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[+] 80 points 8 months ago (12 children)
  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Tbf the last 300 years put the white people in a pretty comfortable first place.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Well yes, but once you start oppressing a people, they generally don't get much of a chance to oppress anyone else.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Actually, quite the opposite is true for colonialism. Colonizers often chose a "favourite" group of local people and gave them a tiny sliver of power on the condition, that they help oppress everyone else. I'm not judging that btw.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Right but if you follow that power dynamic up the chain the cause would still be the group that picked the " favorite".

    This doesn't resolve the "favorite" group from their role, but rather distributes blame to all involved

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Moreover, the intentional pitting of Group A against Group B in colonialism is specifically to make it so that Groups A and B never realize that they could overtake their colonizers by cooperating.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    What I really don't get with tankies is their reverence of Russia. Their history can be summarized like so: and then everything took a change for the worse. To this day Russia is an empire where white people use colonized people to die for bits of field in parts they already starved in 1932-1933.

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  • [–] 33 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Are you trying to suggest that the Great Satan USA isn't responsible for every single genocide in world history? Preposterous!

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    The weirdest part is that the US never really got up to much imperialism compared basically every other world power.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 8 months ago

    I think it shakes out much more evenly if you count the westward expansion against Native American polities as imperialism. Don't forget taking part of Mexico, opening Japan and attempting to open Korea at gunpoint, engaging in 'unequal treaties' with China, annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines, occupying Haiti, etc. And the whole Cold War we engaged in a similar level of hegemonic imperialism as the USSR did, even if we were more tolerant of democracies on 'our side'.

    I love this stupid-ass country more than most (and more than I should honestly), and I go to bat for arguing against American Diabolism regularly, but we definitely have a long list of skeletons in our closets.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    It engaged in a lot of imperialism, but then when it found itself on the top spot a new form of colonialism was being built, that of cultural and economic hegemony. Occupation by corporation rather than by military.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    Korea, Japan, the UK, and the EU are essentially 100% dependent on the US, which is why the are kowtowing and letting Trump do whatever he wants. The US has always been imperialist, they just don't try to openly declare half a continent across the globe as rightfully theirs, just bullying their "allies" into favorable treaties

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago

    Historians looking for genocide in history:

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    It's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism, tankies love this fallacy for some reason.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago*

    It’s “appeal to hypocrisy”. It’s very similar to butwhataboutism, but butwhataboutism relies on constantly shifting the focus and making the opponent jump through hoops while the butwhatabout-er never concedes anything. Hypocrisy is saying “you did bad shit too so you don’t get to talk.”

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    Let's try the commie shit again and see if it's better this time around

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  • [–] [S] 18 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    Sure, but no Lenin 2.0 please. Oligarchies and dictatorships tend to go down the same tired old path.

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  • [+] 4 points 8 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] [S] 17 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Are you ever going to read theory? Communism literally cannot exist without a dictatorship of the Proletariat….

    I can't tell if this is meant to be a joke or not.

    The dictatorship of the proletariat, as outlined by Marx, is not a literal dictatorship. Bourgeois parliamentary democracies were considered the dictatorship of the bourgeois.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago*

    I had a tankie tell my that same line of bullshit when they said that the only way to run a dictatorship of the proletariat was through a literal Lenin style dictatorship, and not any form of democracy.

    Which is just insane.

    Read more theory, and you come across the Levelers, and more pointedly, the Diggers.

    The Diggers were completely in favor of abolishing basically everything, money, government, kings and lords, property ownership. All of it in favor of an extreme Christian communism, They also advocated for forced labor for lazy malcontents, who they did not define as the poor or the destitute.

    The English civil war was wild. It laid the groundwork for Marx, and the American and French revolutions. Sadly, the English never could get it together and ditch the monarchy completely.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    Are you ever going to read any political theory that isn't on cowbee's little list so that you actually understand first principles instead of just regurgitating jargon you don't understand?

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago

    tankies punching air rn

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    Well, the Alliance would never have invaded Draenor and put orcs in concentration camps if the orcs didn't invade Azeroth in the first place!

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    People just been fully convinced to hate themselves for shit that happened 100+ years ago

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Historians tells us that after the war the nazis vanished without a trace. But after Hess died they sure did come out of the woodwork.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (17 children)

    I don't think there's any evidence for genocide, but my pet peeve for this is how the indigenous people of the Americas are held up purely as victims, as if the concept of violence didn't exist until Columbus arrived. When the Europeans first arrived in North America, the tribal villages they encountered were surrounded by fortified wooden palisades. Those weren't just there as decorations. Everyone sucks.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I don’t think there’s any evidence for genocide,

    Back up, there may not be evidence for a single, concerted policy of genocide, but there are many verifiable genocides of Native American peoples by colonial polities and societies.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    I have yet to encounter this explicitly where someone would say that Native Americans were "purely victims". At best, they aggregate and dehistoricize all tribes into a conglomerate term, "Native Americans". I'm sure there are some who cling to the "noble savage" trope, but I don't see it these days.

    What ever intertribal conflicts happened, they never reached the level of disease spread, displacement, and systematic violence aimed at cultural erasure. The unprecedented scale of violence unleashed by colonialism, which led to devastating consequences for these communities is important and to flatten the intertribal violence along side the colonial conquest is narrow minded. They may have sucked, but some far more than others.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    What ever intertribal conflicts happened, they never reached the level of disease spread, displacement, and systematic violence aimed at cultural erasure

    Not because they were noble savages though, just because they lacked the ability to do that to their enemies.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    That's a huge statement. Do you have equally damning evidence to support that statement?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Do I have damning evidence that humans are humans and behave the way humans always do?

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

    "I've never seen someone cling to the noble savage trope."

    "Intertribal conflicts between Native American polities were less brutal because of material constraints, not any fundamental cultural restraint on the behavior of human beings, which is largely consistent across recorded history regardless of region and culture."

    "I don't accept that."

    ?????

    Do you legitimately not understand how that is the noble savage trope?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    The frame I'm rejecting is the idea that, given the same material conditions, all people and cultures throughout history would react in the same way. This view oversimplifies and dehistoricizes the diverse experiences of Native Americans, as I mentioned in my first comment.

    Culture and material conditions are interconnected; they shape and influence one another. If culture only emerged from material conditions, then people would merely be reacting mechanistically to their environments, lacking the richness of creativity, belief systems, and individual agency that shape societies in diverse and meaningful ways. Recognizing this complexity does not mean I'm relying on the noble savage trope.

    The way you dismissed my response was uncalled for. I've take time and care to craft my response to be honest and considerate. I'm not interested in a discussion that is otherwise.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    The frame I’m rejecting is the idea that, given the same material conditions, all people and cultures throughout history would react in the same way.

    Broadly speaking, they do. People are people. I didn't realize we were entering into an argument where cultural chauvinism is the very foundation.

    This view oversimplifies and dehistoricizes the diverse experiences of Native Americans, as I mentioned in my first comment.

    How the fuck so? When Native Americans have, even just during the time period of European record-keeping, have been observed engaging in displacement and systemic violence aimed at cultural erasure?

    Or are we laying it all on some strange notion of an especial-but-unproven cultural immunity to the development of novel diseases?

    Culture and material conditions are interconnected; they shape and influence one another. If culture only emerged from material conditions, then people would merely be reacting mechanistically to their environments, lacking the richness of creativity, belief systems, and individual agency that shape societies in diverse and meaningful ways.

    No culture yet seen has been observed to prevent human beings from acting in according with their own interests; our interests are determined overwhelmingly by material conditions.

    The way you dismissed my response was uncalled for. I’ve take time and care to craft my response to be honest and considerate. I’m not interested in a discussion that is otherwise.

    The entire point of the Noble Savage trope is exactly the line of argument you laid down. I'm sorry that you feel being called out is being 'dismissed', but perhaps before denying using a trope you should at least check what it means first?

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    This conversation has become repetitive, and it feels like my arguments are being mischaracterized as arguments I am not making. I reject the notion that people act solely based on material conditions, and I've articulated my view in full. Your insistence on framing my position as cultural chauvinism or invoking the noble savage trope is not only unproductive but also dismissive of the complexity I'm trying to convey.

    You've called out a strawman and I am not interested in continuing this discussion.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 8 months ago*

    This conversation has become repetitive, and it feels like my arguments are being mischaracterized as arguments I am not making.

    Repetitive because... I point out that Native Americans have engaged in displacement and systemic violence aimed at cultural erasure, unlike what you claimed?

    I reject the notion that people act solely based on material conditions, and I’ve articulated my view in full.

    I'm sorry you don't believe that all humankind shares a basic biological-neurological foundation which drives our behavior, both as individuals and societies?

    Your insistence on framing my position as cultural chauvinism or invoking the noble savage trope is not only unproductive but also dismissive of the complexity I’m trying to convey.

    No, you're simply uncomfortable with acknowledging the reality that you are advocating a culturally chauvinist position. Fuck, in what way could you possibly see this argument otherwise? "It's not cultural chauvinism because it's not my culture I'm championing"?

    I'm sorry that you refuse to acknowledge that your position is fucking spot-on for the noble savage trope, wherein the reality of a fetishized culture is ignored in favor of stripping it of moral agency so that it can be displayed as a didactic counterexample to a 'decadent' modernity.

    You can harp on about how complex your position supposedly is, but all that's been presented here is a denial of the common behavior of human societies in preference for a saccharine and sanitized view of Native American peoples wherein they are, by the virtue and purity of their culture (and, of course, it is just 'Native American' culture, not any actual specific culture of the Americas that might pin you down to real-world evidence), incapable of the evils of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and "disease spread."

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Regardless, they were still victims of colonial genocide, they didn't have to be pillars of esoteric religious morality for that to be wrong. Considering how many wars between england and literally every other kind of person they could identify not being english, it's hardly a stone to be thrown in this context.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    fuck tankies, but to be fair, capitalism is responsible for more suffering and death than any other ideology

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Only insofar as one is willing to subsume multiple economic systems without even marginal ideological similarities between them as a single system that bears the guilt for the actions of the polity.

    I wouldn't say central planning has caused most deaths attributed to ML countries, and I wouldn't say capitalism has caused most deaths attributed to non-ML countries. Both have caused more deaths than they have any right to, but the fundamental problem lays in political and military power more than the exact structure of economic hierarchies. They can feed each other, but then we must get into questions of how much guilt and in what proportion - especially since ideological application in the real world is rarely 'pure' - each piece holds.

    Not only that, but these two economic systems have dominated an age where an order of magnitude more people live on the planet than previously. It may be technically true, for example, to say that capitalism or central planning has killed more people than feudal economic systems, but that does not really capture the actual moral value of each of the three.

    Capitalism is shit. We need to get rid of it. But that's not the same as saying it's responsible for more suffering and death than any other.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    With all due respect, this smacks of rationalizing. I'm not talking about ideology, I'm talking about outcomes. You and I both know that everyone who dies or suffers from a lack of healthcare, food or shelter, just as an absolute fundamental starting point, is a victim of our system of resource distribution. We have enough food and housing for everyone, but it isn't profitable to provide it to those who need it.

    It is a disgusting system and I agree with you, it has to go. And to get rid of it, we need to talk about how evil it is. Tankies are wrong because they want the system to persist but be controlled by the working class. But the system is the problem.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    With all due respect, this smacks of rationalizing. I’m not talking about ideology, I’m talking about outcomes.

    But I'm explicitly talking about outcomes as well? I'm pointing out that the idea of 'capitalism', when used vaguely, often conflates the outcomes of many different systems.

    "Only insofar as one is willing to subsume multiple economic systems without even marginal ideological similarities between them as a single system that bears the guilt for the actions of the polity."

    Ideological similarities here should be read not simply in terms of post-hoc justification, but in terms of the very valuations and thinking which create the processes of the systems.

    You and I both know that everyone who dies or suffers from a lack of healthcare, food or shelter, just as an absolute fundamental starting point, is a victim of our system of resource distribution.

    Sure, this is technically true. But the issue is that resource distribution is itself a systemic question.

    It's not as easy as "Give everyone what they need." There's not a simple switch to pull that would ensure reliable access to needed resources for everyone who needs them. Who decides who needs what? By what means are these needed goods produced? What motivations are used to ensure steady production? If production is short, what happens? Etc etc etc etc etc.

    We have enough food and housing for everyone, but it isn’t profitable to provide it to those who need it.

    And under central planning, there's enough food and housing for everyone, but the redistributive apparatus is incapable or unwilling to provide it to all those who need it; and under feudal economic systems, there's enough food and housing for everyone, but the redistributive apparatus is so primitive and insular that it has no interest in providing food or housing to those who need it, and we can keep going back as far as you like.

    Capitalism is a shit system. But if you're going to assign every death under well-defined capitalist systems as the fault of capitalism, then you'll also have to assign blame likewise to other economic systems which allow death from shortages of needed goods (ie all of them so far), which would cast significant doubt into the claim that capitalism has caused more suffering and death than any other system.

    It is a disgusting system and I agree with you, it has to go. And to get rid of it, we need to talk about how evil it is.

    Sure, but talking about how evil it is doesn't necessitate making dubious superlative claims. I can say Boris Johnson was a depraved shithead without needing to call him the most morally repugnant head of government to ever walk the earth, for example.

    Tankies are wrong because they want the system to persist but be controlled by the working class. But the system is the problem.

    ... so what systems aren't we counting as 'capitalism' then?

    Or if it's just "the system" rather than capitalism that's being critiqued here, what is meant by "the system" exactly?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Historians? Who and what are they?

    Do they keep the secrets, or do we?

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