Hey everybody, look, Disney is doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party!
Seriously, they pulled this episode for their Chinese audience:
Disney, ever eager to avoid any confrontation with the Chinese Communist government, cut an episode of The Simpsons from Disney Plus streaming platform in Hong Kong that referenced "forced labor camps" in China.
The episode, titled "One Angry Lisa," aired in October 2022 and showed the instructor of Marge Simpson's virtual bike class state, "Behold the wonders of China. Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones." Another episode of the show that broadcast in 2005 mentioned the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the Chinese government's efforts to suppress knowledge of it; it was cut in 2021.
Here's the clip:
Yes, the old Uighur concentration camps conspiracy theory.
Except it's not a conspiracy theory.
Here, I found a left-wing article to explain:
These camps are much more like prisons than so-called boarding schools. A 2018 report by Agence France-Presse described camps in which thousands of guards carry spiked clubs, tear gas, and stun guns to surveil detainees, who are held in buildings surrounded by razor wire and infrared cameras. AFP journalists also reviewed public documents showing that government agencies overseeing the camps purchased 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.
So let's face it: Disney is out here working their magic in China to make sure nobody is exposed to the truth — even when it comes in the form of a Simpsons joke.
Anything that goes against the Chinese Communist Party is just not what Disney is about. They're about money, and when you call out the CCP you don't make money in the Chinese market.
For example:
In October 2019, speaking at the WSJ Tech Live conference on Tuesday, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted that Disney would stay silent regarding the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.
"What we learned in the last week — we've learned how complicated this is," Iger said, as reported by Bloomberg. "The biggest learning from that is that caution is imperative. To take a position that could harm our company in some form would be a big mistake. I just don't believe it's something we should engage in in a public manner."
So as China slowly pushes its way toward global hegemony, we got American corporations just simpin' away for the CCP to make sure they don't upset them.
All for the money.
Hey, maybe while we're at it we could get some of those Uighurs to make us some Frozen T-shirts, or possibly a nice little backpack with the new woke Buzz Lightyear on it.
I wonder if Disney has already banned this intro showing communist slave camps that the artist Banksy did for the show:
