• queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Europe is a fake continent made by fragile crackers that wanted to have their own special crackerland separate from Eurasia.

    • comedygoblin@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’ve always found it weird how Europe gets to be a continent but India is only a subcontinent. I mean, I get why (white supremacy) but still

      • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        The entire idea of continents is stupid anyway, really. I understand the desire to name locations on the map for easy identification and reference, that’s fine, but the execution is arbitrary as fuck as far I can tell.

        Most of the issue is Asia, Europe and, to a degree, Africa. At some point we just started using Middle East to describe the area vaguely east of Egypt and west of India. Just draw a giant fucking circle south of Russia and between those countries and call it “Middle East.” Ignore all history, ignore cultural differences. They are all one thing now.

        I could definitely rant about a bunch of other shit like “Russia? The fuck is going on there?” or “Africa: Continent or country? Don’t ask Americans!” but I really just find the entire idea of continents to be kind of silly. More silly than the usual “nations are dumb” kind of way. Even more arbitrary and ultimately meaningless.

        Also, everyone always says Australia is the only country and continent simultaneously. But isn’t New Zealand part of the Australian continent? Or are the Kiwis just special? (Yes, I’m trying to start shit between the Kiwis and the ‘stralians). What about Antarctica. Google? What the fuck is google? No thanks, I’m just typing and guessing shit now. It’s like advanced Wikipedia perverts. They read made up shit and believe it. I just make shit up and ask easily answered questions.

        Edit: apparently I posted this last night in a weird half-sleep state. I apologize for nothing. My brain is weird.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I like to call it Eurafrica when I’m talking with libs. They dislike being reminded that the foundations of European culture were almost all developed in Africa.

      Then when they’d stolen all they could, they forgot about the continent and plummeted into the dark ages until they met west Asians, whose scholarly outputs helped backwards Europe to turn the lights back on.

      After draining all they could, they stagnated again until they found the Americas, where they found parliamentary democracy and many other theretofore inconceivable inventions.

      Marx called it primitive accumulation when the capitalists started doing it but Europeans have been propping themselves up on the heritage of the rest of the world for millennia. I guess Europe could be called ‘Thievesope’ but that is a bit tautologous.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, the two supposed methods for finding continental boundaries are geology and culture, which makes absolutely no sense for Crackerland. My brain worms demand I point out that the Isthmus of Suez is, at least, a distinct geological feature.

        But the so-called boundary they drew on Eurasia is (from Wikipedia) “along the Turkish straits, the Caucasus, and the Urals and the Ural River (historically also north of the Caucasus, along the Kuma–Manych Depression or along the Don River)”. That’s such obvious nonsense lol

      • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        the foundations of European culture were almost all developed in Africa.

        Could you elaborate on this, please?

        • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          First thing to do is to peddle backwards a little bit! Maybe I went a little bit too far – in part because those foundations were also laid on other continents and some of Europe’s cultural and intellectual foundations were developed in Europe. Still, there’s evidence suggests that Ancient Greek thinkers plagiarised ‘learned a lot’ from African and Asian thinkers. All that European pride in the Ancient Greek roots of their philosophy, etc, is not European but African and Asian.

          There’s a ‘controversial’ three-part book by Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, which argues that the origins of Ancient Greek culture were not in Greece but in Africa and Asia. He argues that this was the accepted view until the nineteenth century. I’ll quote from the first book (footnotes removed):

          (drop down 1/3) ‘Black Athena: … The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985’ Introduction

          These volumes are concerned with two models of Greek history: one viewing Greece as essentially European or Aryan, and the other seeing it as Levantine, on the periphery of the Egyptian and Semitic cultural area[:] … the ‘Aryan’ and the ‘Ancient’ models. The ‘Ancient Model’ was the conventional view among Greeks in the Classical and Hellenistic ages. According to it, Greek culture had arisen as the result of colonization, around 1500 BC, by Egyptians and Phoenicians who had civilized the native inhabitants. Furthermore, Greeks had continued to borrow heavily from Near Eastern cultures.

          Most people are surprised to learn that the Aryan Model, which most of us have been brought up to believe, developed only during the first half of the 19th century. In its earlier or ‘Broad’ form, the new model denied the truth of the Egyptian settlements and questioned those of the Phoenicians. What I call the ‘Extreme’ Aryan Model, … flourished during the twin peaks of anti-Semitism in the 1890s and again in the 1920s and 30s, denied even the Phoenician cultural influence. According to the Aryan Model, there had been an invasion from the north – unreported in ancient tradition – which had over-whelmed the local ‘Aegean’ or ‘Pre-Hellenic’ culture. Greek civilization is seen as the result of the mixture of the Indo-European-speaking Hellenes and their indigenous subjects. It is from the construction of this Aryan Model that I call this volume The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985.
 I [propose a] return to the Ancient Model, but with some revisions; … [a] ‘Revised Ancient Model’. This accepts that there is a real basis to the stories of Egyptian and Phoenician colonization of Greece …. However, it sees them as beginning somewhat earlier, in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. It also agrees with the latter that Greek civilization is the result of the cultural mixtures created by these colonizations and later borrowings from across the East Mediterranean. On the other hand, it tentatively accepts the Aryan Model’s hypothesis of invasions – or infiltrations – from the north by Indo-European speakers sometime during the 4th or 3rd millennium BC. However, the Revised Ancient Model maintains that the earlier population was speaking a related Indo-Hittite language which left little trace in Greek. In any event, it cannot be used to explain the many non-Indo-European elements in the later language.

          If I am right in urging the overthrow of the Aryan Model and its replacement by the Revised Ancient one, it will be necessary not only to rethink the fundamental bases of ‘Western Civilization’ but also to recognize the penetration of racism and ‘continental chauvinism’ into all our historiography, or philosophy of writing history. The Ancient Model had no major ‘internal’ deficiencies, or weaknesses in explanatory power. It was overthrown for external reasons. For 18th- and 19th-century Romantics and racists it was simply intolerable for Greece, which was seen not merely as the epitome of Europe but also as its pure childhood, to have been the result of the mixture of native Europeans and colonizing Africans and Semites. Therefore the Ancient Model had to be overthrown and replaced by something more acceptable.

          (drop down 2/3) Later in the text, Bernal explains (pages 105–6):

          … Athenians were concerned with the secrets of Spartan success. … [S]cholars working within the Ancient Model have no doubt that the stories about Spartan, and specifically Lykourgan, institutional borrowings from Egypt were current at the turn of the 4th century because they were true. That is to say, the tradition is confirmed not merely by the nature of certain aspects of Spartan society but by the strong Egyptian influences on Spartan Archaic art and the many plausible Late Egyptian etymologies for the names of specifically Spartan Institutions.

          Isokrates insisted that the Spartans had failed to apply the Egyptian principle of the division of labour and that their constitution fell short of the perfection of the Egyptian model, about which he wrote: 'philosophers who undertake to discuss such topics and have won the greatest reputation prefer above all others the Egyptian form of government …’

          To whom was Isokrates referring? [It was] plausibly … to the Pythagoreans, and … their concept of, or even actual writing on, ‘Egyptian Politics’. It takes the greatest Aryanist ingenuity to deny the strong ancient traditions – referred to by Herodotos and … later writers – that there was such a person as Pythagoras and that his school was established on the basis of his long studies in Egypt. Nevertheless, it has been attempted. … Isokrates was quite explicit about it: 'On a visit to Egypt he [Pythagoras] became a student of the religion of the people, and was the first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy.

          [Or,] less likely … ‘philosophers’ … meant his great rival Plato and his Republic. It is generally thought that the latter was written between 380 and 370BC, that is after Bousiris, c390. It is also believed that the work was the result of many years of thought and teaching, and that there were possibly earlier drafts. The likelihood is, however, that priority should be given to Bousiris. … [T]here are striking similarities between it and Plato’s Republic. In the latter, too, there was a division of labour based on castes ruled by enlightened Guardians produced by careful selection and rigorous education. Plato was sharply hostile to the turbulence of democratic politics in Athens, and this kind of model was clearly comforting.

          To what extent can it be related to Egypt? Apart from the resemblance to the explicitly Egyptian Bousiris we know that Egypt, where Plato had spent some time, probably around 390 BC, was a central concern of his later works. In Phaidros, Plato had Sokrates declare that 'He [Theuth-Thoth the Egyptian god of wisdom] it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry . . . and most important of all letters …’.

          In Philebos and Epinomis Plato went into more detail on Thoth as the creator of writing, even of language and all sciences. Elsewhere Plato praised Egyptian art and music and argued for their adoption in Greece. … [T]he only reason for doubting that his Republic was based on Egypt is the fact that he does not say so in the text. This omission, however, has an ancient explanation. As his earliest commentator, Krantor, wrote …:

          Plato’s contemporaries mocked him, saying that he was not the inventor of his republic, but that he had copied Egyptian institutions. He attached so much importance to the mockers that he … ma[d]e [people] say that the Athenians had really lived under this regime at a certain moment in the past.

          (drop down 3/3) Bernal cites Marx (pages 106–7):

          Faced with all this evidence in favour of an Egyptian derivation, early modem scholars still associated Plato’s Republic with Egypt. As Marx put it: 'Plato’s Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the state, is merely an Athenian idealization of the Egyptian system of castes.’

          Popper, who hates Plato, would have loved to tar him with an Egyptian brush. However, he was writing in a more systematically Aryanist age and, though fully aware of Krantor’s charge, he has confined it to the footnotes and appears puzzled by Marx’s remark. … The majority [of scholars] simply omit any mention of Egypt in connection with the Republic.

          Thus, for Plato … [and] Isokrates … [t]he deeper they went towards the true Hellenic roots of Greece, the closer they came to Egypt. … [B]oth Isokrates and Plato maintained that the great lawgivers and philosophers like Lykourgos, Solon and Pythagoras had all brought back Egyptian knowledge. Furthermore, Isokrates and Plato both believed in the colonizations of Pelops, Kadmos, Aigyptos and Danaos and seem to have accepted with Herodotos that the ‘barbarians’ brought important cultural baggage with them. Even on the issue of the foundation of Athens, Plato … accepted that there was a ‘genetic’ cultural relationship between it and Sais. Thus, despite their ambivalence if not hostility to the ideas, the two leading intellectual figures of the early 4th century BC were forced to admit the critical importance of foreign colonization, and massive later cultural borrowing from Egypt and the Levant, in the formation of the Hellenic civilization they both loved so passionately.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It could be! But when I say it’s fake, I’m saying it’s a subcontinent. It exists but there’s no material reason for Europe to be its own continent while the Indian subcontinent is part of Asia. Crackers just wanted a crackerland.

        • Bloops@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          For sure, it’s ridiculous that India (and Arabia) is excluded but Europe is not. Eurindarasia is a little silly sounding though…

    • Farman [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Because the greeks beleved the vistula was at some point connected to the deniper and then to the black sea. And i think there is a point where crosing between the 2 of them is posible or at least easier than the crossing at suez. Its not clear because the logs are missing but pytheas probably circumnavegated europe by doing this in one of the expeditions.

      It is also convinient because in classical times east of the vistula is ruled by iranians west of it by germans.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It is also convenient later on because in more modern times it was believed that each “continent” represented a race of humans.

        The concept of continents came from Greece, but it’s not as if every continent that exists was defined by Greece. When the truth was known that the only way to divide Eurasia is by drawing arbitrary lines the whole project could have been dropped. It’s not like we kept literally every idea the Greeks had - have you had the balance of your humors checked by your physician recently?

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            An arbitrary region with no material or geological basis. They just drew a line and said “this is where Europe ends and Asia begins”. Nonsense.

            • huf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              they didnt draw a line, they drew 272 different lines.

              europe is the UK and france

              europe is the EU

              europe is anything west of russia

              europe is anything up to the urals

              europe is whatever people want it to mean in that particular moment.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                First off, god damn America. All my homies hate America.

                Now that that’s out of the way, Europe and Asia are not countries. In fact! The dividing line between Europe and Asia runs through a damn country. That’s such obvious nonsense. Europe is just Crackerland, its so-called boundary runs through a country lol

                It’s Eurasia dwi

  • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    As excellent as this article is, I’ve had multiple conversations with Captaincool07, and I think comrades should know that he is unfortunately a Han supremacist. I hate using that term since it sounds like its giving credit to liberals, but he really is. He thinks the CPC is more of a nationalist party than a socialist one, and he thinks Vladimir Putin is a “radical centrist”, and that China’s success is more due to nationalism than socialism, and he once said that he thinks that China should return to controlling 25-40 percent of the entire world’s economy, rather than a multipolar one.

    He’s also vehemently homophobic and thinks that Mao’s socialism “went too far”.

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      1 year ago

      You can just call him a nationalist or a patsoc. The rhetoric he espouses isn’t any different from Chinese nationalists of other ethnicities, and from his videos it’s clear he cares about preserving minority culture/ is proud of its preservation. The few “Han nationalists” that exist live in the US or Taiwan and have a intense hatred for the mainland/the CPC and tend to be very pro-US (they both share the goal of a balkanizing China based off of ethnicity).

      • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        I gotta heavily disagree with the idea of him being no different than any other nationalists.

        He’s said before that only the Han Chinese are “smart” enough to have a successful country as China, and he believes that “full communism” is just as bad as full capitalism. I will admit maybe his views have changed and I could be wrong, and he’s definitely not pro US. But he is/was very homophobic, and the bad kind of nationalist.

        There are a noticeable amount of Han chauvanists in China as well. The CPC and most of the Chinese population don’t agree with them though, thankfully.

        • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          This is why I always flinch a little when nationalism in revolutionary countries is described as a “good” thing by communists.

          Nationalism isn’t “good.” It’s a force that can stand in opposition to imperialism, which is the primary contradiction. In that way, it’s useful. But left unchecked, any nationalism can fester and grow into something dangerous. As you’ve said, Han chauvanism is a real thing in China and hopefully it remains a fringe ideology that dissolves over time.

          • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            When I say “good” nationalism, I always mean as in the kind an exploitated socialist or anti-imperialist country has, to stand up against international bourgeoisie. I understand that nationalism is a double-edged sword.

  • SineNomineAnonymous@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Never - ever - forget that the only thing Erdogan had to do every time he wanted to have his way with the EU (and he always got it), all he had to do was “Imma open the borders into Europe”.

    Because to a European, there is no greater threat they can imagine than a destitute brown person.

    That’s the EU and what it stands for.

    • Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, it’s especially revealed by the shit happening on the Polish-Belarussian border. Even libs are okay with building a fucking wall there.

  • appel@whiskers.bim.boats
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    1 year ago

    Flagrant racism on multiple levels, it is horrendous to see it flaunted in broad daylight. They say first one racist thing and then back it up with orientalism.

    • SineNomineAnonymous@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      To your average Westerner no.

      You can check that by just having a look at Facebook and articles about China, reddit and link to articles about China or a quick peep at the comment section of any article on China.

      • Eat_Yo_Vegetables69@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Pretty much shit like this lol

        • Any picture with an Asian with a pet dog or cat, can guess what the comments will have (unless it’s an attractive person which will attract the yellow fever types)

        • The murderous glee they show when fake rumours of a three gorges dam collapse pops up for the 50th time

        • “Just the government not the people… but it would be real nice if they suffered so we could buy some cheap slaves” type sentiment

        • Chinese can’t think for themselves, we enlightened liberal saviours have decreed that they are oppressed and only the Libya treatment will free them

    • VolatileExhaustPipe@lemmygrad.ml
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      Literal nazi propaganda quote “Wehrt euch gegen die asiatischen Horden!” / “Defend yourself against asiatic monster hordes”, so yeah it isn’t neutral, it isn’t just descriptive and the imagery and article do reference that asiatic otherness. The perspectives and continuities are relevant in such things.

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      1 year ago

      Only when they need to narcissistically give away a bag of US AID wheat and post about it, meanwhile extracting and exploiting a million x in resources and labor.

    • Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I knew a Japanese dude who didn’t smell human. He had some skin disorder that made him smell like he’d been running for 20 miles through the jungle in a fireproof suit made from jizz socks.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Thesis: DAE LE ASIAN WAIFU AND DAE MAIL ORDER RUSSIAN BRIDE awooga

    Antithesis: DAE LE RUSSIANS ARE LE ORCS JUST LIKE LE ASIAN HORDES frothingfash

    Synthesis: Dummy thicc Orc forgewife arm-L sicko-fem arm-R

      • VolatileExhaustPipe@lemmygrad.ml
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        It is basically “death by snu snu”, but a bit changed and incorporates propagandistic slav- and russophob depictions.

        Well the synthesis seems to be the longing to have a sexual partner that is fit and can control you and is interested in physical emotions instead of anything else, so that you are basically only your body and don’t have to justify yourself as long as you are present and this is a longing and embrace - the existing without having to be useful for extraction of surplus - that is common in capitalism.

  • Life2Space@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Russians look European, speak an European language and have a culture that’s immensely inspired by that of other European countries. There’s not really anything “Asian” about them.

    • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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      That is if we’re talking Russians as an ethnicity. The terms are conflated in English, but no so much in Russian.

      • Life2Space@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yes, I’m aware that there are two words in the Russian language that are both simply translated into English as “Russian”: the one for ethnicity and the one for citizenship. I didn’t feel the need to point it out since most people think only of the former.

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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          Fair enough. I felt the need to mention it to highlight the absurdity of separation. Asian, “white”. Which am I? Apparently depends on time of the day