this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
2 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43473 readers
1372 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] davel@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you’re saying authoritarianism can be explained by non-whiteness…

I’m not saying that. I’m saying that “whiteness” as a construct is a tool of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism. And that the Global North similarly tends to attribute “authoritarianism” to whichever states are acting insufficiently subservient to their imperialist interests at any given moment. And I’m saying that these two constructs have a tendency to be aligned with each other, because they’re both tools of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism.

But also saying that anyone opposing NATO become ipso facto non-white because it’s “an ever-shifting construct”…

Whiteness is as old as European colonialism, and has been baked into capitalism—which began in Europe—from the start. Whiteness has been twisted into all sorts of nonsensical logic pretzels. See for example honorary Aryans honorary whites. It has no explanatory power because it is simply a tool of power. Even the Irish, Italian, and other Catholic European immigrants have suffered it within our own country. As Josep Borrell has more-or-less said, the imperial core is the “garden”, and the rest of the world is the “jungle.” Imperialism uses race—which again is made-up bullshit—as a tool to justify their imperialism.

You’re saying “authoritarianism = non-whiteness = opposition to the NATO bloc”

I’m not saying that, but the NATO bloc often seems to imply it. international-community-1international-community-2

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

And I’m saying that these two constructs have a tendency to be aligned with each other

It's not empiricaly right tho. Hitler and Stalin are the first type-examples. In the modern era it's normally Putin and Xi who get the label.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I already covered the origins of this propagandistic Western conceptualization of “authoritarianism”/“totalitarianism” in another comment in this post. But I’ll add a 1955 CIA report that was declassified in 2008.

Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.