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all of that shit is informed and subsumed by white supremacy thanks to colonial legacies
It was definitely played into during colonial occupation. But westerners didn’t create the Soviet-Sino split. Nor did westerners force Japan to do a genocide in Manchuria. Westerners didn’t create the Sunni/Shia split or the Hindu Caste system.
This ain’t a competition
It’s a simple acknowledgement that removing western influence does not somehow sanitize a culture of its own bigotries. European hegemony has normalized whiteness globally and positioned white men at the top of existing social hierarchies. Removing them from power won’t remove the hierarchy.
Westerners didn’t create the Sunni/Shia split or the Hindu Caste system.
Their modern iterations they absolutely did, the tensions between Sunnis and Shia (when it’s not being exaggerated by western media) is 100% a US/Saudi led project decades in the making
And the British quite literally modified, racialized, and expanded the caste system during the Raj
It’s a simple acknowledgement that removing western influence does not somehow sanitize a culture of its own bigotries.
I don’t agree with a pessimist take like this, historically the removal of western influence was followed by immense social change and a progressive flourishing, however short it was; Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Cuba, Vietnam, United Arab Republic, the undermining or removal of a social ideology installed by colonial powers over the course of centuries absolutely can change a culture overnight, power structures bereft of a material basis and social narrative don’t magically maintain themselves, and it doesn’t automatically imply new bigotries will just emerge out of a vacuum fully formed
Their modern iterations they absolutely did
The modern iteration is simply “European aristocrats go on top”. Where as, for the vast majority of the history of the country, they would have lived near the bottom. And while they happily played up the conflicts between Muslim migrants - whose religion had spread rapidly all along East Africa and South Asia - and Hindu natives where it was convenient, they also routinely found themselves pincered between warring factions within the greater Hindu state (the northern border wars with the Pashtuns, the tug-of-war over Kashmir, etc).
the tensions between Sunnis and Shia (when it’s not being exaggerated by western media) is 100% a US/Saudi led project decades in the making
The US/Saudi regime replaced the Ottoman Empire, which managed cultural splits by doing periodic pogroms and genocides (most notably the Armenian Genocide). Old boss same as the new boss.
historically the removal of western influence was followed by immense social change and a progressive flourishing, however short it was; Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Cuba, Vietnam, United Arab Republic, the undermining or removal of a social ideology installed by colonial powers over the course of centuries absolutely can change a culture overnight
The civic nationalism and egalitarian socialism necessary to overthrow an imperial power often requires those social changes predate the revolution. What you see in the aftermath is a generation’s worth of work to unify disparate peoples coming to fruition.
But consider the hostility between Vietnam and China or Iraq and Iran following their revolutions. Or, again, the Sino-Soviet split. Once nations have congealed and developed their own internal politics, the interests of factions within the state won’t necessarily align with those on the outside, regardless of how ideologically aligned they might be at the roots.
“Colonialism could only come from Europe” isn’t a sound materialist assumption, nor does it bare out historically. Everything from the Congo Wars to Imperial China / Japan to Pre-Columbian Native Civilizations suggest the drive towards imperialist control is a chronic condition within human populations.
“Colonialism could only come from Europe”
I’m not claiming that, I’m pointing out the global colonialism that actually took place was a European phenomenon, local elites of colonial territories were educated in western schools, learning western schema, following western political directives, accumulating western capital for generations, these historical realities have enormous long term effects on the social, cultural, economic direction of all these nations
Even the example of Japan you’ve used multiple times is not immune, it’s isolation forcefully broken by western guns, its economic constitution underwritten by German developmentalism and hilariously enough the British postal service, its fascistic militarists taking power directly as a result of Japanese finance ministers lifting Anglo liquidationism and applying it to their economy creating the Showa depression
An export oriented economy on a resource poor island (hmm I wonder what fueled Japanese Imperialism) led by a cohort of westaboo aristocrats who learned race science in European schools and applied it to their own imperial conceptions of Asia
Now this whole time we’ve been talking about bigotry and prejudice, so the Sino-Soviet split, an ideological and political squabble does not represent some foundational civilizational race hatred between Russians and Han Chinese, the Ottoman empire while also an Asian power was also historically a fully recognized EUROPEAN power integrated into the European power game for centuries, historians literally lose their minds over people forgetting this fact
Saddam and the Shah were American funded, armed and backed creatures, the Congo wars a result of CIA backed coups and colonial border blowback, Pre-Columbian Native Civilizations annihilated by Spanish imperialism…on and on, Europe took over the globe, that’s a fact and that fact has consequences and pretending that it’s the Songhai Empire of old that underlies modern bigotry in western Africa or any other similar example is ridiculous
It’s the last save file that matters
