I believe you have a point about the overt discourse, but the material relationship is still there: the comparative comfort that the middle class in the imperial core has comes at the expense of the subjugated periphery states, racism and chauvinism are still heavily ingrained in the American conscience even if the very most mask-off promotion of them is frowned upon enough that doing so will result in a lucrative career on youtube and the reactionary talk show circuit, and there's a massive amount of propaganda aimed explicitly at tricking anyone with a conscience into thinking that everything from brutal wealth extraction to the arming of white supremacist militants is actually a benevolent act of charity from the "developed" world to the "developing" world which Americans are eager to accept because it eases their conscience as they consume mountains of luxury trinkets made in the periphery.
And that's before you get to the real, educated neoliberals who fully understand the evil that their comfort is predicated upon and who declare that it must be good and right because it benefits them personally, resolving their cognitive dissonance by explicitly embracing evil rather than trying to doublethink it away.
I agree that the material relationship is the same -- neo-imperialism is still imperialism -- but the extent to which people understand that is important to how they should be treated/how we should attempt to get through to them. If someone is knowingly hurting others we should handle that differently than if they're hurting others because they think they're bringing freedom or democracy or whatever.
Of course, the latter is still bad, and someone can be responsible for harm even absent the intention to harm. But it's a different type of responsibility, and more immediately, it speaks to what might convince them to stop. Someone who understands what they're doing and still does it won't be swayed by merely being educated on the subject, for instance. But if someone thinks they're spreading freedom and democracy and they learn about how something like sanctions on Venezuela or the DPRK actually hurts people? That might move them.
"freedom and democracy" is "the white man burden" of today. It is paternalism in both, but it is this way because western chauvinism is deep within the culture and does not cross the mind consciously.
I believe you have a point about the overt discourse, but the material relationship is still there: the comparative comfort that the middle class in the imperial core has comes at the expense of the subjugated periphery states, racism and chauvinism are still heavily ingrained in the American conscience even if the very most mask-off promotion of them is frowned upon enough that doing so will result in a lucrative career on youtube and the reactionary talk show circuit, and there's a massive amount of propaganda aimed explicitly at tricking anyone with a conscience into thinking that everything from brutal wealth extraction to the arming of white supremacist militants is actually a benevolent act of charity from the "developed" world to the "developing" world which Americans are eager to accept because it eases their conscience as they consume mountains of luxury trinkets made in the periphery.
And that's before you get to the real, educated neoliberals who fully understand the evil that their comfort is predicated upon and who declare that it must be good and right because it benefits them personally, resolving their cognitive dissonance by explicitly embracing evil rather than trying to doublethink it away.
I agree that the material relationship is the same -- neo-imperialism is still imperialism -- but the extent to which people understand that is important to how they should be treated/how we should attempt to get through to them. If someone is knowingly hurting others we should handle that differently than if they're hurting others because they think they're bringing freedom or democracy or whatever.
Of course, the latter is still bad, and someone can be responsible for harm even absent the intention to harm. But it's a different type of responsibility, and more immediately, it speaks to what might convince them to stop. Someone who understands what they're doing and still does it won't be swayed by merely being educated on the subject, for instance. But if someone thinks they're spreading freedom and democracy and they learn about how something like sanctions on Venezuela or the DPRK actually hurts people? That might move them.
"freedom and democracy" is "the white man burden" of today. It is paternalism in both, but it is this way because western chauvinism is deep within the culture and does not cross the mind consciously.