Are You Baizuo?

You might have missed the story. I certainly did. For those who want to know how the world sees us, or, more specifically, how the Chinese see us, we now know that they have invented a special term for “leftist elites.” That term is Baizuo, which means “white left.”

This is to say, the white people who have punished themselves by mortifying their white flesh… in order to overcome their white privilege and to assuage their white guilt. Just think, our leftist intelligentsia is filled with the right thoughts about the right moral issues. They have staked out a claim to the moral high ground. They believe that the rest of the world will soon follow their shining example. Imagine the shock when they discover that the rest of the world thinks they are a joke, worthy of nothing but ridicule.

The story comes to us from the Global Times, from last May:

Baizuo, a derogatory term in Mandarin that refers to the "leftist elites" in the West, has become increasingly popular among China's netizens, a phenomenon analysts ascribe to the public's resentment against what they perceive as the superiority complex of the Western liberal elites and their ideological agenda against China.

Apparently, Chinese internet users have been using the term for some time how:

Chinese netizens have long been using the term baizuo, literally meaning "white left" to ridicule the liberal elites in the West, but Fox News only picked up the topic on Tuesday after they read an article about it written by Zhang Chenchen, a PhD in political theory and science.

Baizuo refers to people who "only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment," who "have no sense of real problems in the real world," who only advocate for peace and equality to "satisfy their own feelings of moral superiority" and who are "obsessed with political correctness" that they "tolerate backward Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism," reads Zhang's article published in opendemocracy.com on May 11.

The term baizuo is not limited to referring to the white liberal elites, as former US president Obama was considered as an advocate of baizuo ideology. According to Zhang, the Chinese public mentioned that baizuo first emerged to describe German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her decision to welcome more than 1 million third-world immigrants to Europe, which infringed upon Chinese people's right to stay in Europe. Other terms like "holy mothers" have also been invented to ridicule Western politicians who welcome Muslim immigrants and help Islamicize Europe.

We are happy to know that the first person to be mocked with this term was German Chancellor Merkel. Apparently, our enlightened liberal elites have become the object of ridicule in the Middle Kingdom.