The Primate Diaries

Caught your attention, didn’t it? Mine too. This morning I came across Steve Silberman’s twitter headline pointing out that when people typed “I Am Extremely” into the Google search bar, one of the top suggestions was “Terrified of Chinese People.” Fascinated to see what fools these mortals be, I clicked the link only to discover an article on Christwire that was actually able to claim that they were terrified of a racial group but that this didn’t mean they were racist. Confused? You’re not alone. Just take a quick look at some of the extremely confused statements that attracted nearly 200,000 searches. It seems we may be in the midst of a new “Yellow Peril” that first gripped the United States in the 1880s (see anti-Chinese propaganda poster from that time to the right).

According to Christwire:

I am extremely terrified of Chinese people, but I am not racist. You should feel the same way too.

Much like their brethren in the USSR and the Democratic party, the Chinese are atheistic wonders. Their lack of morals means they have no problems developing WMDS with which to bring massive death, all while doing genetic manipulation and cloning to ensure population boom.

I’m not sure which part of that statement is the looniest. Is it the claim that the Chinese are atheists or that Democrats are? The blanket statement that a nation of nearly a billion people “lack morals” or that they’re cloning people to grow their populations (afterall, they all look the same, right?).

A national poll by Harvard University found that, on college campuses, students who identify as Republican or Democrat had about the same level of religious belief. Where they differed was how much it should be a part of the political process.

As for the alleged atheism in China, according to the Chinese governments own statistics there are:

over 100 million followers of various religious faiths, more than 85,000 sites for religious activities, some 300,000 clergy and over 3,000 religious organizations throughout China.

While the abuse of Falun Gong followers is clearly a serious human rights issue, it’s pretty clear that China is not an “atheistic wonder.” For that you’d have to go to Norway.

But the crazy just keeps getting crazier:

Only 60 years ago, these Asian peoples joined up with Adoldf Hitler in order to destroy the most moral nation on Earth. Even though their attacks took the life of many good men on a day of infamy, America was blessed to rain bombs of freedom and nurture resultant liberty within a very dark Asian culture.

Reality check. I believe you’re thinking of the Japanese. Are you really not able to tell the difference? The Chinese were the victims of Japanese aggression (think Rape of Nanking) and were decidedly not allied with the Axis powers. And those “bombs of freedom” that you so highly praise, they were dropped on innocent civilians most notably in the form of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki where there were no military forces whatsoever. It’s one of the great crimes of the 20th century. You should probably know where it happened.

Historically, Chinese people have naturally wanted to bring destruction and great mayhem to all things American. Liberals will tell you lies and say this is not true and very extreme, but mark my words. Liberals want nothing more than to see a small population of American overran by billions of Asians. This is why they support abortion.

Yes, I couldn’t agree more. Abortion is nothing but a secret plot to reduce the number of white people in preparation for welcoming our new Chinese overlords. I’m sorry, what?

Know that the Chinese are going to attempt a great battle, battle being perhaps better described as a world domination plan. Such endeavors typify their nature, as their culture still does not value the principles of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Asia still is bitter about WW2, and how we showed them new ways to live outside their old Pagan tradition, and it’s for this reason that you must be very afraid. At its roots China embraces communism, a practice which noble men like Senator McCarthy, President Ronald Reagan and the somewhat liberal John Paul II fought against with all their heart.

It would seem that this rant is little more than Christian dominionism attempting to force Cold War mythologies into an epic battle between good and evil. If China is so committed to communism that surely must make Wal-Mart, the primary importer of Chinese goods, the most successful communist enterprise in history. God bless Ronald Reagan and his free market belief system for helping the godless Chinese? The Chinese government has entirely rejected communism in any literal sense. That’s why the United States is so keen to do business with them. Noble men like Senator McCarthy and President Reagan have no problem doing business with dictators, but when they start advocating for the poor and downtrodden (such as in Nicaragua where Reagan conducted a secret terrorist war) that’s when they get religion.

Despite past American grace, the menace of the the People’s Republic of China truly a great peril to the world today. Indeed, these people seek nothing but to steal land from the West and kill you and your family dead in the process.

Right. Perhaps one of the great ironies of this whole piece are the Google ads that appear to the right of this viciously racist diatribe. Not one, but two separate links promoting “Beautiful Chinese Women For Dating and Marriage.” There you have it. We need to go to war with the Chinese to defend our very existence, and then marry their women. It’s just like the Good Book says:

Have you saved all the women alive? . . . Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves (Numbers 31:15-18).

And people say Christians don’t know their Bible.

Comments

#1 Raymond Ho
November 2, 2009

WTF? LOL.
#2 Anne Gilbert
November 2, 2009

Personally, I think this Christwire outfit sounds like a bunch of sickos. It’s true China is now getting economically powerful, but then, the Chinese have been around for some 5,000 years. We here in the USA, haven’t. As for the rest of it, it’s just laughable. But people like the ones who support groups like Christwire, can be dangerous, and it’s a good idea to let them alone as long as they don’t do anything but foam at the mouth, but at the same time, keep an eye on them.
Anne G
#3 Katharine
November 2, 2009

Dudes, it’s the wacky-ass fundies; do you expect any different?
#4 Crudely Wrott
November 2, 2009

Boy howdy. Take all of the misconceptions, myths, ignorance and lies about twentieth century history, add a heaping hand full of Christian paranoid promotion of a catastrophe they believe is long overdue and puree with ice cubes of frozen primal fear.

How can anybody drink that stuff? It makes my adrenals run dry before I can even piss!
#5 Rae
November 2, 2009

The only thing that bothers me more than crazy, non-sensical, ignorant, hate-filled rants are the people who take them seriously. Yesterday I passed a man on the street screaming that Obama was an alien and the man was a time-traveller come to save us all with glo-sticks and ball-point drawings on Kleenex (then he started mumbling to a dog something about Twizzlers). I did not, however, write a blog pointing out the errors in his logic, seeing as how he was just completely f**king nuts. This Christwire article deserves the same respect, and I’m sure we all have better things to do with our time and minds than to critique it as if it were remotely valid. People who write such nonsense should be ignored. Hopefully then they will just go away.
#6 Julis
November 2, 2009

I kind of agree with Rae that this type of thing should just be ignored but then I wouldn’t have had my laugh for the night.
#7 Owen
November 2, 2009

I don’t know, do we ignore this stuff at our own peril? Isn’t something like 80% of Americans buy into this Christian stuff and I doubt a significant portion of these people are sharp enough to recognize the historical errors in this rant.
#8 Ben
November 2, 2009

LOL – you guys just got Poed…
#9 Azkyroth
November 2, 2009

We need to go to war with the Chinese to defend our very existence, and then marry their women. It’s just like the Good Book says:

Uh…”marry?” Dude, reread the quoted passage. x.x
#10 C. Chu
November 2, 2009

Are you sure this guy wasn’t Eric Cartman???

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/187260/

(Cartman fears the Chinese are going to take over the world and starts the American Liberation Front to stop the Chinese at almost any cost.)
#11 Jadehawk
November 2, 2009

what ben said. christwire is satire, just like landover baptist
#12 John J. McKay
November 3, 2009

It’s humor, but very well done. Other posts by Amber include “Chinese Invent Giant Firebreathing Robot Armies.” The giant firebreathing robot looks a lot like Casper the Friendly Ghost except all giant, firebreathing, and made of metal.
#13 Snoof
November 3, 2009

Yeah, my irony meter is going off. Seriously, has anyone in the history of sapient life _ever_ used the phrase “bombs of freedom” in a non-ironic manner?
#14 Anida Adler
November 3, 2009

Oh, man, if this is a poe it’s very well done. I can absolutely believe this could be written by some extremist in all seriousness.

Thanks for my daily laugh.
#15 jimspice
November 3, 2009

My favorite headline from the site: “The Golden Girls: How One TV Show Turned A Generation Of American Boys Into Homosexuals.”
#16 Troy
November 3, 2009

Its getting scare when you can no longer tell when the Christian Extremism is almost identical to the satire about them. And sadly I can picture some born again loonie saying “bombs of freedom”. In my, catholic, fathers version of history we fought the revolutionary war against the Nazis for Freedom, Christianity, and the Standard measure system… He’s getting his war movies confused more and more often.
#17 NoAstronomer
November 3, 2009

“Oh, man, if this is a poe it’s very well done. I can absolutely believe this could be written by some extremist in all seriousness.”

Which is, in fact, what Poe’s law says.
#18 Bob
November 3, 2009

I liked the article on the bearsharktopus. http://christwire.org/2009/09/crazed-evolutionists-create-bearsharktopus/

Perhaps PZ could comment on that one.

You may also be interested in http://www.landoverbaptist.org/
#19 Raka
November 3, 2009

So a blog post is (apparently) written by group C, demonizing group A by treating them as one monolithic entity devoted to unhistorical acts of inhumanity. We (group L) find this blog post, and lament about how low group C has sunk. Once it is pointed out that the post is a none-too-subtle parody, we shrug and say that we couldn’t be expected to figure that out, since you KNOW all those group C people are so bad that this is exactly the sort of thing they’d do.

Color me “concern troll”, but this seems to say a lot more about us than it does about group C.
#20 cicely
November 3, 2009

Raka, I might agree with you, if I didn’t know for a fact that my own brother, though apparently sane and possessed of rational capacity in most matters, holds a belief-set that uncomfortably resembles the post under discussion. I can’t see him being a lone aberration, therefore have no trouble believing in the possibility of a group A running along exactly these lines.
#21 Emily
November 3, 2009

@Raka: Indeed, the line of reasoning you describe is the same used by Rush Limbaugh to claim that although a socialist essay allegedly written by Obama in college was satire, we “just know” Obama really thinks that way. Of course, that doesn’t mean that no evangelicals would accept these Yellow Peril beliefs. What’s really disturbing is that people genuinely hold beliefs which are indistinguishable from satire.
#22 hjh
November 6, 2009

lol. I typed “I am” in google, and the whole “terrified of chinese people” came up as the second choice after bored. Google is so wierd! There are some really racist people out there tho…
#23 George
November 8, 2009

I was Poe’d by another article on Christwire.org. There is no shame in falling for it.
#24 Chaz
November 14, 2009

For the record, the vast majority of Christians do NOT believe anything like this. The christwire website is either a spoof or the work of a small, racist, bigoted minority. Unfortunately, these kinds of people reflect badly on the rest of us.
#25 jake
November 20, 2009

probably related to the kkk
#26 leslie
November 29, 2009

its a shame to see that a so called science blog is too ignorant what this post is about. your getting trold
#27 Crystal
November 30, 2009

hahaha
As a Canadian asian who attends an American system school in China, I believe my perspective is quite valid on this issue. It’s really quite baffling how warped the perspectives of the Western World and the Eastern World are. I met people like me who have lived abroad all their lives, and I’ve also made asian friends who’s only ever lived in America. It seems that misconceptions are results of speedy conclusions. Americans regularly practice this when viewing China: fact without evidence. It’s even worse when they attempt to ‘empathize’ with the ‘bizarre’ yellow people. It bothers me when people narrow their world so that the only accepted terms are democracy and christianity. Atheism? Yes I am an atheist. Do I believe I am less moral than Christian? Of course not. I have my own morals, and so does my Chinese family who is not devoted to a particular faith. And yes, the communism view of China is too black and white. No one government is exactly defined by a single term. Some can even argue America is not a full democracy in several aspects. It’s impossible to understand fully unless you’ve seen it from both perspectives…now consider this. I am 14 and I understand more about these worlds than some in a lifetime. Do people understand how vital mutual understanding will be in the future?
#28 tracy
December 5, 2009

Hey guys,
I just wanted to straighten out one thing. The fact that this guy is totally ridiculous and ignorant has nothing to do with his religion. It has to do the political manipulation that’s received by the undereducated or under-exposed populations of this world.

The Bible doesn’t tell me to discriminate but tells me to love people as myself. If I have hatred towards someone or a race, it simply means that I am just a hypocrite, not a Christian.

I have read the Bible many times, and I just don’t find most of the controversies that people claim are Christian ideas. In American, there’s a horrible tradition of polarizing every policy or idea by adding religion accent to the mix. This is a form of mass manipulation to get support and votes. Sometimes it’s aimed at the ignorant. Now, even individuals are conditioned to use religious labels for their personal agendas. Reacting to that, others then get manipulated into hating Christians just because they feel the need to take the opposite side than the offender. But honestly, the REAL Christians are not the ones out there making political propaganda and claiming God told them to. They are at church learning how to be a better person, and striving to serve others. WHY? Because that IS what the Bible ACTUALLY teaches us Christians.

Honestly, let’s STOP generalizing based on half-knowledge and reaction to superficial illusions. Let’s REALLY think for ourselves and do some research personally before coming to conclusions, about the Chinese people, or about Christianity.
#29 Angel
December 6, 2009

Bitch please.
Ima gonna find you and choke you with dumplings.
I’m gonna get all my chinese buds together and bomb your house.
I will slit your little white throat
love, chinese kid whos gonna kill you
#30 Denise McTighe
December 7, 2009

A former science writer I have lived the past few years under the red flag of China, and have walked in an out of villages, hutongs and gleaming high rises all over the country in search of another perspective. I have learned to expect uncertainty in the unpredictable nature of the highly-developing East. However, with over a billion people attempting to live,and thrive the behavioural religious, pscyho-social summing up we are famous for in the West just won’t cut it. There just is not as much time or space for gratutious navel gazing and debating over issues.
#31 gin
January 5, 2010

I, too, googled “I am extremely” and came across that ridiculous article. However, after reading a couple more equally ridiculous articles on christwire.org, I realized it might just be another whiny satire site. Seriously, I’m of Chinese descent and don’t follow any religion, but even I don’t think any devout Christian on a site called “christwire” would have a link called “hatemail and questions” or “blessed this week” (at least, not referring to favorite articles). Well, just wanted to put that out there. I bet the creators of that site snigger every time someone posts an angry reply to one of their articles…losers.
#32 garret owens
January 22, 2010

uhhgg. people showing there ignornce by ranting about someones ignorances i hope you realize your just as ignorant toward christian as he is to chinese plus its satire and shouldnt be ranted at in the first place
sincerly,
DIE IN A FIRE
#33 Anonymous
January 25, 2010

this is what it sounds like clay is fat and doesnt do his homework………….
#34 Chan
February 10, 2010

The smartest comment I’ve read on this site is by Gin, who’s perceptive enough to call a bluff for what it is. I’m Chinese and a Christian. One thing is for certain, Christwire.com is just an overt attempt to give Christians a bad name by raising sensitive issues and attacking minority groups, then signing off as Christians. Do not fall for it!
#35 Cliffton
February 16, 2010

Look at you fucking retards. You are so eager to hate on christians you can’t see an obvious troll website for what it is. Whoever wrote that doesn’t believe a word of it. It was done to piss people off and get reactions. You fell for it. YHBT. YHL. HAND
#36 Anonymous
March 7, 2010

Honestly i think this is the biggest load of rubbish ever. Just beacause your view to other ethic group is different doesn’t mean they have to be the one in the wrong ? Maybe their definlation of moral is different doesn’t mean you can insult them either ? i cant even express how annoyed and angry I am at your understatment and your misunderstanding at the chinese history maybe you need to spend more time your internet then you already have and please do remember the history of chinese has gone further back then you americans. You need to sort yourself out you are a argoant geek, get you ass off the internet and stop chatting shit !
#37 sylvia
March 22, 2010

I’m a Chinese person and I find this hilarious.

Don’t worry, we’re less afraid of you than you are of us.
#38 Colugo
March 22, 2010

Great Lord Cthulhu, Johnson, you are credulous. This is a somewhat old post, but its lesson is still pertinent.

Here’s another right wing Christian website for you to get sputteringly self-righteous about:

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/

Maybe this is an opportunity for you to reflect on how sanctimony can fuel gullibility. For instance, over a number of posts you have parroted animal rights talking points, some of which are quite dubious. A bit more savvy and due diligence are in order.
#39 Chinese King
March 26, 2010

you can be dead now .First,I can say you know just a little about our motherland,but you pretend bo be an expert.I can tell you,your land is not yours ,you got it from the indians ,you robber!How many people have you killed for it?have you think about it!!!!! You just a person whose hands are covered by blood but talk about moral
#40 Cockring69
July 19, 2010

I’ve never made a post on the world wide web before. My name is Gladys Davenport, and my grandson showed me this interwebb thing. I am trying to start a group of people afraid of ashians, come out ofd the woodwork. We need to stop the yellow fever.
Gladys
#41 Steve Gearth
August 10, 2010

I think you have missed the point. That whole artical was written by a woman of Chinese descent. It is simply being sarcastic. None of it was meant to be taken truthfully. Get your facts straight next time, mister sciencepants.