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.

  • awth13 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    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’s not how Chinese language works. Just because 白 (bái) can be part of a word that means “idiot” doesn’t mean that it is infused with the meaning of idiocy. That’s like saying “the bai in baizuo is also from mingbai, which means clear/reasonable so baizuo doesn’t just mean white left but also reasonable left”. Which is obviously absurd lol. In most contexts, 白 means “white” and nothing else, although there are obviously many cultural associations with the colour white that are layered on top of that.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      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 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        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 [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          6 days 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.