• MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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      16 hours ago

      Just look below. Pretty clearly to call the other person a racist.

      The irony obviously being that this is about the interior design of the White House and calling it “designed by a dictator from the middle east” is about as bad of an insult as “designed by a king from europe”. It only really works as a racist statement, when you believe in Western Exceptionalism.

      • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml
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        12 hours ago

        It only really works as a racist statement, when you believe in Western Exceptionalism.

        This Is some laughable mental gymnastics! I assure you that I don’t believe in Western exceptionalism.

        The reason looking at Trump’s ugly, ego-stroking, interior design choices and saying they “look like a middle eastern dictator designed it” is racist, is because it Orientalizes the middle east, not as a place with diverse peoples, politics, and yes, interior design senses.

        But instead papers over that diversity and paints Trump’s gaudy displays as unbecoming of a western leader, more akin to that of an imagined barbaric Oriental Despotism

        Saying Trump’s design sense is “Like a middle eastern dictator” is very different from saying it’s “like a European king”. The former sits within a of a long history of Oriental racism perpetuated by Europeans, against people’s the Global South.

        Please read Orientalism by Edward Said, I’m begging you people!