I know that it's Chinese and it translates roughly as "white/Western left." Looking it up on the Chinese wiki, Google translate gives me... well, this:
It is used to describe people who support policies such as the abolition of the death penalty , [ 3 ] animal protection , environmental protection , body equality , skin equality , LGBT , feminism , vegetarianism , marijuana decriminalization , euthanasia , abortion and immigration , that is, people with cultural leftist ideas in the European and American world.
This paints baizuo as something akin to American conservative terms like "woke" or "SJW." On the other hand, I've seen baizuo on Hexbear a few times, but in those contexts it seemed to mean something closer to "succdem" or "Western chauvinist" rather than the definition above. Obviously, a term used to insult feminists, LGBT people, and environmentalists would be incredibly out of place on this site, hence why I'm asking about it rather than taking a machine-translated Wiki article at face value.
Honestly didn't know the etymology coming from an unhinged weirdo, but I've generally used it (irl mind you, I'm in China) as a handwaive when family asks about why X in the west is bad/inefficient/non-existent and "right wingers" isn't the cause.
Like what's with the aversion to nuclear power? Combination of 白左 and also the fossil fuel lobby.
Or if a policy that does (ostensibly) benefit poor people but is means tested to death, and they ask why it's set up like that. 白左
But I don't really often hear it in China. My family is just weirdly politically engaged due to being former Party members and revolutionaries. The average guy in the street is absolutely not going to use the phrase ever.
Yeah sure weirdos on XHS will also use it to refer to any aspect of the Western "left" they see online that they disagree with, but it's wholly inconsistent. Could be addressing Ultras. Or trots. Or liberals. Or redditors. Or nazbols. Or socdems. Or demsocs. I feel like XHS comment sections are like 2 steps away from calling Shanghai 白左.
Isn't this the general sentiment there already? I thought they already thought of Shanghai as honorary westerners, or trying way too hard to be westerners.
The aversion to nuclear power here in europe is mostly the cultural scars that chernobyl had on Europe along with various different instances of massive polluting by major companies and nobody believing any for-profit company could be trustworthy enough to manage it safely.
It can't be understated how significant Chernobyl was on european mindsets about nuclear power. That shit legitimately did nearly destroy europe and people's attitudes to nuclear power were very heavily affected by it. Those attitudes then passed on.
Another small part of me thinks that anti-nuclear power movements were also tied together with anti-nuclear movements and that such movements possibly once believed that opposing nuclear power helped prevent nuclear weapon proliferation because they wouldn't have the materials to be enriched for weapons. But this thought is not really based on anything I've read, I think it's something that might have been discussed by orgs privately at the time though.