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> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself. oh come on. we critic
by kmlx 5y ago
> West's psychological struggles to come to terms with its own historically unprecedented imperial past, than it does about China itself.
oh come on. we criticise China because it’s whole political system, that was set up very recently btw, fights against basic rights we take for granted in the West. not because of what the romans or european empires did hundreds of years ago, but because of what China is doing right now.
- ahelwer 5y agoThose rights are available domestically in the West, yes, at least for the time being. Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. But hey, here in the imperial core we are quite comfortable. So this state of being must represent our ideals!
- andrepd 5y ago>Those same rights have never been extended to the citizens of the countries whose democratic governments were toppled or subverted by what we call the West. Well yeah, isn't that precisely what's being criticised? Also not all the evil in the world was created by the West.
- tombh 5y agoWhilst I readily admit that focussing my attention on the West's criticism of China depletes my limited resources to affect positive change in China, I actually believe I am ultimately having a greater impact. What I'm saying is that if we truly have China's, or namely humanity's best interests at heart when we criticise China, then we could profoundly increase our effectiveness if we demonstrated even just a basic understanding of context. Namely that the West is defined by its colonialism — its power and influence comes from exploitation of more than half the world. To give an example, if a government truly wants people to wear masks and socially isolate, then the prime minister (Boris Johnson of the UK in this case), should not throw private parties. We can argue about whether what the West did was net good or bad, but I don't think we can argue about whether the effectiveness of one's words are diminished by acts that are contrary to those words.
- kmlx 5y agoyou are cherry-picking history in order to further your narrative about exploitation. in reality, humanity has been at war for millennia. the chinese have been at war with all their neighbours for centuries. slavery has been the status-quo until 200 years ago. you are also assuming just because some politician is immoral than people will also be immoral. this is false. does this have anything to do with how the chinese government treats its citizens in the present? not at all
- tombh 5y agoJust for the record, and to be 100% clear. I hereby explicitly denounce the Chinese government's murder of innocent students at Tiananmen Square, and the genocide of the Uighurs. But I think you are completely missing my point. I don't believe the West actually wants to improve the world. It wants so much power that it can avoid looking at its own past, and present for that matter.
- ganzuul 5y agoYour context is where everyone already is as and your example appears to be wholly unrelated to your claim. I don't think you are having a positive influence here.
- tombh 5y agoCould you give more details?
- ganzuul 5y agoI like to think that anybody who has heard about the Vietnam war already knows what the West does in terms like colonialism. I finally understood that your example related to self-consistency and that Boris' binges are not the definition of colonialism, so my suggestion about influence should be discarded.