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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   29517 thread views

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.

Kulak is somewhat hyperbolic in the film, it's most likely sikh or Pakistani propoganda by some diaspora dweller, any non subcontinent person knowing this much about disgusting Indian videos has to have some major issues. The movie also singles out Hindus which confirms my suspicions.

The one good point he made was about India, castes and class

They cannot do what Hundreds of millions of high caste indians and upper class third worlders do every day: Stop Empathizing.

Stop looking on them as your fellow man, and instead look upon them as revolting stupid bottom feeding animals, akin to diseased racoons or possums…or various mamilians who wallow in their own filth, or seek their missing nutrition in the droppings of more noble creatures such as the bovine.

For to stop empathizing, so the western thinks, to stop believing “there is only one race the human race” or “that all men are created equal” would be to abandon all that is good and true and transcendent in this world.

Further continued

One need only speak to people in commonwealth countries to see many of the most opposed to mass immigration are earlier waves of Immigrants who had to pass a higher standard and were of that aristocratic upper class, and now don’t want the people they’ve escaped following them to the west.

Nothing in this film is surprising or horrifying to anyone from the Third World… many from the upper third world might say India is uniquely bad, one Chinese man described it a “4th World”, but most upper-class third worlders are very aware of what goes on in their slums. There might be some Indian Ultra-Nationalists on 4Chan or Twitter who REeee that Thames has laid waste to their “India is the Next Superpower” cope… but that’s an intra-4Chan turf war only amusing in that an internet argument so insignificant might have been ended in a final move so vastly more significant

This was astute, you have people use words like waiters, drivers, servant as slurs openly here and the contempt they have towards them is very real. Society here has been running on fumes since forever. What is funny is that kulak got these talking points from Jayant Bhandari on twitter who left India after he saw how decayed everything was.

The movie is extremely gory and exists as agit prop, it's not meant to be enjoyed and is not surprise to anyone frankly. The only people who will watch it are 4chan freauenters.

Most of the world is completely aware of how bad, dirty, scammy the subcontinent is. The movie is not that deep, kulak just read too much into it since he's aware of India and Jayant Bhandari.

I'm an Indian living in India for context, people live in enclaves, you have zero hygiene, open natural spaces, clean air, water or even morals in most parts here besides the lack of iq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are even worse.

The movie exists to facilitate dunking on Hindu far right users more than to be a real work of art or a thought out commentary. Skirmishes between pajeets of various kinds are a daily occurrence online. All sides picked up internet lingo and try to make themselves look better than their neighbors, you're better off just turning it on for 5 minutes and never thinking about it again, ever.

it's most likely sikh or Pakistani propoganda by some diaspora dweller

Why Sikh? Do they not have the same issues as Hindu Indians?

The Sikhs are generally quite unhappy towards both Hindus and the concept of India as a nation. I've met diaspora Sikhs in Australia and a complaint that regularly comes up is that at partition, the British gave the Hindus a nation, and they gave the Muslims a nation, but the Sikhs were screwed out of one, and Sikhs view themselves as just as important and respectable as Hindus or Muslims.

As such, Sikh separatism has been ongoing since before independence, and has at times led to insurgent or terrorist movements. The Sikhs have a strong internal feeling that they are not the same as Hindus or Muslims, and the more that Indian nationalism comes to be identified with Hindu nationalism, as it is at the moment, the alienated the Sikhs feel.

I would be entirely unsurprised to find some diaspora Sikh on the internet engaged in vicious anti-Indian ranting.

The word pajeet was coined for them, they pretend that they are some Scythian race living among who they think are pajeets whilst being the same as every other person around them minus basic values like self-respect which is why people from my clan and region do not abuse migration systems in the west.

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