hey, I know this may be a stupid question to ask, but can you explain what makes the meme with "thing, japan" and "thing, china" racist? I don't know a lot about these topics, and I'm genuinely confused.
(for the record, I'm taiwanese, and we make similar jokes about our own balls-to-the-wall education system and strict parenting really often)
Idk if racist is the right word here
And for that post, it’s only understandable through a very specific American lens and context so don’t worry about being confused. We’re not talking about people actually from China or Taiwan or Japan criticizing and/or praising their own countries, but rather how westerners and American westerners specifically view Asia. As well as how the Pentagon is pushing another Cold War against China in the propaganda department, considering how sinophobia has intensified in the late 2010s/early 2020s in America. Anything which is Chinese is immediately discarded as “evil”, ie that stupid ‘China spy balloon’ hysteria which wouldn’t have occurred if it had been a Japanese weather balloon in American airspace. But the American media saw a chance for ratings, and they took it by running with the anti-China Cold War style rhetoric that’s been swirling around American culture for the last several years.
Racism is definitely a method in which the Pentagon uses to dehumanize whoever they’ve deemed our “enemies” (which is ofc based on the economic interests of the week), so as to coerce consent from the majority white American population. All of whom have been raised within the mortar shells left behind by segregation and slavery and the genocide of indigenous people, and therefore have a very warped perception about how it’s acceptable to treat people. This primes the American population for anger, which gives way to consent for war.
However. Like I said, China is a legitimate foe. Japan is not. ONE of the reasons Japan started the Second Sino-Japanese War was because in 1930 their population reached 50 million people, and Japan’s land mass can only support the food supply for up to 50 million people. And instead of being reliant on other nations, the Japanese Imperial Army decided to invade and colonize their neighbors. It worked for a minute, until America got involved. The United States had a lot more resources for weapons and machinery, while Japan was on the brink of an environmental catastrophe by the end of WW2 due to the amount of deforestation performed to provide supplies to troops. After the US committed a terrorist attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan pulled out of the war (which btw they surrendered bc the USSR was threatening to invade not bc of the nuclear bombs), in the terms of surrender America forced Japan to dissolve the military and give up its right to fight wars. While today Japan does still have somewhat of a military, it’s obviously nothing compared to the Japanese Imperial Army at its height. Many Japanese bases also share with American military bases as well, which I imagine was originally intended to keep eyes on each other. But since WW2, japan has sought to rehabilitate its image somewhat, and has continued to intensely attempt to align itself with the West. Japan is probably now the foremost American ally in the Asia Pacific region.
China however? They do not have a lack of agricultural land, like Japan does. They are much more autonomous and less dependent on other nations and international trade in general in order to feed its population. The numbers of those in poverty has been decreasing over the past several decades. Also, they’re the most populous country in the world. You best believe that scares the shit outta Washington, knowing that each American soldier could be outnumbered by multiple Chinese soldiers. In addition to communism being a direct threat to capitalist profits, this means that Washington has set its sights on China as the next “big bad” that they wanna take down, or at least suppress Chinese culture altogether so that the American people don’t look too closely at the social support systems in China and start demanding it for ourselves. As a result, even everyday trivial things in China are demonized, as a way to dehumanize Chinese people themselves. Both for war purposes, and for propaganda.
There’s also this tendency to infantilize Japan and Japanese people that I see amongst white westerners, which is specifically linked to Japan’s specific utilization of ‘soft power’ post WW2 as a part of the larger attempt to rehab its image in the international political arena. By investing in and promoting Japanese cultural products, it shifts public memory away from war and onto art, which makes it easier to forget that Japan was a colonial empire and still denies justice to the victims of its former empire.
Hope that made sense. Thanks for the ask xoxo
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e!false without her memories was nervous. paranoid. desperate for people to like her just so they wouldn’t try to kill her. she knows how to kill and is afraid of what that means. she tells herself to behave, she swears she’s good, she doesn’t want “what happened before” to happen again. she built a town with her own hands and maybe even started liking people instead of just keeping them happy to keep herself safe.
e!false with her memories is confident. she doesn’t really care what the other emperors or hermits think of her because she’ll use them or kill them either way. it’s nothing personal. she just gets the urge to kill sometimes. she built a secret room for her head collection. she’s killed enough to have a head collection. she still cares for her town, but everything outside it means nothing to her
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I’m so sick of hearing separate the art from the artist, when the art is a direct extension from the person your willfully choosing to ignore. Like, there is no separation from these two things that very much go together as one. And I feel like the saying is just a cop out to completely ignore valid discourse and issues with an artist where it probably is worth considering no longer consuming their art in a way that they still benefit from your consumption, or that the continued consumption contributes to the sterilization of their actions to where they aren’t serious and there’s never any accountability. I don’t know, I’m some cases, callouts are necessary for fucked up actions and behavior and out of the like 90% of times where people are trying to cancel artists for bullshit, the other 10% of times are for things that really deserve some level of address and fans engaging with that persons media should absolutely not write it off as nothing or something they don’t care about because it doesn’t directly effect them.
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finding it necessary to remind everyone that it's seasonal. i promise you it's seasonal. everyone i know is out of their minds right now in some way or another. it's seasonal.
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