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Few famines before british rule, dozens during, and none after.
Hmmm…
Must’ve been the climate!
Churchill, one of the most revered figures in the Anglosphere, celebrated the export of food away from people who were starving. He would respond to questions on it mockingly. In India’s case he took a type of joy in it since he hated people who weren’t white. Was a different time sure, but he was particularly vile when it came to this.
Churchill wins the HP Lovecraft Award for “outstandingly racist even by the standards of an absurdly racist society”.
This isn’t a flex you think it is, as USSR did all those things and the reason that all Russia neighbors hate Russia is because it was unusually brutal when doing it.
What happens in Ukraine isn’t a one off.
not even a ten off. the list of russian atrocities of recent years would make a lot of maniacs blush
And they pale in comparison to the atrocities being committed with full support of the West in the middle east
debatable given the scope.
Right, because you limit your scope to only white people
Pugjesus is a psyop
Boot connoisseur at the very least
Along with CM002, Rimu, dude, the quok guy, eyekaytee, Goat, Lund, gedelliyah… The whole .world mod/admin team, along with .works, and now midwest.social, several anime, more I’ve probably not mentioned.
Put it this way: I don’t think PJ is a fed, but I think the fact that he’s the feds aren’t paying him is wage theft.
iight, I been on here for a while now. Idk if there’s some kind of beef with Pugjesus and Cowbee but, I feel like I vibe with them both.
Anyone have the tea?
PJ is a social fascist, essentially. PJ nearly always posts anti-communist memes that range from horribly misleading to outright disinformation, and will frequently misquote Marx or other leftists to justify opposing communism and supporting imperialism. Further, PJ stalks my account from time to time and tries to grab content for the Nazi bar they moderate, so at a personal level I’d say I’m not a fan.
Huh, I guess I haven’t paid too much attention to that. I’ve only ever engaged with their historical posts that they’ve put up. I’ll probably have to look up social fascistism. I’ve used Umberto’s 14 points, is it kinda like that?
I’m not a fan of Eco’s 14 points as an identification of fascism. They are common characteristics of fascism, but not the definition of it nor do they explain the rise and fall of fascism. Fascism is better seen as capitalism in decay, as the methods of colonialism applied domestically. The Nazis essentially tried to colonize Europe, treating the rest of Europe the way Europe treats the global south.
Social fascism is essentially a term for those that want to retain imperialist welfare states, bribing the working classes with welfare and siding with imperialism and neocolonialism to fund them, rather than socialism. The German SPD hated the communists, and worked with the Nazis to kill the KPD off, enabling the rise of Nazism in Germany. It’s no coincidence that PJ loves the German SPD.
Oof I didn’t know PJ likes the SPD. That changes things, I gotta ask them about it the next time a conversation happens. Thanks for the tea ☕
No problem!
Top one is about Bengali Famine? Or the Irish one? Because I am sure you only meant one of those and forgot about the others.
My favourite (didn’t make to top 5) is when UK betrayed Poland after WW2 and gave it to Soviets because - I shit you not, that was one of the arguments Churchill gave - they needed Polish soldiers in UK to repopulate peasant villages.
Are you fucking kidding with me? That is insane even for Churchill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Resettlement_Act_1947
According to the memoirs of one of the MPs who protested it (forgive me but I don’t remember which one, there were like 25 of them), in a closed door session that was among arguments Churchill made.
You’re a fucking idiot
The Bengal famine was not even the largest British engineered famine in India.
I think the “exported food during a famine” part deserves some examination. Because doing this in itself may or may not be justified.
For the Soviet Union, I have heard this as an anti-communist talking point for both the famine that occurred during the civil war in the 20s and the famine of the early 30s. In both cases the Soviet Union was totally justified in exporting food during a famine. Why? Because having food in itself doesn’t necessarily solve a famine. You need inputs (like fertilizer) and capital (like farming equipment). For the Soviet Union, agriculture was essentially still pre-modern. They were seriously lacking both in both famines. The decision to export was not “let’s make some side cash by starving our people”. Rather it was recognizing that selling X units of food today would yield X+Y units in the future by using the proceeds to improve your agricultural situation. Food was swapped for inputs and capital. It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it’s the rational one and in the end saves more lives.
But the British in Ireland in the late 1848? That was just allowing the invisible hand of the free market to do its thing. Produce sold for more in England so they shipped it off, because England was significantly richer than Ireland. You can say the famine wasn’t the intentional result of the British government perhaps, but you can’t say it’s not the expected and natural outcome of free market capitalism.
And then the British in Bengal? I’m not quite as familiar I’ll admit but IIRC that was just the Brits needing more food for themselves so they took it from India, consequences for Indians be damned.
England was richer than Ireland? That implies Irish people had some level of choice… Ireland was a colony of the British empire and as such were responsible for it’s citizens and the Irish people had no say in where the crops were sold to. Irish people, by and large, couldn’t afford those crops anyway and so relied the potatoes they grew. When that failed for consecutive harvests, they starved because the landowners continued to sell the other food sources abroad rather than helping. The invisible hand of the market has little or nothing to do with it because they could never have bought the crops anyway, it was just greed and cruelty.
The invisible hand of the market has little or nothing to do with it […], it was just greed and cruelty.
To be fair, greed and cruelty is what the invisible hand of the market is when push comes to shove.
The push that comes to shove? Also the invisible hand.
With regard to Bengal and India as a whole:
British policy resulted in the death of 100 million people during the Raj. The Bengal famine is just one example and was not even the most deadly.
In Bengal:
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Fearing a Japanese invasion through Burma, the British enacted a scorched-earth policy in coastal Bengal. They confiscated or destroyed tens of thousands of boats, bicycles, and carts (the lifeblood of the local transport and fishing economy) and seized rice stocks so the Japanese couldn’t use them. This completely destroyed the rural economy.
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Stockpiled food strictly to feed military troops, civil servants, and industrial defense workers in Calcutta. Rural peasants were entirely abandoned to the market.
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To pay for the war, the British printed massive amounts of paper currency in India. This caused the price of rice to skyrocket by up to 600%, completely pricing out rural laborers.
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When the scale of the famine became global news, other countries offered to help. Canada offered to send ships loaded with 100,000 tons of emergency wheat. The United States also offered food aid. Churchill’s government turned them down, refusing to provide or allow the shipping vessels required to transport the grain to India.
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To protect Britain’s international reputation during World War II, the British colonial government heavily censored the Indian press. They banned newspapers from using the word “famine” or publishing photographs of the skeletal bodies lining the streets. It wasn’t until a British editor of an English-language newspaper in Calcutta broke ranks and published gruesome photographs that the British public—and the world—realized the scale of the horror.
When British officials in Bengal like Leo Amery petitioned Churchill for aid he responded with:
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Stating it was the fault of Bengalis for breeding like rabbits.
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Asking why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.
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Stating that he “hated Indians” as they are a “beastly people with a beastly religion”
To which Amery replied: "I am by no means sure whether on this subject [India] Winston is really quite sane… I told him that I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s."
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Forced the Chinese into opium addiction.
Gave Palestine to the Zionists.
Destabilised multiple countries and regions around the world for spice and goods trade.
The populations of Ireland and Scotland still haven’t recovered from what happened to them.
Scotland has forgotten that we had the famine too. That and the clearences lead to thousands of Highlanders migrating to Glasgow. Today the West of Scotland has some of the most deprived areas in Europe.
Ireland understands and has confronted its generational trauma. We swept ours under the rug and the consequences are stark.
Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the north of England were getting fucked by the aristocracy long before the empire.
I just read a little bit about it. Fuck! How did this stay under the rug for so damn long!
Because the aristocracy is still in place. The house of lords should burn.
They should never have banned dueling for the lords. If anything they should have kept dueling not only legal, but the only way they can retain their honor after any slight.
Also we need their duels to be public events sponsored by firearms companies and first aid kits for ballistic trauma!
it was never legal on paper, but it was tradition to judges to let free the winner (murderer) of the duel if the duel followed proper etique
Combination of it barely being taught in schools and this weird contempt we have for our heritage. Ireland has put a lot of effort into preserving theirs. And they had Sinead O’Connor - she did a lot of the heavy lifting all by herself 😅
Same with languages. Scots Gaelic has all but died out in the highlands. Now its just a cultural relic and an annoyance. Search for news stories about the Gaelic road signs - they caused a massive stir.
Irish on the other hand - nearly died out but their government really pushed it in schools, the media etc. Poured real money into it. Its fairly widely spoken now.
Meh, humans are pretty much the same no matter where they’re physically located. Some are decent enough — a small percentage are even quite good — but the large majority are varying degrees of shitty, with a small number (e.g. the “one percenters”) being irredeemably so.
China and Russia does something evil:
Unacceptable. Think of Human rights, Morals, Empathy, Kindness.
West does the same or worse:
Meh, it’s just human nature to be evil
Could you people be any more hypocrite?
Easy to put words in my mouth, huh? Shitty is shitty, regardless of who or where. Point out where I’ve EVER treated one side differently from the other in that regard.
Otherwise, maybe stop being shitty yourself with all the projectionist bullshit. You’re being no better than you claim I am.
You are treating one side differently from the rest because one side is in a dramatically different situation to the other side and you are acting as if they are the same. Slaves and masters, oppressed and oppressor, treated with the “same” moral and ethical rigour despite one side actively trying to exploit the other.
If you don’t think the same is happening on your preferred side (or any side, really), then you have blinders on. Human nature is universal.
I still don’t see any actual evidence of my supposed unequal treatment.
Wrong
If you think that China or Russia have ever done anything near the scale of the British Empire you are delusional. They operated the East India company for 300 fucking years. They literally starved over a hundred million people by their policies and 10 million at one time. Just between 1880 and 1920 the Raj claimed more lives than all the famines in the Soviet Union, PRC and North Korea combined. They operated the slave trade. They created zionism. They forced opiates into the Chinese then bombed them into submission when they tried to resist. They had a part in the full scale extermination of indigenous North Americans. They overthrew the democracy Iran for oil profits. They built global capitalism.
To say all things are equally bad ignores the part where one of these things is not like the others - The British are by far the most brutal and evil people to ever exist by a wide margin. The USAmericans are just the latest phase in the 500 years of anglo global domination and exploitation.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
The opinion you linked is as flawed as the black book of communism. Not because of the findings, but because of the methodology of “guestimatting” the total numbers and making wild assumptions.
It’s honestly taking AWAY from the evilness of British Empire.
(The opinion piece takes one of the most horrific crimes against humanity and makes it into a pastiche of itself by assuming basically π = 7)
ok genocidal empire apologist. Fuck you.
The privilege you(we) experience in the west is a direct result of exploitation of the global south. While you sit there allowed to have free will, post shit in your home with electricity, your government is not only forcing other countries not to export their own goods for the benefit of the people in the country (Cuba, etc) but also make it ILLEGAL for any other country to sell them crucial commodities or buy anything from them. So it’s not about individual experience and more about the entire geopolitical history of the exploitation domestically (slave trade) and abroad and YOU personally benefit from it. All of our lives could be so much better if we operated more like China, Cuba, Vietnam or the USSR, economically, legally, etc.
Honestly I think the biggest predictor of a country doing harm is just the amount of geopolitical power they wield.
Those who can harm others to get ahead, and have that opportunity, do. The British did. And they sure as fuck did an incredible amount of harm
For a hot minute the US has been in a position to do a great deal of harm, and thats exactly what we’ve done :(
Those who can harm others to get ahead, and have that opportunity, do.
This isn’t true on an individual level, and individuals make decisions for countries. Why would it be true on a state level?
Not taking advantage of others (either other individuals or other states) isn’t even some idealistic pursuit, either. There are costs and risks to doing so, and there are benefits (e.g., peace and cooperation) to dealing with others honestly.
Power corrupts. It’s true for individuals and for organizations and states.
Power is not a supernatural corruptive force, this narrative is spread to prevent people from organizing.
Or we could try to organize while taking this fact into account. Bootlicking is not necessary to organization.
Haha, I remember being 15 and just throwing Matrix Thoughts around with no structure to cohere them
And you still do that, apparently.
12 year old response
“I know you are, but what am I!”
Nobody is talking about bootlicking. Power is not a supernatural corruptive force. Administration does not turn people evil. What’s important is class analysis, as people do act in their class interests generally.
Class is not supernatural either. But as i said in another message, the corrupting effect of power is well-studied by psychology.
Confidently wrong lmao
Yeah that’s why train drivers derail on purpose all the time, the raw power they hold over peoples lives just corrodes their immortal soul. They’re just like cops when you think about it.
Class isn’t supernatural, correct. It’s a material relation. Capitalists are interested as a class in retaining private ownership, workers are materially interested in collectivizing production. This isn’t a corruptive force, but pure class interest. As for power supernaturally corrupting, no, it is not well-studied by psychology.
Power is not the one ring, it’s not magical.
It’s true. But my sentence was true too.
No it isn’t, for either. Unexamined thought terminating cliches are worthless.
Living up to both the name AND the instance’s rep - a twofer! I’m impressed.
Go back to reddit you insufferable dork
Thoughts: terminated
Yeah, seems to be an extremely common occurrence here.
Exactly. Idealists know, that when they engage with material evidence that doesn’t fit their narrative, their worldview will get weakened in their own brain. So they have to terminate their thoughts.
And the more material evidence is on an instance, the more thought-termination per idealist there will be. An approximate formula would be:
amount of thought termination on a particular instance = amount of facts on that instance that idealists disagree with * amount of idealists (including federated ones browsing on all-sort)which I’d assume makes lemmy the number one.
Shut up nerd, you all sound the same
It’s not an unexamined thought. It’s a scientifically analyzed phenomenon.
I find it interesting that the study focused on power holders within the capitalist system, which incentivizes selfish behavior, greed, and abuse of power. In a system that does not incentivize those things, I think there would be very different results.
“Hot minute,” my ass. We’ve done some good, but a fuck-ton more evil - albeit a lot of it in more subtle ways than of late.
Projection
Curious what you think the biggest predictor would be, then?
The mode of production and distribution.
What Cowbee said. But to simplify, a system that is extractive structurally, will always expand that leeching outside it’s borders eventually.
Few nations without corpses in the basement in their history. Umportant the current behavior, the history of other countries can’t be used as valuation without hypocrisy, only if they had not learned from it.
That’s a good point. The real problem is that the land and resources they stole through brazen force still remain in the hands of Western megacorps in a system of neocolonialism, and whenever any of the exploited countries try to tax or regulate that (much less reclaim their resources altogether), they get sanctioned into oblivion, if not overthrown outright.
Albert Fish ass comment
Britain has a borderline unfixable economy - according to expert economists - and is about to put the final nail in the coffin by electing Reform so perhaps what goes around comes around.
Has russia?
And no, the (y)uk has somehow unlearned.
Certainly not much
Looking at recent history, some have more than others and have the riches to show for the destruction they engaged in.
And they still think they were civilising people. There is a reason with West is associated with hypocrites. Atleast teach your population that colonisation was wrong no matter how you look at it.
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
And he represented the liberal wing of South Asia’s decolonial movement! Imagine what the left wing would have said lmao
They call it White Guilt and still spin the narrative to blame non-Europeans and especially non-Anglos, I believe.
You can’t really reason with a raider. He will only understand force.
See, right off the bat I’m like “wow, I didn’t know the Russians did the same thing as the British with the potato famine”
Turns out humans are pretty evil regardless of where on this planet they were born and raised
Who knew
No they’re not, shut up. This is genocide apologia.
Lol ok sure I never said that they were less evil or anything
Apologia… thats really dumb
This meme implies people think the brits arent as bad as they are
Well if you step back and look at all humans, in varying degrees, theyre all pretty fuckin evil
So thinking any nation or empire isnt evil in some way is pretty fuckin dumb
Unless you label every single brit as evil for the crimes listed above, then your just stupid with a hate boner
It was their leaders, politcal and business, that were fuckin evil
Show me a single entity that didnt have evil leaders at some point you dipshit
Claiming that all people are like this everywhere is tantamount to genocide apologia because it implies that there’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about genocide. You’re basically stating this is the natural order of things and people are gonna just do this whenever sufficient political power is amassed.
That is absolutely false and ahistorical, genocides are thankfully not as common as white westerners like to pretend they are (just because they’re always involved in them).
Centrists are really the most useless people on earth
Yet, the tankies can’t see that it happened on both sides
Not really.
The British exported food during famine to enrich themselves off the backs of Irish, Scottish, Indian, and other colonized peoples. The Soviets exported grain during the 1930s Soviet famine to trade for agricultural machinery to end a naturally occurring famine, and redirected grain to alleviate the famine where they could.
The British slaughtered colonized peoples, both armed and unarmed. The Soviets put down reactionary counterrevolutions that were armed.
The British colonized territories, erasing any autonomy and running their economies on extraction. The Soviets were anti-colonial, and generally helped set up socialist democracy, liberating the working classes.
The British frequently arrested and executed people even for simple backtalk against colonialism and imperialism. The Soviets censored, and did execute people when evidence of an anti-soviet force was brewing to overthrow socialism.
If you erase all of the context, you can find similarities. However, just like you can say Nazis and communists are both “violent,” what matters is who that violence is used against, and for what aims. It’s necessary to investigate beyond surface level comparisons.
It is so funny how you people can’t read. There is nothing about any other side but the British here. You just need to interject your bullshit. Thanks for announcing a new useless account to block.
“Don’t you mean all lives matter?”
How is the comment below violating Rule 1? Seems like cypherpunks is violating it himself.
This isn’t a flex you think it is, as USSR did all those things and the reason that all Russia neighbors hate Russia is because it was unusually brutal when doing it.
What happens in Ukraine isn’t a one off.
