China has lashed out at Germany after its foreign minister called Xi Jinping a “dictator” and summoned Berlin’s ambassador for a dressing down, in the latest flaring of tensions with a western democratic power over how the Chinese leader is described overseas.

  • GreatGrapeApe@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    When you change the rules so you can hold office longer than permitted in an authoritarian country that is an appropriate label for the dictator.

  • quindraco
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    1 year ago

    Very noticeable that they didn’t specify how he wasn’t a dictator, nor what other label would be more appropriate.

      • quindraco
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        1 year ago

        I use a client that can block instances, so I have all of Hexbear blocked. It radically improves the Lemmy experience.

          • GoodEye8
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            1 year ago

            There’s differing opinions and then there’s just shittalking. When it comes to differing opinions most of Hexbear interactions deliberately (by the admission of their own users) fall under shittalking. They deliberately antagonize and troll anyone with a different opinion because in their mind anyone who doesn’t agree with them should be trolled. You don’t get differing opinions from Hexbear, you get a bastardization of a differing opinion. One that is different only on the basis them telling you you’re wrong, and in most cases even that has to be intuited.

            Nobody should wade through shit to get a few nuggets of gold which is why most people just block Hexbear.

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            Just because they blocked Hexbear doesn’t mean they block all the opinions they dislike.

            Hexbear is just full of radicals and trolls.

          • zooi@feddit.nl
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            1 year ago

            Have you ever bothered to read the rules of your instance? If I go on there and say anything negative about your cute dictator I’ll be banned. However, you can freely go on our greedy capitalist instances and praise your teddy bear as much as you want. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I guess your mind can’t comprehend being free.

            • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Do you mean the rule about not being Sinophobic? Is that really a hard rule for you to follow? I like to look at objective reality instead of just barking the same nonsensical shibboleths when the topic of China arises.

              • zooi@feddit.nl
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                1 year ago

                No capitalist apologia / anti-communism

                You would whine even harder if lemmy.ml had No communist apologia / anti-capitalism in their rules.

                • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Most anti-communism has no basis in reality and often are myths perpetuated by state agencies. All Anti-Capitalist sentiment is rooted in the material realities of our world and life. To deny socialist historical reality is to deny your own history, and ultimately is an admission of your disingenuous support of the truth.

                  Historical Materialism is truth seeking in practice. It requires you to have a fact based, objective view of our past and present.

                  Also I don’t know why I would whine, because I’m not using lemmy.ml. That instance can have whatever rules they want. I wouldn’t block or defederate from them because of it either. But if you are not interested in seeking the truth and objectively observing reality, then I guess you can insolate yourself from it and keep your echos.

      • randint
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        1 year ago

        Thankfully, OP is from an instance that has not federated with Hexbear. Hexbear users won’t be able to see this post.

        • spez@sh.itjust.works
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          But they have posted to .ml which is federated with hexbear. So the poster’s instance needs to be federated no the instance of the community where the post is?

          • MBM@lemmings.world
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            You need both. For a comment you even need the community instance, the poster instance, and the commenter instance to all be federated

    • LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
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      Because he was democratically elected in a transparent election. Unlike the current American demented imbecile.

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    1 year ago

    Whatcha gonna do, China? That’s right, nothing. Stay mad forever 😂

    • Łumało [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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      Haha, racism! I love that one!

      Whatcha gonna do, China? That’s right, nothing.

      What is there to do when you are already the one winning?

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Mocking a single individual is not racism.

        It may be bullying, but that is about it.

      • OldPain@lemmy.world
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        I’m an American so I can answer this question sincerely. When you are already the one winning, you work as hard as ever to keep winning. You innovate more. This is the American way. It’s why we’re the most advanced country on the planet, and it’s how we maintain that lead. Building off of the work of previous generations who made and did amazing things. That’s our approach and it works fucking awesome.

      • GreenMario
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        Xi is so fat he is his own race 🤣😂

              • GreenMario
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                动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门

      • OldPain@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well you can fuck right off! The same person *supposedly upset about the KKK just discriminated against 330,000,000 people from every country on Earth in the very next breath. You’re worse than racist.

  • krische@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We know a thing or two, because we’ve seen a thing or two

    • Germany, probably
    • Ooops@kbin.social
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      Hitler obviously wasn’t a dictator as he was democratically elected by a majority (after competing parties were banned) and then -just out of situational necessity of course- got a lot of extra powers to ignore laws and constitution.

      Yeah, I see how that Chinese definition works.

      • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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        Hitler obviously wasn’t a dictator as he was democratically elected by a majority (after competing parties were banned) and then -just out of situational necessity of course- got a lot of extra powers to ignore laws and constitution.

        wow, just like zelensky!

        history sure is wacky sometimes…

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          What extra powers did Zelensky give himself then that his predecessor did not have?

          • Pili@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            The power of staying in nice hotels around the world, racking a lot of cash while sending the poor people of his country to the meat grinder.

  • spez@sh.itjust.works
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    I love how every single comment making fun Xi the pooh here is getting downvoted lol

    • GreenMario
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      1 year ago

      Here’s a little something for the dictator simps:

    • OR3X
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      Gee, I wonder which group of users would do something like that…

      • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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        Probably the antiracists. You should wonder if you’re on the right side when you are promoting and supporting racism.

        • OR3X
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          LMAO! Racist? I didn’t know “dictator” was a race! Please, enlighten me.

          • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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            The Winnie the Pooh meme about Xi is just racism. I don’t care if you think he’s a dictator.

            • unphazed@lemmy.world
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              Not racist at all. It’s against one person. Trump’s face is seen on an orange all the time. No one is calling for racism. He just looks like a damn orange.

              • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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                Not racist at all. It’s against one person.

                So depicting Obama as a monkey in a political cartoon wouldn’t be racist?

                • intensely_human
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                  That would be racist, because of the whole monkey-black-people existing racial insult. In the same way, it is not racist to depict Xi as Winnie the Pooh since there is no “President Xis look like cartoon bears” racial insult.

                • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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                  1 year ago

                  If only Obama was depicted like that, yes.

                  But it is commonly used to depict black people in general.

                  While nobody uses Winnie the Pooh to depict Chinese people, only their dictator.

              • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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                There’s a big difference here.

                Is Trump’s skin naturally orange? Is there a long history of oppressing white people in the US and other NATO countries?

                Just because the Winnie the Pooh meme didn’t originate as a racist symbol doesn’t mean that it isn’t used to propagate racism and sinophobia.

                • eltimablo@kbin.social
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                  Just because the Winnie the Pooh meme isn’t actually racist doesn’t mean I’m not going to call it racist in a pathetic attempt to establish a fake moral high ground over people who have arguments I can’t counter

                  There, I fixed it for you.

                • unphazed@lemmy.world
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                  Xi isn’t in the US and his country isn’t part of NATO. Political cartoons are as old as time. They poke fun at the individual, not their descent. By trying to make it more you’re arguing for it to be censored. He has feelings (maybe), but he has gone so far as to attempt to censor the cartoon from his own country. Not because he believes it is racist, but because his opinion is that he doesn’t like it. Streisand Effect of course, it gets used more. I think Xi does remarkably look like Pooh. Do other Asian persons? No. There isn’t an innocence about it. Xi feels bad by it, people use it to make him angry. He is a dictator with lots of power so people use the one tool they have to attempt to fight that power - a fucking cartoon bear.

                • GBU_28
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                  What? Winnie the Pooh is from a British cartoon…Asian people aren’t described as “orange” by racists. I don’t think you know the origin of this meme

                  Please illustrate how a British cartoon character is a racist caricature of xi? Is Barack Obama a tiger?

            • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
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              The Taiwanese use the meme all the time. Obviously not because it looks like Xi in particular and especially because of fragile censoring, but because they like to be racist against themselves. That must be it.

              Calling Trump a guinea pig is probably also considered racist in lemmygrad.

                • randint
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                  The guy who replied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in your second screenshot seems like one of the far-right wingers. They do not, in any capacity, represent the general population.

              • LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
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                and especially because of fragile censoring

                You think these memes are censored? Lol, you live in an authoritarian shithole that brainwashes you with this stupid shit. Use your brain.

              • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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                Taiwan is where the former Republic of China retreated after being defeated by the People’s Republic of China. The censorship of Xi=Pooh in China isn’t rooted in racism, it’s rooted in the political conflicts between the ROC and PRC. China censors these comparisons because they are used by opponents to attack the government. You don’t have to agree with their methods to understand why they would want to do this. Censoring realistic threats to the ruling government is a common practice in all nations.

                The racist aspect originates from how the meme is used in Western circles where there is a long history of racism towards minorities and the enemies of the US as well as a long history of sinophobia.

                If your understanding of history, racism, and their opinions of Trump are so shallow, maybe lurking Lemmygrad to learn why users from this instance act so aggressively towards racism and war-mongering propaganda would be helpful.

                • GBU_28
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                  If being connected to a cartoon is a “realistic threat” then you have a shit government

              • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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                Dehumanizing people through racism is a well established method the US has historically used when manufacturing consent to go to war among its people. Look at depictions of Germans and Japanese in WWII. Look at depictions of Koreans, the Vietnamese, Afghans, and Iraqis during the invasions of their countries.

                Just because its origins weren’t racist doesn’t mean it hasn’t taken on a racist meaning. Sinophobia is rooted in racism and ignorance.

            • boredtortoise
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              Whoa whoa saying Chinese are yellow isn’t cool. Dat’s racist, with Pooh the color isn’t relevant

    • hackris@lemmy.ml
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      It’s definitely part communists, but I think mostly special interest groups, maybe even from China itself.

      • Łumało [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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        You really want to feel special enough to think the Chinese government would even care about this internet backwater? Get real.

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          Never heard of propaganda? It is like sand.

          It is course and rough, and it gets everywhere.

        • hackris@lemmy.ml
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          Altering public opinion is definitely on their agenda. I’m not the type of person that screams China bad on everything, but this simply wouldn’t surprise me. Also, nobody is trying to feel special here, except for you.

        • metallic_substance@lemmy.world
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          What a goddamned loser. Go sell your ignorant cultist bullshit somewhere else. Nobody here is buying it other than mindless idiots

  • TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com
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    Most dictators haven’t gone by that term, preferring instead some other executive role like chairman, supreme leader, or president. If Xi doesn’t want to be called a dictator, maybe China should start holding open elections, see how popular the CCP really is.

    • sevenapples@lemmygrad.ml
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      The CCP has higher approval rates than western governments and the vast majority of Chinese believe they are living in a democracy. This is confirmed by western studies; latest one I’ve seen was from Harvard.

    • Spzi
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      Most forced elections haven’t gone by that term, preferring instead some other description like people’s elections, free elections, or secured elections. Made up words but you get the idea.

    • MaggiWuerze@feddit.de
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      Most dictators haven’t gone by that term, preferring instead some other executive role like chairman, supreme leader, or president.

      Don’t forget Führer

    • clutch@lemmy.ml
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      Open elections when there is only one party in practice are moot

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    Dictators were never good at hearing the truth.