#StopAsianHate Commodifies our Pain
#StopAsianHate is a performative hashtag that centers the individual, helps the capitalist, and ignores the US Empire’s role in creating hate.
#StopAsianHate distracts us from the true root of anti-Asian racism in the US by making it about individuals correcting their personal biases rather than the system that created these biases in the first place. The Asian community has devolved into infighting as we attack each other and other people of color in meaningless fights over identity and privilege. Our bickering comes from a place of pain and trauma. No one wants to be killed. Our anger is misdirected inward at each other, instead of at the Empire. As we wave signs and place flowers at the graves of Yan Zhiwen, Ma Guiyang, Christina Yuna Lee, and countless others, the military industrial complex rakes in billions of dollars through the invasion and destruction of Asian countries. Our deaths are profitable. As long as capitalism exists, there will be another Yan Zhiwen.
Hate crimes toward Asians haven’t gone anywhere. Chinese workers were lynched by mobs of unemployed whites in the 1800s, the hate was alive and well when Vincent Chin was brutally beaten to death in 1982 due to anti-Japanese sentiment, and the attacks continue in 2022 after Yan Zhiwen was shot dead and his killer remained free for over a month. Not only are these hate crimes ever present in 2022, they are increasing at an alarming rate. There has been a 567% spike in hate crimes toward Asians, in San Francisco alone.
Some boba liberals have taken to blaming the Asian community for our own suffering. We’re just paying the price for being anti-Black! We’re not truly a minority deserving of protection because we’re “white-adjacent!” Other boba radlibs are cancelling even the #StopAsianHate hashtag for being “anti-Black”. In the twisted mind of the boba liberal, we Asians somehow deserve to be murdered and assaulted. Every single Asian murdered by a nonwhite perpetrator is just our collective punishment because we didn’t “do better” against racism in our own communities. Clearly, we just need to be “aggressively anti-racist”. We just need to go vote. Sign a city petition against hate crimes. That’ll stop the murders, right?
Meanwhile, the boba reactionaries have chosen to blame the Black community. We need more policing, they say. Aren’t the Blacks just jealous of Asian excellence and success? Can’t we just end the hate crimes by locking them all up? The boba reactionary will happily repeat white supremacist talking points in the name of Asian safety. But the police have never been an ally of the Asian community, and they sure as hell aren’t starting now. Even if every single perpetrator of hate crimes is immediately jailed and we throw away the key, there will be another racist waiting to murder a grandma in Koreatown. We’re on our own, as always.
The collective freakout of the Bobas reeks of individualism and performative wokeness. They, too, are hurting. But they direct their anger inward toward falsely constructed enemies within the Asian community rather than the capitalist whites pulling their strings. A simple look at Google’s search results is a brutally honest picture of who really benefits from #StopAsianHate:
Our pain means their profit. Each time another Yan Zhiwen is murdered and his family waits in stunned grief for answers, a capitalist chuckles and puts in another order of merch. There will be a real demand for shirts, posters, and stickers at that next rally. Sales are up this quarter, and they’re spiking for the next quarter along with the spike in our deaths. Our flowers and tears at vigils mean drinks and parties behind the closed doors of the corporate boardrooms. They succeeded. They sold us a product.
BTS, shirt companies, the corporate press, the next politician promising racial equality but abandoning us once they’re elected. Everyone wants a little slice of our pain. There’s so much profit to be made from our dead, battered bodies. I want to be clear that I have nothing against Asian comrades putting up signs with the hashtag. We are entitled to our pain and local organizing however we see fit. We just need to recognize that waving signs with #StopAsianHate is not the answer. It ignores the root of our suffering and turns it into another commodity. The liberals did this with BLM, the Ukraine flag, and #StopAsianHate. Soon it’ll be replaced by the next trendy social issue. They don’t care about us at all. I would even argue that this hashtag is harmful because it makes people feel like they’re doing something and diverts their efforts away from enacting meaningful change.
The one true source of hate comes from the Empire. The warmongering, bomb-dropping, red scare blasting war machine that loves killing Asians for military profits and will continue killing Asians until its very last breath. The Empire doesn’t value Asian life. You can see it everywhere from their constant wars in Asia, to their discomfort about China’s advances in medicine, to their joking attitude toward Asians who have died. Not only are our deaths profitable, they’re funny too! In short, more dead Asians is exactly what the Empire wants.
Want to stop the hate crimes? Destroy this Empire. Destroy Capitalism. Join the cause of revolutionary socialism and learn about the great Asian leaders of our homelands who resisted the colonizers and liberated their people. There is no liberation if we continue to play by the rules of the whites. We need to burn down the whole rotten system that gets rich at our expense, and build something new with our comrades.
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