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Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

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Until Googlr, Facebook, Disney or Time Warner run their own countries the sozr of a continent, times still are different. Not that some of those companies don't want to, especially Thiel certainly would, but we are not even close to what the East India Co. was and did.

It's not them but the ruling class shareholders and fund-raiser donating class of people that for example pressure meta and fb to filter some content or maybe not filter it and ler civil wars happen and governments get toppled.

Www.lobbyfacts.eu would like to politely dissagree with you. Just look at the biggest donors.

I agree with you that the New Yorker's classification of authoritarianism is lazy and I think it nullifies its credibility. I also agree that some powerful people have it in their best interest to hide the costs of democracy because they have the means to influence voters through emotion.

But you lose a lot credibility when you talk about Trump (I think?) using "authoritarian" as a defining term (the guy relatively easily could've taken on so many emergency powers during the pandemic but largely left it up to the states), as if Obama and literally every other president didn't also have mostly authoritarianism in their policies.

Also, most so-called democratic societies don't value democracy at all costs. E.g. courts with appointed judges are less democratic than mob justice.

I said trump because he refused to concede power and admit loss as well as called for termination of the constitution so he can regain power. An unsuccesful authoritarian is still one. He could have grabbed emergency powers but there are none that place him above removal from office by the senate or his cabinet (25th).

> modern neo-colonial liberal democracy proponents

What does this even mean?

If you read about all the ways people justified shitting all over Africa in the 1800s (white man's burden, "we're going to civilize them", other garbage like that) you'll find some uncomfortably strong echoes in modern mainstream upper middle class viewpoints. That's what he's getting at.

I think "neo-colonial" is a bad choice of wording because the word "colonial" comes with too much specific implication that is not quite relevant at present but the whole implied and unquestionable inferiority of other groups culture and methods of societal organization is very much alive and well.

If that's what he means, I actually sympathise with the viewpoint (neoconservatism and neoliberalism intersect in US hegemony, something JFK specifically spoke out against), but am completely clueless as to how we got here from dreams under authoritarianism.

(FWIW I've proposed some better wording for concepts in my original thread if they would help avoid derailment)

Presuming authoritarianism to be this one thing was the starting point, a worldview shaped by neo-colonial "democracy or else" is my theory as to why the alternatives in types of government as seen from a western view point are either authoritarian, communist or democratic (even putin and dprk are democratic lol). In reality, putin's russia, dprk, china, vietnam, etc... are all different from each other. You can't be succesful like china by being communist alone for example or end up poor like nk simply because one family of dictators ruled over a few generations (the british monarchy of dictators ruled for over a millenium and had the largest empire ever).

British/english monarchy still has a few decades until its millennium (2066 and all that) but yes, "democracy or else" is remarkably reductive (I doubt the 2k+ representatives to this year's 二十大 went there if they weren't going to be voting on party business and positions, and on the other hand there are "good monarchies" just as in 1970 there were still "good fascists", so the categories might be worse than reductive; they could easily be mistaken).

I would rather blame ignorance than malice: western viewpoints are oversimplified because by and large we westerners do not care to learn about the important distinctions to be made. However, I suspect that will slowly change over the course of this century. (In 1985, it only took the G5 to have enough corner to manipulate the exchange rate of the USD. Today it would probably take almost the entire G20 to do so.) Pushing my thumbs that it will change for the better.

> ... do not care to learn ...

Slogan: wars are God's way of teaching geography to Americans.

"soft-imperialist" ?

You are right about the first part. Neo-colonialism is a word I chose because regime change and installment of a western friendly regime is the goal of the people I talk about. Including many on HN that think circumventing restrictions in other countries by legitimate governments is good because it supports some internal faction of that country more aligned with their views. The result would be a country open to western views and more open to trade and influence. Colonialism is when you install rulers of a country that are your subjects, essentially making that country a province and the goal being to "improve" and "civilize" that country to your standards and allow "trade" beneficial to you. Neo-colonialism isn't of course exactly that, but as you said, there are strong parallems which is why the term is used (and abused by some). The presumption that you get a say in what type of a government and what type of laws exist in a foreign country can only when you see yourself as part of a powerful force that can affect those changes and has the right to do so. If US and europe were broke 3rd world countries that don't have powerful militaries there wouldn't be all this talk about replacing governments in other countries and supporting by finance and technology revolutionaries that seek to install western friendly regimes in those countries.

It is important to label it and call it out because since grade school we are indoctrinated to think this is the correct way.

When there were terrible things happening in Syria, trump bombed them with popular support. When terrible things happen elsewhere like China, they're left alone because they can fight back. Preying on the weak and installing friendly regimes is a modern way of colonizing those deemed inferiror or uncooperative.

I suspect many of these "ex-colonies", by popular referendum - if they had this option - would choose to be a "province" again. People just want peace and prosperity.

This doesn't mean that systematic abuses didn't happen in the past but contradicts clearly the thoughts of the enlightened elites.

No, I know plenty of immigrants and they would not want to be subjugated again, but you sort of proved my point there. You fail to realize that even now, the reason many former colonies (US being an exception) do so poorly is because the post-colonial countries were formed by colonizers, their original countries were erased. Now, I blame them for not defending their homeland to begin with but my point is that to this day they fight against each other (and I know I am overly generalizing here) because mainly mistrust between each other. You maybe familiar with tutsi's and hutu's in rwanda for example, they did not trust tutsis because they feared subjugation. You think they would be ok with europeans subjugating them when they have civil wars because their neighbors might subjugate them?

Colonialists were greedy, they could have made a lot if money just by trading and establishing trade routes. Everyone wants to profit. Their greed was they wanted it all and fast, because they developed superior militaries they used that power for greed.

Again I suspect if "ex-colonizers" allowed open frontiers, an avalanche of "ex-colonized" people would come to get peace and prosperity, leaving their elites preaching to themselves about "subjugation". Past is past. Abuses were made but "colonialism" doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Actually it never was.

It is just another point of view - an unpopular one among the elites - to be aware of.

The thing is what do you do about people that refuse to accept colonisation? Even if you are right and people vote to be colonized, you have to kill or imprison the millions who resist. And even if that wasn't the case and they somehow prosper in a few decades, why would they not want independence then? Even texas wants to secede from america and the whole south fought a war. Either way, you will have a lot of bloodshed.

Also, this means a lot more of the people you colonize will immigrate to the homeland as you can see in Europe, can your people handle that give the birth rate difference and cultural incompatibility and all the "purity" xenophobes? Business is business. In case you don't know, majority of black people in the UK immigrated in colonial mid-20th century to work in child care,NHS,etc...from the carribean and africa (which is great) because local talent was short and expensive. The same will happen in any new colony.

It is best to be friendly trade partners and allies than master and slave. There are those who want peace and profit and there are those who are filled with violence and greed.

>leaving their elites preaching to themselves about "subjugation"

It's usually the elites who inherited the colonial extractivist machine and are keeping it running. If they preach about "subjugation" it's only to avoid responsibility for failing to reform the country in a way that doesn't benefit them. People who tried actual reforms quickly found their countries intervened by foreign powers.

The last sentence of the article mentions Trump and it is likely triggering to some of his supporters. Neo-liberal is a term frequently used in that circle.

Oh ffs! I am not a trump supporter or a communist or a terrorist.

> In modern times, what makes authoritarian rule difficult and unstable is the western nations' neo-colonial ruling class (most on HN) who are hell bent on exporting their superior democratic ways.

The attempted colonization of the Spanish language by Westerners who are offended by its gendered terminology is a real-world illustration of this.

LatinX.

I live in a Spanish speaking country where some people take issue with the fact that groups of people are male by default, unless they are all female. Using "e" is preferred to "x" since you can actually pronounce it. Anyway, the clue that this is an American thing is not the fact that they try to make the language inclusive, it's that they don't even think about getting rid of the racist term "Latino" in the first place. A businessman from Ciudad de Mexico and a farmhand from northern Chile have so little in common that it's senseless to lump them together for most purposes, yet as soon as they step into the US they become part of this group labeled "Latino" and treated as as single unit (for "Asians" it's even worse). Most Americans, even many that self-define as "progressive" are so used to this racist framework that they don't see anything wrong with it

I saw Hateful 8 here at home, and was often the only person in the theatre laughing. If one hasn't grown up with the racist framework, how is one supposed to get all of Tarantino's gallows humour references to it?

Are you sure you were laughing at jokes and not just some characters being racist ?

It was nervous laughter.

(for some reason I am now thinking of a legless frog begging in front of a restaurant, but can't recall the connection)

I've been checking this thread and what amused me so far is the amount of down and up votes, it seems what I said was very controversial as opposed to just unpopular.

I said what I said in good faith, I am open to an honest and respectful discussion for those of you who disapprove of my comments.

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