news

it's becoming the new human rights concerntrolling I think. as in, everybody should obviously be supportive of human rights but when it's constantly used by imperialists to justify absolutely heinous shit, it's hard not to get a little cynical about human rights sometimes.

It's the undermining of universalist values by Eurocentrism. Samir Amin wrote about it extensively:

Eurocentrism is, like all dominant social phenomena, easy to grasp in the multiplicity of its daily manifestations but difficult to define precisely. Its manifestations, like those of other prevailing social phenomena, are expressed in the most varied of areas: day-to-day relationships between individuals, political information and opinion, general views concerning society and culture, social science. These expressions are sometimes violent, leading all the way to racism, and sometimes subtle. They express themselves in the idiom of popular opinion as well as in the erudite languages of specialists on politics, the Third World, economics, history, theology, and all the formulations of social science. I will, therefore, begin with this set of common ideas and opinions transmitted by the media, on which a broad consensus exists in the West, in order to summarize the Eurocentric vision:

The European West is not only the world of material wealth and power, including military might; it is also the site of the triumph of the scientific spirit, rationality, and practical efficiency, just as it is the world of tolerance, diversity of opinions, respect for human rights and democracy, concern for equality--at least the equality of rights and opportunities--and social justice. It is the best of the worlds that have been known up until this time. This first thesis, which simply repeats facts which are in themselves hardly debatable, is reinforced by the corollary thesis that other societies--the socialist East and the underdeveloped South--have nothing better to offer on any of the levels mentioned (wealth, democracy, or even social justice). On the contrary, these societies can only progress to the extent that they imitate the West. And this is what they are doing, in any case, even if they are doing it slowly and imperfecdy, because of elements of resistance based on outmoded dogmatisms (like Marxism) or anachronistic motivations (like tribalism or religious fundamentalism).

Consequently, it becomes impossible to contemplate any other future for the world than its progressive Europeanization. For the most optimistic, this Europeanization, which is simply the diffusion of a superior model, functions as a necessary law, imposed by the force of circumstances. The conquest of the planet by Europe is thus justified, to the extent that it has roused other peoples from their fatal lethargy. For others, non-European peoples have an alternative choice: either they can accept Europeanization and internalize its demands, or, if they decide against it, they will lead themselves to an impasse that inevitably leads to their decline. The progressive Westernization of the world is nothing more than the expression of the triumph of the humanist universalism invented by Europe ...

I, therefore, charge Eurocentrism with an inability to see anything other than the lives of those who are comfortably installed in the modern world. Modern culture claims to be founded on humanist universalism. In fact, in its Eurocentric version, it negates any such universalism. Eurocentrism has brought with it the destruction of peoples and civilizations that have resisted its spread. In this sense, Nazism, far from being an aberration, always remains a latent possibility, for it is only the extreme formulation of the theses of Eurocentrism. If there ever were an impasse, it is that in which Eurocentrism encloses contemporary humanity.