If so, was it polled somewhere?

  • Gsus4@feddit.nl
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    When you guys mention the imperial core, what are you talking about? DC? Hollywood? Wall Street? Brussels? London? Paris? Berlin? The Hague? Where is this imperial core you keep mentioning?

    • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      "imperial core" isn't a phrase we made up. It refers to World Systems Theory, a theory of international relations invented by a guy named Immanuel Wallerstein which argues that imperial "Core" countries (think the traditional "developed" or "first world" countries. Mainly the US and Europe) have a particular extractive, colonial relationship with "Periphery" countries (think poor, raw material exporting, rentier states like Kyrgyzstan or Nigeria).

      Then there are semi-periphery countries which are still tied into the imperial core in some way, but have enough sway economically and geopolitically to kind of stand on their own. They have a different kind of relationship to the imperial core, compared to the periphery (these would be the BRICS countries, largely).

      That's a gross over simplification, but hopefully that answers your question.

      Edit: Here's a really good explanation of World Systems Theory that goes into more depth

      • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Wasn't aware of this framework, thank you for taking the time to explain it :)

      • PutangInaMo@sh.itjust.works
        ·
        1 year ago

        To be fair, colonialism is a human trait and it's been proven in every large society time and time again. You think the current US/UK empire is bad but if you look in your own back yard it's the same thing with a different spin.

        It is inevitable, humans are destined for this. It's unfortunate but it's what we do.

        • PandaBearGreen [they/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          That's just the propaganda you've been fed. The world doesn't need to be xenophobic or exploitative. These are learnt behaviors.

            • Egon
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              4 months ago

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                • Egon
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                  4 months ago

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                  • PutangInaMo@sh.itjust.works
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    I'm being vague because these are common facts. I'm not about to go spend half my Saturday sourcing this for you, to win some kind of online argument lol its nice and sunny outside and I'm planting trees all day and imbibing with you kids on here on my breaks.

            • Venus [she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Just because you're a terrible person doesn't mean everyone else is.

                • Venus [she/her]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Like a Christian deep in the closet talking about how gay people just need to suppress the natural urge all men feel to engage in gay sex, you believe that your internal experiences are universally shared across humanity. Because you are a selfish, deeply evil person, you refuse to believe that there is actually any such thing as a good person at all. You feel smugly superior to the rest of us who refuse to admit we're all evil, without realizing that not everyone thinks like you.

        • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          yeah but the thing is other countries' policies didn't inspire apartied and the nazis and their holocaust.

          the US's exterminationist and segregationalist The US did those thing

          Hitler wrote in his diary how good america was at genociding its undesireables, and took it and ran with it

          The United States: world leader in being the absolute fucking worst thing in human history since 1619

          • PutangInaMo@sh.itjust.works
            ·
            1 year ago

            But that's kind of my point. The CCP engages in almost identical policies and political strategy. It's just under a different banner with a different mascot.

            • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Absolutely fucking wild to go yeah the US Inspired the nazis and aparteid and segregation, but china has the belt and road so its basically the same

              The fuck?!

              • PutangInaMo@sh.itjust.works
                ·
                1 year ago

                If somebody looks at you and likes a thing you do, and then goes and commits genocide because they liked that you liked their favorite potato chip, does not make you connected to their genocide.

                You are fabricating connections while denying reality.

                • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Hitler literally wrote in his diary how good the US policies of extermination and land settling were, and, quite famously, his basis for Lebensraum: the material basis for the holocaust

                  Get the fuck out of here nazi apologist

        • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          You think the current US/UK empire is bad but if you look in your own back yard it's the same thing with a different spin.

          I don't think any non-Western country has enslaved a continent, refused to pay reparations for enslaving an entire continent, and continue to plunder an entire continent of its resources.

            • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              I'm going to make the bold claim that the Tang dynasty and the Achaemenid empire was nowhere near as bad as the Spanish empire or the British empire and unlike the first two, the second two are still relevant in modern times.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Do you seriously think Cambodia "enslaved a continent"? Like, I think Pol Pot was one of the more destructive leaders in human history, but you're being silly.

              Japan was working on it but only partially did it. China didn't. Persia? uh . . . I don't think so. Egypt? No. Spain was part of the overall effort that the US and UK were part of.

        • NormalC
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          1 year ago

          Removed by mod

    • dolphin
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      1 year ago

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      • Sharkwellington@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        I genuinely would like to understand what you guys at hexbear are about but every time I poke my head into that instance you guys are "dunking" every other instance with language nobody else understands. It's very alienating.

        • dolphin
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          1 year ago

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          • yuri@sh.itjust.works
            ·
            1 year ago

            you guys are also like, just huge dicks without provocation. like all the fucken time. 99% of what i see from hexbear users is either condescension or outright hostility.

            • Kuori [she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              honestly it's a pretty friendly instance all told, we just have p strong feelings about politics and bigotry

              and admittedly a lot of us have little patience for the worst among you bc we deal with that shit permeating society at every level on a constant basis

                • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Really? cause when I look through comment sections it's always liberals spewing the same fucking lines, and acting like everyone they disagree with can't possibly also be from marginalized groups. (In fact most seem to take the fact that you disagree with them as prima facie evidence that you can't be from a marginalized group!)

                  The amount of casual misogyny, racism, and generally sickening comments I've seen has shot through the roof since we federated, and it's exclusively been coming from lemmitors.

                • somename [she/her]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Give me an example of a user from Hexbear being racist/transphobic/homophobic etc.

                  Just one. Please.

                • Egon
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                  4 months ago

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                • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  also, coincidentally, i see a lot of folks from marginalized groups specifically complaining about y’all being insensitive and shitty.

                  Now that's a lie if I ever saw one lmao

            • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              usually how conversations go is this

              1. I see a reply to a post by a liberal stating a point which we regularly debunk

              2. to help them see why they might be wrong, I politely, and in good faith, though often with a little force, push back on it and explain why they are incorrect

              3. they then smugly and condenscendingly reply with a sentence like "Oh, so you've come along with your CCP/Kremlin propaganda now / Oh great, the Hexbear horde has arrived / Actually, it's much more complicated than that [refuses to elaborate] / Actually, you're wrong because of [link to wikipedia]"

              4. we then start dunking given that they aren't operating in good faith

              perhaps reddit's typical style of "debate", where you smugly reply thought-terminating cliches and decontextualized quotes at each other while being variously awarded and downvoted, is more harmful and damaging to actual discussion than our style of "You're wrong, here's why you're wrong with a bunch of references included, hell, most of them are to western media because if I don't then you'll start screeching 'CHINESE CCP XI JINPING PROPAGANDA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH' at us"

              additionally, we have no downvotes, and haven't for three years, because it just fosters anonymized disagreement and even harrassment without any constructive points being made. thousands upon thousands of times, I've seen arguments become people just saying quotes like "Well, communism works on paper but not in practice" and "If you sacrifice freedom for security then you deserve neither" or "Did you know that the Founding Fathers warned against parties?" and just a hundred other pseudo-points gathered from a lifetime of being exposed to various kinds of media and irl interactions, without even the slightest curiosity as to the underlying philosophies and ideas and complexities and nuances behind, say, what authoritarianism really means, or whether democracy is necessarily "when you have elections" or if there's something deeper, or even just the basic histories of the USSR and China and Cuba etc. the average Westerner's knowledge of anything beyond culture is as wide and deep as a puddle. I'll even be a little self-depreciating and include myself in that, though I am actively working to improve.

              no matter how often you remind people that downvotes should only be used for comments that don't "contribute to the discussion", no matter how good their intention, downvote systems online always devolve into "I dislike you and/or the point you're making and I'm not going to explain why. fuck you." disagreement on Hexbear can only be done through posting and replying, and sorting these things out through discussions (or "struggle sessions") rather than building up silent resentments over time that split everybody up, and because of that, it's by far the healthiest online community I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. it's also why we come across as overbearing - even if we had only a third of the members, the site culture of "if you disagree, reply and tell them, you can't downvote" means that we're all used to commenting a lot and could overwhelm other instances which are more used to downvote-and-move-on tactics.

              • Egon
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                4 months ago

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            • Egon
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              4 months ago

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            • Staines [they/them]
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              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Hexbear - "that's true, I see how our culture can be hard to decipher"

              Lemmylib - "you guys are huge dicks without provocation"

              Hexbear - oh well fuck you then :)

              Lemmylib - "see, so hostile!"

              If we respond to people being needlessly aggro with quip derision it's "so uncivil!" If we respond to people in good faith by trying to explain our differing views it's "wow im not going to read that!"

              So what should we do?

        • Doubledee [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Honestly your best bet is probably to do some reading first, unfortunately. A lot of Hexbear dialect is that way because it's tied to concepts that come from books and thinkers we're broadly familiar with.

          If you're more into video stuff you could try this guy. I think he's pretty approachable.

          Actually if you went into the megathreads and asked most people would probably give you suggestions too. We are fiesty but in my experience we also like to be helpful to people with questions.

          • PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocksB
            ·
            1 year ago

            Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/channel/UCGog4JPn5-W3_XIKccENysg

            Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

            I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

        • Venus [she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          We're literally just communists. Read any introductory text to communism and 99% of what we say will make sense in context.

            • Nama [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              I'll oversimplify a bit, but here you go. In economic terms, liberalism is a market oriented economy, and the current iteration of neoliberalism is marked by social welfare cuts and tax cuts for the rich with "trickle down" effect in mind (allegedly). That ideology is shared by both the democratic and republican parties. The difference between communists and liberals in the sense the word is most often used, is that economic approach, and from that perspective both liberals and conservatives are "liberal".

              Now the common use of the word is a bit different, but that's almost exclusively US from what I can tell. Hexbear is also international though, and liberal is a common term for right wingers where I'm from for example.

              Hope I could help.

              • YeetPics@mander.xyz
                ·
                1 year ago

                "The colloquialisms from the place I am directly talking about don't matter as much as this one I am using, everyone who disagrees is propagandized"

                This is what I'm seeing when I read your comment. I can call the sky green all damn day, that doesn't make it green, you dip.

                • Egon
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                  4 months ago

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                  • YeetPics@mander.xyz
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    You reap what you sow. I figured a tankie would know about planting things but I suppose I was wrong again.

                • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Exactly the same as a chud saying college biology is fake pseudoscience because of the biology they were taught in 5th grade.

                  In any decent political science education in the states you will also see these definitions. You can stop having a tantrum about it.

                • sawne128 [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Let me oversimplify even more. Donald Trump upholds the American Revolution which turned British America into a liberal republic.

                • ReadFanon [any, any]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  This isn't a colloquialism. This is a basic definition used within political science.

                  If you're going to talk politics on a serious level then using the terminology of political science matters and, if that's too much of a stretch, then at least avoid colloquial terms which contradict the terms used in political science.

                • Staines [they/them]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Americans can call the sky green as much as they want. In the rest of the world, Liberalism = Liberalism, not "democrat".

                  Liberals are people that believe in liberalism, which can be summed up as "everyone has the individual right to be an asshole, even if it fucks everyone else over".

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Locke was a classical liberal. Trump is a neoliberal. This is very simple.

            • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Liberalism has a couple of different definitions. The one you're thinking of is the one in US politics where "Liberal" is synonymous with "Left'. This isn't how it's being used here though.

              Liberalism, as a broad ideological trend that came out of the enlightenment, contains within it, Conservatism. Conservatism was theorized by people like Edmund Burke who, seeing that the previous feudal hierarchy was dying off, sought to preserve it, at least as much as was possible, by accepting Liberal notions of property rights and capitalism.

              So, instead of a social hierarchy being ordained by God, it's decided by the market, and social conflict is meditated through the liberal, Lockean, Republic.

              So when we call Trump a liberal, we mean it in this broad sense. He's still a conservative, but conservatism is a subset of capital L Liberalism.

              This is in contrast to Leftism, which also contains a lot of things within it, but breaks from a lot of the philosophical assumptions that undergird Liberalism.

            • WhyEssEff [she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. donald trump is a capitalist. donald trump is a liberal. easy.

              • Egon
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                edit-2
                4 months ago

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        • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I genuinely would like to understand what you guys at hexbear are about

          Well, I'd be more than happy to have a good faith discussion with you. No dunking, I promise 🙏

        • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          If you ask good faith questions and give context for why "Hey, I'm a liberal and I don't understand X could you explain what you mean?"

          You WILL get excellent engagement and people will give you very good answers

          its easy, and if you genuinely want to learn give it a shot

        • Egon
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          4 months ago

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        • epicspongee [they/them, he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          To be clear in the dunking threads folks are not usually engaging in good faith with us. When I was on another server and replied with actual questions to stuff everyone was incredibly nice to me and explained stuff super well. Can agree though that folks can see dunking as alientating. I promise though if you can get past that it's one of the friendliest communities I've found on the web.

    • HornyOnMain
      ·
      1 year ago

      The imperial core is the countries that have been most involved in the imperialist plunder of other nations, so that would be the US, Canada, UK, France, Belgium, Germany, etcetera

        • Venus [she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Tibet was an oppressive theocratic slave society whose people China liberated.

            • PandaBearGreen [they/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Serfdom in Tibet controversy - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy

              Here is a very both sides wiki article to start with. You can see the weakness in the argument in the defense of Tibet as they're semantic arguments.

                • ReadFanon [any, any]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  If you want information about Tibet, let me know.

                  I am a westerner who was raised Tibetan Buddhist so I'm pretty familiar with Tibetan history and... it's really not the country which gets painted as this peaceful utopia free from political intrigue or human rights abuses that was all about enacting and embodying compassion.

                  There's contemporary examples of this, and perhaps the most obvious example is the Karmapa controversy (try figuring that little doozy on your own without being steeped in Tibetan history lol) which often overlooks significant issues such as the struggle over who would hold the seat of Rumtek monastery in Sikkim and lay claim to the considerable amount held in trust for the Karmapa (which featured a wealthy patron, at one point, stationing a small private military to prevent one of the Karmapas from entering the monastery) along with suspicious death of Jamgon Kongtrol Rinpoche and his delegation in a car accident when he was instructed to "test the brakes" on a newly serviced car (BMW? Mercedes? I forget...) or the historical significance of the then-Dalai Lama outlawing the recognition of the Tai Situpa lineage (and liquidating his monastic holdings and forcibly converting the Kagyu monks under his tutelage to the Gelug school) and the current Dalai Lama lifting this centuries-long ban and the implications this would have on the recognition of the current Karmapa(s).

                  Then there's historical examples of this, like the famous example of the politically-influential polymath Lungshar, whose son was considered for being a reincarnation of the next Karmapa (this process of recognising reincarnations, strangely enough, tended to exclusively occur to children within wealthy and politically influential families such as Lungshar's) who was sent as part of a delegation to Europe by the British who were courting Tibet at the time as they sought to expand their colonial holdings from India up into Tibet. Lungshar was smitten by western political systems and he sought to bring about reforms to democratise the Tibetan theocracy.

                  Unfortunately for Lungshar, his son died under suspicious circumstances around the time that his agenda for political reforms was running into direct opposition by the conservative political powerbrokers in Tibet (monks/lamas and aristocrats) and, in a surprising turn of events, Lungshar was "discovered" to have been practising black magic (they found a piece of paper with someone's name on it inside his shoe which was considered black magic - this name happened to be of the aristocrat Timon who held high offices in the Tibetan theocracy and who happened to be a conservative and the main figure who openly opposed Lungshar's reform agenda. How they knew to check Lungshar's shoes is a matter for speculation...) and so, as punishment, Lungshar had his eyes gouged out on Timon's order and Lungshar lost his political influence and the movement supporting the liberalisation of the Tibetan theocracy was effectively extinguished by this act.

                  There's this extremely romanticised, idyllic notion that westerners tend to have about Tibet (and the fact that Avatar: The Last Airbender is something treasured by westerners rather than being looked at with a skeptical eye for all of its overt orientalism, to me, speaks volumes about just how canonised this notion is) but history paints a markedly different picture than the one we tend to have.

        • Egon
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          4 months ago

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        • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Note that they said "Most involved" Russia, for instance, has always been the modern "Sick man of Europe" since the fall of the USSR. It's imperial aspirations don't extend as far. And it's relationship to the historic Core of the US and Western Europe, is as a semi-peripheral nation trying to coalesce a regional sphere of influence with itself as the center of gravity. None of that makes it a Core country though.

          Maybe if the current world system collapses, and it filled that vacuum. But that hasn't happened.

          Imperial Core refers to the World Systems Theory of International Relations, first put forward by Immanuel Wallerstien. I would suggest you read up on the topic before making half-baked responses like this.

    • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      You know how any time there's a map where it colors countries who vote on UN resolutions, or countries where you can be thrown in jail for being poor, etc etc etc etc, you know how its usually a very similar map with US Europe and western allies on one side, and the entire rest of the world (the other 6.5 billion people) on the other?

      Yeah, that teeny group that seems to always get its way controlling global politics is the imperial core.

    • bigboopballs [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Where is this imperial core you keep mentioning?

      They prefer to be called The International Community™

      • ReadFanon [any, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        And occasionally the "We make the rules, you take the orders" rules-based order.

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Where is this imperial core you keep mentioning?

      Probably start with where all the giant battleships come from: https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-dominance-2013-11

      Why does the USA need all those battleships if they're not doing imperialism? Are they just cosmetic battleships? Just for shits and giggles?

      • Egon
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        edit-2
        4 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I was answering his question, not trying to be hostile. I did not insult him at all. Just voicing my opinion.

      • Gsus4@feddit.nl
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ok, so the imperial core is in DC to you, got it. The previous reply is more thoughtful than that.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Another user already explained world systems theory, but there's also the school of global historical materialism, that analyses the relationship and structure of the imperial core/triad and the periphery/global south. Samir Amin was a leading figure in that, he also coined the term "Eurocentrism". You can find quite a few recordings of his lectures for free on YouTube, or pirate his books (he's dead now, so it's not like he'd get the money anyways).