This past week a post was made by autismdragon criticizing a Spanish meme calling out those who hypocritically denounce reformism and social democracy/democratic socialism in the United States or Europe but are ardent supporters of Latin American reformism and social democracy. within this post I and several Latin American comrades criticized this position from my our perspectives as abandoning revolution and being conciliatory to capitalists and capitalism in our countries. during this conversation I offhandedly mentioned that Honduras is also a western nation, a belief commonly held here, much to the chagrin of the general userbase who found the concept of any Latin American country being western preposterous. A comrade from Brazil, Apolonio, decided to make a separate post to expand on this topic in more detail and help explain the Latin American position so that people can understand where we are coming from. I was banned for 3 days for being a white supremacist for believing my country is western and Apolonio was bullied off the platform and went on to delete their account and every message they have ever made. its within this hostile atmosphere that I am going to analyze the oppositional view and its origins and analyze the chauvinistic attitude toward the predominant Latin American perspective.
1. The Beliefs Of The Userbase
User Dirt_Possum says
The way I’ve always thought of it is that “Western” is just an informal way of saying Imperial Core. That it’s all a matter of who is doing imperialism to whom, who is benefiting from imperialism and who is being exploited by it. That it’s not a matter of culture, language, etc., and is only a matter of race and racism because it’s racist reasoning and racist justification at the heart of imperialism
and SeventyTwoTrillion says
“Western” and “imperial core” are synonymous to me, too, and thus Honduras is not in the imperial core and I assume is in the periphery
while sooper_dooper_roofer adds
This whole debate is pointless because “Western” is just another weasel word, a euphemism, a dogwhistle, for “White”. The point was to make it sound softer and tamer, and the fact that this debate even exists, means they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. “The White World” sounds awkward and racist to the POC across the globe, but “The Western World” sounds soft and tame and inclusive–mission accomplished!
and autismdragon themself who made the original post says
For me, “the west”, “the imperial core”, and “the global north” are very close to being synonymous in how i understand them. But maybe they shouldnt be. This is why i usually use imperial core though, since it seems the most specific.
finally to end with we have supafuzz saying
The white bourgeois insistence on ‘cultural westernism’ or whatever in these countries is just aspiration to the Imperial core that they ain’t in
viewing all these different statements combined, none of which are being detracted by other people as being blatantly wrong and all being surrounded by a conversation about the definition of white and whiteness it is safe to assume that for the community there is no nuanced difference between all these different terminologies and they are not defined in significantly different ways. The West is the Imperial Core is White is The Global North is each other. Western Culture is not a defined set of beliefs, values, culture, religion, or anything else that can be viewed concretely but viewed holistically as just what white people do. This is a racial categorizational view of the world or a racially reductionized view that begs us to ask the question of what is white or more importantly who is white.
on the topic of eastern europeans we have Egon who says
Croatia, while being perceived as a “white” country most certainly is not perceived as western. Polish people, Czech people, Croatians, these people are not treated as equals when they come into “western” European countries. There is immense racism against them. You should hear how people speak of old “east block” countries.
and yet this seems contradictory to what has been established beforehand about western and white being synonymous. thankfully, in the past this sort of contradiction was found and rectified by categorizing eastern europeans in their own subracial category called the alpine race. This categorization allowed for the continued differentiation of eastern europeans in their own group while still allowing them to be caucasian which was the fancy term for white in the past.
on the topic of southern europeans we have sooper_dooper_roofer adding
Italian was considered a different racial category from northern European as late as the 1980s, I’ve seen it on official job applications. Italians also just look different in a way which doesn’t exist for Irish Polish or even Russian people. They’re darker, and they look more proximal to Arabs or Mexicans depending on who you ask. only from the (visibly darker pigmented) European periphery of Spain
or TupamarosShakur who says
However I think another point is that “the west” doesn’t apply to even Spain, I mean not really. There is of course the racial component that someone touched on, where Italians, southern Europeans, are not considered white
from this we can see that southern europeans are both included and disincluded from whiteness with the added fact that unlike eastern europeans, or the alpine race as it would’ve been called, southern europeans are significantly more tan than the real whites. thankfully this problem was also rectified with the sub-racial categorization of the Mediterranean race. this subracial categorization also conveniently solved the next problem on the list; Latin America.
sooper_dooper_roofer explains extensively through talking about admixture within latin american communities saying
that’s like 90% of Latin America or 75% of South America. They’re not white, they’re admixed with Europeans. Just like Black Americans are. I know a lot of you think you’re white because you’re lighter skinned than black people. Arabs and lighter skinned Indians also think that a lot of the time. They’re not. Almost everyone in Northern Europe and Anglo America can tell the difference and tbh even Argentinians don’t really look that white to me on average.
America is technically mixed race, but the average white American is 98.5% white (and western european to boot), unlike any “white” person in any Latin country where even the least mixed people are still 20% Native admixed
Latinos are basically only half white (from a darker than average white country like Spain), that means that Latinos are not Western
while Egon talks similar with
The argument that a lot of Italians went to Brazil, and so the place is “white” is funny to me too. Italians were still treated like an exotic “other” up to the late 90’s lol.
within these arguments we can see that Latin Americans are made up of Mediterraneans and natives and since Mediterraneans aren’t truly white either you end up with non whites and ergo non westerns. this also contains an age old classic The One Drop Rule. Since all Latin Americans are considered to have at least one drop of non-white in them they’re all tainted to be non-white while since the united states is made up of English and Germans mixing with Italians or other Caucasians this has a purifying effect creating real whites.
to further expand we have JohnBrownNote saying
yeah japan is sometimes part of “the west” but it’s not western. i mentioned in another comment that this is perhaps an opposite to the latam situation.
or supafuzz taking even further saying
I’d also argue Japan is more “western” than, say, Colombia in most cultural ways too. Full internalization of Western art, music, and most importantly political and governance structures, which are sort of a superficial veneer in most of Latam.
this comes from an old trope that japan is honourary aryan and that the japanese are special enough to be allowed in an anglo-japanese alliance. this further highlights the underlying racial aspect of this since anyone can very plainly see that very little about japan is culturally similar to western european countries and ties into the final point
in a little bonus 420stalin69 concludes with
I think of latam as having a western layer in the upper and more white classes that exploit a non-western majority.
this highlights the well established in other comments belief in white inherently being successful and dominant. those within latin american societies which are rich and do well obviously have to be white in the same way japan must be atleast honourary white in order to explain their similar success despite being asian. this also explains why the west is also the richest place on earth due to their dominance
now what does this all add up towards? this forum fundamentally believes in Anglo-Saxonism or Nordicism which is an outdated racialist ideology that divides the world into differing Caucasian races who predominantly inhabit different countries of which the Nordic race is the endangered and superior one destined to lead the other white races to greatness. the origin of the Nordic race comes from the Germanic tribes which went on to conquer across Europe and create Germany, The United Kingdom, France, and other countries. In fact, the only significant difference between Nordicists and the people on Hexbear seems to be the belief that white people are bad. This explains the incongruence of ideology between Latin Americans on the forum and the non-Latin American majority. Within Latin America Nordicism is not at all popular and those who espouse it are mentally tied together with the Nazis of Germany in the 30s.
2. Credibility of Those Beliefs
Now I was under the impression that after ww2 racialism was entirely discredited within academia and inside any groups in society who matter but evidently with the rise of neo-nazism, white identitarianism, and apparently this forum its an ideology that makes intuitive sense for some and has grand explanations for others. keeping in line with the talk of admixture some people have done before I am going to start by saying there is no such thing as races and its a concept that makes no sense whatsoever biologically.
https://www.eupedia.com/europe/autosomal_maps_dodecad.shtml
you can see in these simple autosomal admixture maps that genetic diversity is the rule and not the exception when it comes to Europe even within these countries that are labeled as “true white”. the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and France do not have their entire population share any haplogroup which could be used as the basis of this racial theory and the majorities in the UK share with Ireland, France share with Spain, Germany share with Poland haplogroups that they don’t share with other “true whites”. this is also entirely ignoring the fact that hapolgroups from outside Europe is found in abundance within Europe. The lack of scientific rigor for race is precisely why in South Africa they did not follow this ideology but instead used the Pencil Test to gauge who was and wasn’t white. now the only defense for why the need to adopt crazy racialist theory always amounts to “well a lot of people believe this stuff is true so we need to too” which apparently is true for nordicism but isn’t true for the belief that communism is evil or that lowering taxes is good. conveniently, too, no singular person or group is ever pointed to as holding these beliefs its always an amorphous “everyone”. well, as a counterfactual to this apparent majority who all think that western culture and civilization is just white I will point to the two most well known authors on Western Civilization. Oswald Spengler who wrote The Decline of the West in 1918 which popularized talk of western civilization and gave it universal terminology said in volume 2 page 46
But that which distinguished Faustian man, even then, from the man of any other Culture was his irrepressible urge into distance. It was this, in the last resort, that killed and even annihilated the Mexican and Peruvian Culture — the unparalleled drive that was ready for service in any and every domain… the relation between this forceful young Civilization and the still remaining old ones — is that it covers them, all alike, with ever-thickening layers of West-European-American life-forms under which, slowly, the ancient native form disappears.
This aligns with Spengler’s view of Western Civilization not being defined in racial terms, he was actually ardently opposed to the racists of his time and believed a “race” was a population united in outlook not ethnicity or dna and believed that mesoamerican culture was overthrown and replaced with western culture to join western civilization. Samuel Huntington who wrote the foremost modern book on Western Civilization, Clash of Civilizations, writes on page 45 a simple description of Western Civilization as
Western. Western civilization is usually dated as emerging about A.D. 700 or 800. It is generally viewed by scholars as having three major components, in Europe, North America, and Latin America.
more specifically regarding Latin America he says
Latin America could be considered either a subcivilization within Western civilization or a separate civilization closely affiliated with the West and divided as to whether it belongs in the West.
This underpins his disbelief in race being the objective definer of western civilization. this in fact highlights the widely accepted belief within academia, since I sau it once again racialism is no longer the vogue in academia, that other factors such as culture define whether or not someone is within western civilization not race.
3. Why it Matters
Some at this point may believe its fine to have outdated racialist concepts considered reactionary in the early 20th century and that they help explain the world very well despite being demonstrably false. I say that this theory ironically orientalizes Latin Americans, papers over the realities and differences in our specific countries, and promotes chauvanistic and paternalistic thinking towards Latin Americans. Latin American society was born from western conquerers and is defined in this and is not defined in whatever “brownness” that is prescribed onto us by foreigners. when a latino talks to another latino from another country its through a european language, spanish or portuguese, not through a native language. this language, spanish or portuguese is our native language which may not mean much to americans who have no concept of knowing more than one language but it makes a great deal more difference when your family, government, friends, and workplace all speak and express themselves and their identity through that language than when you have to use your second language, which you’re usually not very good at, to negotiate through society as a foreigner or other. we act in a fashion mimicking the mannerisms brought to us by conquers from long ago and believe in ourselves in a way brought to us by these same conquerers. and finally many of us can trace our lineage very recently from elsewhere and may not have any kind of genetic connection to natives. plenty of chinese, italian, german, or in my particular case arab immigrants moved to our countries very recently. I can very easily trace my family leaving palestine in 1922 but nobody in my own country would deny my latinness since we’re not racist in that way. even further, people talk about being hatecrimed immediately upon stepping foot in rural united states, which I have done and can say I am not dead and nobody cared quite as much as it was made out to me, yet you can literally say the same thing about mexicans hatecriming hondurans upon entering mexico and deporting them or mention the fact that the majority of border patrol in the united states is latinos themselves. fundamentally, the theory just does not understand latin america which is why its there is an issue and why it needs to be done away with.
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“The West”, “Western Civilization” and “Western” are all loosely defined terms our political enemies use to justify the (horrific) status quo and/or call for even more regressive political policies- to quote this article from Vox:
“Western civilization” has, for the alt-right, become culturally acceptable code for “white culture.” So celebration of Western civilization is really a way to celebrate the cultural achievements of white men. They see ancient Greece and Rome as a starting point for this imagined idea of Western civilization, and later it evolves to include Christianity in the medieval period.
It gives them a unified cultural narrative to draw on.
(The only amendment I’d make is that this term, “Western Civilization”, has a longer history as a dog-whistle for white supremacy than just its use by the alt-right as the article suggests, and that the alt-right has since been mainstreamed and reabsorbed into the right wing proper in the anglosphere since the time that this article was published.)
Since almost everyone on this forum is some form of Leftist opposed to the unjust hierarchy’s imposed upon us by Capitalism, Imperialism, White Supremacy and Patriarchy, naturally we would be suspicious of anyone who would seek to adopt these terms, since we oppose those very things and would like to see them torn down. I think maybe there’s been a miscommunication?
Hegemony/ imperial hegemony refers to ideas elaborated upon by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, in which he describes the mechanisms for how capitalism supports colonialism as a means of extracting labour/wealth from the global south.
Cultural hegemony is a further elaboration of those ideas by Antonio Gramsci, focusing on ways that the ruling class impose their values upon their subjects through culture. White supremacists invoking “Western Civilization” as a sort of mythology is an example of that.
Imperial core is a term from World Systems Analysis by Wallerstein, which is a further development of Lenin’s work in Imperialism (ok, this is a gross oversimplification but I don’t want to spend too much time on that) in analyzing the mechanism’s of how capitalists in the global north extract wealth from the global south today.
You’ll of course note that Latin America is marked in the the “semi-periphery”. The map measures flows of capital, based on trade, which is empirical data. Yet all the countries marked orange on the map (barring Japan, and even then) are the ones that our political opponents would say are the heirs to “Western Civilization”. This is deliberate.
When our political opponent’s invoke “Western Civilization”, they’re almost always doing so as a defense for the current hegemon, the United States, to maintain it’s current imperial status in order to justify the continuing plunder of the global south and the accumulation of capital in the global north. This project is intrinsically linked to white supremacy as a justification for the continuing plunder, for reasons too numerous to get into here.
When we (Leftists) point out that our political opponents won’t consider Latin America as part of “Western Civilization”, we’re not trying to downplay the historical role Latin America played and will continue to play, or it’s many struggles- we’re just pointing out that those whose hands are on the levers of power are the one’s who get the decide who is or isn’t in the club, and it just so happens that those hands are overwhelmingly white. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I don’t doubt for a significant portion of people western civilization is code for WASPs but for a significant portion of people, including the majority of people in my country it has a different meaning and i’ve shown multiple scholars from the past and today who view it having a different meaning as well. I also have to note that wallerstein is not a marxist, his analysis puts my country as periphery while mexico a fellow latin american country is semi-periphery, portugal which is a western european country is semi-periphery putting it as the same level as mexico, while spain is core despite not being part of this “nordic race”.
I just wanted to point out that the reaction you’re receiving is because of this difference in meaning. The political position most people on this forum would take is that “Western Civilization” as a term should be retired and discontinued as part of a wider effort to dismantle white supremacism, imperialism and capitalism, not that the term be expanded to be more inclusive.
On World Systems Analysis: Wallenstein is not marxist, but marxist scholar’s like Samir Amin use World Systems Analysis because it usefully measures how much a country benefits (or has historically benefited) from colonialism.
To quote the relevant part from the article the other poster provided:
According to world-systems theory, the capitalist world system is divided into three structural positions: core, semi-periphery, and periphery. The core countries specialize in quasi-monopolistic, high-profit production processes, and the peripheral countries specialize in highly competitive, low-profit production processes. Surplus value is transferred from the peripheral producers to the core producers, resulting in unequal exchange and concentration of world wealth in the core. By comparison, semi-peripheral countries have “a relatively even mix” of core-like and periphery-like production processes.
and I’d say discontinuing it is a fools errand and would lessen our ability to describe very real phenomenon and cultural forces. how else might I describe the process by which my country, a third world one not part of the imperial core people tell me about, forces its native population to adopt spanish, adopt market forces, adopt wage labour, adopt cultural attitudes and self identification, etc
Have you read Frantz Fanon? He’s a marxist writer who discusses at length these cultural forces you’re describing, in his work on colonialism and neocolonialism. I think maybe the ideas in his work would serve us better as a common frame of reference.
Also,
and I’d say discontinuing it is a fools errand
People say this about capitalism, Marxists are ever eternal optimists.
Being “western” means being “Satan”. You shouldn’t want to be “western” and the more “westernized” your country becomes, the more demonic
Systems analysis isn’t a breakdown of white and non-white nations, it’s more or an analysis of net benefit/drain on a country in Americas global empire. So core/periphery/semi-periphery is more of an analysis of how the imperial system works, which maps well onto the “western” world previously discussed. It so happens that much of that world is also white, though not exclusively.
I think this recent article on the question of whether china is periphery or core to better understand the topic: https://monthlyreview.org/2021/07/01/china-imperialism-or-semi-periphery/
yeah except it really doesn’t fit well with the western world and spain or portugal. conflating the two is only going to reduce people’s understanding
I think it’s maps very well onto the “Western” world. Could you describe the ways in which it doesn’t? Core countries are typically those that historically benefitted the most from colonialism, and parlayed that advantage into today’s complex global trade and markets.
Spain is considered core as it did that more successfully than Portugal, who is considered semi-peripheral. It also helps explain some of the racial things you’re talking about, like how Japan is part of the imperial core both from its own imperial exploits and from it’s relationship with the us in the postwar period. Much of Japan’s racial expectation in the otherwise white western world as the model minority is a cultural effect downstream of their important place in the flow of surplus value from the imperial periphery to the core
you can’t say the west is core while parts of the west are not core and parts of the core are not the west. clearly they’re describing different things and it don’t map 1 to 1
Seems to map 1:1, just like always “always the same map”
This all just seems like you are mad you aren’t in green on the “always the same map” so you are taking it out on us. Stop trying to join team Satan
OP sees descriptions of racism as racism in and of itself by the person describing it. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of our point and your entire argument is flawed because you are arguing against nobody. You are shooting the messenger who is telling you how racist the “west” is.
OP is apparently a Palestinian Honduran living in China and fluent in Chinese, Spanish, and English. After having interacted with them, I still don’t understand why they’re posting massive tl;dr posts to a bunch of leftist Anglos and Anglophones on an obscure Anglophonic forum. I guess they really want to convince a bunch of Anglos that Latin America is part of the West?
The OP seems to rely on the Idea that West = good, not-West = bad, therefore it must be racist(?) to say that Latam is not in the west because it implies that Latam is not good enough to be in the west or something. The logic only works if you accept that Western civilization is peak civilization, which I outright reject for being racist and for resting on a racial hierarchy. The objection in the OP also seems to conflate whiteness/race with skin colour, which is also problematic.
Same can be said for the people who are disgusted by the fact that Latin america is part of the west
Who would that be here?
Sounds like someone with money in Latin America…to give a hot take a day too late, yea, there’s plenty of places in Latin America where you will find no shortage of Latin Americans claiming Western heritage. Those places are probably getting memed to death as Whitexicans in Mexico and once you step out of those places that look like literal Chipotles, things get real fuzzy…as in i don’t think you would find people calling themselves Western.
It kind of sounds like CatratchoPalestino has lived their time in LATAM surrounded by the Honduran equivalent of Whitexicans. It’s like never leaving Miraflores in Peru and making the opinions on that.
I think that might be fair, i would like to point that all of OP’s receipts were given to us and i think that level of documentation is in the right direction for effortposts
for you too cdeOp did not link to either of the posts and cited people in such a way as to make it look like THEY were racists, rather than describing a racist point of view. Op also made it seem as though the discussion was one where op wanted “western” to be arbitrary and the rest of the username.insisted on a stringent definition, despite the opposite being the case. Op did not provide receipts, but in fact misrepresented the discussion and the opposition
Oh, huh. Ok, that makes more sense, I guess nice formatting and quotes aren’t enough.
Thanks for the clarification!
Yeah in this very thread OP admits to leaving out aspects of the posts they cite in order to build the point they’re presenting here. I think there’s a reason why they didn’t link to the posts they cite.
Just because people forgeiners have a ignorant view of a place doesnt mean we have to defend it
People aren’t defending it. I don’t see how people are defending it by describing it.
People were saying we should apply the racist view instead of agreeing with op
“The west” is a fascist and racist construct. That’s a fact. No amount of squirming changes that. “The west” must be destroyed, not whitewashed and joined up with
Non-white nations are not, and will never be, part of “the west” nor should they want to be. The more “westernized” they are, the more colonized and subservient to capital they are
Why are supposed “leftists” so concerned about wanting to be included in “the west”? Reeks of comprador brainwashed mentality
Latin america itself has a racist history and they should not whitewashed into being “non white” nations . There are diffrence races there just like Klanada and Burgerland.
One was colonized by the Iberians and the other by Anglos/French
How is a white dude from a Argentina calling themselves westerner a traitor We are not talking about some hong kong lib flying murican flag
Should this white Argentinan racist who thinks they are above natives/other races be considerd a non white because some anglos think so
Having a high standards for whiteness is a right wing thing we should be not acting like only a few people deserve the to be called Western as if it is such a great thing
Why do leftist want to defend the purity of the Western label
Again, you have a fundamental misattribution and failure to understand the point. There IS a global white supremacist racist system. Me describing this fact to you does not mean I support it or am racist myself. Denying this is soft racism and denialism though
Outside of the “international community” white latin americans look no diffrent than other westerners
People are explaining the racist view and why the racists hold that view
And they are saying that not holding that view actually makes you wrong
They are saying that if you expect them to change that view because Honduras considers itself western, then you’d be wrong
Then why did no one agree with op? if no one here thought their orginsl tske was wrong
We are asserting the factual truth that “the west” is a fascistic construction of racist imperialist nations, and wanting to be included “in the west” is class treason and cuckery
You don’t seem interested in the actual political economy of the western world at all lol. I guess that makes sense considering you’re critiquing a rage comic.
You spent days writing and still haven’t mustered a reply to me
I have no clue what I would reply to your last message to me was asking if I was gonna purity test every latin american country. I’ve already spent plenty of time talking about the political-economy of my country and how that connects to the wider world
I’ll link to em, one sec, that was a bad time to make boasts about words per minute. 😩
WHAT THE FUCK THEY BANNED HIM
lol oh man. okay one more sec
supafuzz taking even further saying
I’d also argue Japan is more “western” than, say, Colombia in most cultural ways too. Full internalization of Western art, music, and most importantly political and governance structures, which are sort of a superficial veneer in most of Latam.
this comes from an old trope that japan is honourary aryan and that the japanese are special enough to be allowed in an anglo-japanese alliance.
Hold on, this comment is easily readable as pointing out how thoroughly Japan was made a vassal state of the US after its unconditional surrender in WWII. It bears the direct and recent marks of an unambiguously “Western” culture. Constitution literally written by Americans during the occupation, music and animation hugely informed by Americans, etc. Tremendous cultural influence (and destruction of what was there before). The same is true for former West Germany; if they weren’t “western” before they certainly are now. Such a theory might tell us that Columbia kicked out the Spanish 200 years ago and has had more time to go in their own cultural direction, or that the Spanish cultural hegemony was less complete, or whatever. The racist trope of Japanese people having a special predilection to “Western culture” is an explanatory myth created for racist Americans to make ideological sense of the real historical fact of the sudden postwar anglo-japanese alliance; recognizing the very real fact of the occupation and subsequent trade relationship doesn’t imply acceptance of the myth.
The text you’ve reproduced here does not support your assertion that it reflects a belief that Japanese people are intrinsically racially special. I was not involved in these old threads, but it sure looks like you’re assuming bad faith from people, quoting them out of context, and not linking the source so we can’t investigate.
which are sort of a superficial veneer in most of Latam.
This part sounds bad to me but maybe it was supported by a non-chauvinist argument. What was the reason you didn’t link the source comments or tag the users?
this highlights the well established in other comments belief in white inherently being successful and dominant. those within latin american societies which are rich and do well obviously have to be white in the same way japan must be atleast honourary white in order to explain their similar success despite being asian. this also explains why the west is also the richest place on earth due to their dominance
Again I think you are reading this backwards. We defined Japan as “Western” because they were a convenient military outpost and trade partner. Same thing is happening with Israel. Irish and Italians defined themselves as “white” to become (and once they were) successful, they didn’t succeed because they were white all along. In this system the guys on top are defined as white and non-white culture is “brought into the fold” of white culture to maintain hegemony. Jazz, tex-mex, etc. Immigrants “act white” by sacrificing most of their culture; in exchange the bounds of whiteness stretch to accommodate what remains, granting them additional societal advantage. “Western” is colloquially used by Americans for people who have taken on “white culture” but not yet been subsumed into the white racial category, e g. monolingual grandchildren of nonwhite immigrants, or suited CEOs no matter what language they speak. That commentor sees Latam elites who would not yet considered racially white in the US, but who nevertheless “act white” (by being successful capitalists, and especially by oppressing a racialized indigenous population) enough to be called Western.
Now, this colloquial definition is just as problematic to apply to a whole country as is “white” or “nonwhite”, since countries have lots of different people. You might call America a white or Western country but it’s got lots of non-white and non-Western people. The average American on the street will use something like this definition if you ask him “is X country western”, but trying to rigorously define that is doomed to failure. I agree that it’s bad when Hexbears use this vague definition for “Western” countries: it has no material basis, reifies the arbitrary underlying racial hierarchy, and isn’t very analytically useful because it’s unclear which countries are members. Some commenters use “global North”, etc as synonyms which is just as bad.
I am curious if you have a useful definition of “Western”. Unambiguous, different from other categories we already have, material or relatively static ideological basis.
I use global north as a synonym for imperial core. Is this wrong? Do some others mean something else by it? The neocolonizing states need a collective name.
That makes sense to me. I’ve seen people use “global North” sloppily to mean “western”. I like terms like imperial core or neocolonizing because the category definition is right there and we don’t have to figure out what it means.
Instead of “Western,” I’ll often use “Atlanticist,” which is basically the Global North minus Japan & South Korea.
Constitution literally written by Americans during the occupation
Colombia’s constitution was written directly based on the american one which is why Colombia has a bill of rights, a president, and is a republic while japan’s constitution gives them no bill of rights, a prime minister, and a monarchy. just because americans primarily wrote their constitution does not mean they’re more similar to america than Columbia is. furthermore, japan is a 1 or 1.5 party state where the leading party, the liberal democratic party, has maintained power for 64 of the last 68 years while Colombia is a multiparty country where the ruling party is always changing. even furthermore Japanese do not consider themselves western and still have a vastly different culture to any other western country while Colombians do consider themselves western and have very comparable culture to other western countries
the thread was deleted so I’m unsure if you can link, how you’d do so, nor how to do so without making things substantially longer. I don’t really care if each individual is chauvinistic just that the origin of their ideas entirely fall in line with antiquated chauvinistic racial theories and could be said to at least be partially derived from them
I don’t care about Columbia vs Japan as factual matter, just showing that the comment you cited is not evidence of endorsing the racial theory that sprung up afterward to justify the actually existing relationship between Japan and the US. You don’t have to endorse any theory of Japanese people being special to point out the cultural results of the obviously different Japan-US and US-Colombia relationships. More generally, racial ideas are attempts to justify subjugation, so any theory of subjugation is going to “fall in line” or be compatible with racist ideas inasmuch as they are attempting to explain the same existing conditions. Where they differ most obviously is predictions.
Linking doesn’t make a post longer, you know how to do formatting. You can’t link to deleted comments, but if they’re deleted where are you getting the text from?
this forum fundamentally believes in Anglo-Saxonism or Nordicism which is an outdated racialist ideology that divides the world into differing Caucasian races who predominantly inhabit different countries of which the Nordic race is the endangered and superior one destined to lead the other white races to greatness
I cannot reconcile this strong claim with the fact that you “don’t really care if each individual is chauvinistic”. Personally I think that some users do behave as if the real-but-untrue ideas of race and culture are true (we are mostly podcast Americans after all), but that it’s not a fundamental belief of the forum. But if the forum is fundamentally racist, I would expect you to be able to point out users who are straightforwardly using racist ideas, not just describing the racist framework and not just describing conditions that racism attempts to explain. For instance expecting the racist framework to be internally consistent rather than ad-hoc, seriously trying to do the blood quanta stuff outside of the context of places that actually had it enshrined into law as a justification for existing conditions, often implies those beliefs. I’d have to look at /u/sooper_dooper_roofer’s admixture stuff in more detail to see if they were expecting that to predict anything (to be true) or just attempting to describe existing racist classification (to be real); the former is the kind of evidence you ought to be showing. If you are taking comments that recognize racial ideas as real, and presenting them as comments that recognize racial ideas as true, you are doing a great disservice to everyone.
I don’t understand your motivation in writing this massive tl;dr post. Regardless of what you think of the West, the West is in terminal decline, and as it spins down the toilet and is relegated to the dustbin of history where it rightfully belongs, it will drag its various vassal states and other unwilling victims along with it. Why latch yourself to the sinking ship that is the West?
I can’t exactly move to palestine, or to go back in time and not learn spanish or english, or go back in time and tell my family to stay in palestine, or go back in time and tell the conquistadors to stay in spain can I? you’re acting like it’s me who is latching myself to the west when it’s societal forces which have been doing so for hundreds of years. I’ve done my part to not live in the west and I speak more asian languages than european ones. the thing latching me to the west here is having to be able to reply to you
If you’re not white and don’t even live in the West, then this makes even less sense to me. Just stop hanging out on the Anglophone web and go on Weibo or something. The Anglophone web is mostly cope about how China is totally not owning the US, random bullshit psyop concocted by the CIA, grifter/influencer bullshit, and bots from Langley. As an experiment, I compared a fresh account on Douyin and Tiktok. Douyin’s algo gave me a bunch of cool shit (and strangely, a whole lot of clips about people finding animals at the beach) while Tiktok’s algo funneled me to some chick saying that lemons are alkaline and increase your body pH. Complete night and day.
Seriously, why are you even here lol. No offense, but it sounds like you’re having an identity crisis. I get why someone would have this if they’re stuck in a place full of shitty racist white people, but you’re not even in the West, and going by your definition of the West which includes Latin America, this means you’re basically in Africa or Asia (or I guess the parts of Oceania that’s not Australia/New Zealand and the Caribbean if you don’t count them as part of Latin America). Like, I guess if you’re stuck white a bunch of shitty white sexpats, that would be pretty bad, but you’re not exactly in a poor position when the West finally goes under. At least you’re not stuck in Europe.
I don’t have an identity crisis I’m an arab and an honduran and simply that. as i’ve said before latin americans typically view themselves as westerners. you can go to china and see yourself if latinos tend to hang out in expat communities alongside white people instead of being with native chinese if you don’t believe me. and I have to say that english/american media is qualitatively superior and likely will be compared to chinese media for the next 20 years although I usually watch more chinese than english stuff these days
Wait, so you’re in China? Okay, now I really don’t understand your grip lol. You’re in the prime viewing spot to watch the decline of the West and the ascension of the Global South. Assuming you actually want to live in China and are not just studying at a Chinese university or something, your focus should be on settling down and raising a Chinese family, if that’s your thing. If you’re going to have kids, your kids will almost certainly identify as Chinese unless you exclusively date with immigrants from other countries. They won’t really see themselves as Arab or Honduran, and they certainly won’t see themselves as Westerners. Why would they identify with the pathetic garbage fire failure that is the West?
I’m in honduras visiting my family for christmas and you have some seriously strange views on biracial marriages in china or the imminence of “the collapse of the west” whatever the hell that would look like. are you expecting all the businesses to collapse, all airports and seaports to shut down, all government functions to stop, and mass chaos on the streets?
Europe is being sucked dry by the US, and the US is not exactly doing well these days. It’s only going to get worse in the 2030s and 2040s. Europe in particular, the West par excellence, is going down the shitter. Most pan-European institutions like the EU are probably not going to last past the 2030s. As the decline in Western hegemony progresses further, more and more countries that are at the periphery of the West (Latin America, Eastern Europe, Japan) would stop identifying as being part of the West because no one wants to hitch their wagon with failures. At a certain point, even the idea of a Europe will die and they will rightfully be seen as a bunch of northwest Asians not exceptionally different from the other Asians in this massive culturally diverse continent called Asia.
As far as I’m concerned, the West is soon-to-be history, and in this multipolar world, the non-Western part of the world will finally have their chance to shine in the sun.
I wouldn’t hold your breathe for all that to happen. also the Japanese don’t identify themselves as the west that’s purely other people who do so
i think the hegemonic western powers are anglo-saxon nordicist themselves and a lot of what folks were doing is describing what the hegemonic in-group is (not what the kool kids klub claims, because, ukraine lol) rather than endorsing the underlying racist jingoist etc framework.
it’s fine to want these terms to be only geographic, and in an equal world we wouldn’t have a reason to make a different distinction, but that shift of language probably requires the west being destroyed.
it’s fine to want these terms to be only geographic
I’m not against this. If your issue is that other countries are geographically western and that Australia shouldn’t be western bc other side of the map, then fine I actually agree with that. I made a big point about how whites just keep coopting words from their own language and turn them into new euphemisms for “white” when they weren’t originally (words like Caucasian, Aryan, Indian, continent were all used for this purpose, and so is the cardinal direction of “Western”)
The debate was about what “Western” means as a demonym. A lot of deluded non-NATO residents think that Latin America, or maybe the Levant, or Japan/Korea are “Western”. I promise you that NOBODY who wrote any work of literature containing the demonym “Western” was thinking about the majority inhabitants of Latin America, unless it was in the context of bringing in more whites to make the region into a clone of Europe. Many Westerners will pretend to see you as western, because they feel it gives them more power to have a “larger group”, and also because they can use your land as dumping ground, a resource extraction soft colony, etc (see Hawaii and their water problems and also their land problems.)
Peru and Bolivia and basically every Latin American country already has a quickly growing problem with White Mennonite colonists who come in and deforest tons of land to live on privately, which manages to be even worse than just deforesting it themselves the way Brazil was doing. (Unless you’re a “blanquimiento” believer and your answer to everything is “import even MORE white settler colonists to take your land and warm your climate further but you get imaginary USD back in return”)
We can also say that Europeans don’t actually exist, and the thing we call “European” is a mestizo race which is 60% Middle Eastern, in much the same way that Latinos are 50% European. And yet we still know that when people say the term “Middle Eastern” that they are referring to everything east of Thrace and south of the Caucasus, and NOT some guy in Germany who has 60% neolithic Anatolian farmer DNA but looks totally different due to evolutionary skin whitening.
And then there’s the even more baseless argument of “oh it’s not genetic it’s just culture and Latinos are culturally Western”. Well, so is half of Africa, the Philippines, and parts of India. Also Greece wouldn’t be western since Orthodox, right? Unless all Christianity Western, in which case Ethiopia qualifies, yes? What about the fact that the majority of Europe is becoming agnostic/atheist?
It’s so utterly transparent that “Western” is all about race that even the very reason this debate exists is because Latinos are 50% European on the genomic level in the first place. Everyone will deny it but you know it’s true, otherwise they’d be truly committed to their bit and announce Angola and Nigeria and Ghana as “Western” and pretty soon every country in the world is Western apart from China India and the Middle East, but even then industrial tech was first employed in England, so everybody’s Western! Except for Papua New Guinea!
It is fundamentally impossible for Latin Americans to be Western and pro-Latin American. Just think about it, don’t you think they would’ve accepted Russia by now? Y’know, the people who are whiter than even them (let alone Latinos) and also follow a (slightly different) version of Christianity? Despite all they have in common, Russia is NOT Western, because Russia’s material interests are at odds with the West. So are Latin America’s interests, but a LOT of Latinos seem to not realize what their interests are, and instead want to be recolonized–it’s their continent, not mine, so that’s up to them, but let’s just cut the bullshit and be clear on what you’re actually supporting.
I promise you that NOBODY who wrote any work of literature containing the demonym “Western” was thinking about the majority inhabitants of Latin America, unless it was in the context of bringing in more whites to make the region into a clone of Europe.
I already prove this wrong citing Oswald Spengler. everything else you say is just a long nordicist spiel that’s very patronizing to latin americans
ok fine, 1 person did. Dozens of others didn’t.
Anyway, for what reason should a Latin American consider themselves Western? Why shouldn’t Latinos consider themselves as their own cultural bloc?
why not both? do slavs not form their own bloc in europe? đó orthodox and catholic and protestant form their own bloc? are southern europeans not their own bloc? latin americans evidently feel very western when they’ve spoken spanish or portuguese in all spheres of life for hundreds of years and can talk to an iberian in their mother tongue like they speak to their neighbor or all other latin americans. this is not at all comparable to say an angolan who speaks maybe Kikongo to his family and friends, Umbundu when they travel for work, and Portuguese from time to time as their third language if they visit the capitol
do slavs not form their own bloc in europe?
Yes, but that’s a bloc WITHIN the European bloc. Which, by the way, is very much based on race and ancestry.
The analog to this would be to say that Latinos are Hispanic. Which I never denied.https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/26344.jpeg
South Africa and Singapore both have “very high” English fluency. Are they Western as well?
And this fluency is only rising with time. Within a few decades, pretty much the entire map will be dark blue. Will it be the case that the entire world is the Western world at that date?
a very small percentage of south africans speak english at home, roughly 10%, and english in the country is nowhere near the same as spanish is in any latin american country but its conceivable, especially for the white people in south africa who speak english and afrikaans natively, to conceive themselves as western and identify with western culture rather than any kind of ethnic or tribal or village association. same for the hong kongers who decided to flee to england after the protests and view china as an “imperialist power taking away autonomy”. I find it would be similar to an african american saying they identify with the west and that they are western which would not at all be odd in the united states
regarding South Africa: the English Proficiency Index rates the country 9th in the world: https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/ (scroll down)
IDK what the racial breakdown is but Kenya is not far behind. Anyway…suppose the countries of Angola, Kenya, Congo achieved 99% English fluency over the next few decades. Would they be Western? You still haven’t answered this of me
same for the hong kongers who decided to flee to england after the protests and view china as an "imperialist power
Now we’re getting somewhere. So do you admit that these identities, in the absence of a strictly defined language, nation, or province, (for example a Kurd, a Thai, or a Sichuanese are all much more well defined) are entirely made up and self identified, and that “Western” fits this vague nebulous category? And if you admit that, the next logical question is: why should a given Latino choose to identify as a Westerner?
there is a substantial difference between describing this framework and saying that these countries (the governments? individual members of the government? interest groups that affect the government? sections of the public in these countries? some mystical racial/national spirit that compels people toward this inclination?) are all adherents to the framework, saying that this framework is a universal truth, telling latin americans they have to follow this framework as true and they’re in denial for disagreeing, and banning/bullying those who happen to disagree.
yes
i don’t think you should’ve been
bannedsuspended (when the fuck did we stop using that word in favor of “temp ban” smh), but there was some obvious talking past one another in the other thread(s don’t remember if i read both) but when the west talks about itself or critiques are made of it it’s probably important to understand what those academics, media, and politicians are talking about.edit in italics
if somebody wants to develop a competing framework for viewing these concepts that’s cromulent but these terms would all still carry their hegemonic meaning outside of that, and english speakers in the west will mean the hegemonic meaning 99.999% of the time. language is descriptive but our trans comrades aren’t car parts and car parts don’t have gender identities.
yes but evidently as i’ve shown the west talks about itself in more ways than just a nordicist or anglo-saxonist way and ignoring those other ways it talks about itself as either ways of hiding nordicism or being false and reducible to nordicism is dogmatic and serves to lessen people’s understanding of the world
sorry, i added a thought to the previous message
you’re not at all explaining how this “hegemonic meaning” functionally works. your theory of white reductionism that all these terms reduce down into being code for white anglo saxon protestants or whatever your nordicist flavor breaks down pretty quickly in the detail. why would calls to end apartheid and establish democracy in south africa happen if democracy is just code for white etc
it feels like you want there to be more rigor behind the usage than there is.
rolling the shit further down hill doesn’t get west-aspirational compradors into the mostly racialized geopolitical club.
you misunderstand, latinos aren’t west aspiring and don’t care if other countries consider them western. latinos fully believe themselves to have been western for quite some time and will continue believing. if you want to assume that because latinos self-identify as western it makes them compradors that are selling out their countries that’s on you
Not everything is about Europe/USA
So, I’ve softened my position since this all happened. For a few reasons, Apolonio’s thread helped me see better (and i think its unfortunate they deleted, even though i dont think they were really bullied). Also, a private conversation with a comrade with a non-gusano Cuban partner who said that even Cubans see themselves as western and that our rhetoric here might indeed be called racist in latine circles. Also that they took reputable classes where latam was called part of the west. Though they also found this article which they said that, best they could translate it, describes latam socialist making an effort to cease latam people calling themselves part of the west, though this ALSO confirms that people in latam do refer to themselves that way. Finally i tested the whole “white americans dont see Hondorus as the west” hypothesis with a fairly normal white guy, and he said if is. Anecdotal, but still.
That said… yeah i still have to echo the “dont shoot the messanger” sentiments others have said. People here describing describing things that seem like nordicism doesnt mean they are nordicist white supremacists themselves. If means they are describing the views of those who do hold those opinions. And those opinions arent fringe, their central to the white supremacist ideology. Their central to the way “western culture” is vewied by people who use that term in white dominanf countries. And theyre central to the neoliberal order.
I still think you saying “why are you obsessed with race?” to people in the old thread was widly inappropriate. Its reality that white supremacists use that kind of rhetoric when lefitsts try to describe racism. And that did seem to be what was going on. It was racism-jacketing anti-racists describing racism.
Also, since you brought it up however breifly.
This past week a post was made by autismdragon criticizing a Spanish meme calling out those who hypocritically denounce reformism and social democracy/democratic socialism in the United States or Europe but are ardent supporters of Latin American reformism and social democracy. within this post I and several Latin American comrades criticized this position from my our perspectives as abandoning revolution and being conciliatory to capitalists and capitalism in our countries.
Yeah, you made a few critical errors in that thread.
- “Social democracy in the imperial core is fundementally different from social democracy in the global south because the former relies on imperialism and the later does not” is not an abandonment of revolution. Its a statement of fact.
- You just assumed western hexbears were against communists in latam doing revolutions in latam social democracies. Which none of us are, certainly not in Hondorus. The most someone might say is that the Venezualan communist party are ultras who oppose Maduro for bad reasons that will help the imperial order, and i dont even think i agree with that. And thats one country, and just because a party calls themselves communist does not mean they are good. There might also be opposition here to a revolution against Evo, but Evo is again a very special case. None of it applies to your situation in Hondorus.
- You failed to understand the revolutionairy defeatist position of leftists living in the imperial core.
There were other problems, but i want to focus on these. That meme i posted was made by a leftcom to support leftcom ideology. And leftcoms are not antimperialist.
can you really say “don’t shoot the messenger” when the messenger doubles down on their, as you say yourself, rhetoric viewed as racist in latin american circles, call you a nazi pick-me, ban you for having internalized white supremacy, and accuse you of being a comprador? “why are you obsessed with race?” is a fairly normal thing to say to someone you view as acting considerably racist but perhaps unknowingly
I dont blame the mods for being antsy about a new account using known white supremacist rhetoric. Even if i do personally think youre genuine.
But yes, i can say “dont shoot the messanger” about you asking people who are merely describing to you how racists think of being racist or obsessed with race in their own right.
I dont agree with you being called a Nazi pick me or a comprador.
I would say those who aren’t so belligerent as to call me a white supremacist but merely think I am wrong in believing honduras to be western still operate from a very eurocentric and could be described as chauvinistic view and should, as you have done, talk to a latin american and try to understand their point of view instead of considering the concept a complete mockery
Thats fair actually.
haven’t read the full thread yet, but i haven’t seen anyone else validate (what i think is frustration/disappointment) and i wanted to send over some
EDIT: Uh this was meant for @CatratchoPalestino@hexbear.net but you can have some too
Thats my secret captain, i always need e-hugs
its fine everyone can learn to see things from each other’s point of view and come away more knowledgeable in general
It might help if the messengers weren’t so consistently condescending assholes.
You tends to not be too kind in your rhetoric towards people calling you a racist
I’ll try to be kinder.
Yeah me too
I think assumed op saying Honduras is western is like them blaming or puttning Honduras on the same level as USA. for them
Western=Culprit non Western=VictimSo by placing a country as Western it is the same as saying they dont get exploited
I mean yes that is how the term is generally used on Hexbear and why people had trouble with the idea of “Hondorus is western”.
I am however opening my eyes to the reasons peope in latam see themselves as western culturally.
(Im not 100% sure i understood your post right but i did my best).
You read my post right
It’s useful to prioritize how terms are used de facto and in context, where their boundaries lie in context, how people react, etc. You’re of course doing this, but I think we can learn almost everything we need to know about what “Western” means by looking at the incorporation of Greece into the “Western” canon, whereas they had been considered solidly of The Orient for ages by the people throwing these terms around (mostly the British and French and Dutch).
It’s fairly clear that incorporating Greece was part of bringing ancient Greece into the mythology of the self-labeled superior cultures of the industrialized colonial powers, them telling themselves as well as those they colonized why they deserved to invade and pillage and destroy and oppress. One of these justifications emerged as “Western” values traced back to a fetishization of ancient Greece, including its forms of democracy.
But the story doesn’t end there, as the same people helping construct these myths quickly ran into a contradiction in something else created to justify colonialism: their own racism. Greeks were “swarthy” and melanic on the kkkracker scale of the time, so they only wanted to get ancient Greece on their origin story and divorce it from modern Greece, who they still wanted to fuck over and condescend to. This lead to decades and decades of discourse over the entirely evidenceless claim that ancient Greeks were actually Nordic, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and light-skinned, thus resolving the perceived contradiction between Greeks having accomplished anything to be venerated, thus demonstrating the superiority of “the West” and its values, despite not being white (per the race rules of the time).
The idea of tracing “Western values” to the Greeks is still hegemonic, kids learn it in school all around the world. The idea that they were Nordic faded away, particularly as Greeks were directly incorporated into British and American whiteness.
What we see today is the legacy of creating a mythology of what it is to be “Western”, necessarily a dichotomy framed against “the Orient”, built on the racism built from colonists requiring psychological justification for their oppressions.
LatAm, which is not monolithic, exists as continents colonized by European powers, though mostly before the canonization of what it means to be “Western”. These are ideas spread largely by the British and French in the 1800s and early 1900s, and then Americans in the middle of the 20th century, as they all established forms of cultural hegemony. They retroactively applied “Westernness” to all Western European colonists, including, begrudgingly, to the Spanish (who they also considered swarthy), and thus to the various LatAm demographics that could assign that label to themselves. LatAm does not have a single unified set of rules on race, so this was incorporated in different ways, but today we are all familiar with the reactionary nature of so many white-adjascent groups in LatAm and their bigotry towards the indigenous populations. This is the result of centuries of colonization and the merging with the thinking of the British/American/French canonization of their own special “burden” to invade and rule.
Spend a lot of time with indigenous people in your country and you’ll find a visceral self-recognition of the national dichotomy of Western vs. indigenous.
this is all true as a narrative or framework but still is a fairly american-centric understanding of the western vs indigenous dichotomy. you only have to look at the caste system in latin america, for however much it actually existed since english scholars have overemphasized its racial nature and existence, to see that traditional latin american racial frameworks put the spanish at the hierarchical top, followed by peninsulares or people from iberia, followed by isleños or people from the islands around spain, then followed by non-iberian europeans. our traditional racial framework did not put anglo-saxons on top. or let’s look at the case of arabs in latin america who make up the upper elite and despite not being “western” easily integrate into westernness and further propagate this dichotomy
Arabs are not indigenous in LatAm and my point doesn’t rely on LatAm having Anglos on top, so I’m confused. The indigenous vs. Western dichotomy I mentioned reflects how the concept of being “Western” was easily adapted to instances of Eurocentric colonialism despite being a later concept mostly introduced through hegemony. Claiming LatAm to be Western wasn’t really a thing in the 19th century. Claiming anything to be simply Western wasn’t a thing until the last few decades of the 19th century. The hierarchy you mention predates the label. It wasn’t something to discuss, people used other terms for related concepts.
Its use is a result of hegemony. It was integrated into societies like those in LatAm that already had Eurocentrism.
The way in which words are used, and when they’re used, is just as important as their claimed meaning.
the term western goes as far back as the ancient greeks who used it to differentiate themselves from the persians I think you’re just confusing your terminology. I also don’t know what exactly you mean by hegemony causing the use of the term. you mean like British or american academics talking to Spanish ones which helped them propagate its usage within Latin America?
the term western goes as far back as the ancient greeks who used it to differentiate themselves from the persians I think you’re just confusing your terminology.
You’ve got it mixed around, you are confused about this term.
The concept we’re referring to isn’t simply the direction of west, nor even the opposite of The Orient, as multiple people have pointed out. Have you given them the benefit of the doubt and looked it up on the dictionary? The earliest claimed English use of the term in the way we are discussing, the thing you wrote a huge effort-post about, calling out a bunch of people, is in the 1890s. The racialized hierarchies you’re talking about mostly predate it.
I also don’t know what exactly you mean by hegemony causing the use of the term.
I’m referring to the cultural hegemony of capitalism as expressed by its dominant empires, borrowing from Gramsci. Culture is shaped by what capitalism permits and promotes and its form is colored by its vectors, such as attempting to restrict the discourse to what is already in the British or American mythology. Liberalism is Capital’s political ideology, it exports it, including but not limited to the process of imperialism. The use of “Western” here is an outgrowth of Anglo imperialists with a passion for race science doing rationalizing their status from around the 1880s to the 1930s, though we obviously still see the way it was incorporated into culture widely in various forms.
The concept we’re referring to isn’t simply the direction of west, nor even the opposite of The Orient, as multiple people have pointed out. Have you given them the benefit of the doubt and looked it up on the dictionary? The earliest claimed English use of the term in the way we are discussing, the thing you wrote a huge effort-post about, calling out a bunch of people, is in the 1890s. The racialized hierarchies you’re talking about mostly predate it.
I’ve read the latin works myself I know what they say. the old latin saying Ex oriente lux, ex occidente lex or “from the east comes light, from the west comes law” would not make sense if you were correct
That quote is itself apocryphal and I’d be academically curious about how old it is given that the fetishization of Rome is part of the canonization process that led to the definition of Western we’re talking about.
But that doesn’t really matter for the point being made. “The West” already has 4 or 5 meanings (maybe more) in English and you’re referring to Latin, which can easily have its very own and distinct meanings due to contextual use. In this case, a religious use that places the Western extent in Rome / Southern Europe, fitting neither of the meanings either of us have used. I doubt you think LatAm is Roman!
Anyways, it makes perfect sense so long as you acknowledge that words have multiple uses that shift over time. In this case, it seems you’re unfamiliar with this Western academic-ish movement to self-define its own “culture”, blurring together things that had previously been considered distinct or varied in order to say, “no actually they’re the same based on this new identity I discovered but it was always there because this is what defines us superior colonizers”. The term “culture”, as in how it’s used in the compound “western culture”, was invented in the mid-1800s. It’s part of the odd colonial scientism of that time, an invention of a canon that slaps various things together and says, “this is the West it started in Greece and oh also it’s British people oh yeah and now Irish and okay yeah I guess 50 years later it is in contrast to communism oh and 100 years later it includes Poland”. Previously these would be largely considered distinct and not grouped together as “the West”. The term didn’t mean that at all. Remember how weird Engels was about what it means to be German.
To understand where it comes from, you’ve gotta dive into the racist science and historiography of 1800s Europeans, it really doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Look into Nordicism, among other things.
now you’re just jumbling terms around. you said nothing was claimed to be western until the last few decades of the 19th century and when I point to an example that counters this you say its fake and double down. just because the modern definition of western civilization, western culture, and westernness didn’t exist until recently does not mean that the concept is not coming from somewhere and lacks an older origin that its pulling from.
the old latin saying Ex oriente lux, ex occidente lex
That is a saying, and is in the latin language, and isn’t particularly new, but is probably neo-latin or contemporary latin rather than a phrase that somehow survived this whole time.
The first half didn’t appear in English texts until the early 1800’s, and the second half until the early 1900’s, which suggests that it was added later. I don’t have a good way to search latin texts so they could appear in original sources, but considering how much we love our loan phrases it’s a lot more likely that it’s a reconstructed phrase created in the 19th century rather than an original ancient latin phrase that was passed down.even if that specific phrase post-dates the point where the modern conception of the west occurs, which variously is being said to me to be either the 1890s or the 1850s which would be after your earliest sighting in english texts, it doesn’t discount other terminologies that would be showing up in Latin either during the late roman, medievial, or early modern periods which are conceivable predecessors to the modern conception of the west. another example being Imperium Romanum Occidentale or Hesperium Imperium which as far as I know are both attestable to the medieval period and the added benefit of Hesperium itself deriving from the greek word for western lands and help showcase the internal division between the eastern greek speaking portion of the roman empire and the western latin speaking portion.
the term western goes as far back as the ancient greeks who used it to differentiate themselves from the persians
Do you have a source for that?
Even if they did, I think their understanding of west would be completely different than what we mean by the West. My understanding is the modern idea of “The West” wasn’t really developed until the 19th century and then projected backward.
To your main point: Because “the West” is a constructed category, rather than objective, I think who is inside it can expand or contract contextually and from perspective, similar to whiteness (e.g. a person who is seen as white in Puerto Rico might be seen as brown in Ohio).
I agree that conflating these categories with imperial core is an issue.
Mine own judgment is, that even if all the Greeks and all the barbarians of the West were gathered together in one place, they would not be able to abide my onset, not being really of one mind. But I would fain know what thou thinkest hereon
herodotus quoting xerxes in histories page 464 translated by george rawlinson
what “we” mean by west is evidently different since some of us think it describes a sort of culture while others think it describes the countries that are majority white as defined by 19th century nordicists
From this quote, I agree that Herodotus is using west different from how folks do today.
He seems to be using west as a direction to describe the nearby peoples of the known world not under Persian rule. Second, he lists the Greeks and the barbarians of the west as two separate categories.
Definitely a topic I’d like to read more about tho, thanks for sharing
well obviously its not used as it is used today but you can’t say the term didn’t have its origins that far back. things gradually change meaning over time
Hey I think you’re selling my comment a bit short here. My comment had very little to do with race. The reason I said Spain was not part of the west was because I placed the development of modern liberal capitalism in the locus of Britain and France, which is how I defined “the west.” Spain is peripheral to this development and so is not truly “the west,” or at least not central to that definition. That was my main point which I thought was at the least an interesting take.
The point about race was to agree with what other people had said, that non-Protestants and Southern Europeans often occupy a position on the margins of whiteness, more sharp historically but it still exists - at least this is how it’s been in the US - and to point out that there is a racial component to “the west” in that the US would like to portray themselves as having cultural continuity with Protestant European traditions, the foothold of Mother Europe in America, and distance themselves from the imperial colonies in the rest of America. Of course leftists are also using the term so I agree with you that maybe we should replace it with “imperial core” or something which most people agree it’s a synonym for. However my take still stands, imperial core is not really referring to Spain either, but again this locus of France and Britain (or maybe the Western Germany-France-Britain triangle as I said), and the (esp Northeast) US.
I did ignore your non-racial differentiation between spain and the countries north of it but including that didn’t help the point I was trying to make and would’ve required a whole tangent on how “the genius to invent capitalism and develop the world” is attributed to anglo-saxon conception of blood and race. maybe that can be part 2
Yeah I mean I understand why you didn’t include the whole comment, I just don’t think my comment should be included at all. From my perspective what I was trying to do was move away from any race-based definition of “the west.”
Also I noted in my original comment the important contributions of Italy and Southern Europe in the development of capitalism, understanding that it’s not wholly an anglo invention, springing fully formed from the minds of English and Scottish industrialists and economists. But as I also noted, Spain is in decline through the 1600s. By the time we can talk about capitalism as a modern economic system, as opposed to reaching back to figure out its murky origins, the center is France and Britain. And of course surely the triumph of liberal capitalism is in these two countries, which imo is more important than just the development. My point was not that capitalism is an anglo invention, but that the historic development and triumph of liberal capitalism ensured that these two countries would be in the core, turning the periphery, Eastern Europe and America, into by and large sources of raw materials for growth.
The only reason the US is included in my definition of “the west” is because the economies of the New England and Middle colonies ensured that it would develop along a different path from much of the rest of the continent. Had the US consisted solely of the Southern colonies, the US might today be comparable to many Caribbean countries, an imperial colony existing mainly as a source of raw materials for the imperial core. The other reason it’s included is because the “core” of capitalism has at this point moved from France-Britain to the US.
any talk of race was to acknowledge what others had said, which were points worth taking into account, and to note that even with my definition I also think race has to be acknowledged as a part of our usage of “the west” - noting that of course the US likes the term since it portrays them as the extension of the Mother Europe in America. Being that “the west” seems to refer to three things at once - the “imperial core” (my argument is this is France-Britain-Germany and the US with varying degrees of periphery, some more “core” than others), geography (Western Europe, maybe America) and the global spread of Western European culture (Western Europe, North America and possibly as you are arguing, Latin America) - does it really make sense to use such as imprecise term? Especially since what most people are referring to, at least on this site, is more accurately the “imperial core”?
can you really say spain was in decline through the 1600s when the end of the spanish golden age was by some accounts 1681 and spain maintained high regard and relevance until napoleon invaded it? its very whiggish or teleological
I’ll be honest I’m not an expert on Spain. Most things I’ve read place the Spanish decline as ongoing from the mid-1600s. I’m not saying they were some completely unimportant power, but that hegemony had moved to France and/or Britain, and by the time you get into the 1700s you’re no longer dealing with the Spain of the 1500s or something. I’d say the UK has also declined since their height nineteenth century, but surely this doesn’t mean they’re unimportant in the global system today. Same with Spain, I’m not saying they had become unimportant and unnecessary, just that they had declined from their period of hegemony.
If you want to challenge this though that’s fine, as I say I’m not an expert on Spain and this is based on what I’ve read (which is generally not dealing specifically with Spain but merely mentioning them). However I think my point still stands. The industrial revolution is not occurring in Spain. The development of liberal political ideology at some point finds its center not in Spain but in Paris. But more importantly the triumph of liberal capitalism over the ancien regimes and older modes of production does not occur in Spain but in France and Britain. That for me is what is most important, which turns France-Britain into the “core.” Spain isn’t the “periphery” in the same way the colonies are the periphery, it’s just not the core of these historical developments.
england of the mid-1600s was in the middle of a civil war and spain had the spanish netherlands until 1714 which is where capitalism as you’re defining it first developed so I would say you’re being very iffy with your timeline and being very generalizing. not to say you’re wrong. it would probably be better to break it up into different spheres so you talk about economic theory starting with physiocrats and moving to england, stock exchanges beginning in the netherlands and moving to england, etc
The English Civil War though was important for this triumph of liberal capitalism, part of the historical development I’m talking about. I don’t think Spain has anything quite equivalent. Also, yes, Spain had the Spanish Netherlands, but the Dutch East India Company was formed in the Dutch Republic.
I mean you’re right though, I’m very purposefully generalizing so as to not get so bogged down in details. I realize that we can find the origins of capitalism and trace its development very far back, and in places that are not just Northern Europe, and it’s not like everyone woke up one day and suddenly the world was capitalist. But I do think there needs to be a point where we say here is where capitalism becomes the dominant mode of production, prevailing over older anachronistic forms, where capitalism emerges from its primordial state to become what we today recognize as modern liberal capitalism. For me I place that point in late 1700s Britain and France. There are likely other possibilities, but I can’t think of an argument placing that point in Spain. Not that Spain is so unimportant as to not deserve a mention, I just don’t think it’s where we see capitalism begin to emerge in its modern form as the dominant mode of production.
I’m very intrigued by this drama but also not bored enough to read this giant post and all these comment walls
TL;DR anybody?
TL;DR Anglo-North-American leftists don’t view Latin America as part of The West because of it’s historical exploitation by Anglo-North-America, but Latin American leftists do view Latin America as part of The West because of Latin America’s own history of exploitation and erasure of native peoples and cultures by Europeans. I think.
When you say Latin American, is this about Latin Americans living in Latin America or Latin Americans on Hexbear
OP is both.
ty
This is the best summary I think. For my comments on the thread here (and maybe others) it might just be a miscommunication issue though. Of course latam has it’s own exploitative history, and myself and others often exclude much of latam from “the west” on the basis of world systems analysis as periphery nations. But I think the point is this shouldn’t exempt latam countries or political movements from criticism. It’s a good post imo
Here’s the threads, see for yourself. No one got bullied, people weren’t spouting race science.
https://hexbear.net/post/1379138
https://hexbear.net/post/1395470
The idea that Latin america is not Western is or could not pass as white weird to me.
I also disagree with the idea that Spain or Italy is not white they whould be considerd so in litteraly any part of the world like you all know that most white people dont have blonde hair and blue eyes right?
Some Crotian tourist going to Zambia whould be indistinguable from brit.
“Some racist white people from group A dont Consider White people from B to be white”
Thats not something unique to white people to? like no one whould care if some japanese facist said that chinese people arent true asians we moatly look at people out (insert racial category) Expect for white people for some reason
When did excluding people from whiteness become progressive? It was the opposite back then
Spain Portgual and Italy should not hsve their past whitewashed and think its disrepectful to any person who were killed by their colonial empires.
No body is saying these people cannot be white. The discussion and arguments are being misrepresented in order to make it look like hexbear is full of race scientists. I would urge you to look thru the threads yourself.
https://hexbear.net/post/1395470
https://hexbear.net/post/1379138
This aligns with Spengler’s view of Western Civilization not being defined in racial terms, he was actually ardently opposed to the racists of his time and believed a “race” was a population united in outlook not ethnicity or dna and believed that mesoamerican culture was overthrown and replaced with western culture to join western civilization.
This is also irrelevant and even poisonous
if half the population just wants to assimilate you under their “cultural model” which puts their own people at the top, and the other half of the population wants to actually genocide you, guess what the end result will be? yes, genocide.
Also Spengler literally justifies my position:
Spengler’s idea of race had nothing to do with ethnic identity, and indeed he was hostile to racists in that sense. The book talks about a population becoming a race when it is united in outlook, regardless of ethnic origins.
In other words, Spengler’s idea of race isn’t actual race. It’s nation and material interests. Therefore, Latin America is not Western. Latin America is…wait for it…Latin American.
I think India is an interesting example here. As poor and genetically diverse as India is, the bourgeois there do not really carry out ethnic-related terrorism crimes against other Indian ethnicities (religious terrorism though, totally different ballgame). But there’s basically no such thing as a wealthy Punjabi guy just fucking off one day and deciding to kill a bunch of Tamil people for no reason. Not so in America, where this happens literally all the time irrespective of religion
and if India can hold it together I don’t see any reason Latin America can’t? I don’t think the trivial minutiae of “having a virgin mary statue in your cabinet” is really going to trump your collective material interests is it?
Latin america is 33 different nations not 1 and spengler was not trying to describe simple national interests. regardless, I care more about class interests
In your “Why it Matters” section, you say that there’s an “orientalization” of Latin Americans. I think I get what you’re saying with it and I think you’re right.
I think what you’re missing with is this: on a far-left site like this, whiteness is typically associated with shame for the failure to stop - or try to stop - the crimes of “Western” countries against non-western countries. This is a majority American site, and many of the crimes of the United States were and are committed against Latin American countries. When the users on this site exclude Latin America from “The West” or from whiteness, it’s because they’re thinking more with their own national shame (maybe there’s a better way to phrase it) in mind, rather than the history of Latin America, in which countries have their own patterns of exploitation and marginalization of native communities. In other words, because they see Latin American countries as exploited victims of racism, they see them as sinless non-Western countries.
Within an American context, the shame for the treatment of Latin Americans (and, historically, Southern Europeans) is justified. It’s just that when asked to start looking at things in a Latin American context, it can be difficult to change that point of view.
Sorry if this comes across as rambling, I’m an American with a weird relationship with my latin ancestry that very few in my family have come to terms with in a positive way, and also I’m pretty drunk
Removed by mod
It’s a bit different when the bad things done by one’s ancestors aren’t really something that’s over. The United States continues to mistreat Latin American countries and Latin American people within its borders. Hell, even the continued existence of the United States is an ongoing act of theft from native peoples. It’s not just about the past, it’s about right now.
my country is different how? we have higher percent natives than you who get mistreated and stolen from and are made to integrate into western culture. guatemala too was literally doing a genocide up until the late 90s
Your country isn’t different. Within your country’s own context, it’s the same history of theft and genocide as the US. It’s just that because most of the people on this site are American, they’re used to thinking of Latin Americans as victims of American imperialism rather than as perpetrators of Latin American colonialism.
It is layers of oppressed groups. A white American on some level benefits from past and current injustices, but they might also be from Irish or Slavic immigrants so they also are one of those groups exploited to build that privilege they enjoy whether they like it or not, meanwhile both the WASP and Russian American benefit or at least view with guilt the exploitation of LatAm by the US which on some level even benefits African Americans in a round-about way, and those Latin Americans in question themselves have some benefits and might feel guilty over the exploitation of their own African-decended population and AmerIndian populations, etc etc.
This is not a defense of anything, just that that’s more or less how the POVs of a lot of American leftists work, even non-white ones
Hard to not feel shame when the exploitation is ongoing and i indirectly benefit. And the fact that white people in america today still benefit from the legacy of slavery and the native american genocide. is a pretty basic social justice 101 thing. White priviledge and all that. Its why people on this site support reparations. Whjteness is fake so theres nothing to be proud of there. And not really much to be proud of as an American either, im not a patsoc lol.
Also, revolutionairy defeatism.
Its weird how the userbase can mock how concepts like whiteness and the west have been historically arbitrary and have no consistent logic but the minute a latino user pointed that out sudenly they are irrefutable truths that cant be challenged
The discussion was the user who has now made this post wanting to have a stringent definition of western (white, Christian, English speaking) and the rest of the users trying to explain how it is an arbitrary definition made to justify and hide imperialism.
The arguments put forth to illustrate this (my comment on Croatians, which was a response to this user arguing that people in Europe definitely weren’t racist and were instead enlightened people that considered Honduras as a western country) are now being twisted and used to make it look like hexbear has a large subset of phrenologists.This same user has still not answered a question they’ve been asked many times on what sets Honduras apart from many African nations that fulfill the very same criteria for being “western”.
In the follow-up by the now deleted user (who most certainly was not bullied, unless you wanna call “responding to arguments” bullying) it was made clear that no one took issue with Hondurans viewing themselves as western, just that they thought the rest of the “western” countries viewed them as sucjh, which they dont, because western is an arbitrary tag made to obfuscate imperialism. In this follow-up the now-gone user still struggled with the fact that the tag is arbitrary, and kept wanting to have a specific list of qualities needed to become a member of the category
Look at the threads for yourself.
https://hexbear.net/post/1379138
https://hexbear.net/post/1395470so this is a cope post from the OP?
I dunno, I don’t wanna talk for them. They clearly care a lot about this, and it seems to me that they’re writing in earnest - would be wild to write this much on something others can easily verify for themselves, if you didn’t believe you to be right.
On the other hand I think they’re aware that they’re not representing what others say in full - though it seems like they think it’s fine because they’re making a point about how we’re arguing in race science? But that only works if we pretend the discussion was something else and the arguments were as well.
In the thread people were called racists, like people are being called in this post. In that thread it was clarified how people took no issue with Hondurans calling themselves white or western, but that when they ask why other countries didn’t consider Honduras as white or western, the reasons were those given by the users in the thread.
The users were called racist, and they once again explained that this idea “western countries” have of what constitutes a western country is based in racism, so the arguments for why these countries do not consider honduras wester would be racist, because it is - in the view of those other users - a racist construction used to obfuscate imperialism. It’s honestly a bit infuriating to then Once again see users be called racist AND now the discussion is misrepresented and the arguments as well. The users that explained how it was arbitrary are now made to seem like they have some stringent wasp requirement for when a person can be allowed to call themselves white or western, which was at no point what was going on.I think op just misunderstood what others were trying to communicate, and then it kinda derailed from there and now they’re so set in a discussion thats parallel to the discussion most others thought they were having.
And then a little bit of cope.
Back then on this site you whould get made fun of in this site for saying that any one south of USA cant be white or Western i dont know what changed
No one said that in either of the previous posts. They specifically answered two users who kept insisting “western” was when you were white, Christian and spoke English. Users tried to explain how it was arbitrary. The arguments used are now being misrepresented in order to make it look like they’re phrenologists. The discussion on Spain is egregious, since it only leaves in one part in order to “further a point” (that point hinges on people here being weird phrenologists).
Look at the threads for yourself.
https://hexbear.net/post/1395470
https://hexbear.net/post/1379138People were saying that europeans and americans dont considerd them to be part of the same club and they could get hate crimed?
The were also some pretty weird standards that we dont have for other groups. Like when we judge if someone is considerd African or Asian do we consider the opinions of reactionarcy people of those areas or people outside those groups?
Does anyone look at a Zambian calling a Congolese person a “fake African” and basing their decsion or that or do we look what people outside of Africa think why is the opinion of racist Europeans even considerd
I don’t know where you’re getting the hate crime thing from.
The were also some pretty weird standards that we dont have for other groups. Like when we judge if someone is considerd African or Asian do we consider the opinions of reactionarcy people of those areas or people outside those groups?
If the question is “why dont reactionary people of those areas judge these people to be a part of this group?” Then yes we do consider what the reactionaries think.
The question was not “why do you think Hondurans aren’t white/western” but “why don’t people in ‘western’ countries think Honduras is western, despite Hondurans themselves thinking that they are western?”The question is inherently one that investigates reactionary thought, because it is asking why one group of people are excluded from a classification that they by all accounts should be included in.
OP statement that started the entire argument was
“I consider Hobduras to be a Western Country”
“not why do westerners not think We are westerners”
As far as I can see this is the beginning of the discussion as you describe it. It is as far as I can see not the first comment on the subject though, but it is hard to know when one user is completely deleted.
op notes that honduras i western, users ask why and op retaliates by asking what else it would be, what other other countries it has more in common with. This is the beginning of the discussion, that then evolves to the one I’ve described
No Op said Honduras is western becsuse of they are christian country that speaks european language what followed was people ttrying to gotcha them by brining up Zambia and Phillipines and calling them a pick me Nazi.
The idea that Honduras was Western was=joke in that thread
Props to you for keeping that thread alive and at the top of this instance for as long as you did. Haven’t seen a poster like that in a while.
someone has to I guess
U/liberalsocialist has risen from the grave
