5 ms·

These questions aren't comparable. Japan had a crash modernization followed by a brief outburst of violent colonialism, which they thought was the style at the

These questions aren't comparable. Japan had a crash modernization followed by a brief outburst of violent colonialism, which they thought was the style at the time but was actually in decline almost everywhere else. Britain had an empire that lasted hundreds of years, and whose greatest legacy is linguistic and temporal system dominance. Having spent centuries proclaiming itself to be the literal center of civilization to most of the world, is it really surprising that ambitious individuals gravitate toward it? This is the common culture that Britain set out to impose on its possessions. It's especially ironic (though not especially surprising) that immigration from former territories went way up after Britain forcibly detached itself from the EU. Perhaps the Brexiteers wil offer to secede from the world next - build a national space program and launch Britain into orbit as a second satellite that can service its markets while orbiting the planet from a distance.

rayiner 5mo ago
[flagged]
- gadders 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- anigbrowl 5mo ago
  It's not a matter of ideology, or of punishment. It's simply the dynamics of the system playing out. It's alienating for people inside of it because they're experiencing the effects of historical forces which operate on a scale longer than human life. OF course people would rather live in a period when things were simpler and easier, who wouldn't? The lie sold by the self-styled reformists (and doubled down upon by the emerging Restore Britain) is that all these unwanted outcomes were done to Britain by Other People instead of being the product of repeated bad decisions - Brexit being the most recent one. Someone else in the thread observed that about 27 immigrants are offered jobs for every native Briton entering the workforce. But this notion of prioritizing market forces at the expense of all other considerations is exactly the legacy of Thatcherite conservatism that has dominated Britain for nearly a half-century and of which the Brexit/Reform/Restor movements are the ost recent iterations. As John Bagot Glubb pointed out ~50 years ago (and many others have pointed out before him), the root causes of decline are complacency, greed, and individualism (vs the notion of social duty). I put it to you that modern finance capitalism selects for these negative traits because they maximize short-term gain and because the accumulation of money allows the holders of it to be indifferent to the long-term structural problems. The primary reason I do not identify as a political conservative is that they sell tradition to the electorate but conserve wealth and power for themselves. https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    > It's not a matter of ideology, or of punishment. It's simply the dynamics of the system playing out. It's alienating for people inside of it because they're experiencing the effects of historical forces which operate on a scale longer than human life. But British people today aren't doomed to allowing historical forces to play out. Or are you suggesting futility--that the British government lacks the state capacity to prevent what's happening?
    - djhn 5mo ago
      If the government had the capacity to prevent this, they would have. It appears, therefore, that they indeed do not.
    - anigbrowl 5mo ago
      Yes, they largely do lack the capacity, short of drastic restructuring of state institutions. What are they going to do? North Korea type isolation? Ethnic cleansing? The latter is essentially the program of the Restore Britain party, though I'm not sure if that's an actual party-in-waiting or a front group designed to make Reform or the Conservatives look more reasonable.
- l23k4 5mo ago
  >"Mass immigration is your punishment for the British Empire" has a certain ideological appeal. But if you're a British person, you don't care about that. What matters is whether you'd rather live in London as it was in 2000 or London today. And I think the answer to that is obvious if your judgment isn't compromised. My parents went to visit London a year or two ago, and my mom was shocked by the decline in public order and standards, the ghettos, etc. This is a woman who lived in Bangladesh most of her life, and she came back telling me about the decline of London. I walk around outside my home in the very heart of London: the street is full of Rolls Royces, pretty Russian and Ukrainian girls walk around carrying their Graff jewels and Kelly bags. Men still wear watches worth hundreds of thousands despite what the FT style section says. What ghetto? Where is it? Everybody here is as rich as Croesus and very much a part of the same global jet set culture.
- munksbeer 5mo ago
  This comment is nonsense, and it is the usual propaganda based on an ideological bent. I'm sorry but I think you and your family have retained the class/caste based system of you original homeland and it is just manifesting in a weird way. I am willing to bet your mother never encountered anything of the sort. Most of the old very rough areas in London are now gentrified (people complain about it). You can pretty much walk around anywhere in London, at night, without any issues. Phone snatching is the major problem, but general crime, violent crime, ghettoism, etc are all down since 2000. I know this, because I am an immigrant from a 3rd world country, have lived in London for 25+ years. And the stats show it too. Your post really makes me angry.
  - AlexeyBelov 5mo ago
    This user is well known for exactly that.
10xDev 5mo ago
The comparisons between the two nations are always superficial. When you peel the layers of nonsense off, it is just white supremacy with a mediocre attempt at masking it.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - 10xDev 5mo ago
    >if people don't want parts of London to resemble Delhi, Well, there you have it. These people always shoot themselves in the foot. The other guy thought I was Indian and told me about how "weak" it is only one response later as well. Interesting, I suppose Indians are currently the most socially acceptable to be racist towards.
    - rayiner 5mo ago
      If someone criticizes Delhi and your mind jumps to people's skin color--instead of literally everything else about the city--then you're the racist. None of the Indians (or Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) living in London want parts of London to resemble Delhi. They left their families and homeland behind to get away from Delhi and places like it.
      - 10xDev 5mo ago
        >If someone criticizes Delhi and your mind jumps to people's skin color--instead of literally everything else about the city--then you're the racist. Hmm American spelling and a low effort attempt at DARVO. So let's just cut through the noise. You obviously picked Delhi and the other guy picked India out of everything else and this is clearly not a coincidence. And there are certainly worse places. My guess is the Henry Nowak case has recently made it more socially acceptable to be racist towards Indians.
        rayiner 5mo ago
applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
> which they thought was the style at the time but was actually in decline almost everywhere else. I truly hate the historical revisionism of Westerners. Japan engaged in colonialism because it was an active victim of colonialism, and the only way to fight back was to stand on equal footing. Through the 1800s~1940s, Europe controlled nearly the entirety of Asia. China had been subject to countless treaties forced upon it. The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India were all colonies. 90% of Africa was under European control. 100% of both Americas was under European control. 100% of Australia and New Zealand was under European control. Europeans were literally aiming for world domination. The list of countries free from European colonialism could be counted on one hand: Japan (only because it successfully fought back), Korea (before it got annexed by Japan), Siam, Nepal, Iran pretty much covers it. Yet amazingly Europeans found and continue to find no shortage of pearl clutching over Japan daring to do the same thing they did, in a dog-eat-dog world where not doing so meant becoming another pawn. To the extent colonialism declined, it was solely due to to the world wars wrecking Europe so utterly they could not maintain their overseas holdings, + the untouched US intervening in eg. Suez Crisis in order to assert itself as the global Western hegemon with no peers.
- anigbrowl 5mo ago
  It's not historical revisionism, it's my desire to not write multiple paragraphs explaining the much briefer period of Japanese colonialism when the main point I wanted to make was about the British empire. By the time Japan launched its invasion of Manchuria the end of European colonialism was already in sight; Ireland had freed (mos of) itself from British domination a decade earlier, Gandhi had led the salt march in India the previous year and so on. Yet amazingly Europeans found and continue to find no shortage of pearl clutching over Japan daring to do the same thing they did, in a dog-eat-dog world where not doing so meant becoming another pawn. This is the exact opposite of how I feel about it. It was natural for Japan to emulate its geopolitical competitors, they just timed it poorly, overlooked the gradually rising tide of decolonization, and allowed the army in Manchuria too much leeway, culminating in atrocities that continue to haunt their foreign relations today.

rayiner 5mo ago

[flagged]

gadders 5mo ago
[flagged]
anigbrowl 5mo ago
It's not a matter of ideology, or of punishment. It's simply the dynamics of the system playing out. It's alienating for people inside of it because they're experiencing the effects of historical forces which operate on a scale longer than human life. OF course people would rather live in a period when things were simpler and easier, who wouldn't? The lie sold by the self-styled reformists (and doubled down upon by the emerging Restore Britain) is that all these unwanted outcomes were done to Britain by Other People instead of being the product of repeated bad decisions - Brexit being the most recent one. Someone else in the thread observed that about 27 immigrants are offered jobs for every native Briton entering the workforce. But this notion of prioritizing market forces at the expense of all other considerations is exactly the legacy of Thatcherite conservatism that has dominated Britain for nearly a half-century and of which the Brexit/Reform/Restor movements are the ost recent iterations. As John Bagot Glubb pointed out ~50 years ago (and many others have pointed out before him), the root causes of decline are complacency, greed, and individualism (vs the notion of social duty). I put it to you that modern finance capitalism selects for these negative traits because they maximize short-term gain and because the accumulation of money allows the holders of it to be indifferent to the long-term structural problems. The primary reason I do not identify as a political conservative is that they sell tradition to the electorate but conserve wealth and power for themselves. https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
- rayiner 5mo ago
  > It's not a matter of ideology, or of punishment. It's simply the dynamics of the system playing out. It's alienating for people inside of it because they're experiencing the effects of historical forces which operate on a scale longer than human life. But British people today aren't doomed to allowing historical forces to play out. Or are you suggesting futility--that the British government lacks the state capacity to prevent what's happening?
  - djhn 5mo ago
    If the government had the capacity to prevent this, they would have. It appears, therefore, that they indeed do not.
  - anigbrowl 5mo ago
    Yes, they largely do lack the capacity, short of drastic restructuring of state institutions. What are they going to do? North Korea type isolation? Ethnic cleansing? The latter is essentially the program of the Restore Britain party, though I'm not sure if that's an actual party-in-waiting or a front group designed to make Reform or the Conservatives look more reasonable.
l23k4 5mo ago
>"Mass immigration is your punishment for the British Empire" has a certain ideological appeal. But if you're a British person, you don't care about that. What matters is whether you'd rather live in London as it was in 2000 or London today. And I think the answer to that is obvious if your judgment isn't compromised. My parents went to visit London a year or two ago, and my mom was shocked by the decline in public order and standards, the ghettos, etc. This is a woman who lived in Bangladesh most of her life, and she came back telling me about the decline of London. I walk around outside my home in the very heart of London: the street is full of Rolls Royces, pretty Russian and Ukrainian girls walk around carrying their Graff jewels and Kelly bags. Men still wear watches worth hundreds of thousands despite what the FT style section says. What ghetto? Where is it? Everybody here is as rich as Croesus and very much a part of the same global jet set culture.
munksbeer 5mo ago
This comment is nonsense, and it is the usual propaganda based on an ideological bent. I'm sorry but I think you and your family have retained the class/caste based system of you original homeland and it is just manifesting in a weird way. I am willing to bet your mother never encountered anything of the sort. Most of the old very rough areas in London are now gentrified (people complain about it). You can pretty much walk around anywhere in London, at night, without any issues. Phone snatching is the major problem, but general crime, violent crime, ghettoism, etc are all down since 2000. I know this, because I am an immigrant from a 3rd world country, have lived in London for 25+ years. And the stats show it too. Your post really makes me angry.
- AlexeyBelov 5mo ago
  This user is well known for exactly that.

10xDev 5mo ago

The comparisons between the two nations are always superficial. When you peel the layers of nonsense off, it is just white supremacy with a mediocre attempt at masking it.

rayiner 5mo ago
[flagged]
- 10xDev 5mo ago
  >if people don't want parts of London to resemble Delhi, Well, there you have it. These people always shoot themselves in the foot. The other guy thought I was Indian and told me about how "weak" it is only one response later as well. Interesting, I suppose Indians are currently the most socially acceptable to be racist towards.
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    If someone criticizes Delhi and your mind jumps to people's skin color--instead of literally everything else about the city--then you're the racist. None of the Indians (or Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) living in London want parts of London to resemble Delhi. They left their families and homeland behind to get away from Delhi and places like it.
    - 10xDev 5mo ago
      >If someone criticizes Delhi and your mind jumps to people's skin color--instead of literally everything else about the city--then you're the racist. Hmm American spelling and a low effort attempt at DARVO. So let's just cut through the noise. You obviously picked Delhi and the other guy picked India out of everything else and this is clearly not a coincidence. And there are certainly worse places. My guess is the Henry Nowak case has recently made it more socially acceptable to be racist towards Indians.
      - rayiner 5mo ago

applfanboysbgon 5mo ago

> which they thought was the style at the time but was actually in decline almost everywhere else. I truly hate the historical revisionism of Westerners. Japan engaged in colonialism because it was an active victim of colonialism, and the only way to fight back was to stand on equal footing. Through the 1800s~1940s, Europe controlled nearly the entirety of Asia. China had been subject to countless treaties forced upon it. The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India were all colonies. 90% of Africa was under European control. 100% of both Americas was under European control. 100% of Australia and New Zealand was under European control. Europeans were literally aiming for world domination. The list of countries free from European colonialism could be counted on one hand: Japan (only because it successfully fought back), Korea (before it got annexed by Japan), Siam, Nepal, Iran pretty much covers it. Yet amazingly Europeans found and continue to find no shortage of pearl clutching over Japan daring to do the same thing they did, in a dog-eat-dog world where not doing so meant becoming another pawn. To the extent colonialism declined, it was solely due to to the world wars wrecking Europe so utterly they could not maintain their overseas holdings, + the untouched US intervening in eg. Suez Crisis in order to assert itself as the global Western hegemon with no peers.

anigbrowl 5mo ago
It's not historical revisionism, it's my desire to not write multiple paragraphs explaining the much briefer period of Japanese colonialism when the main point I wanted to make was about the British empire. By the time Japan launched its invasion of Manchuria the end of European colonialism was already in sight; Ireland had freed (mos of) itself from British domination a decade earlier, Gandhi had led the salt march in India the previous year and so on. Yet amazingly Europeans found and continue to find no shortage of pearl clutching over Japan daring to do the same thing they did, in a dog-eat-dog world where not doing so meant becoming another pawn. This is the exact opposite of how I feel about it. It was natural for Japan to emulate its geopolitical competitors, they just timed it poorly, overlooked the gradually rising tide of decolonization, and allowed the army in Manchuria too much leeway, culminating in atrocities that continue to haunt their foreign relations today.