Chinese person in Canada: I just drink cold tap water, but my parents and grandparents drink boiled water. Not really for safety concerns over here, but they, my grandparents especially, subscribe to that traditional Chinese medicine thing of don’t put anything cold into your body ever.

Flying Canadian flags is generally a more subtle sign that someone is like that. Usually the people that do are polite and not overtly assholish, just avoid the following topics with them:

1. Immigration
2. Indigenous rights
3. China
4. Russia
5. India (Canada has a huge Indian diaspora and sadly they experience quite a bit of hate and racism)
6. Islam (non-Christian religions in general)

They will still be super polite while being racist. Canadians seem to have mastered that.

Interesting thing is that racist Canadians are often still fairly LGBTQ+ supportive, those are generally seen as separate issues in Canada, which is better than nothing I guess? The way that is counteracted like in your example is if they fly the Canadian flag with another country’s flag, immigrant families do that a lot and they are usually genuinely pleasent and nice people.

Canada: VERY common and considered standard practice, we like to make fun of the Americans for being obsessed with their flag but overall we’re just as bad. It’s also flown by Nazis as often as the American flag is.

You can show them other instances that better match your or their political view. Lemmy.ml is no longer marketed as the flagship instance, and in fact is not intended for everyone.

Again, simply expressing opinions for or against Ukraine or Taiwan is not against the rules.

Admin reminder to everyone: insulting other users, even so much saying “fuck you”, “fuck [this group of people]” or anything like that while debating IS against the rules of Lemmy.ml. This goes for every political view, you DO NOT get free passes because you’re leftist, rightist, communist, etc. If you’re confident of your position you should be able to debate politely without cursing someone else out.

Check the modlog, we HAVE removed replies of this nature from both sides, and even if we don’t say it every time, we DO keep track of both removals per user and general behaviour even if it doesn’t get removed, and too many infractions WILL result in a ban.

That said, it is NOT against the rules to present countering facts or opinions, or to have political opinions in general. Don’t report comments for “being pro communist” or “being pro China” unless they have broken an actual rule, namely the ones about being civil. Things people disagree with getting down voted is also acceptable, it’s not considered an attack on you if your comment has a negative score, and it doesn’t even significantly affect the ranking because of the relatively low comment volumes currently on Lemmy. It’s just imaginary internet points, relax.