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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Or take this piece of ridiculousness, such that it is.

Oh, my.

The Japanese derided the Chinese as "yellow". As Michael Keevak points out, Japan saw itself on par with Western powers. Its imperialism mirrored the imperialism of white colonisers. In the West, the Japanese were still seen as "coloured people", Keevak says, but "maybe not as yellow as the Chinese." For the past three centuries, power and whiteness have been synonymous. From the British Empire to the American century, white nations have exported violence, committed genocide, stolen land and made it all legal. China, like so many other non-white nations, has felt the sting of white imperialism.

Uh... is the claim here that the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was a white supremacist project?

the Chinese Communist Party itself mirrors whiteness. The irony is Xi has also become what he opposes. He is a Han nationalist — his idea of Chinese power is ethnic Han superiority — persecuting non-Han, non-white people in his own country. If whiteness is power, Xi Jinping is its champion. The continuation of white power, in darker skin.

And that the CCP and Xi are white supremacist? Like, is the idea that anyone who's not a helpless victim and who has agency in the world is white?

Uh... is the claim here that the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was a white supremacist project?

Not even just that, but:

For the past three centuries, power and whiteness have been synonymous.

So the Manchu domination of the Han, quite explicit in the Qing, is also white supremacy.

And that the CCP and Xi are white supremacist? Like, is the idea that anyone who's not a helpless victim and who has agency in the world is white?

I assume that is what they are getting at.

Is this some sort of AUKUS plan to poke the Chinese Tiger? Publish journalistic equivalents of this meme aimed at Xi?