#YOU THINK THEY SHOULD BE INFANTILIZED AND CIVILIZED BY THE SUPERIOR MORALS OF YOUR OWN CULTURE IS THAT IT | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mewlabu · 2 years

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I just want to talk about how dehumanizing it is when Western Leftists do shit like insist Holodomor was fake and propaganda as some sort of defence of communism every time Ukrainians try to talk about their personal history with it. Now they do the same shit with the this war.

Their narrative of Ukrainians as a nation of Nazis or Ukrainians as pawns of the UN/US/NATO isn't just wilfully ignorant of any real context or history, but posits that my people are such absolute monsters that we would kill millions of our own just to make the USSR look bad. While at the same time, suggests we are also child like idiots, who have no will of their own and can't possible have a national consciousness, goals, or a dream of a future that isn't fully manipulated by the west or NATO.

They cry about Western Capitalist Hegemony but can't even imagine that nations have history and politics and events that can and should be considered and understood without constant reference to Western Capitalist History.

They only seem to be able to accept us as either benign idiots or absolute monsters. All so they don't have to actually examine their own blind ideology, or wrestle with the reality that the world isn't a black and white, and villains aren't clean and easy to spot, and you framing every conflict and every nation's attempts at self actualization in terms of West vs East, Capitalism vs Communism is immensely dehumanizing and reductive and ignorant.

It's a convenient way to remain both ideologically pure and feel morally superior.

With every denial of Soviet violence, with every defence of what Russia is doing (and here's a challenge, try to defend it without relying on ' but America bad' argument), they reinforce the idea that all the victims of Soviet or Russian aggression are infantile, servile, monsters with little will of their own.

They act like we can't possibly know or tell our own history, or know what's good for us. And how is that different from the paternalistic bullshit of colonialism? Of the civilizing ideology that led to so much death and subjugation of indigenous cultures and peoples?

How is the USSR repression of the distinct cultures of it's various republics for the sake of the communist dream any different when it includes cultural erasure, genocide, repression, and racism?

Every social, or cultural, or political flaw of our people is used to argue we deserve what we're getting or how we'd be better off from it while even massive crimes by communist regimes and now Russia or China are dismissed, discounted, explained away, justified, or just painted as irrelevant and unworthy of genuine criticism because "capitalism is bad!" and what is being done is for some abstract greater good.

They contort in new and surprising ways in justifying Russian imperialism, both then and now, Soviet repression and brutality, but won't spare two moments to listen to a single Ukrainian talk about their family's losses, or look at any historical sources by Ukrainians or other former republics desperate to stay out of Russias grasp.

That's what you do when you don't think the people matter, when their humanity doesn't count as much as your own ideology.

Meanwhile they risk nothing. Not one thing.

Ukraine was under Soviet rule and has been doing its own work and struggle to reclaim what was lost, to grapple with the contradictory way of thinking that was the main way to survive in that regime. But we don't get any fucking credit for it from western leftists who think Gulag jokes are funny. They've raised their ideological bar impossibly high for Ukrainians before any consideration or sympathy is granted, before we can be even seen as worthy of being heard, of our lives mattering while the bar for Russia is 6 feet below the ground.

They erase and diminish and demonize individual stories to keep worshipping at the altar of ideology. This is by far the most disappointing thing about my experience with this kind of western leftists.

That they grant vast leeway for so many other peoples to do and be flawed, but not to us. Never to us, because we look to the west for help in surviving a war we didn't start, because we shine a light on the atrocities of the utopia they want to believe in, because it doesn't let them sit there and be smug about how much they hate capitalism while in relative safety, where all this remains abstracts to them and writ in blood for us.

I realize this was a bit of a rant but I am genuinely hurt, let down, and broken at the way i've been spoken to by this group and their whole position in this whole thing.

P.S. If you're basic argument to justify your support for a ruthless, violent, repressive regime is that you think America is even worse, how is that even remotely a good defence? When you literally can't actually point to the good in your idealized Russia/USSR apart from "it's against the US" then what are you actually standing up for?

#i am obviously not referring to all leftists #war in ukraine #stand with ukraine #nato #ukraine war #confirmation bias is a think and the hammer and sickle symbol is not some magical protection against it #Just be fucking human for

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sophia-sol · 5 years

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A Hope Divided, by Alyssa Cole

This is a romance novel of the civil war in the American South, but focused on all the different kinds of people who opposed Confederation. I think this is my fave so far of the Alyssa Cole books I've read. Still don't love everything about it, and in fact have a significant argument with one thing the book does, but....overall worth the read.

The two main characters: Marlie, a free black woman who left her black mother as a girl to live with the white half of her family in hopes of a better life, and finds herself both sheltered and stifled in her family home; and Ewan, a white Union soldier whose lack of emotional affect has led his superiors to see him as ideal for the role of torturer.

I liked Marlie a lot, and her difficult emotions about her relationship with her mother as well as her white family members, and her commitment to her work as a healer.

I liked Ewan too, but I really didn't like the decision to make him a torturer. Like. He is doing it for the good of the Union, and doesn't enjoy it, but he believes it's worth it in support of the cause, and the narrative clearly thinks his work is useful despite it being awful.

And this just plays into the same old lies that torture works. No. Torture is both ineffective and immoral! So there is never any excuse for it, no matter the situation! I am never going to be a fan of a narrative that upholds these kinds of wrongheaded ideas about torture. (Hello yes I am on this soap box again, as I am every time I read a book involving torture)

Or maybe it's just that the narrative considers Ewan a good man despite this. He is an adult person capable of making his own life choices and his own moral judgements and he is willing to do the torturing, and him experiencing negative feelings as a result of what he agreed to do doesn't actually lessen his culpability.

Almost directly after finishing this book I found myself rereading a novel-length fanfic wherein one of the romantic leads is himself a torturer. And as I was reading it, I realized that I am totally fine with the author's choices in that romance because the narrative acknowledges that the person who chooses to obey orders and use his skills to torture people for the good of his country is, like, not actually an uncomplicatedly good guy! And in A Hope Divided, Ewan.....is. Apparently. Despite the torturing.

Honestly this makes me feel kind of like the author is infantilizing Ewan a bit, as if he's not morally responsible for the choices he made to involve himself in torture, it's the fault of the people above him who told him to. Which is particularly uncomfortable in the context of Ewan being clearly written as autistic, given a general tendency amongst allistic people of discounting the agency of autistic people.

So in my opinion either A Hope Divided should have the whole torture thing removed, or Ewan's entire characterisation would need to change, for me to be wholeheartedly in favour of the book. And I like Ewan, so I'd rather the former!

Sigh. If you ignore everything about Ewan being a torturer I actually really did like this book. And you might too, depending on how easily you can put aside the torturer thing......!

C'MON ALYSSA COLE, I WANT TO LIKE YOUR BOOKS, YOU KEEP COMING SO CLOSE.

(my next Alyssa Cole is gonna be the novella Let It Shine, which I've heard good things about, so maybe that'll be the one. I want to also read Once Ghosted, Twice Shy, but the pricing for that novella ebook is absolutely outrageous if you are Canadian: $8 CAD as compared to $2 USD if you're american -- more than three times the cost, even taking into account exchange rates! -- so probably I'm not going to read that one unless my library gets it. And I've put in a request but the local library has never yet made a purchase I've recommended so I'm not holding my breath.)

#alyssa cole #a hope divided #book thoughts

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