Decolonizing Identitarian Essentialism in Asian American Social Media Activism

In the digital era of neoliberalism, social media vent their characteristics of democracy where freedom of speech politics uncloak inevitable conflicts of citizenship inclusivity/exclusivity and discursive subjugation/contestation (Jackson et al., #HashtagActivism: Networks of race and gender justice. The MIT Press, 2020). Epitomising condescending free speech as rhetorical practice of oppression, Donald Trump’s tweets about the Corona virus in March 2020 fueled anti-Asian hate not only in his social network of anti-immigration supporters but also in ideological discourse of Asian threats to U.S safety (Johnson, Trump’s ‘Chinese Virus’ tweet led to rise in anti-Asian tweets, study finds. CKRA3 News. https://www.kcra.com/article/trumps-chinese-virus-tweet-led-to-rise-in-anti-asian-tweets-study-finds/35941683 , 2021). On the other hand of social media gratifications, activists of Asian descent and allies propagate counter-semantics of their identity construction as symbolic contestation dismantling anti-Asian stereotypes in digital sites (Ramirez, Asian American activists are demanding equal civil rights, better education in schools after Asian hate attacks. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/26/stop-asian-hate-asian-americans-across-us-demand-reforms/6990150002/ , 2021). This chapter, therefore, challenges Trump’s anti-Asian rhetorics embedded in post-racial tenets of free speech while elucidating Asian/American activism for their digital counter publics.