Somersault 🧂
I'm looking forward to vic 3, but I think the thing I'm most excited for is to play as an underdeveloped country, modernise, and do colonialism on Europe. The thing that worries me, though, is that colonies will be hard-coded in some way like they are in EU4. Please, tell me that Congolese Belgium can be repressive and exploitative in the exact same way the Belgian Congo was.
no need to sort by controversial, pretty much every comment thread has people at arms.
turns out OP's ancestor literally fought natives and served in the confederacy. though OP wants to reassure us that "[...]the family had a good relationship with the native tribes. Not all settlers and Native Americans had conflicts."
are the 8300 acres of land OP still owns not a lot? is it wrong for OP to want this particular parcel back?
one user hoists his battle flag by responding "shut up cunt" to three different users (the last one since been deleted).
one long thread about whether or not native americans participated in conquest that humorously devolves into pedantry.
all in all just another day on reddit.
EDIT: update-- OP has apparently deleted the post along with most of his comments in it.
Are there any Star Trek episodes that directly criticize / comment on colonialism?
Another big theme I’m looking for is one in which technological advancement tends to destroy the beauty of the land, rather than work with the land.
Or are there any episodes that show a utopia where technology and nature are working in harmony?
Pretty much every interesting work of art has a political dimension, and while I deeply enjoy probing the cosmere books for their textual mysteries (like where the plot will go or the mechanics of the magic systems), I also thing it's fun to take these books as works with a clear political message.
To that end, here are three political readings of The Stormlight Archive books, as we currently have them. Spoilers for all currently-published Stormlight books.
Shardblades are nuclear weapons/WMDs
This one should be pretty obvious.
The dead shardblades wielded by human armies parallel the political implications of nuclear weapons in our world fairly closely. They represent a destructive force an order of magnitude above all other conventional weapons, necessitating a complete reappraisal of military strategy, and concentrate this power in the hands of individuals, reminiscent of U.S. presidents with their finger on the proverbial 'big red button'.
Like nuclear weapons, shardblades are the primary material way that a state asserts its military power and legitimacy. The two major forces in Roshar, Alethkar and Jah Kaved, hold similar numbers of shardblades and are thus in stalemate with each other, a kind of 'cold war'. Smaller countries, like the Azish satellite states, usually have only one or two shardblades, if that, and mostly rent them from benefactors, like how Russia distributed nukes to Ukraine, Belarus etc. at the outset of the 1990s. This is why a large part of Words of Radiance follows Adolin trying to win shardblades by dueling Sadean loyalists: it's a way to defang your geopolitical enemies.
Similarly, when the Horneaters want to gain political legitimacy, they don't aim to unite themselves or form a standing army - instead they try to win a shardblade. This calls to mind the many micronations who've tried to develop their own nuclear programs in our world. Naturally, Roshar's major players have a vested interest in stopping that from happening, which is why Rock's expedition is murdered extra-legally by Sadeas. The public fiction is that anyone (even darkeyes or foreigners) has a right to shardblades or nuclear force, but in reality this is reserved for the powers that be.
As Orwell wrote in his essay You and the Atomic Bomb, the rarity and tight control of nuclear weapons/shardblades is exactly what allows them to establish certain states as dominant. That's why yo
... keep reading on reddit ➡How do you respond to socialists and leftists that claimed that colonialism is the reason for modern capitalist wealth.
The argument can be broken down like this:
The colonization of American continent and New World by Portuguese and Spanish opened massive resources such as gold, silver and other minerals which was later exploited by the British and Dutch to kick start capital accumulation and industrial revolution.
After the US revolutionary war, Manifest Destiny and Westward expansion at the expense of indigenous Americans was also necessary for accumulation of capital so that the US can began its own industrialization.
Colonial adventures in Asia and Africa was primarily motivated to exploit resources and capture new markets for further accumulation of capital this done either by direct colonial control such as in India or indirect via unfair free trade agreements such as the case in the Ottoman Empire. Leftists argue this results in subsequent de-industrialization of these countries and the rest of the Third World in places like India, China and Ottoman Empire.
I can find ten deep dives into the "colonial mentality" or "colonized mindset" for every one half-hearted attempt at analyzing colonizer mentality or colonizer mindset.
I'm getting this vibe from some corners of literature that completely focus on "internalized racism/homophobia/sexism", and skimpy analysis aimed towards dominant systems and people perpetuating oppression.
Maybe I'm stuck in a blind spot, missing some vocabulary? What should I be searching for if I want discourse about mindsets/culture/attitudes of perpetrators instead of fixating on how marginalized groups need to fix their inferiority complex, to put it indelicately. Can anyone recommend me literature? Something with a topical focus like Ordinary Men, but instead of Nazis, stuff about colonial history, neoliberalism, global economies, media, pedagogy, healthcare, mental healthcare, social services, altruism/charity, religion, etc.
For more context, I've read Fanon, Gramsci, Spivak. But I'm starting to notice how often their work is twisted to support victim-blaming narratives. Open to revisiting those writers too, if anyone can point me to some salient points I might have overlooked in their work.
Edit - someone just smacked me upside the head on another forum: Bourdieu and habitus. Any more recommendations in that direction?
Edit 2 - That was fast. Extensive reading list that I will be wading through for possibly a few years. Thanks everybody.
Edit 3 - I fucked up the post title, it's not about Cesaire. I meant literally people having discourses and referencing colonialism/postcolonialism in their arguments. Noob times with an organic intellectual, thank you for bearing with me.
So my group got a new game called Settlers of Catan and I love the fresh take on traditional colonialism. You don't seem to take slaves or steal anyone's land, instead you just peacefully trade and create culture and a society where there is nothing of value before you transform the land. Really gives a different view on how colonialism is usually portrayed.
For example, "we need to free the women of the Middle East so we should install a US friendly government".
Or something like that.
Do monarchists support colonialism?
Hello. I had a question. Many past monarchies practiced colonialism. Was that a mistake?
The colonial empires were usually much more advanced than the colonized nations so they brought them advanced technology. And it's true. Europeans were often cruel to other nations, but colonized nations themselves were also often very cruel to each other.
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