this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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That is a fascinating question. I would argue that racism does constitute soft power, because the USA definitely does export racism deliberately through popular culture, and through promotion of reactionary content on online platforms to stoke ethnic and racial tensions and as an attractive call for people who share those values living abroad. Soft =!= benign, it just means 'not hard/coercive'. (Soft power is a buzzwords afaic and often poorly used)
Edit: i.e. soft power is about 'value' dissemination and attraction, the valence of those values has no bearing on the evaluation of whether those actions to promulgate those values are soft/hard
I'll have to read this after work and get back to you, I'm interested in both the responses (also I added a small edit to my original comment before seeing your reply)
I found deepseek's response definitely more coherent and, I know it wasn't in your prompt but, as always I feel that both responses were lacking citations on theorists and texts. I need to do a bit more reading myself. Thanks for sharing these.
Never had that one happen, lol.