I don’t think there is a single dogmatic definition for western, nor should we seek one out. It depends on context and has shifted over time, just like whiteness as you rightly mentioned. But while I agree with the overlap with whiteness, I don’t think western necessarily implies race every time it is used.
Western means something slightly different when speaking of philosophy compared to art. It means something entirely different in leftist (esp. Marxist) discussions because it is usually referring to the imperial core which is coincidentally in the West (as originally, arbitrarily defined relative to Rome).
Hell, one could argue that we quit using the word western altogether, first and foremost because of its imprecision, secondly because it maybe has some latent Orientalism baked in; the term western only has meaning relative to Eastern which has historically connoted inferior, backward, foreign, etc.
Edit: sorry for all the adverbs, I usually edit them out but I’m about to fall asleep
I don’t think there is a single dogmatic definition for western,
Yes there is. It's just "collective European racial interest"
The anglos in USA, Aus, NZ, Canada are all 98-100% genetically pure and look Northern European. It's not at all like Latin America where they're both 1) only from the (visibly darker pigmented) European periphery of Spain and 2) only partially descended from said periphery, which results in something like 80% of Latinos looking out of place in Northern Europe.
Why does this matter? Because the west is racist, and this racism is applied primarily based on appearance. Illegal Polish immigrants don't exactly get questioned for their papers out of the blue, but legal US citizens can be deported if they look Mexican enough (Joe Arpaio)
White Americans (and Australian etc) are pure so they're western
Japan and Korea are not remotely European so they're not. Will gladly fill with 100s of European-controlled military bases tho
Russia seeks more power at the expense of other whites. (bolded very important). Thus, not western. They're betraying the collective racial interest!
Poland used to be non-western. But now it is.
https://i.postimg.cc/MWGZ93zF/image.png
If Latin America is western, then they're doing a piss-poor job at it lol. If almost every country in Europe would rather help any other European country than help Colombia, what does that make Colombia? Even Spain would rather help much richer Northern European countries than they would Colombia. Hell even INDIA receives an overall warmer reception, though not by much, but it should tell you that Latin America is as forgettable and unimportant to the Western world as INDIA is. And the best part is that Colombia isn't even an especially offensive Latin country in terms of geopolitics, unlike Venezuela or Cuba or Bolivia etc.
"Western" is just another extraneous word for "white". Whites love making more words mean "white". They did it with the word "Caucasian", the word "Aryan", the word "continent" which was redefined to give white-people-land its own special snowflake status, the word "Indian", which was applied to the actual inhabitants of America in order to tacitly emphasize that they don't belong here so that white settlers could LARP as natives, etc. "Western" is just another variant of these words. Anyone who thinks otherwise is playing checkers while we're playing chess.
If you wanna complain about the concept of a direction being used as an ethnocultural bloc, then I'm all for that. Europe is a central place on the world map (which is completely arbitrary anyway). But when white westerners say "western", I promise you nobody is thinking of Chile or Ecuador when they say that.
I largely agree with you that Western means white in many contexts. Just not all. The usage of so many terms for white, far from proving a uniform history of white supremacy over different eras and continents, actually demonstrates the ambivalent and volatile nature of whiteness as a concept, that it is not something absolute but rather disputed and impermanent.
I don’t agree with identifying peoples as Western based on appearance. It is valid to consider Japan as Western in certain discussions because it forms an integral part of US imperialism today. Same for Israel, Guam, and other places. India right now is at a turning point and seems to be trying to join the west. Yet I acknowledge that in other contexts these countries are not really part of the club and could then be considered non-Western. It’s a matter of geopolitics not biology.
So I take the Parenti view on this one. It doesn’t matter to me what we call Western as long as communication is clear. At best, it is a waste of energy like it is a waste to argue whether certain nations are/were Actually Existing Socialism. At worst, it validates the existing class structure by accepting the division as natural. Like I’m not interested in fine-tuning exactly which ethnicities I would consider Aryan because the very premise is racist and unnecessary. We have terms like imperial core and global south, which shift the focus properly to social relations rather than racial ideology.
I don’t think there is a single dogmatic definition for western, nor should we seek one out. It depends on context and has shifted over time, just like whiteness as you rightly mentioned. But while I agree with the overlap with whiteness, I don’t think western necessarily implies race every time it is used.
Western means something slightly different when speaking of philosophy compared to art. It means something entirely different in leftist (esp. Marxist) discussions because it is usually referring to the imperial core which is coincidentally in the West (as originally, arbitrarily defined relative to Rome).
Hell, one could argue that we quit using the word western altogether, first and foremost because of its imprecision, secondly because it maybe has some latent Orientalism baked in; the term western only has meaning relative to Eastern which has historically connoted inferior, backward, foreign, etc.
Edit: sorry for all the adverbs, I usually edit them out but I’m about to fall asleep
deleted by creator
Yes there is. It's just "collective European racial interest"
The anglos in USA, Aus, NZ, Canada are all 98-100% genetically pure and look Northern European. It's not at all like Latin America where they're both 1) only from the (visibly darker pigmented) European periphery of Spain and 2) only partially descended from said periphery, which results in something like 80% of Latinos looking out of place in Northern Europe.
Why does this matter? Because the west is racist, and this racism is applied primarily based on appearance. Illegal Polish immigrants don't exactly get questioned for their papers out of the blue, but legal US citizens can be deported if they look Mexican enough (Joe Arpaio)
https://i.postimg.cc/MWGZ93zF/image.png
If Latin America is western, then they're doing a piss-poor job at it lol. If almost every country in Europe would rather help any other European country than help Colombia, what does that make Colombia? Even Spain would rather help much richer Northern European countries than they would Colombia. Hell even INDIA receives an overall warmer reception, though not by much, but it should tell you that Latin America is as forgettable and unimportant to the Western world as INDIA is. And the best part is that Colombia isn't even an especially offensive Latin country in terms of geopolitics, unlike Venezuela or Cuba or Bolivia etc.
"Western" is just another extraneous word for "white". Whites love making more words mean "white". They did it with the word "Caucasian", the word "Aryan", the word "continent" which was redefined to give white-people-land its own special snowflake status, the word "Indian", which was applied to the actual inhabitants of America in order to tacitly emphasize that they don't belong here so that white settlers could LARP as natives, etc. "Western" is just another variant of these words. Anyone who thinks otherwise is playing checkers while we're playing chess.
If you wanna complain about the concept of a direction being used as an ethnocultural bloc, then I'm all for that. Europe is a central place on the world map (which is completely arbitrary anyway). But when white westerners say "western", I promise you nobody is thinking of Chile or Ecuador when they say that.
I largely agree with you that Western means white in many contexts. Just not all. The usage of so many terms for white, far from proving a uniform history of white supremacy over different eras and continents, actually demonstrates the ambivalent and volatile nature of whiteness as a concept, that it is not something absolute but rather disputed and impermanent.
I don’t agree with identifying peoples as Western based on appearance. It is valid to consider Japan as Western in certain discussions because it forms an integral part of US imperialism today. Same for Israel, Guam, and other places. India right now is at a turning point and seems to be trying to join the west. Yet I acknowledge that in other contexts these countries are not really part of the club and could then be considered non-Western. It’s a matter of geopolitics not biology.
So I take the Parenti view on this one. It doesn’t matter to me what we call Western as long as communication is clear. At best, it is a waste of energy like it is a waste to argue whether certain nations are/were Actually Existing Socialism. At worst, it validates the existing class structure by accepting the division as natural. Like I’m not interested in fine-tuning exactly which ethnicities I would consider Aryan because the very premise is racist and unnecessary. We have terms like imperial core and global south, which shift the focus properly to social relations rather than racial ideology.