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Most Americans have forgotten that the first rule of international travel is not to overtly fuck with totalitarian regimes. With the unipolar world of the last
by kchoudhu 7y ago
Most Americans have forgotten that the first rule of international travel is not to overtly fuck with totalitarian regimes.
With the unipolar world of the last thirty years coming to a messy end, that's a lesson we're going to have internalize again. Be humble, be careful with the risks you take abroad, and steer clear of overtly dangerous places.
- narnianal 7y agoThe basic idea is to not fuck with any local system/law/culture if you're abroad.
- jMyles 7y agoI don't agree with the word "any" here. There's nothing wrong with taking a disruptive approach to oppression when you witness it, but calculating your position relative to the system/law/culture so that you are able to live freely to act justly another day - that can be the tricky part. I remember seeing hotel staff act in an overtly and disgustingly racist way in Cape Town, South Africa. As a tourist, hotel guest, American, and white person, I knew that I had all of the systemic privilege on my side. So I had no problem assisting the underprivileged people in that situation. Now, with a powerful totalitarian system like China, it might be a different calculation.
- rossdavidh 7y agoIf you are taking a disruptive approach to the government (at any level) of a place you are traveling, you should expect to have a high risk of getting arrested, and not necessarily being given a fair trial. If you are morally so opposed to the situation that you believe this to be a sacrifice worth making, ok then. But you shouldn't be surprised when it happens. Also, it is not too hard to imagine a foreigner's "disruptive behavior" backfiring in terms of the impact on the locals' attitude towards the policy in question. Knowing whether or not your disruptive behavior will be a useful prod to change, or provoke a backlash against foreign meddling that actually reinforces the system in question, takes a lot of nuanced knowledge of the local society, which a foreigner will usually not have.
- chillacy 7y agoThat's a great thing you've done in Cape Town. I remember reading Trevor Noah's book where he talks about how his father challenged Apartheid with his integrated restaurant, but ultimately got shut down by government inspectors making impossible hoops for him to jump through.
- jMyles 7y agoI actually still keep in touch with two of the guys who were being treated unfairly. It was a crazy situation, but not without a touch of comedy. I need to write about it sometime.
- gruez 7y ago>Be humble, be careful with the risks you take abroad, and steer clear of overtly dangerous places. That advice wouldn't have helped the americans in the article.
- jki275 7y agoIf you read it "Don't travel to China" it would have.
- chapium 7y agothat pretty obvious tbh
- fps_doug 7y agoIt's probably safe to say this applies to most westerners, and not just limited to totalitarian regimes, but developing countries in general. I woudln't say it's the majority, but a lot of people seem to run around there thinking they're great white saviors with infinite wisdom.
- cltsang 7y agoTrue. But most Americans don't fuck with DPRK even if for some reason they decide to travel there. The core of the problem is they underestimate how "totalitarian" China is.
- DeonPenny 7y agoWow when did appeasement become something americans should be ok with. Why are you so ok with that being the world we live in. Tip toeing around monsters instead of pushing them out of the world stage.