US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he still believes Chinese President Xi Jinping is a dictator, even as the two leaders made progress in their relationship during a meeting outside San Francisco.
“Well, look, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden told CNN’s MJ Lee. “Anyway, we made progress.”
When asked about Biden’s latest comment at a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Thursday, a spokesperson called it “extremely erroneous” and an “irresponsible political maneuver, which China firmly opposes.”
I don’t disagree with your first point. The second I still have to disagree – it’s a fraught term. If a substantial group of people find the word to be antisemitic, even if their reasoning is flawed it’s best to just not use it. In most circumstances it isn’t being used in a hateful way, but the connotation still exists.
Look at it this way. You and I may understand the historical context, but the average person doesn’t. They’re going to see it called antisemitic, and believe it too since it is in the original charter. If we’re protesting and demonstrating to the average person, why use the phrase? We need to separate criticism of Israel from antisemitism, and using a term considered antisemitic by many is completely counterproductive to that.