RenOS
Falling Outside the Normal Fashion Constraints
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
Falling Outside the Normal Fashion Constraints
4d ago
There are very many (christian) religious charities operating in all developing countries, most of which obviously lean conservative (btw, USAID is still working with plenty of them to this day). For the most part, these are centered around providing the basics: Alleviating poverty, providing fundamental education, giving out medicine, etc. However, they are often accused of just wanting to abuse this status to spread their religion. Some of them even openly do so. In the past, the christian western countries would frequently overwhelmingly fund these charities, citing the same arguments as you do: They are the primary charities operating in these places. You should see how this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: If they get funded but the others don't, they'll necessarily be the primary ones. That's how it works.
We have a very similar situation now; Imo arguably worse in some ways, but YMMV. Plenty of progressive NGOs are very blatant about spreading specifically their particular worldview. Usually in addition to basic aid, sometimes even without that fig leaf, but they'll often get funding anyway. And if you try looking into what they are actually doing on-the-ground, it's not only often exceptionally difficult to even find out where all that money is even going, but in the few cases where you can find something, they'll usually even exceed their claimed mandate substantially.
At least from my vantage point, we have successfully pushed these religious charities to tone down their missionary purposes and concentrate on the aid part if they want to get our funding. I'd like for the same to happen to progressive charities.
War and violent conflict in general has this nasty property that not only it can happen with only very few wanting it, it can even happen when nobody wants it, but enough feel sufficiently threatened.
Also, a quick check of history shows that indeed a suspiciously large number of first strikers likes to claim that no, they totally didn't want to do this, the other side just forced their hand. Maybe they're right, maybe they're lying, maybe they're wrong on the "forced" part but were right that the other side really was looking to do the same or some other possibility.
Either way, the situation can deteriorate in some bad ways that don't translate neatly to "people just wanted it to happen". That said, I think that as long as most people get to live a broadly comfortable & safe life, nothing much will happen.
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