Biden’s strategy is out-racist Trump?

Lentic · Apr 19, 2020

Who looks at the rise in hate crimes towards asian people and decides this is the ad to make?

We'll have posters rushing in here to tell everyone that it's "NOT RACIST" and to shut up and sit down regardless. Like at least wait to hear people voice their issues with it.

meowdi gras · Apr 19, 2020

Brace yourselves for a whole lot more problematic shit coming out of the Biden campaign. Already shown some ugliness, it's just going to get worse.

LegendofJoe · Apr 19, 2020

Big_Blue said:
Criticizing China as a sovereign state isn't racist, but there are definitely people that can't get that nuance.

The same thing happens with Israel. It's difficult to discuss ethnostate problems without a subset of people immediately throwing out accusations of racism.

shnurgleton · Apr 19, 2020

There's a big difference between saying "the Chinese government dropped the ball" and "the Chinese are to blame for the pandemic"

This ad is pushing the latter

Everybody Lies · Apr 19, 2020

Lentic said:
There is definitely a xenophobic undertone to the ad.

"Trump let 40,000 Chinese travelers into America!"

After Trump shut the country down. Context matters.

Deleted member 31923 · Apr 19, 2020

Jag said:
Blaming the Government of China for fucking up is not racist.

Agreed, but it's still not a great ad imo. All you need is clips of him calling it a hoax and downplaying it. Play those over and over.

schuelma · Apr 19, 2020

srsly? said:
Brace yourselves for a whole lot more problematic shit coming out of the Biden campaign. Already shown some ugliness, it's just going to get worse.

this is really disingenuous. If Biden did nothing everyone would be saying how he is a paper tiger who isn't tough enough to beat Trump. Biden didn't choose this ground.

Pai Pai Master · Apr 19, 2020

Richiek said:
I tend to agree. The ad's not intentionally racist, but Biden could have pointed out Trump's incompetence on the domestic front in handling COVID rather than focusing on China.

Well the ad is specifically about Trump's hypocrisy with China. And Trump's mistruths about China are a big part of his campaign. It's not something Biden can ignore, though they should have made the distinctions stronger.

Breqesk · Apr 19, 2020

CW: Racist assault

On a Monday night in late February, Jonathan Mok was walking down London's busy Oxford Street, when he was attacked. He was kicked and punched in the face, a beating that resulted in a bruised and swollen eye the size of a golf ball, which he showed to the world in a Facebook post. Mok is twenty-three and Singaporean; he had been studying for the last two years at the University of London. The attack, which he described in his post, was brutal and racially motivated. "The guy who tried to kick me then said, 'I don't want your coronavirus in my country,' " he wrote, "before swinging another sucker punch at me, which resulted in my face exploding with blood."

defending this ad, in the face of the awful shite that's been happening to Asian people in the West as a direct result of the kind of anti-China xenophobia it trades in, is fucking abhorrent

nocturnedelight · Apr 19, 2020

entremet said:
The specific point in the ad was to criticize Trump's lack of follow through with his own ban--hence the traveler's from China point. It's not to blame China.

It's to show the incompetence of the current administration.

Context and flow in presentation matter. While someone can make a case for how this particular ad is structured can fuel racist undercurrents in all people (which other's here are making that case), at the very least this ad could've changed the instance at 0:33 and 0:49 to "The Chinese Government."

And if it wasn't obvious, I purposely phrased it in an all encompassing way, is because EVERYONE in ALL CASES should understand the value of specifying where critique lies. So as not to derail and give many other examples, again I'll say, 'There's a value in specifying The Chinese Government."

BabyMurloc · Apr 19, 2020

The ad's issue is that it makes Trump's greatest failing to be that he didn't act against the true enemy of China. When Trump is in fact the worst enemy America has ever had.

Status quo must be maintained at all costs.

schuelma · Apr 19, 2020

clevbrowns95 said:
Agreed, but it's still not a great ad imo. All you need is clips of him calling it a hoax and downplaying it. Play those over and over.

again, this is a specific response to a specific attack coming from Trump. Have you seen this ad? Ad

Hierophant · Apr 19, 2020

Breqesk said:
CW: Racist assault

defending this ad, in the face of the awful shite that's been happening to Asian people in the West as a direct result of the kind of anti-China xenophobia it trades in, is fucking abhorrent

Attacks on Asian Americans skyrocket to 100 per day during coronavirus pandemic

Representative Judy Chu said that reports of bigotry and hate crimes against Asian Americans have surged during the coronavirus crisis.

thehill.com

good shit on this forum

ryseing · Apr 19, 2020

schuelma said:
I'm not trying to be a broken record, but Trump plans on making this his central case for reeleection. Biden can't just ignore it. Or he will lose and we get 4 more years of Trump.

Biden doesn't need to ignore it but he also doesn't need to make it a central platform of his own. Make it clear that he will also take a hardline stance against China and leave it at that. There is a way to do so without inflaming the American people against an Other.

schuelma · Apr 19, 2020

ryseing said:
Biden doesn't need to ignore it but he also doesn't need to make it a central platform of his own. Make it clear that he will also take a hardline stance against China and leave it at that. There is a way to do so without inflaming the American people against an Other.

And I see no evidence this is a central platform of his campaign. Its a response ad. Biden has had many ads over the last few weeks on Trump's general incompetence.

AGoodODST · Apr 19, 2020

How is this racist in anyway?

Ravensmash · Apr 19, 2020

Hierophant said:
Explain how BIG RED LETTERS saying 40,000 CHINESE TRAVELERS with ominous music and with spooky desaturated footage of chinese people is criticizing either Trump or the Chinese government.

Firstly, "40,000 travelled from China after the travel ban was signed"

and because Trump has been using the daily press briefings to continuously state how fantastic his travel ban policy was, and this highlights how it actually was compared to his own self-congratulation?

Deleted member 23381 · Apr 19, 2020

Era Uma Vez said:
The ad may not be racist, but the message isn't clear enough, leaves room for minsinterpretation by the public, that may result in an increase of xenophobic attacks.

This is where I'm at. I don't think the ad in of itself is racist but they need to do more to make sure they're being specific about the the Chinese Government.

Richiek · Apr 19, 2020

Also, wasn't the main reason for the spread of coronavirus to the US from travelers coming from Europe, not China?

Lentic · Apr 19, 2020

There are a thousand different things you could attack Trump on when it comes to pandemic response, but you choose to highlight China and how he's letting those Chinese in the country.

Pai Pai Master · Apr 19, 2020

Richiek said:
Also, wasn't the main reason for the spread of coronavirus to the US from travelers coming from Europe, not China?

Yes but the point is Trump's ONLY defense for his mishandling has been "I shut down all travel from China so early". Its specifically calling out that lie.

That's what the ad is attacking. Not the Chinese people. They didnt do a great job of making the distinction.

schuelma · Apr 19, 2020

Lentic said:
There are a thousand different things you could attack Trump on when it comes to pandemic response, but you choose to highlight China and how he's letting those Chinese in the country.

Again, this is a single ad and it is quite literally a response to a Trump ad. That's politics.

BIden has plenty of other ads out.

Deleted member 31923 · Apr 19, 2020

schuelma said:
again, this is a specific response to a specific attack coming from Trump. Have you seen this ad? Ad

No, I didn't see that ad. Makes more sense now. I can't believe they threw Hunter in there like he's the buttery mails of 2020.

Jag · Apr 19, 2020

Brinbe said:
Full stop. Just like criticising Israel doesn't make you an antisemite

OP needs to visit an Israel thread if he thinks this ad is bad. And yes nuance is important. Blame the government = fine. Blame a race of people = not fine.

Ravensmash · Apr 19, 2020

Pai Pai Master said:
Yes but the point is Trump's ONLY defense for his mishandling has been "I shut down all travel from China so early"

And now his deflection from his own failings by continuously blaming China/WHO, despite previously praising China repeatedly.

cgcg · Apr 19, 2020

The ad is fine, china deserves everything it's getting because of its shit government. Their failure has caused many lives. Some of you are little too sensitive. You should not in any way be defending the Chinese government, especially if you are no longer a Chinese citizen. Patriotism is a disease.

Before you are making stupid assumptions, hint: I'm not white

TaySan · Apr 19, 2020

I think this add could have done a better job in being more specific about referring to the government. Instead it leaves more interpretation to blame citizens.

medinaria · Apr 19, 2020

when you say "travelers from china", it is parsed by the viewer/reader as "chinese people". this like thin veneer of "well technically it could be white people who were in china at the time" isn't enough. part of the ad's central message is "trump tried to keep all the chinese people out, but he did it so ineffectually that some still got in - how dare he, scary music, ominous graphics". regardless of the technicality of the wording, that is the message the ad conveys to the average viewer.

also, I honestly don't get why this is the strategy here. why is biden trying to fight trump over who china likes more? all it does is deflect from how terrible trump's response to this has been, by casting a different country as the actual villain. by suggesting that the problem is that trump didn't do great, but part of what he didn't do great was that he listened to the real bad guys. why not just... not do that? if he brings up china, just call him out and say he's intentionally trying to shift blame away from himself. point out that the american government knew about this shit in december (and knew it had spread to other countries by mid-january) and did nothing. he did nothing. blaming china is just a distraction.

every minute spent saying "trump got played by china", rightly or wrongly, is a minute that you're not saying "trump literally had people telling him about this shit months in advance and didn't bother doing anything, because he cares more about his stock portfolio than your life".

viral · Apr 19, 2020

China fucked up for sure, but why is everyone trying to put all the blame on them? We've known about the virus since at least january, and noone gave a shit until it came to Europe/USA. We've had 2 full months to prepare and try to stop it from spreading, but we did literally nothing. It's a pretty shitty thing to blame China for everything.

Shudouken · Apr 19, 2020

Zhengi said:
This ad is going to cause lots of xenophobia and additional racist attacks against Asian people.

Even if you make sure it always reads "the chinese government", I'd argue that would still happen.
Like, what kind of mindset do you need to have that this incentivises you to attack others?
The people that would do that are looking for excuses to do it one way or another.

Ushojax · Apr 19, 2020

Criticising the Chinese government is not the same as criticising the Chinese.

viral said:
China fucked up for sure, but why is everyone trying to put all the blame on them? We've known about the virus since at least january, and noone gave a shit until it came to Europe/USA. We've had 2 full months to prepare and try to stop it from spreading, but we did literally nothing. It's a pretty shitty thing to blame China for everything.

Nobody except Trump is blaming China for everything. Every country in the world can criticise China for failing to properly control and report the initial outbreak and they are free to criticise their own government for their shitty decisions as well. But the reality is that it started in China and the CCP made it worse than it needed to be, had the outbreak had happened in a country withiut an autocratic dictatorship perhaps it could have been contained.

Chaos Legion · Apr 19, 2020

Trump is calling Biden 'Beijing Biden', he's pointing out Trump's failing at handling relations with China over the coronavirus. Don't think it's criticizing the Chinese government, rather poking holes in Trump's attack.

Pai Pai Master · Apr 19, 2020

Ravensmash said:
And now his deflection from his own failings by continuously blaming China/WHO, despite previously praising China repeatedly.

Correct. Criticizing Trump for his hypocrisy and lies on China isnt racist. Even if this ad could be better executed, it does not make it more racist than anything Trump has ever done, especially not more racist than his antics yesterday.

Punjabi_Hitman · Apr 19, 2020

Rhubes don't care whether it's Chinese government or not. They'll just picture Asian people.

Just like they can't tell the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim.

NookSports · Apr 19, 2020

If instead of China and Chinese, it said Italy and Italians nobody would be saying the ad is anti-Italy.

the Chinese government deserve criticism for their actions. They could've contained this or helped other countries contain it if they hadn't lied.

There's a trend of not being able to even say that without catching criticism for being racist. I don't think the ad has racist intent behind it, and reading it as racist needs a lot of logic leaps

GreatFenris · Apr 19, 2020

Zhengi said:
You can criticize them for the pandemic without stoking the fires for racism against Asian Americans in this country. We've already had Trump try to pin this on the Chinese government and it has led to an increase in racist attacks on Asians here. So now we have both parties stoking hatred against Asians, and one of them is supposed to be our ally?

By the way, my "government" is the US. I am an American citizen. Don't be a racist.

The "Your government" line was about how on reddit, and here as well people have tried to downplay the PRC's actions by going "Well your government didn't do anything either" (which usually bundles every other country with the Americans)
I am sorry if it came across as otherwise.

Jag · Apr 19, 2020

viral said:
China fucked up for sure, but why is everyone trying to put all the blame on them? We've known about the virus since at least january, and noone gave a shit until it came to Europe/USA. We've had 2 full months to prepare and try to stop it from spreading, but we did literally nothing. It's a pretty shitty thing to blame China for everything.

There is still alot we don't know, but indications seem to point that the Chinese government was forcibly silencing whistleblowers that may have prevented the spread. We just don't know enough. There is fault all over the world, but of course people are going to look where it started. It would be foolish to ignore it. Especially given the nature of China's authoritarian and brutal regime.

Deleted member 2761 · Apr 19, 2020

I'll edit this post with sources once I have access to my PC but...

1. A travel ban for China was useless because evidence suggests the strain that infected the US came from Europe.

2. We already had CDC disease watchers in China, but the Trump admin axed the job.

With that out of the way, yes, this all reeks of yellow peril shit and is absolutely racist. I am not voting for Biden anymore.

AGoodODST · Apr 19, 2020

viral said:
China fucked up for sure, but why is everyone trying to put all the blame on them? We've known about the virus since at least january, and noone gave a shit until it came to Europe/USA. We've had 2 full months to prepare and try to stop it from spreading, but we did literally nothing. It's a pretty shitty thing to blame China for everything.

Well to be fair the general consensus seems to be that this corona virus started the same was as SARS, in China's legal wildlife markets. Enough wasn't done after SARS to prevent this happening again and here we are. The Chinese government absolutely has to bare a huge part of the blame, both in the cause and the way it was initially handled.

Sure, the way a lot of western governments have handled this has been unbelievably shit, but it shouldn't have been a position they were in in the first place.

Godzilla's Left Toe · Apr 19, 2020

This ad is going to lead to more xenophobic attacks on Asian Americans

cgcg · Apr 19, 2020

If you think Trump rhetorics are the reason for the racist attacks... well you don't know America.

schuelma · Apr 19, 2020

Lesath said:
With that out of the way, yes, this all reeks of yellow peril shit and is absolutely racist. I am not voting for Biden anymore.

I am sorry but that is patently absurd. If Biden responding to a clearly racist ad by Trump gets you to no longer vote for Biden against Donald Trump you were never really going to vote for him in the first place.

BabyMurloc · Apr 19, 2020

Godzilla's Left Toe said:
This ad is going to lead to more xenophobic attacks on Asian Americans

This. You can't just go "technically this is not racist" and then watch the attacks increase. Well you can, but...

NookSports · Apr 19, 2020

Shudouken said:
Like, what kind of mindset do you need to have that this incentivises you to attack others?

Godzilla's Left Toe said:
This ad is going to lead to more xenophobic attacks on Asian Americans

I'd like to meet the Trump supporter who's on the fence about a racist attack against Asians but waits to see whether Joe Biden's ads properly differentiated between the Chinese people and the Chinese government

GuessMyUserName · Apr 19, 2020

Pointing out China's blame isn't racist but good fucking god do not tell Trump he hasn't gone after China enough. as if he hasn't riled up the anti-asian rhetoric enough what the fuck. And yeah as others have said does nothing to confront the general rising racism against all asian people from this mess and it's definitely dangerous.

"Trump praised the Chinese!" and look at all these Chinese people Trump let in is pretty gross.

water_wendi · Apr 19, 2020

AGoodODST said:
Well to be fair the general consensus seems to be that this corona virus started the same was as SARS, in China's legal wildlife markets. Enough wasn't done after SARS to prevent this happening again and here we are. The Chinese government absolutely has to bare a huge part of the blame, both in the cause and the way it was initially handled.

Sure, the way a lot of western governments have handled this has been unbelievably shit, but it shouldn't have been a position they were in in the first place.

When your neighbors pitbulls escape from their yard and run rampant in your house tearing shit up its no fault of your neighbor because you had your back door open. Sure you heard the barking but the neighbor assured you that they were leashed and you are just an idiot for believing them so its your fault.

thuway · Apr 19, 2020

Close this thread.

key · Apr 19, 2020

Lesath said:
With that out of the way, yes, this all reeks of yellow peril shit and is absolutely racist. I am not voting for Biden anymore.

Help me understand how not voting for Biden will help combat racism in America.

Everybody Lies · Apr 19, 2020

It's an attack ad criticizing Trump and his response to the pandemic not the Chinese people.

Scuffed · Apr 19, 2020

schuelma said:
I am sorry but that is patently absurd. If Biden responding to a clearly racist ad by Trump gets you to no longer vote for Biden against Donald Trump you were never really going to vote for him in the first place.

Exactly. Trump supporters concern trolling.

Biden’s strategy is out-racist Trump?

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