Greetings from the nomadic, war-like and democratic lupine culture

[Cain]

I cannot overstate how much I love Han nationalism in China

http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=4064

Over the past four years, I have been engaged in a type of digital ethnography, which has taken me deep inside one of the small corners of the Chinese internet—a rather dark, sobering periphery inhabited by an increasingly truculent community of Han nationalists. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this community of several thousand hardcore members is extremely diverse, crossing both national and ideological barriers, but also passionately convinced that the Chinese party-state and its allies are intentionally undermining Han power and privilege. In seeking to draw attention to a regime of government policies that are rendering the once mighty Han race "second-class citizens," Han cyber-nationalists have created a network of weblogs and BBS forums. Yet the deeper one probes into their online discussions and activism, the murkier truth and reality becomes.

As part of my ongoing research, I published a short essay on China Beat analysing the group's reaction to the immensely popular 2004 novel Wolf Totem (Lang tuteng 狼图腾). In the article, I described how Hanists view the novel as a despicable celebration of uncivilised and parasitic nomadic culture, which in the words of one of its leading members, was "actually preparing public opinion for the carrying out of racial genocide against the Han." I also posited that this sort of cyber-racism seemed to be spilling over into Chinese streets, with the 2008-09 race riots in Lhasa, Shaoguan, and Ürümqi serving as an important reminder of how internet rage can whip the marginalized and socially dispossessed into bloody action.

In March 2010, my China Beat article was translated on the Hanwang 汉网 BBS community (www.hanminzu.com), under the title: "Western article suggests: Hanwang incited the bloody attack on minorities during the Tibetan and Xinjiang riots," and immediately elicited a flurry of discussion, with now over one hundred replies and cross-postings across the Sinophone internet. The seven year-old Hanwang community has over 120,000 registered members and attracts on average 2 million unique visitors per month, although this number tends to fluctuate wildly and was as high as 7 million in April 2010.

I half-expected the sort of unreflective vitriol and spleen-venting that saw me labelled a "white skinned pig" (baipizhu 白皮猪) on Baidu Tieba 百度贴吧 and suggested elsewhere that I allow "the nomadic, war-like and democratic lupine culture," which I clearly worshipped, "to trample on the naked belly of my wife." But what really surprised me were the hollow death threats—I received two such warnings—and the way these threads quickly slipped into the realm of bogus babble and absurd conspiracy theories.

Within hours of its translation, Hanwang members were already referring to my article as "the result of collusion between domestic tartars and Western Nazis." This quickly led to extensive speculation about my ethnic heritage. Someone speculated that I was a Manchu sympathizer seeking to inflame Hanwang members. Noting that I was an academic in Australia, one blogger argued that my surname seemed German and the large number of Turkish migrants in Germany could help to explain my nomadic affinities. Others asserted that Leibold was actually a Muslim surname: "This tool is quite likely a Turk." Another member piped in: "Although he is German, I bet he's a minority," and later asked: "Does anyone think that this guy has a Germanic demeanor?" Another contributor posted up a link to my La Trobe University webpage and photo, stating: "Leibold seems like a fairly common surname in Germany, but this doesn't mean he is German as there are a large number of German migrants in America and Canada, as seems to also be the case in Australia."

Based on my photo and suggestions that I was trying to link Han nationalism with Nazi-style racism, another blogger concluded that I must be Jewish. This then lead to further speculation about my nose, with one member declaring it was not high enough like the typical Jewish and Palestinian noses. Others disagreed: "In my opinion, Middle Eastern people have beak-like noses, the bridge of the nose is not too high like Albert Einstein and Yassar Arafat."

Its things like this that remind me that democratization is not necessarily a good idea, because people are so stupid, and perhaps the CCP, for all its many and various crimes, is actually the lesser of two evils in some ways.

On the other hand, the overheated rhetoric directed at the blogger there is amazing.  If I got a reaction like that off someone, I'd want to put it on my CV:

Housemaster from 2011- Present
Insincere, savage and crazy Representative of the nomadic, war-like and democratic lupine vulture that will trample on the naked belly of your wife from 1986 to present.

[Triple Zero]

That's ... pretty crazy and interesting.