#western cultural imperialism

[intersectionalpraxis]

Never forget that these celebrities, including those not included on this list, and so many more remained silent and therefore have been either genocidal apologists or complicit to genocide and terror against Palestinian people. Selena Gomez. Taylor Swift. Ariana Grande. Beyonce. Everyone with huge platforms who have said NOTHING, ya'll are shameful.

#feminist #feminism #social justice #free palestine #freepalastine🇵🇸 #palestine #free gaza #settler violence #settler colonialism #current events #celebrity culture #ceasefire now #ceasefire #genocide #gaza genocide #western imperialism #us imperialism

[hussyknee]

Regular reminder that if you don't live in the Global North, nothing they have to say applies to the rest of us. Actually most things they say have little value anyway since the Global South and Eastern folks are afterthoughts to them, much less center us in their social justice.

- The USAmerican cultural hegemony has fuck all to do with us. Be aware of what they're trying to peddle you, but they have more power to harm and radicalise you than you have ever could to harm them. This applies to both the Western left and right wing. They are both equally racist, colonial and imperialist.

- Global North issues around capitalism, exploitation and piracy have nothing to do with us. Consumer activism might work to some extent over there idk, but if anyone brings it up over in the lands of the Black and brown people, you can laugh them out of the country.

- Their queer history is not ours. Congrats to Stonewall and all but that's just some shit that happened in the US. We need to dig past 18 different strata of cultural genocide and colonial garbage to mine our queer histories back into the light, and designing microlabel flags and fighting over colonizer language acronyms have fuck all to do with that either.

- Always pirate everything within reach. Save up and buy from authors and creators you really like (that's what I do – esp when it's a BIPOC creator), but people who can't afford to buy shit in the first place ain't stealing food out of anybody's mouths. Pirating is praxis and always has been since the days of the East India Company.

- Don't buy into the USAmerican theories of race. They aren't universal. "BIPOC" especially is a USAmerican specific term, it is not used in the UK or other settler colonies. Constructs of race and the tribal Other far predated European colonization; race as a colour system that exists today is simply one variation of it. The global apartheid against the mellanated takes many forms, histories and terminology. There are especially no "people of colour" in Asia, Africa, Caribbean and Polynesia. There are only people who live there, and "people of white".

Race is a fake, made-up conceptualization imposed by whoever has power within each region. It's ethnic, cultural and casteist, with no biological basis whatsoever. There is no uniformity, no universalism, no rhyme nor reason to any of it; the only people who know exactly who doesn't belong are the oppressors. I'm seeing concepts like "unambiguously black" floating around the terminally online Western left; any dark-skinned person of the Global South should split their sides laughing at it. Whites have no ambiguity on who the darkies are.

- Read, watch, listen to, play whatever the hell you want, just have the sense to pirate it, and to be very conscious about the narratives they try to smuggle.

- When the US and UK speak, listen with compassionate interest, offer what solidarity you can spare for their downtrodden, and then go back to reading and following your own fucking news. Focus on our own women's and reproductive rights, trans rights, queer histories, rise of fascism, militarisation, anti-blackness, class warfare, nationalist violence, imperialism etc. That is decolonization, that is emancipation from the Western cultural hegemony. Everything else is the bread and circuses of empire, in which both the left and right wing of the West are complicit.

We owe the Global North nothing more than we can each individually afford to extend to them on grounds of common human decency and compassion. Which is a lot more than they will ever reciprocate.

#racism #colonialism #western imperialism #american exceptionalism #american cultural hegemony #decolonization #lgbtqia #queer history #trans rights #us military #disability #ableism #women's rights #reproductive rights #fascism #global south #eastern europe #africa #asia #caribbean #polynesia #oceania #landback #indigenous sovereignty #anthropology #classism #elitism #capitalism #knee of huss #piracy

[thepeopleinpower]

Capitalism and colonialism took community away from us and I want it back. I’ve heard about it from my grandparents and in books and articles online. All throughout history and still today in some parts of the world. People looking out for each other. Regularly. Relentlessly. Neighbors watching each others children, having enough food to share and actually sharing it, being invested in each others lives because everyone has different strengths.

Today community has been strategically painted as a weakness and something to be skeptical of because it is a threat to the very foundations of capitalism. And that’s a real fucking shame because in reality, growing up with community and still having that through adulthood would probably make most people generally happier and less perpetually tired and stressed. It is renewable resilient versatile adaptable self-sustaining and kind of the Ultimate Resource.

#I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy #fuck capitalism #global community #local community #communities #community #fuck colonialism #fuck western media #settler colonialism #land back #indigenous liberation #indigenous communities #indigenous culture #human rights #renewable resources #sustainability #intersectional social justice #disability advocacy #social reformer #racial justice #wealth redistribution #healthcare reform #economic justic #environmental justice #generational healing #ancestral healing #industrialization #anti imperialism #religious tolerance #coexistence

[francisforever2014]

three separate white people pissed me off bad in class today can y’all be quiet tomorrow to make up for it

#white queer people stop equating queer liberation with whiteness and escape from ‘backwards’ poc cultures………… #today a person literally implied that imperialism wasn’t all bad bc it ‘gave people terms’ . in this case meaning like . the term #non binary and the idea #of being gender non conforming . are you fucking kidding me #i pushed back but jesus christ . #also they were talking about their navajo friend who’s nb like i hope they secretly hate you. sorry that was mean #1) assimilation is not safety if you’re poc #2) western imperialism is the REASON we have the gender stratification system we have today #3) even if it wasn’t stop acting like whiteness even contemporary whiteness is some escape or safe place that other cultures aren’t #i’m gonna lose it

[rwoh]

this is more of a personal commentary because I don't think it's my place to police anyone but when people write the fire nation as homophobic as a shorthand for them being bad it doesn't come across the way you think

#I just keep reading a lot of literature about pink washing and fr the way some of you do it is cringey TO ME #again TO ME #reading about us vs china international relations styles #cause basically the us is like everyone needs my morals #whereas china is like I just need you all to think of me as ur pal ur buddy ur ally #and the demonisation of countries that don't allow ss marriage when the majority of the time they are in fact #being colonised #and it's a result of the colonisation and pushback against western imperialism culture and former colonial laws etc #idk I'll probably have like #more coherent thoughts about this at some other point #I need to sleep on these thoughts

[icedsodapop]

Also like The Mary Sue recently posting a fluff piece on Chris Evans while Israel is literally attacking Gaza. Like, they think it's was a good idea to publish a fluff piece on the guy who...

Literally signs US weapons of mass destruction in Afganistan

Acts buddy-buddy with neo-Nazi Dan Crenshaw

Produces a docuseries on the US foreign policy in the Middle East featuring war hawks like John fucking Bolton

Like The Mary Sue really thought it was a good idea to do a fluff piece on a Hollywood celebrity who's been openly war hawkish, while the US and by extension, Hollywood celebrities are openly backing Israel's war on Gaza and spreading misinformation about Palestine??

Wow, White pple get away with everything don't they??

#the mary sue has been pissing me off for a while #free palestine #anti us imperialism #anti chris evans #anti military #anti us military #anti hollywood #celebrity culture #celebrity worship #stan culture #white mediocrity #anti us liberals #anti western liberals #anti white liberals #antisemitism

[iraqueer]

always thought it was fucked up that there's a brand of hummus sold by an Israeli company called sabra

like not only are they appropriating an arab food but they then name the company after a fucking massacre they committed in Lebanon.

like how could they do that who would to something so unthinkable evil. like they're bragging about it

and then I remembered...

the colonialism apple does not fall fall from the imperialism tree

#western imperialism #neocolonialism #cultural appropriation #palestine #usa

[jynjackets]

I finally watched The Creator and holy shit why didn’t any of you tell me it was going to be that beautiful

#this movie was literally made for me #i’m a ml engineer #I research tech comms & censorship in asia and la #vietnamese language vietnamese people!!!! Thaii!! nepalese!! desi!!! #*cries* god i love being asian #Asians banding together to kill colonizing Americans ilysm #gareth edwards forever the movie maker of all time #we are going to gif the shit out of this #once I find out how to #the creator #this is the dream science fiction was made for #science fiction is not for taking from other cultures and putting white westerners in its place even when that's how it's been. #it's for telling a grave and distant future that is not so distant to deliberately expand your view of how the world works #INCLUDING outside the west and the united states #reclaiming the genre to the very culture that inspired it #And by not only showing the overpillaged overcolonized overpoached focus on southeast asia but also all of asia as a united front. #Imperialism is supported by xenophobia and racism so how else do you tell that story without casting nonwhite races & diverse nationalities #the movie said you just fucking can't! #and its apparently not even that hard with the film coming in at $80M to make (blue beetle cost $104M for comparison that's insane) #and to say 'American' so clearly and so many times oh is so *chefs kiss* #there's flaws but idgaf because they are insignificant compared to the story and themes that are so clearly and respectfully carried out #It's completely okay if you didn't know anything about southeast asia or asia in general #but when watching the movie don't you just understand that imperialism war violence are inherent evils #NOT because (a) other cultures are nice to look at and you can borrow it like through clothes dances food songs religion #(b) that we are pretty advanced and such intelligence shouldn't go to waste and perhaps be put to work #or (c) any other rationalized benefit for imperialists to put a price on a people or life #but by the simple fact that people are human and are hurting #and that the elusive concept of a soul and where we go when we die exist for everyone along with fears emotions and meaning surrounding it #it's about how we must protect these differences in meaning /because/ we are all the same

[intersectionalpraxis]

I love it when celebrities say they're going to "quit" the industry because they can't handle justified criticism lol like bye don't let the door hit you on the way out (sorry not sorry) -maybe also take some of your terrible celeb friends with you, Lizzo.

I should also remind everyone that during the whole sexual harassment breaking story just a short while ago; Lizzo went on her notes app and posted something officially on Instagram saying people were trying to defame her character -when all she did was deflect and make herself seem innocent. So this doesn't surprise me. I used to absolutely love Lizzo. Everything she represented was beyond a breath of fresh air in an industry that overwhelmingly never spotlights Black, Brown, Indigenous, Fat, and/or Queer women overall.

But this is not it. Her, and for all celebrities like her -are equally complicit whether silent or vocal about their stances about any major issue going on in this world.

I also know she's probably going to come back with a single 'stronger than ever,' and I just...

#feminist #social justice #free palestine #palestine #freepalastine🇵🇸 #current events #settler violence #settler colonialism #lizzo #celebrity culture #celebrities #biden administration #genocide joe #tw sa mention #israel is evil #israel is a terrorist state #western imperialism #us imperialism #current news

[alchemistdetective]

((Hoyo really put the concerns of some of the elders in Modern Day China here, good gosh

A bit of China talk under the tags))

#OOC #Basically to summarize one of the concerns in China #One of China's sentiment is that their government kept insisting that other countries ESPECIALLY the US loves picking on China #And China would someday be strong enough to 'beat' the US and take over as the world's superpower #All this talk while the rich China politicians send their kids over to the US to study because of China's education system and all that #What Sushang is saying is similar to the concerns of traditional Chinese people in modern era #Is that because China 'always gets bullied and pushed around' (it doesn't help that their government is a bully too) #The kids are leaning more towards other foreign cultures such as the US while not having much of China's tradition and heritage #Basically it became a 'Westernization' of China where the West started to influence China and those who are proud of their home are worried #It doesn't help that the Chinese elders still remember the Nanjing Massacre back at the VERY old days when Imperial Japan was around #So not only are the nationalists seeing their kids be influenced by Western media and stuff #They also don't respect tradition and culture that much either and it doesn't help that politicians are sending their child overseas #instead of working on their own education system #For those who are aware of the famous Japanese song: Senbonzakura it's very similar #I think I pretty much ranted enough but yeah #tl;dr: Sushang's words are pretty much one of the biggest concerns of Modern-day China among people who love their nation

[apollo-cackling]

[transcript: Immortal Taoists-Idle Manga /end transcript]

ah yes taoism, the famously japanese religion

#my rambles #no I'm not bitter about the bastardisation of chinese aesthetics at all what do you mean #picture the sheer disgust and contempt on my face when I opened my kindle one day and saw some book subtitled #'a greco-roman cultivation fantasy' being recommended to me #like okay I am deeply disconnected and out of touch with chinese culture etc so take this with a metric ton of salt #but xianxia and wuxia are genres deeply rooted in chinese culture and history #like take wuxia for example some of the foundational works of wuxia(?) by jin yong are set in the south song dynasty #I've offhandedly said that idk how racist 蛮人/barbarians are in a chinese context but taken in a western one it's just definitely racist #bc yk. in the book I'm thinking about the barbarians are the jin dynasty. it's two imperial dynasties fighting each other #and yeah I can definitely see arguments why that's also just straight up racist/the way they're used in the stories I'm thinking of #are just straight up racist #but anyway at least there's enough context that you can pretend it's less uncomfortable than it probably is #but anyway toss that fuckin bomb into a greco-roman setting and OHHHH BOY that's getting uncomfortable quick! #haven't read the book can't say how it's like but like the moment I saw that pitch I was like oh no. ohh boy that's maybe not two settings #you'd want to smash together in your fun power fantasy book #just straight up the worst context to put cultivation in wrt the racism problem #honestly that does kinda have potential in an author that knows what they're doing #but uh. a power fantasy litrpg is. maybe not that. yk. yk just saying #plus with like the song dynasty thing like. #that's a period where the country has fallen into deep turmoil and the common people are suffering because of deep institutional corruption #and due to the incompetency/cruelty/cowardice of the emperor and the sycophancy and selfishness of the officials surrounding him #(see: yue fei. or that one battle where the jin armies sieged right to the northern song's capital) #it makes sense it makes *sense* why they're so harshly critical of the government and why those in power are depicted the way they are #idk the context for xianxia/the time period where jin yong was writing but I'd assume it's something along those lines #take that context away and have a non chinese person write that and it starts feeling like redditors going #'ohoho see this is just what china's like' #ultimately this is just me having a disgust reaction that I'm not sure is justified to something that's in the end inconsequential #+ it's not like wuxia/xianxia is something that has all that much cultural weight #(I get the impression from my parents that xianxia in particular is seen as like. the equivalent to YA of sorts) #usually it's just a setting for trashy power fantasy webnovels (which is usually how western folks discover it and yea explains a lot)

[hussyknee]

Twitter feels like an even split between pro-Palestine supporters and the most horrific kind of racists, Zionists and white supremacists. Tumblr is by comparison overwhelmingly in support of Palestine. And yet the level of dehumanization, isolation, Othering and casual racism on here is so much more unbearable and suffocating than Twitter could ever be.

Tumblr wants to be seen as the anti-racist good guys on the right side of history while reinforcing the racist white supremacist western-centric status quo. Black and brown people are given platform under strict conditions of what values can be challenged and how far white comfort can be pushed. It's on Twitter that we have our own communities, our own power of advocacy, and a collective drive to interrogate and dismantle structures of power.

It reinforces what I have known for a long time— Tumblr's hatred of Twitter and TikTok is based primarily on refusing to tolerate the reality of equal representation, leftist action and racial justice. A true diversity of power and perspectives is messy, chaotic, conflict-driven and upends the sense of stability and space that can only come with a homogeneity of racial demographic. The majority of disenfranchised people understands that power structures and bureaucracies are built on purpose to exclude them — the poor, the sex workers, the incarcerated, the ghettoised, the disabled, the colonized. We have to fight to be heard, and our reality and political investment cannot be separated from the minority trauma that informs them. True equality entails not having to funnel that trauma through behaviour and ethics that makes their expression more palatable or considering of others; it removes all respectability politics and allows us to behave with the same unpunished toxicity that is unleashed on us by white and western people. Conflict, cacophony and having to tolerate the untempered emotions and self-interest of all groups is the price of true diversity and honest dialogue. It also primarily empowers Black and brown people and disempowers whites. In contrast, the "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" on predominantly white-driven and Western-oriented spaces is a simply a neoliberal farce that requires us to perform our own humanity and ask validation from whiteness. This is why you see only the worst aspects and negative effects of Twitter and TikTok and use them to reject the the platforms wholesale while creating a narrative of moral superiority around Tumblr's relatively low levels of conflict and glossing over the receding presence of Black and brown people in its userbase.

Race is not a layer of oppression. It's the fundamental bisection that creates the underclass on which the colonial capitalist world order is built. It's the caste hierarchy of humanity; who gets to be labourer and profiteer, the exploiter and exploited, the worker and producer, the consumer and consumed, the masses and the individual. The living bodies and embodied lives. The experience of every other marginalization is shaped by its waters. White women and queers will neither understand nor share in the oppression of women and QPoC from both diasporas and the Global South. Even further, every marginalization becomes a weapon against BIPOC in the hands of its white demographic. Black and brown people of those marginalized communities will always only be a token and shield for their white counterparts, while being the workhorses behind their struggles.

It doesn't matter how many times you post "Free Palestine" when we know its only the product of your preoccupation with your own personal moral landscape. Politics based on egoism will always be eclipsed by threats to your material reality. This is why a userbase that spent its entire existence grandstanding against Nazis now cannot see Zionists as Nazis and begs people to participate in a political establishment that has revealed itself to be a genocidal white supremacist regime in the clearest possible terms. Fascism against its own enfranchised is the end stage of an empire that has begun to collapse under the weight of its war-mongering and now resorts to eating itself to survive. No amount of moral distance between yourselves and its machinery of death, no amount of scapegoating the lives crushed underneath it, will stop the roofs you sheltered under falling on top of you. This the truth that the colonized, enslaved and indentured people that built your house have lived all along.

#tumblr culture #twitter #tumblr wank #tiktok #white supremacy #racism #anti-blackness #islamophobia #antisemitism #anti zionism #usamerican imperialism #western imperialism #colonization #colonialism #free palestine #diversity and inclusion #respectability politics #global south #coloniality #genocide #war crimes #knee of huss

[valentineish]

The sins of Pentecostalism are innumerable, and I truly believe it to be an example of a mainstreamed cult. It is to my horror, then, to realize three things:

Growing up in that environment equipped me with phenomal grace and charisma – even with people I despise

That universal cordiality has become so synonymous with evangelicism, few other groups bother with such social skills

... But proselytizing has become so typical, I find its use across communities and political alignments in the Western world.

#part of this comes down to evangelical branches coming from the intersection of imperialism and christianity #thus 'proselytizing' just being an extension of western european colonialism and cultural genocide #but it's just very striking to me that people kind of get THAT part and try to reinvent it for the better anyways #yet the myriad of social skills necessary for organized proselytizing are treated as the real evil in all this #it feels like. backwards. like the actually morally neutral soft skills became the scapegoat to protect their conversion attempts #there is a dissonance people do pick up on and i think this has become part of the radicalization toolset y'know? #because well-meaning allies will do Really Weird Things like fucking leaving info pamphlets about queer rights in public like chick tracts #and the only people that point out what that resembles are violent bigots while allies are AFFRONTED to be compared to evangelicals #i'm rambling about this in tags bc i'm still stewing on this and connecting dots but. yeah. does that make sense. #open mic night

[alchemistys]

the racism in fs is...astounding to me. specifically im bitching about how asian skaters can’t skate to asian music because the judges don’t ‘understand’ it or the artistry. like apparently some motherfucker (Joe Inman) was saying hanyu Yuzuru was lucky to win pyeongchang gold with seimei because japanese music in unintelligible to westerners?? please. I didn’t know jack shit about Abe no seimei when I saw the 2018 olympic free skate as a stupid teenager who’d never been outside fucking North America. yet I cried as I watched it. you don't have to know fuck all about the folklore or the cultural/historical context to feel passion or raw emotion, to appreciate the interpretation. after I finished watching seimei I still didn’t know shit about the guy, but I knew the program, the skating made me feel some kind of way. there’s a bazillion ‘swan lakes’ but let me tell you to this day I don't know shit about fucking swan lake. I can still tell when a skate has good artistry. your average american probably doesn’t know jack shit about swan lake either, same as Abe no seimei, but they'll still prefer swan lake over seimei. like don't try to tell me it's ‘only’ because of cultural differences that you're gonna score swan lake higher, just admit you’re racist. we know. and the absolute stupidity of this is that asian skaters performing a western piece will get scored higher and people will feel the artistry is better. what kind of dumbass logic is it that an asian skater will have a better interpretation of a piece of music from a different culture than of one from their own? you dumb fucks. I hate how skaters have to conform to western culture/standards in order to be taken seriously. are you so convinced of your own fucking superiority? of your own importance? the world doesn’t revolve around you. is someone else’s culture not as, idk, valuable as your own lukewarm white history (and how the fuck can you measure a culture’s value)? there’s over a billion people in china alone yet the country the entire world has got to pander to is the u s of fucking a? ‘cultural differences’ and ‘unintelligible’ my ass, it’s just soft imperialism. reminds me of how kpop is seen in the west. if the entirety of america can bop their bussy to despacito they can also bop it to bts. but nooooo the orientalism just has to get in your way of enjoying amazing cultural exports. you don't have to understand it you just have to appreciate it, which is why that fucking racist bullshit falls apart when you poke it with the critical thinking stick. and admitting that you can't do your job properly is so embarrassing, especially when you admit it’s racism standing between you and competence. i’d say the isu should fire any of these racist chucklefucks who say asian culture is unintelligible and that impedes their scoring, but we all know the isu is a joke that’s also comprised of racist chucklefucks. 

#figure skating #isu #anti isu #anti rusfed #anti usfed #racism #orientalism #hanyu yuzuru #yuzuru hanyu #seimei #fuck isu #western supremacy #soft imperialism #american exceptionalism #anti figure skating #fs #anti fs #fs scoring #scoring discourse #cultural imperialism

[exilley]

I should be able to hold korean webtoon at gunpoint until they start drawing more dark skinned characters. Btw

#exilley's diary #saying this as a korean person. and psa to western fans a lot of us are not that fucking Pale #and theres a conversation to be had aboit westernization and cultural imperialism bcs thats usually what this shit rounds off to lmao

[daeluin]

god there is nothing worse than being so fucking excited about dinosaurs and paleontology and wanting to experience that with people bc i mean DINOSAURS HOW COOL IS THAT

only to be so bummed out when it's all about north american/us dinos like.....

I am begging there are SO MANY COOL AND INCREDIBLE AND BEAUTIFUL DINOS ALL AROUND THE WORLD why y'all only care for the gringo ones???

specially when you come from a country with so many unique dinos that always get ignored/shafted! i swear i wanna share my love for south american dinos so bad. you have so many unique species only found in Patagonia and the dinosaurs from Cuyo/Ischigualasto are so beautiful and incredible and don't start me on dinos from the Amazon like guys!!! OPEN YOUR MINDS SOUTH AMERICAN DINOS DESERVE SO MUCH MORE RECOGNITION

#we gonna stop equating dinosaurs to the US i swear it's the worst kind of american cultural imperialism #also yes im the kid who was obsessed with dinosaurs in primary school #this is brought yet again by a doc that was like: here's all the dinos in the different eras. and it was all gringo dinos and one australian #like please i am begging western paleontologist and people who make docs about dinos to expand your knowledge beyond the rocky mountains