when it comes to africa for example i was taught that they're poor cause their land isn't harvestable or some bullshit like that, and then i find out as an adult it's actually cause western countries fucked the shit out of them and huh that makes a lot more sense
I either got "that's just the way it is" or outright racism. No concept of rescource extraction or colonialism, of how different parts of the world had different levels of relative development at different times, almost entirely due to material forces like raw materials and availability of trade.
That's why for all the well deserved clowning it gets, I think there's some value in Guns Germs and Steel in terms of being a very lib friendly introduction to the idea that geopolitics (and history overall but let's not scare them too much) stems from material conditions rather than some weird spooks about different nations having personalities and shit.
do you believe zizek at all when he talks about national ideology permeating these things?
if we grow up within the big headed imperial core & hegemon, we can easily project that out into the world. cocky & dumb american tourists are rightly stereotyped all over the world. Americans literally think they're the richest & most loved & greatest country of all time, the dipshits
now, think about post-colonial & formerly war-torn countries in the global South & Eastern Europe who had to endure humiliation from the West (or Japan) for the last century & more. On some level, individuals in those places may also subconsciously carry that subaltern/overly humble worldview because they haven't been expanding and waging global resource war... people convince themselves of lots of things, even when monsters like the US are real
these are material drivers, but when we look at how the indigenous groups in Bolivia still can't get along with the bourgeois European/Spanish elites there, then we know that this shit is working on some cultural level too. reification comes on the back of sublimating the real material causes into this bullshit "clash of civilizations". problem is people actually believe it
Argentinian here:
A lot of idiots from my country hate it here cuz we are a shitty country, but the propaganda (and racism) is so strong they keep voting for rabid neoliberals that sunk the country even deeper in shit.
besides propaganda there's also the issue that the middle class tends to emulate (or attempt to emulate) the lifestyle of the dominant classes, so they kinda hate even "progressives"
for instance, here in brazil middle class homes and even apartments used to come with a special bedroom, built away from the rest of the house, obviously in poorer conditions, and usually right next to the service area/kitchen (some of us even called it "quarto de empregada", or maid room)
this kind of shit explains why the middle class was pissed when lula kept raising the minimum wage to the point where they couldn't have their own house servant anymore
not that i'm a fan of lula, but it really shows how even the slightest amount of liberal "reform" riles people up (and you can't even call this a reform, right? it's just raising the minimum wage ffs)
Exactly, the middle class absolutely hates seeing the low class improve their lives. There a shitton of racism mixed in there, but yeah, same in Argentina.
oh yea definitely, but even that racism is closely associated with the class issue
remember, the irish were basically treated like the "black people of europe" when they were the colonized/lower classes, in fact the "racial scientists" (phrenologists and the like) used to argue the irish brain was similar to the african brain and therefore they were also "made to serve", to "work with their hands", etc
as ireland became independent and started rising up as a 1st world country this no longer served a purpose and sounds absurd to us, but it was very real and deeply believed in up until the late 19th century or so
so that racism exists, but it's also built upon the need to dehumanize the lower classes so we can justify their conditions (though of course when this takes root in society it starts working at a subconscious level)
And yeah, we can all shit on soc-dems like Lula here, but in any other place of the internet if I catch a whiff of anti-pink-tide I react like
i'm still like that with evo/chávez, and even correa to a lesser extent, but i've grown so disillusioned with lula and his party that i don't really care anymore :(
after realizing how conservative his government was (and even reactionary in some aspects - he sanctioned a crime bill that was similar to that of the democrats from the 90s, or at least had similar consequences, literally doubling the amount of people in jail in ~10 years), i'm kinda just... whatever
We too don't have a good/relevant real left.
btw, !latam@hexbear.net
oh god in the first page there's already someone getting overexcited because lula mentioned marx
being a leftist feels like painfully spinning in an eternal vortex of struggle sessions
alright i've joined the sub
We have all been libs at some point. Be patient.
indeed
those aren't separate
or rather, they aren't supposed to be thought of that way
yes, you're right, but people & things are different...
and through this perverse accelerating global capitalism & imperialism the phrase "the material relations between people become social relations between things" really stands out. untapped resources are always conveniently where the enemy is