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This is a very humorous comment for you to have made. OP posted a quote from David Graeber that precedes China's Belt-and-Road plans by years. Graeber was inste

This is a very humorous comment for you to have made. OP posted a quote from David Graeber that precedes China's Belt-and-Road plans by years. Graeber was instead writing about the West's use of debt to further exploit the global south, and how debt has long had a supposed moral dimension that makes renegotiating it (in the literal and metaphorical sense) exceedingly difficult. As someone who sporadically did political organizing with David Graeber, I assure you he was sharply critical of US policy as it pertained to exploiting developing countries. He also happened to be a professor of anthropology at Yale and the London School of Economics. How you have determined he was a "foreign agent or useful idiot" is curious. But I know David would have found it as funny as I do.

username332211 3y ago
I don't see how you can drag someone's credentials to prove he isn't a useful idiot. Malcolm Caldwell, famous for being the very embodiment of a useful idiot was a research fellow at UCL. Other defenders of the Red Khmers had even more impressive credentials. Need I remind you who was the writer of "Distortions at Fourth Hand" and "Manufacturing Consent"? By definition, all useful idiots have impressive credentials. Without credentials, they are not useful.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Other defenders of the Red Khmers Are you talking about the entire Western block where in the 80 when western powers brought support to the milicia in order to piss off the Soviet Union-backed Vietnam, or what?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
vkou 3y ago
> How you have determined he was a "foreign agent or useful idiot" is curious. That's easy. Generally speaking, anyone who is critical of empire-building is seen by that empire's apparatchiks as a "foreign agent or useful idiot." The criticism doesn't come from any position of principle, it's just us-versus-them tribalism.

username332211 3y ago

I don't see how you can drag someone's credentials to prove he isn't a useful idiot. Malcolm Caldwell, famous for being the very embodiment of a useful idiot was a research fellow at UCL. Other defenders of the Red Khmers had even more impressive credentials. Need I remind you who was the writer of "Distortions at Fourth Hand" and "Manufacturing Consent"? By definition, all useful idiots have impressive credentials. Without credentials, they are not useful.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Other defenders of the Red Khmers Are you talking about the entire Western block where in the 80 when western powers brought support to the milicia in order to piss off the Soviet Union-backed Vietnam, or what?
- deleted 3y ago
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vkou 3y ago

> How you have determined he was a "foreign agent or useful idiot" is curious. That's easy. Generally speaking, anyone who is critical of empire-building is seen by that empire's apparatchiks as a "foreign agent or useful idiot." The criticism doesn't come from any position of principle, it's just us-versus-them tribalism.