Zoë Grünewald
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We have this relationship with China.
Whether we like it or not, the question is, how do we use it, right?
And I think because we are feeling very...
unstable because of our relationship with the US and how that has changed because we've distanced ourselves from Europe.
There is this kind of consensus, I think, that we have to be realistic about that.
But you're totally right.
Does that realism come at a cost of ignoring our national security, ignoring the human rights violations that are going on, and ignoring the fact that any relationship we shore up could massively damage another relationship that could then inflict pain on us economically?
So it is very difficult to start with.
So I actually, I've looked into this a bit.
So you're right that it's a copy of this Trump meme.
But this Trump meme was a copy of a TikTok which copied a Werner Herzog film.
He's a documentary filmmaker in the early 2000s.
He had this clip of this penguin walking on the ice.
The penguin was explicitly suicidal.
This has become like a nihilist meme that has been used.
It was originally used because it was like, you know, this penguin walking into certain death.
The American right actually decided that that wasn't really what this penguin was.
Actually, he was a base national hero.
They've all said now the penguin is actually used to mean don't follow the herd, reject immigration, embrace destiny.
And that's why Layla Cunningham has ripped it.