this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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What's up with the term "baizuo"? (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by BeamBrain@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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I know that it's Chinese and it translates roughly as "white/Western left." Looking it up on the Chinese wiki, Google translate gives me... well, this:

It is used to describe people who support policies such as the abolition of the death penalty , [ 3 ] animal protection , environmental protection , body equality , skin equality , LGBT , feminism , vegetarianism , marijuana decriminalization , euthanasia , abortion and immigration , that is, people with cultural leftist ideas in the European and American world.

This paints baizuo as something akin to American conservative terms like "woke" or "SJW." On the other hand, I've seen baizuo on Hexbear a few times, but in those contexts it seemed to mean something closer to "succdem" or "Western chauvinist" rather than the definition above. Obviously, a term used to insult feminists, LGBT people, and environmentalists would be incredibly out of place on this site, hence why I'm asking about it rather than taking a machine-translated Wiki article at face value.

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[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The connection between baizuo and baichi was established by those reactionaries. Like, you can say that baizuo is just an abbreviated form of baichi zuopai (idiotic left). "bai = white and zuo = left, so baizuo = white left" is something you would say if you just ran each character individually through Google Translate. Nobody calls the Black Panthers "heizuo" even though the two characters translated separately is "Black left."

My broader point is that the term, due to its reactionary origins, isn't as innocently translated as "white left."

[–] awth13@hexbear.net 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The connection between baizuo and baichi was established by those reactionaries. Like, you can say that baizuo is just an abbreviated form of baichi zuopai (idiotic left).

Is this your hypothesis or did you read this somewhere? The wiki article in the OP says 是”白人”与“左派”两个标签结合组成的称号, i.e., it’s a grouping of “white person” and “left wing”. I’m not saying you’re wrong, it’s just that I didn’t get that vibe as someone who speaks Chinese, especially because 白痴 is more of a clinical/bookish term for idiot and not something I heard people say very often in everyday life. I only went to uni in China and I’m not a native speaker though.

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 1 points 1 month ago

You have to remember the term originated from terminally online netizens. It's like how "leftoid" is "left" + "-oid," but the "-oid" comes from "removed," as in the former medical term for Down's Syndrome. Terminally online reactionaries do this shit all the time like how channers purposely use the okay hand sign as a shibboleth.

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hmm a "soyboy wojak" situation

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 4 points 1 month ago

Or how "aquaponics" is "aquaculture hydroponics."