this recency bias or whatever. china identifies
thean ultimate cause of the soviet collapse as the “historical nihilism” brought on when your country starts propagandizing against itself. in this view, when khrushchev viciously slandered stalin, he essentially made it taboo to support one of the heroes of the revolution, or at least easy not to support him. soon it became taboo to support the revolution itself. in 1991 the party didn’t bother to stop the dissolution of the soviet union, despite the fact that it was against both the ussr’s own law and the will of the people. it was the worst time in living memory to be eastern european. so i totally understand why chinese officials do not tolerate mao slander from their brand representatives.I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
My issue with it is that everyone around the world learns western history, whether that be my parents in SWANA, or my friends who studied in Peru, China, Rwanda, Tanzania as children.
It must feel like such a slap in the face to have to learn about an English king’s marriage from the 1500’s and all that other arbitrarily useless stuff to learn about a completely different country, while the citizens of those countries don’t even know your country’s “founding fathers” or how your government works or even how day to day life is in your country.
I know he’s an athlete and he’s given the dumb pass, but this is probably an overreaction from the years of ignorance westerners have presented about China while speaking to a public forum.
He was replying to a meme about himself being called a dictator, what the fuck do you want him to say? ‘I really like the picture of my face overlaid on Mao’s, but I must correct you because while Mao was the dictator of the proletariat, he was a democratically elected leader of the peasant revolution in China’ like jesus crhist. This overreaction is because he’s black and an easy target. If it had been any other white star, they’d have rolled out a rehab course for them, not given meat to teir racists
are there examples you can give of this “rehab course” for white western celebrities?
There’s nothing embarrassing about making some dude lose money and forcing him to bend the knee. China should begin doing to Western celebrities and stars what they have been doing to Taiwanese celebrities and stars for a while now: force them to toe the party line using access to their domestic market as leverage. The next step is to use this economic leverage on state leaders.
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