>Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.
It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover. Racists can't use the n-word any more, so they invented "terrorist" to continue their bigotry and hatred of cultures they've deemed inferior.
Its one thing to consider the West to be morally and technologically superior with regards to civil rights - its another thing to remember that our governments were the principle violators of civil rights, just a few short decades ago. What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...
The irony being that the pieces of Western culture one might reasonable feel smug about (government of checks and balances, democracy, high standard of care for the worst off, careful jurisprudence with presumption of innocence, scientific freedom and literacy, free public education, etc.) are precisely the foundations that MAGA and their ilk despise and work so hard to undermine.
Like if you're going to get patriotic about post-enlightenment values and institutions, that's one thing... if you're going to just act like a bigoted, might-makes-right, my-country-right-or-wrong, personality-worshiping, science-denying, uneducated xenophobic dipshit, then you don't have much to be proud of.
> It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover.
Not under that much cover, just the more overt part of it directed at a different demographic than the primary foci of earlier rounds of US racism (though it provided a lot of excuse for actions directed more in line with classic US racism, and set the stage for the renaissance of more classicly directed, out-and-proud racism that has characterized the Trump era.)
The Big Short (2015) | American Taxpayers Bailout The Banks | Steve Carell, Jeremy Strong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQGiEbj_GR0
"I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people"
See, I happen to think that racists get some kind of perverse self-actualization from manifesting degradation of cultures they consider inferior - that there is a real 'buzz' to be had from such fallacious elevation as required to justify bombing another culture into oblivion. The murder is its own reward in such circles.
The "terrorism" tranche of this hate culture is particularly jarring, since the ones claiming moral altitude over 'terrorists' are delivering far, far more terrorism than their supposed enemies. It's just been homogenized.
> What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...
Or where they'd still like to take us. The only problem they have with Ayatollahs is that they call God by the wrong name.
Well, that, and the rapeing and the murdering. And sticking their women in sacks isn't a good look for the theocracy.
The fundamentalist 'christian' groups are not much better from my vantage point.
It's hard to discern detail with your eyes closed.
Are you talking about American religious conservatives in power, or Iranian ones?
See, there you go, doing it.
Do you think that subsistence-working at Only Fans, or the local strip club is a better alternative?
For every 'women in sacks' argument that can be made, there is a street downtown where women put themselves in immense danger just to be able to feed their kids, pay their medical bill debts, get themselves some kind of safety net...
Same shit, different social flavor.
In America women can go to jail for their husbands' crimes, men are allowed to marry ten-year-olds, and abortions in some states are illegal, even in cases of rape.
https://letterboxd.com/film/americas-war-against-women/watch...
I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a pretty good framework by which to assess the longterm viability of a nation/state/group. States which violate the principles of the UDHR tend to be dreadful places to live in many ways - and this is as true of Western states as it is the non-Western ones.
I couldn't live in a state which allows its police forces to murder with impunity, for example.
The point is that the moral authority we claim over other states is a fallacy. Until we are actually protecting civil rights to the extent we expect of other nations, we are hypocritically justifying our own states heinous track record.
Alas, this seems to be understood pretty well by the ruling classes, who have subjugated human rights to mean "this gives us a right to justify the destruction of sovereign states and their peoples' we have deemed inferior".
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I know you're going for the joke, but it's really not funny. There are a thousand things I could be labelled inferior for - terrorism is really not one of them.
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Nope, this is what the world thinks of America.
It literally happened.
Lee Atwater, Republican party strategist, 1981:
> You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n****r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N****r, n****r.”
He predates the war on terror though.
Yep, the southern strategy. Make the lowest white man feel superior to the best minority.
It's truly amazing how well it works.
"The US is an evil warmongering empire... wait why aren't they doing more to support Ukraine's war? They only sent 14x as much aid as France!"
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Are you racist? Or a bot yourself? I genuinely cannot tell.
I am someone with common sense
No, that's demonstrably false. You might believe you have common sense, but this is another sign your judgement is, in fact, rather poor.
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>said in an 1895 speech in Alanta that despite the civil rights challenges faced by African Americans, that America was the best place in the world for Africans to live and prosper.
Maybe because Americans, whether black like Booker T Washington or white like Donald J. Trump, are notoriously ignorant on living conditions elsewhere, and conditioned to believe their country is the greatest ever place to live, even if it's way behind dozens of life metrics most of the western world.
or maybe because Africa was under brutal European colonization at the time, look up Belgium
Don't have to look up Belgium, I know of it (and Belgium was in the Congo and Ruanda basically, not Africa in general).
Doesn't mean the US, with KKK, Jim Crow, seggregation, and the rest was the best country in the world for blacks to live.
>Doesn't mean the US, with KKK, Jim Crow, seggregation, and the rest was the best country in the world for blacks to live
just ignoring the person you're talking to and bellowing the same things over and over does not make you anything like "right". Booker T Washington was a bigger expert on race issues concerning Africans and African Americans than you, and he says you are W. R. O. N. G.
It doesn't change or make better the situation for Blacks now or 100 years ago to point that out, but it is wrong to say that the US was the worst. It wasn't. Stop exaggerating like that and stick closer to the truth.
He was advocating for blacks to accept segregation, during Jim Crow. The guy was an idiot and many other black intellectuals disagreed with him.
Pretending he is the sole authority on race relations because he was an uncle tom trying to appease southern whites is hilarious.
Saying "uncle tom" is straight up racist by the way.
It's straight the exact opposite of racist.
It's a term long used by blacks themselves, as well as black allies, abolitionists, anti-seggregation activists etc, to refer to the "palatable to the whites, makes too many consessions" type.
stick to one topic: was the US the worst place for black people in the world? No it was not. Provide evidence that it was. Then I will point out to you that it was worse in other places.
There is still Black African slavery today in neighboring Arab countries, google it. Focus your attention on fixing things that are wrong and stop distracting yourself with things that are false.
Booker T Washington was in the context of the Jim Crow South and KKK. You really think that it would benefit Black people individually to refuse to accept segregation? In those times?
Stop changing the subject.
> stick to one topic: was the US the worst place for black people in the world? No it was not. Provide evidence that it was. Then I will point out to you that it was worse in other places.
Can you link the comment where anybody said it was the worst place? Brother, your claim is that, because some guy said that America is the best place in the world for Africans it must be true, and other people are just pointing out the things that make America bad for Africans. Nobody even said it was the worst!
Stop changing the subject.
> stick to one topic: was the US the worst place for black people in the world?
No one said that in this reply chain. They said it was awful for them. You are saying it wasn't bad because of one quote from some uncle tom. How about you provide more proof it was good for them without relating it to the fucking Belgian Congo.
> here is still Black African slavery today in neighboring Arab countries, google it.
First, chattel slavery is not the same as Arabic slavery. Second, yes I know, it is happening in Libya. Why is Libya doing that now? Oh, because we violated their sovereignty and bombed them to oust Gaddafi for geopolitical reasons. So we have a direct hand in that too.
> You really think that it would benefit Black people individually to refuse to accept segregation? In those times?
Yeah, why would people oppose their oppression? Better to bend over and take it because some uncle tom said to. You are clueless.
> Stop changing the subject.
Bless your heart.
>and he says you are W. R. O. N. G.
Your argument is an appeal to authority and "wrong" spelled like initials? What are you, 15?
Yes, Booker T Washington was a bigger expert on race issues concerning African Americans than all of us (nobody doubts that).
Not an expert on global race relations, or the conditions abroad. And obviously those uterrances were an expression of american exceptionalism, and very likely placating white US audiences (as a champion of a contested matter like race relations you never got far if you don't appear patriotic enough. That had to wait until much later with figures like Malcom X, and he didn't have the best of receptions of course).
>but it is wrong to say that the US was the worst. It wasn't.
Nobody said it was the worse.
What terrorist acts have "antifa" done, yet you dont bring up ANY of the right wing terrorism like oh I dont know, the Oklahoma bombing?? Your fly is open and your bias is showing.
I wasn't comparing brutal acts, I was arguing with facts against the literal language employed in the comment I was replying to.
antifa isn't a single organization, but groups under that umbrella do cooperate with, or are coopted front groups for, Marxist groups, and connect with any nationalist or sectarian strife in the world. You need to read up on "the theory of the revolutionary vanguard" and their self perceived role and techniques for fomenting revolution: that's who I'm talking about when I say antifa. Many people who consider themselves part of antifa for muh racism or muh increased minimum wage or muh ACAB might not be intellectual or well read about the history of Marxist revolutionaries, and they might beven be shocked to discover they intellectual Marxists are trying (and succeeding) in controlling their organizations toward a goal that's more likely to get a new Stalinist government.
Cool. Now do extremist Likud party members and their frothy-mouthed children-hating warmonger allies in the US Congress.
Think they give a shit about civil rights?
Not to mention the criminal omission in their argument of the US' support for the willful, daily murder of children every single day for the past few years in Gaza.
Contemptible.
on a daily basis, the people of Gaza are more oppressed by their own government. Gaza 60 or 70 years ago was territory claimed by Egypt just as the West Bank was territory claimed by Jordan; and Egypt and Jordan gave up their claims because of the hostility of the terrorist movement there.
If it's a question of ethnic strife, the condition of the West Bank and Gaza are due to strife between the West Bank and Jordan, and Gaza with Egypt as anything else.
Carefully side-stepping the responsibilities of the nation in the region with undeclared nukes, which was literally founded by active terrorist groups, does not help your argument...
The children of Gaza are being murdered by American bombs, dropped by Americas allies, with permission, in full view of the rest of the world. Because Americans and their allies have deemed those children inferior.
Claims of superiority on the issue of civil rights are, therefore, null and void.
>Carefully side-stepping...
You wrote a comment, I critiqued it with facts, and it is YOU who is changing the topic and carefully side-stepping that I showed you were wrong. (I replied to someone else about Gaza.)
I have to jump in some cabs now, so you now have time to contemplate the error of your ways rather than hoping I'll see what you write further.
You issued nothing but falsehoods about the cause of the suffering of the children of Gaza, actually. Apropos errors of ones ways…
>Most terrorism in the last 60ish years is associated with some Arabs and also some Islamists, and with or in cooperation with, anarcho-Marxists like Bader-Meinhof, Brigate Rosse/Red Brigades, antifa, etc.
That is blatantly false and you are indeed manifesting the very example of the ideology I find utterly contemptible.
37 million refugees from America's heinously vile wars, this century alone, beg to differ. The two million dead Iraqi's - and the children born to their descendants, daily, with congenital birth defects as a result of the widespread distribution of depleted uranium, certainly have had their human rights utterly abrogated from a distance by America's overtly racist ruling class, also.
And then, there's Gaza.
I have no respect for a nation that justifies the constant, daily murder of children. A nation that has dropped one bomb, on average, every 15 minutes for the past 25 years - on mostly innocent people - deserves a lot less respect than you seem to imply. It is certainly no shining example of civil rights.
Your in-group is not my out-group, but it's not my in-group, either. I prefer to participate in cultures which protect human rights - at the level of children - above all else. America is not one of them.
If your state has to murder children - or supports states willfully murdering children - in "self defense", then it is a failed state.
Period.
As for Booker T Washington, that was over a century ago. His work nevertheless had to be continued via Martin Luther King and company.
Try to keep up to present time. The US is the worlds #1 funder and supporter of terrorism this century, bar none.
Loudly agreeing with this statement - for anyone who believes that the US and NATO countries were not actively supporting right wing terror groups in Europe (and beyond), read up on Operation Gladio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio