Populists and nationalists spread anti-Muslim and anti-feminist messages, but also the Communist Party line
At the start of the 2016 US election campaign, Fang Kecheng, a former journalist for the liberal-leaning Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly and then a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, began verifying Donald Trump’s statements about refugees and Muslims on Chinese social media, hoping to provide more context for the presidential candidate’s report in China, but his effort was soon harshly criticized on the Chinese Internet.
Some have accused it of being a “white left,” a popular insult to idealistic, left-wing, Western-oriented liberals; others called him “virgin,” “bleeding heart,” and “white lotus,” degrading words that describe benefactors who care about the underprivileged, while trying to defend women’s rights.
“It was absurd,” Fang, now a professor of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told the Observer. “At what point worrying about disadvantaged teams was an explanation for why a reprimand?When was social Darwinism so justified?
At the time of Trump’s election victory, he began to realize striking similarities between the “alt-right” network in the United States and an organization of social media users who post on the Chinese Internet.
“Like its counterparts in the English-speaking sphere, this small but developing network also rejects the liberal paradigm and identity rights, similar to what is called ‘alt-right’ in the American context,” Fang noted, adding that in Chinese In this context, the discourse includes what he considers anti-feminist ideas, xenophobia, Islamophobia, Han racism and ethnic chauvinism.
During Trump’s presidency and without delay after the Brexit vote in 2016, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic began to thoroughly examine the rise of the alt-right in English-speaking cyberspace. At the same time, some noted that the Chinese online organization also showed a nationalist tone and called for state intervention.
In a recent paper he co-authored with Tian Yang, a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, Fang analyzed nearly 30,000 right-wing election messages on the Chinese Internet and found that users not only represent the percentage of right-wing national publications, but also right-wing ones. They also found that most of the issues were raised through U. S. -based Chinese immigrants disillusioned with the progressive timetable set through the American left.
Not all researchers are comfortable with the description of “alt-right. “”I’m skeptical about applying categories of American politics to the Chinese Internet,” said Sebastian Veg of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Liberal intellectuals in China or China are incredibly critical of Black Lives Matter, the refugee crisis, political correctness, etc. They are populists, but on the contrary an elite critical of the regime. Are they absolutely right?”
Dylan Levi King, a Chinese internet publisher based in Tokyo, first discovered this vaguely explained organization during the 2015 European migration crisis. what they were talking about at the time, locate them by borrowing discussion topics similar to the European ‘far-right’ community, such as the word ‘the wonderful replacement’ or the so-called ‘no-go zones’ for non-Muslims in European cities, which have also been used through Fox News. “
Shortly after the outbreak of the migration crisis, Liu Zhongjing, a Chinese translator and commentator who has appealed to himself through his fierce anti-left and anti-progressive stance, asked about his perspectives on how Germany has dealt with the situation.
“A new kind of political correctness has taken shape in Germany, and many things can no longer be mentioned,” he observed. Liu also cited Thilo Sarrazin, a questionable figure who some say is the “standard-bearer of the German far right. “to his argument.
On June 20, 2017, when the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees posted on Weibo the plight of other displaced people on World Refugee Day with the hashtag #StandWithRefugees, thousands of netizens flooded their account with negative comments.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Yao Chen had to make it clear that she was not intended to suggest that China participate in hosting refugees.
That same year, another article made the impression on the popular social networking site Zhihu, with the headline “Sweden: The European Capital of Sexual Assault. “”But,” Wu Yuting wrote, “the ruthless truth is that with the huge number of Muslims flocking to Sweden, they have also resulted in the repression of Islam and hurt opposing women, and have destroyed gender equality in Swedish society. “
Islamophobia is the main theme of the Chinese far right, research through Fang and Yang.
“By presenting the policies as biased, they interpreted them as a source of inequality and intended to cause resentment by presenting the Han as victims in their narrative,” Fang said. “They represented a conflicting dating between the Han, the dominant ethnic organization in China. “- and other ethnic minorities, especially the two Muslim minorities – the Hui and the Uighurs. “He added: “It is precisely the same logic and the same dominant discourse deployed in the alt-right in the United States: white men deficient in ordinary elegance are exploited through immigrants and minorities. “
Other researchers have gone further. In a 2019 article, Zhang Chenchen of Queen’s University Belfast analyzed 1,038 posts on Chinese social media and concluded that by criticizing Western “liberal elites,” right-wing discourse about Chinese has built an ethnic-racial identity opposed to the “inferior” of the non-Western other.
This is “exemplified through non-white immigrants and Muslims, with racial nationalism on the one hand; and formulates China’s political identity as opposed to “the declining Western with a realistic authoritarianism of the Array,” he wrote.
Antifeminism is another factor discussed through the Chinese alt-right online. Last December, 29-year-old Chinese actress Yang Li faced a backlash after a question she asked on her show. Joked.
The line made his laughter live, but the anger of many on the Internet. Although Yang does not publicly identify as a feminist, many have accused her of adopting a feminist agenda, with some calling her a “feminist activist” and a “boxer. “”In an effort to gain more privilege over men,” one critic said. “Feminist whore,” another rebuked.
And in April, Xiao Meili, a well-known Chinese feminist activist, was abused after posting a video online of a guy throwing a hot liquid at her after she asked him to quit smoking. others, without credible evidence, “anti-China” and “foreign forces”. Others said, “I hope you die, whore” or “Little whore, fuck the feminists. “
“When the Xiao Meili incident happened, many feminists were trolled, adding to myself,” said one of the artists who then collected more than 1,000 abusive messages sent to feminists and feminist teams and turned them into art paintings. make trolling words anything that can be seen, touched, materialize trolling comments and magnify the abuse of what happens to other people online,” he said.
Some artists and activists have created a transitory physical “museum of violence” to show how online violence in China has brutally targeted feminists. This task responded to the recent persecution of feminists through nationalist trolls and online primary platforms. Pic. twitter. com / PbNVbtH98a