Calling people cringe isn't avoiding confrontation. It's just a much more reasonable stance to take than "meme invented by Chinese netizens is actually racist as soon as white people touch it and is also a nefarious plot by neo-nazis to normalize racism because it's making a non-white person look ridiculous".

I'm not saying avoid confrontation to ease tension, I'm saying that the easier dunk is "you are posting a picture of a world leader photoshopped to look like a children's book character and expecting it to bring about regime change".