askchapo

Honestly didn't know the etymology coming from an unhinged weirdo, but I've generally used it (irl mind you, I'm in China) as a handwaive when family asks about why X in the west is bad/inefficient/non-existent and "right wingers" isn't the cause.

Like what's with the aversion to nuclear power? Combination of 白左 and also the fossil fuel lobby.

Or if a policy that does (ostensibly) benefit poor people but is means tested to death, and they ask why it's set up like that. 白左

But I don't really often hear it in China. My family is just weirdly politically engaged due to being former Party members and revolutionaries. The average guy in the street is absolutely not going to use the phrase ever.

Yeah sure weirdos on XHS will also use it to refer to any aspect of the Western "left" they see online that they disagree with, but it's wholly inconsistent. Could be addressing Ultras. Or trots. Or liberals. Or redditors. Or nazbols. Or socdems. Or demsocs. I feel like XHS comment sections are like 2 steps away from calling Shanghai 白左.

I always thought it was a rightoid gotcha to own the leftists with their own logic of "China is trad and hates you".

Baizuo was either came up by or came up by a fan of some reactionary netizen who's famous for some unhinged ideology called Auntology. You can read a summary of Auntology for yourself. It's just unhinged reactionary shit. A weird part of it is that he actually wants to balkanize China. I think a lot of those balkanized China maps floating around were made by his shitty fandom. So the weird thing about him is he isn't a Chinese ultranationalist (he doesn't think China should exist) or a Han chauvinist (he apparently thinks Han isn't a real ethnicity) but some Chinese reactionary who wants to balkanize China.

The bai in baizuo is also from baichi, which means idiot. So, baizuo doesn't just mean white left but also idiotic left. A more fitting translation of baizuo would be white leftoid or white left*rd.

That term was always sus.

I've actually never seen baizuo used in the context that wiki is suggesting, at least not on hexbear or reddit. When liberals use it they've always intended it as a semi-racist "Why do you support china if you're white?" insult which betrays their nationalism, when hexbears use it it's always been about chauvinism.

A lot of those issues are in fact only mostly hegemonic in the western left, and even that is a recent thing that I do think it's probably related to how we can't really get anything done with economic issues.

In the rest of the world where life is generally worse it doesn't shock me that other things are prioritized, and in some countries where these issues are used as cudgels by imperial core countries (to condition aid or policy) opposing them passes as an anti-imperialist, or at least pro-sovereignty, cause.

It's also true that someone who supports all these culturally left positions doesn't necessarily support other historically leftists causes like anti-imperialism and anti-militarism (anti-nato), so I guess some chinese people invented a term for that kind of leftist, which, from the outside I guess if you count the "left" very broadly from center-left socdems to progressive liberals it would seem like that's all the "white left" is.

Just an aside the Chinese Language Wiki is blocked in mainland China and mainly maintained by taiwanese and hong konger users so take that into account

Global South need some way of making fun of people from far right countries larping as socialists.

These people can't build working class power (and social levelling would threaten their privilege) so they just aim to be moralists on the internet to make themselves feel good.

Western leftism isn't leftism, it's the thing that killed it.

Basically a slur for white people made by the people that claim they love white people to punish any white people that don’t immediately fall in line.