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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I just read Kulak's review of "India: The Worst Country on Earth" on his Substack, Anarchonomicon. https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/film-review-india-the-worst-country

I had never heard of this film and haven't seen it, but I have read other stuff from Kulak. While there are definitely points I take from his posts, I do not consider myself a confederate and find his takes to be pretty divergent and extreme from my own. His writing is solid enough I don't get bored so I consider him an example of "what a reasonably intelligent far-right person has to say." He might not be far-right, but I think that's how he identifies. I'm certainly no expert, I've read maybe 4 or 5 articles and I seem to remember him from Reddit...maybe? I would be glad to hear other opinions/warning/lauds.

In his review he claims the film is

  1. true and accurate (from use of primary source online material)
  2. a perfect piece of right-wing propaganda
  3. unwatchable by almost everyone (4-chan trolls are the exception) beyond the 16 minute mark
  4. An important film that forces Jeffersonian "All men are created equal" types to reformulate their world view

Now that I know the film exists, will I watch it? No, I think it's unlikely. I don't really harbor Pollyanna-ish views on India that need to be rewired, but I also don't get into watching death, rape and destruction in my free time. I find it psychically damaging and can admit I prefer ignorance to knowing the true depth of human depravity. The review reminded me a lot of how people would describe "Faces of Death" back when I was a kid--another film I never had any interest in watching and remain largely ignorant of, aside from knowing it's just watching an endless string of people getting horribly killed.

I would like to know if people here are familiar with the film and what their general impressions are. I would also like to discuss some of the following:

  1. Is it true? Can a feature-film length series of horrible phone videos give us an accurate view of what India is really like? I have no experience with the country beyond discussions with people who have been there or come from there and some low-level Youtube vids. Is this really the worst country on Earth? If so, what's the deal with the subcontinet? Is this level of degeneration directly tied to IQ? If not what caused India (I think there's some talk that Pakistan and Bangladesh are in the same boat) to be like this? If this is human degeneracy, what keeps a society from degenerating? Are we degenerating? Is India the future for everyone?

  2. Is it perfect RW propaganda? Kulak's point is that it is so disturbing it forces Westerners to adopt an "Ohmygod the West is so much better than this I'll defend it with my life," attitude. I would suspect that hardcore universalists and "brotherhood-of-man-types" would find ways of countering the narrative, but I wouldn't be satisfied with, "it's just nasty fascist racists," if the truth content is high. Bad people can have high signal-to-noise ratio content even if I don't like it.

  3. Is it really that bad? The horrible deaths and mutilation parts I might be able to stomach, but the accounts of the varieties of rape and abuse had me squirming just in their retelling. The scenes of ecological devastation and anti-sanitation sound almost as bad. Is India truly this decrepit and insane or is it just a white-power-washing of a place I'm meant to develop a revulsion towards so I have the correct opinon of H-1B visas? would watching the film bring me closer to understanding or just turn me into a gibbering racist? Should I go to India and see for myself? People I know who have gone there tell no happy tales so I'm biased toward believing it's as bad as they say.

  4. Is it important? Will this film actually pin itself to history? It's hard to claim that "Faces of Death" was an important series of films from any kind of cinematic or virtue position, but it did make an impact and we remember it. Is it possible that even as pure culture-war propaganda, it's message might actually help people, either by protecting themselves when they're in India or forcing the country/global community to force some changes on the culture? Does something like 'India:TWCoE' need to happen to turn the ship? Does the left need far-right propaganda thrown in their faces from time-to-time? Does the West need to understand how terrible things could become if they don't reverse their own degeneracy? Is this an argument for AI control of humanity or will we necessarily revert to the mean where we use warfare, colonialism and slavery to force the best genes to emerge...like, are we simply doomed?

Anyway, these are just some initial thoughts, but it seems like pure, uncut culture war and I thought y'all might have more perspective on this than me.

I think Kulak had posted that here on the Motte too, and given that I have a rather high threshold for discomfort, I sat and watched through most of it. I'm going off memory, because it's definitely not worth watching a second time.

The short answer is: It's full of shit. Pun perhaps intended.

You're being treated to a lowlight reel lovingly amassed by 4chan of all the wretchedness and misery a poor nation of 1.4 billion people has to offer. Did the incidents depicted happen? I expect so, it's not trivial at all to deepfake all of that. I expect that budget was blown on free ElevenLabs credit.

It is however, not remotely representative of a single human's existence in the subcontinent. Or what you might observe passing through. It's as honest as compiling reels of SF fent addicts drowning in their own feces and triumphantly depicting it as an accurate representation of Americana as a whole.

For fuck's sake. I am often the first to criticize India, and am bearish on its future. That doesn't mean the country is a literal cesspit. It's a highly diverse, unequal nation where billion dollar privately owned skyscrapers tower over slums. The majority of Indians lead a difficult, but reasonably optimistic life, one that wouldn't strike a Westerner as being devoid of experiences worth living. We're poorer, we live in a corrupt and polluted land, we've got funny accents and an Eternal September to end all the rest when internet access became cheaper than bottled water. We're not savages, not en-mass.

Is it true? Can a feature-film length series of horrible phone videos give us an accurate view of what India is really like?

No.

No when it's 4chan writing the script.

I can assure you that I have spent the majority of my life in the country having seen precisely zero gang rapes or public sexual assault (if someone got their ass pinched in front of me, I've yet to notice). The number of times I've seen someone defecate in public is a number between 1 and 3, and that's a conservative number because I can't rule out never having seen it. Let he in the West who has never seen evidence of human feces on the street cast the first stone.

The majority of Indians, even Hindus, have no truck with the consumption of cow feces and urine. They're fucking weirdos to the rest of us.

Bad people can have high signal-to-noise ratio content even if I don't like it.

Let us be thankful that this particular example certainly doesn't.

Is it really that bad? The horrible deaths and mutilation parts I might be able to stomach, but the accounts of the varieties of rape and abuse had me squirming just in their retelling. The scenes of ecological devastation and anti-sanitation sound almost as bad. Is India truly this decrepit and insane or is it just a white-power-washing of a place I'm meant to develop a revulsion towards so I have the correct opinon of H-1B visas? would watching the film bring me closer to understanding or just turn me into a gibbering racist? Should I go to India and see for myself? People I know who have gone there tell no happy tales so I'm biased toward believing it's as bad as they say

If it's not obvious, it isn't that bad. I might be upper middle-class, but I'm not blind, and have used my fair share of public transport and gone out into the boonies and slums on many an occasion. It's not a post-apocalyptic movie out there, it's just dirty and congested.

Leave aside power-washing, unless you're using a backed up septic tank as your water source, you can't ridicule the country this badly.

Is it important? Will this film actually pin itself to history?

I'm reasonably certain that even the terminally online would forget its existence in a week.

"Only a fool would take anything posted on 4chan as a fact".

Is it possible that even as pure culture-war propaganda, it's message might actually help people, either by protecting themselves when they're in India or forcing the country/global community to force some changes on the culture?

Eh, probably not? What's the West supposed to do, tactical airstrike us with bunker-buster portapotties? India is dysfunctional in a rather coup-complete way, or perhaps AGI-complete.

Foreign aid is unlikely to fix our actual issues. Political pressure is of dubious utility, though like SF miraculously divesting itself of the homeless when Xi paid a visit, some foreign scrutiny can't hurt. Unless the West is willing to invade and annex a country where the average person doesn't have an utterly miserable life, what's to be done? We're not North Korea.

In a slower world, we would slowly keep rising up the ranks till we were comfortably middle-income. It seems unlikely events will play out that way.

Call me self-serving and biased if you will, but the kindest thing the more fortunate denizens of the West can do is let some of us on the raft. Selectively, with skilled immigrants first and foremost, I don't ask for charity. Indians Not In India are much luckier Indians on the whole. Fuck brain-drain, if the country wants to keep us, it better make it worth our time to stay. And a non-negligible proportion of those who could trivially leave, don't.

At the very least, I attempt to be a decent denizen of where I'm at. No street-shitting for me, though I can cop guilty to taking a leak on someone's fence at the dead of night after dragging myself home, subsequent to crawling more pubs than was good for me. An honest Scottish pastime, someone gift me a kilt already.

It is however, not remotely representative of a single human's existence in the subcontinent. Or what you might observe passing through. It's as honest as compiling reels of SF fent addicts drowning in their own feces and triumphantly depicting it as an accurate representation of Americana as a whole.

This was my first reaction too. It's got a bit of a Cormac McCarthy problem of the "gritty realism" of history consisting of the worst things anyone ever had happen to them.

The number of times I've seen someone defecate in public is a number between 1 and 3, and that's a conservative number because I can't rule out never having seen it. Let he in the West who has never seen evidence of human feces on the street cast the first stone.

Europe seems to have a far more common relationship with public urination than the United States. A Singaporean friend told me he was sure he'd be arrested for that back home. Americans generally try to find a side street or hide behind somebody. Spaniards just find a storm drain.

No street-shitting for me

God bless you sir!

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! It seems to mostly fit my priors.