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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
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:
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?
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.
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.
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 watched most of the film back when Kulak did the review of it, my impression is that it is cherry-picked but the parts that are cherry-picked are true enough. The parts that are true mostly relate to the lowest castes in rural India, although it's arguably an indictment of the entire civilization. High caste Indians though are clearly able to immigrate to the West and not engage in the degenerate behaviors like those portrayed in the film.
The biggest takeaway of the film is that Indians are fundamentally not a sympathetic people, to be charitable. The clannish, nepotistic, sometimes antagonistic behavior of Jews is tolerated because, on some level, the West is sympathetic to them after a long history together, Abrahamic ties, and yes Hollywood propaganda especially. That, and they are White-passing and talented so their engagement in that behavior is often inscrutable and has plausible deniability. The Indians don't have any of that sympathy, lack subtlety, and are not white-passing, so if they come here and act that way it is going to rub people very much the wrong way. The Indians coming here to draft on the preexisting Silicon Valley culture industry, which they did not build, and bringing with them a big dose of nepotism and Hindu nationalism, that is going to trigger a "Racism" response in people who have been thoroughly trained to have sympathy for Blacks and Jews. And then documentaries like this basically validate the racism.
As to whether the film will be important- well I've only heard about it through Kulak's writings and nowhere else. But I would agree that Indians seem poised to reintroduce racism into the Western psyche as greater contact only seems to lead to growing the backlash and a willing audience for things like this.
This reminds of something that happened in 2021 on Twitter. I think it speaks to your point almost exactly. I pulled this directly from a website that talks about it:
On September 26th, 2021, Twitter[2] user LILAVYVERT quote tweeted a TikTok video shared via a tweet[3] posted two days prior. The video shows a nightclub somewhere in India where many young, Indian people are dancing to "When that one song that comes on in the club." LILAVYVERT quote tweeted it, using the phrase "I know it smell crazy in there". The tweet (shown below) received roughly 51,600 likes over the course of one month.
LILAVYVERT's tweet, however, also received roughly 23,700 quote tweets over the course of one month. The quote tweets mostly revolved around LILAVYVERT's statement allegedly being racist. LILAVYVERT received the most amount of backlash from people of Indian descent. For instance, Twitter[4] user @pinkfr1day tweeted, "they going slur for slur in the quotes wow" and received roughly 22,600 likes. This tweet commented on and poked fun at the Indians and the African-Americans in the quote tweets and replies being racist or derogatory to each other.
The sheer volume of racist tweets coming from Indians was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Since certain speech on online was pretty heavily policed at that time, being able to see those tweets making their rounds was very cathartic. It's like the powers that be at Twitter couldn't handle it all. It was hilarious because the pure unfiltered racist vitriol coming from some of these people was so beyond what was normally accused of "racism" in the West that people were borderline speechless. It's precisely their lack of subtlety and the willingness of Westerners to tolerate it that aligns with your point.
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I literally don't think I've ever heard a white person say anything racist about Pakistanis, unless they were an actor playing a role. As far as I can recall, 100% of the racist statements about Pakistanis I've heard were spoken by Indians.
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