• quill7513@anarchist.nexus
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      53
      arrow-down
      15
      ·
      4 days ago

      our prisons, mental institutions, and boarding schools are all reflective of the European patriarchal colonial system that composes the framework of the foundation of the united states. just as Phoenicia made a colony so huge it supplanted Phoenicia’s empire in Carthage, so too has America shifted the center of the eurocentric settler colonial project. you ask why America is why it is, the answer is because Europeans were so sure of the righteousness and superiority of their civilizations that they traveled to this continent and raped, killed, and enslaved the societies they found here.

      • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        8
        ·
        4 days ago

        Nah, Europe, Mexico and Canada all had the same influence but managed to avoid the prison/slavery complex with profit driven sexual torture, there’s probably something else at work in the US

        • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          38
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          4 days ago

          this is a form of American Exceptionalism that ignores that Mexico and Canada both have legacies of prison/slavery complexes with profit driven sexual torture. Mexican people have reduced (perhaps even eliminated, i’m not an expert on current Mexican affairs) the presence of this influence through generations of education, healing, and resistance to imperialist tendencies coming into mesoamerica to extract everything of value. In Canada the scars of the provincial school system are still felt today with the last residential school having closed in 1997, 29 years ago. There are 34 year olds alive today who remember first hand the sexual violence they experienced at the hands of Canadian sponsored torture facilities. Canadian police continue the practice of driving indigenous women far away from the warmth of their homes, forcing them to walk through the cold, condemning them to death.

          There is nothing special that makes America more wrong than any other State. it is merely a coagulation of the worst tendencies present in all states concentrated by the capitalist necessity to extract everything of value from the land and people. The solution is for the people of the world, everywhere they are, to block the barricades until Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, Palestine, the Dakotas, and everywhere else the imperial tendencies of the global north torture, lynch, and enslave the people are free. America’s torture is resistable just like the tortures conducted in Mexico and Canada.

        • 4am@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 days ago

          It’s just the place where those forces were concentrated the strongest. It could have happened anywhere but it happened in the USA.

          • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            4 days ago

            Lol, and it just so happened that everywhere else has had the self control and ethical standards to avoid it.

            The US sure is supremely and consistently unlucky in that regard

        • baines@lemmy.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          3 days ago

          that’s revisionist as fuck

          east India company anyone?

          what about the literal Aztec empire and human slave sacrifice

          we just tend to be temporally biased

          • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            Neither have had for-profit prisons with systematised sexual torture, but even if they did I’d lean into the recency bias and ask: if they could move past it, why did the US double down when faced with better alternatives?

            • baines@lemmy.cafe
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              3 days ago

              wait you think east india wasnt about profit and had no sexual abuse?

              they didn’t ‘move past it’

              the British got fucked militarily and aztec society collapsed

              we’re on schedule for either end atm

              the us isnt gonna stop doing any of this before them either

              rich abusive fucks wont stop because you protest peacefully or virtue signal on the interwebs

          • cecilkorik@piefed.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            4 days ago

            It’s not so much nonsense as it is uncomfortable truth. It’s very, very uncomfortable. But it is also true. None of us alive today chose to benefit from the things our ancestors did, the systems they built, the territories and resources they claimed, the wars they won, the people they killed. But we did benefit from them, we still do, and we are responsible for understanding and acknowledging that. It does not really have to be a big deal, but the longer and harder we refuse to genuinely accept that, the bigger a deal it becomes.

            It’s not “white guilt” to understand that exactly the same things you worked hard for are also things other, much poorer people are also working just as hard for, and quite possibly much harder, while objectively accomplishing much less because of exactly that history. It also hurts to admit that some of that racist colonial history isn’t actually history, because it actually isn’t totally gone yet. Nobody’s saying we have to instantly paint the entire globe with fairness. It’s no person’s sole responsibility, but it is a shared responsibility that we need to be making an honest effort towards, and we should be held responsible if we ignore, minimize and deny those things.

            There’s a lot of different directions I could go in defense and support of these principles, but I don’t think it would lead to productive discussion and I think it would be better for people to simply dismiss me as a naive, idealistic bleeding-heart liberal who can’t possibly grasp reality. But whether you agree with it being achievable or not, I think we should agree that whenever it is possible to move the needle at all, we should try at least to some degree. The first steps of any sort of improvements towards equality require acknowledging the premise in the first place. We have to understand the problem, that equality does not yet exist because genuine harm was done in the past and those consequences have continued to the present, not because some people and groups of people are inherently lazy or stupid or bad. A lot of people are very, very resistant to even admitting that, because they’re afraid that it will make them liable, that it will cost them something. And ironically, by denying it, I think it actually should cost them something. Only the truth shall set us free.

        • Rothe@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          11
          ·
          4 days ago

          Just Americans trying to cope with their shithole the only way they know how: blame it on someone or some place else.

          • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            20
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            Places do not torture, enslave, and rape. People do. I am not interested in absolving or shifting blame, but rather in deconstructing the fascist ideologies used to justify these behaviors. In the case of American Exceptionalism the notion is that white straight cisgender males are superior to all other people, and then violently enforcing that norm.

          • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            We’re not blaming Europeans, we’re acknowledging that we are Europeans and that our current society and culture are rooted in European settler-colonialism. As a white man born in America I can trace my roots directly back to Europe, and our culture and political system reflect those roots. If that makes you uncomfortable then perhaps you should do some self-reflection.

      • MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        11
        ·
        4 days ago

        It’s Europe’s fault that transgender persons are assigned to rapey cellmates in us prisons? That is the dumbest fucking shit I have ever read, but I guess in a weird way you did answer my question.

        • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          31
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          4 days ago

          Not present day Europe’s, but we have to understand what the outcomes and origins of settler colonialism are in order to understand how to resist it. American Exceptionalism is rooted in the notion the white Europeans are superior to Black Africans, indigenous Americans, and Asian and Pacific Islander people. There is an America today because in the 1500-1700s the European monarchies under the protocapitalist framework of mercantilism sought to own the entire world, including the inhabitants therein. America’s founding fathers were Europeans influenced by the enlightenment movement, and the country they built was reflective of the Eurosupremacism of the time, which quickly gave way to scientific racism formulated by anglosphere thinkers to justify the industrialized rape of Africa in the 1800s.

          All I’m saying is that to resist these things we have to look at the history of how they started and then resist the tendencies that brought them about

          • yucandu@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            20
            ·
            4 days ago

            origins of settler colonialism

            American Exceptionalism

            white Europeans are superior

            European monarchies under the protocapitalist framework of mercantilism

            reflective of the Eurosupremacism of the time

            scientific racism formulated by anglosphere thinkers to justify the industrialized rape of Africa

            This is what it sounds like when someone from a middle class background does meth.

      • Rothe@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        4 days ago

        That is some primary grade deflection. Imagine being so far up the ass of their own country that they can’t even admit that their country has problems of its own that needs fixing.

        All this fucking shit happens in the US, and not to the same extent in most European countries, so much for your precious “it’s all Europe’s fault” theory.

        • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          21
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 days ago

          i have not said that the US does not problems. far from it. I even said it is a coagulation of all the things that make States bad and wrong. what needs to happen is the power of the authority of the United States must be dissolved so that the process of communal healing can actually begin. the settler colonial tendencies that america promotes in the world will continue to go on unabated, just as they have for the last 6000 years, unless we resist these tendencies together

          • yucandu@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            15
            ·
            4 days ago

            it is a coagulation of all the things

            You could have used the word “combination” or “mix” or any other common word that everyone understands, but you chose for some reason to use “coagulation”.

            Now I’m not saying I don’t know what my blood does when it gets exposed to air, I’m saying why are you using 5 dollar words to sound smarter than you are?

            • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              18
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              4 days ago

              coagulate because American power is a dangerous blood clot that will give the world a stroke death if it isn’t dissolved

              • Kaul@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                7
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                4 days ago

                Your replies are so on point I’m saving this comment thread. This also really opened my eyes to the narrow mindedness of others. Sometimes broader historical knowledge is necessary to understand present day conditions.

                • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  9
                  ·
                  4 days ago

                  well i’m glad. i do my best to maintain an empathetic approach while also speaking the truth into the world my government wants to kill. this thread has been more mentally taxing than i would have preferred, but i keep reminding myself that it still connected with at least a few people even if all the comments are saying i’m in denial about that very same government’s core nature and trying to deflect blame from it.

                  • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    ·
                    2 days ago

                    I can’t imagine seeing the word coagulate and having it stand out as “intellectual”. I thought you did an excellent job of explaining a complex subject that is usually riddled with actual “five dollar words”, in a digestible way.

                    It’s very thoughtful of you to keep responding to the angry folks dragging their clubs on the ground. Thank you for the labor. Good luck in your battles.

                • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  3 days ago

                  i’m not who chose it. it’s a very popular word to describe the bloody and violent concentration of authority that abolitionists resist

            • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              4 days ago

              Eh, actually fits better, though I don’t think the guy you’re replying to intended it that way.

              America was founded by the crazies that weren’t allowed to be as repressive as they wanted to be in Europe.

    • ContactClosure@lemmus.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      4 days ago

      I’m convinced they put something in the water and/or air and/or food to make some of us greedy self centered seething pieces of shit. Unfortunately those are the people in power.

      • quill7513@anarchist.nexus
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 days ago

        i would say there’s something to be said for the broad impacts idustrialized food has on the gut biome, and the gut biome’s influence on persona. that’s more of a critique of capitalistic tendancies though than a direct endorsement of any hypothesis that some central cabal intentionally poisons us.

        that said, if you told me nestle, nabisco, monsanto, and unilever do intentionally poison us to keep us fighting and themselves on top, i’d endorse that notion, too, and have put at least some thought into the possibility

    • Malica@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      We let McConnell pack the courts with fascists for decades, now the chickens come home to roost.