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[–] 30 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Me before reading: how is that surprising?

Me after reading: are Americans really THIS mentally challenged? What a bunch of insufferable idiots.

Sometimes I think that, even here in Lemmy, Americans who should know better have a enormous difficulty to drop the hubris of being a citizen of the Empire and get they're really fucked up. Becoming progressive doesn't make you suddenly cured of life long propaganda and its deleterious effects.

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  • [–] 27 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    The baby American leftist understanding of right and wrong in geopolitics is "invaded country good, invading country bad", that's really about the extent of the nuance. Bonus points if the invading country is big and the defending country is smol by comparison.

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  • [–] 23 points 4 days ago

    Jones Manoel's essay is so good on this: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Western_Marxism,_the_fetish_for_defeat,_and_Christian_culture

    There really is a fetishization of defending "the underdog". So like, David in David and Goliath is somebody to look up to not because of what he's fighting for, but because he's so weak and Goliath is so strong and he's trying anyway.

    Another example of this is the contrast in how the People’s Republic of Korea is treated compared to Palestine. Both nations engaged in the same struggle — the anti-colonial fight for national independence. In the case of Korea, the struggle was made from a socialist perspective. Korea succeeded, despite being a country that is fractured by imperialism. It has an economy that is relatively strong, with a reasonably high level of industrialization, a very strong national army and capacity to launch nuclear weapons. So, Korea is not a defenseless nation. Palestinians are a people who are deeply oppressed, in a situation of extreme poverty, that don’t have a national economy because they don’t have a national state. They don’t have an army or military or economic power. Therefore, Palestine is the total incarnation of the metaphor of David vs. Goliath, except that this David doesn’t have a chance of beating Goliath in political and military conflict. Therefore, almost everyone in the international left likes Palestine. People become ecstatic looking at those images — which I don’t think are very fantastic — of a child or teenager using a sling to launch a rock at a tank. Look, this is a clear example of heroism but it is also a symbol of barbarism. This is a people who do not have the capacity to defend themselves facing an imperialist colonial power that is armed to the teeth. They do not have an equal capacity of resistance, but this is romanticized. Western leftists like this situation of oppression, suffering and martyrdom.

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