I’ve read the wiki page, but thanks for linking it again. The fact that the meme originated in China, but spread like wildfire in the west, needs to be examined. Xi Jinping is incredibly popular in China, legitimately so. A picture comparing Xi to Winnie and Obama to Tigger showed up online. There wasn’t mass protest against Xi Jinping or anything.

What then exploded was western usage of the meme, beyond its origins, and in a new context. Largely among the anti-communist right, vile depictions and distortions of Xi Jinping began to take place, creating a racialized caricature. By this point the meme faded away near entirely in China, and instead became a symbol of hatred towards Xi Jinping in particular and the PRC in general in the west.

The western obsession with depicting Xi Jinping as a yellow bear is what is racist, and hiding behind the fact that the first iteration of the meme came from China, before it became distorted by the west, is a “get out of jail free” card for racists. It isn’t only communists that can correctly identify this, marginalized groups that have been caricaturized by westerners can also see this easily.

Neither Stalin nor Mao were “tyrannical dictators,” even the CIA said Stalin was closer to a “captain of a team” than an iron-fisted tyrant:

Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain. However, it does not appear that any of the present leaders will rise to the stature of Lenin and Stalin,so that it will be safer to assume that developments in Moscow will be along the lines of what is called collective leadership, unless Western policies force the Soviets ‘to streamline their power organization. The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view of upsetting the Communist dictatorship since the death of Stalin.

From Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership.

As for Stalin and Mao “hating the news,” this is similarly wrong. Stalin and Mao opposed bourgeois media, essentially outlets like Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, where CIA-funded reporters would blast propaganda from the west into socialist countries. News was still reported on, even Statesian reporters like Anna Louise Strong would meet with Stalin, Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and more.

In other words, an entirely different context, and not at all a quote from Stalin and Mao.

As for Trump, he is a billionaire. He serves his class, and the ones who fund him, imperialists and tech giants. This is why he took Elon Musk, Boeing execs, and more to the PRC and tried to get a good deal (which failed). Trump isn’t “trying to consolidate power,” he wants profits, which come from advancing the interests of finance and tech capital. When you erase class analysis, life appears to be an absurdity.

Mao, on the other hand only took up arms against Japan.

An invading and occupying imperialist force that was busily conducting war crimes. How the hell did you expect China to aid the Western front, exactly? The West was content to let Japan do whatever it wanted to the rest of East Asia so long as they didn’t attack their colonial holdings. Only then did they actually step in.

Trotting out with the damn Molotrov-Ribbentrop Pact is old hat by this point, but now you’re inventing new ways to be anticommunist. I’d almost be impressed if I weren’t so thoroughly disgusted.

The communists were never allies with the Nazis. A non-aggression pact is not an alliance. The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.

When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.

Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:

If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.

Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. When the USSR went into Poland, it stayed mostly to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades prior. Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.

Churchill did not take the Nazis as a serious threat, and was horrified when FDR and Stalin made a joke about executing Nazis. Churchill starved millions to death in India in preventable ways, and had this to say about it:

I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.

Meanwhile, the soviet famine in the 1930s was the last major famine outside of wartime in the USSR, because collectivized farming achieved food security in a region where famine was common. As a consequence, life expectancy doubled:

The Nazis and soviets were never allies. A non-aggression pact is not an alliance, and the non-aggression pact between the soviets and the Nazis was unique among the other non-aggression pacts in that it was on the eve of war. The soviets knew war was coming, and so bought more time to prepare.

Your knowledge of history matches your knowledge of Stalin and Mao (inadequate is a fitting term).

The non aggression pact was necessary to delay the inevitable long enough to industrialise post civil war and build up a force to fight the Nazis largely alone as the western powers had continuously refused to form an anti nazi pact since 1933. The soviets were also the last major power to sign a non aggression pact with the Nazis. The USSR broke the nazi beast took the majority of the casualties and killed the majority of the Nazis.

The USSR spent years trying to build an anti-Nazi alliance. 1933 they proposed collective security at the League of Nations. 1935 they signed mutual defense pacts with France and Czechoslovakia. Spring 1939 they sat in Moscow for months begging Britain and France for a real triple alliance. The West stalled, refused to guarantee the Baltics, refused to let the Red Army cross Poland to actually fight Hitler. Poland’s elite, more scared of workers than of Nazis, said no too and instead joined Hitler in attacking Czechoslovakia. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact happened because liberals handed Hitler Eastern Europe rather than work with socialists.

When Soviet troops entered eastern Poland September 17 1939, the Polish state had already collapsed. Government fled to Romania September 15. Warsaw was burning. The army was broken. The lands the USSR moved into? Not Poland proper. Territories Poland had seized and occupied by force in 1919-1921 from Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. Moving in to secure this land also saved millions from extermination.