A controversy to start the year. Accustomed to verbal jousts on TV sets, the LFI deputy David Guiraud is entangled in a bad buzz on social networks. One of France Insoumise’s most piquant speakers alluded to “celestial dragons” in response to a tweet that mentioned a complaint issued against him by the Jewish Observatory for “apology of terrorism.”
Problem: this reference to characters from the manga One Piece is regularly used by Internet users to publish anti-Semitic messages, without seeming to do so. Since then, the Northern MP has deleted his post on What is this reference? Since when was it hijacked? Can we ignore the meaning of this expression when we are used to social networks? We take stock with Pierre-William Fregonese, author and researcher at the University of the Arts in Kyoto, Japan.
What does the expression “celestial dragons” mean?
Celestial dragons are characters in Japanese manga One Piece, known worldwide. It is a caste which constitutes the high nobility in history. “Descendants of the founders of the world government, they are rich, privileged, and full of contempt for others whom they can reduce into slavery by affixing a mark on the bodies of the victims”, indicates our specialist who summarizes their positioning as follows: “the “Celestial dragons” are “powerful, inaccessible and hateful.”
One thing is certain, all the same, this is not the politician’s first reference to One Piece. The LFI deputy has been a fan of the manga for a long time. During his election in 2022 in the 8th district of the North, he also tweeted an image of Luffy, the main character, all smiles, to announce his victory.
Since when was this expression misused?
According to our expert, the misuse of “celestial dragons” dates back to the 2010s. “Some members of the JV forums started using this expression to refer to Jewish people in order to avoid keyword moderation.” This method has become popular on more recent social networks like TikTok, “mostly to convey hateful and mocking messages”.
This analogy was also used in the country of origin of One Piecein Japan, where the “celestial dragons” have been compared to the Rothschild family by YouTubers, specifies our specialist, with a real surge in anti-Semitism, even if it is less pronounced than in Europe.
Today, this expression falls into the dog-whistle category, a technique allowing extreme political messages to be hidden behind seemingly innocuous formulas. And One Piece is not the only manga to find favor with certain cryptic messages. “Other universes, like The attack of the Titanshave also been diverted to serve the extremes,” specifies our researcher.
Can we ignore the meaning of this expression when we are used to social networks?
Followed by more than 370,000 people on TikTok, David Guiraud uses his networks almost daily to communicate. The parliamentarian, who did not respond to our requests, refused to use the expression “celestial dragons” in an indirect manner. After deleted his tweet, the MP criticized his detractors for having misread the manga. “Celestial dragons are not a religion or a “race” and if you think so you have read the manga wrong. It is a military alliance of powerful people who crush others. They are not hated for what they are, but for what they do to others,” he clarified on X.
Without commenting directly on the MP’s case, our expert believes that in France, “the expression is now quite linked to disguised anti-Semitism, even if there can always be accidental allusions. A regular on social networks, a consumer of pop culture and above all a reader of One Piececan hardly ignore this usage.”