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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Last night I watched the absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR. While slogging through this 3-hour parade of xenophobic melodrama, incoherent action, and kindergarten-level sentiment was a struggle, it did make me wonder about two ideas that I’ve always thought should be in direct conflict with each other but aren’t treated as such: “Anti-Colonialism” and “Open Borders.”

As I understand it, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is that Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space. However, this school of thought seems to be most popular among the same political/intellectual cohort that also champions very loose immigration controls, commonly referred to as “Open Borders” (even though that phrase suggests no control whatsoever, whereas the reality is probably something closer liberal immigration controls). With an “Open Borders” mindset, there is no stopping Groups B-Z from moving into Group A’s space and altering its culture or assuming control of its institutions if any of those Groups does so with enough numbers or organization. “Open Borders,” on principle, refutes the very notion of any group’s ownership of any space, which more or less dismantles the paradigm of “Anti-Colonialism.” How do these two ideas co-exist in the same mind without producing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance?

It seems uncharitable to suggest that the salve for this cognitive dissonance is simply racism; or, to put it how I suppose the “Open Borders Anti Colonialist” would think of it, “intersectionality.” That is, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is not really the wrongness of generic groups subjugating each other but rather the wrongness of one static “Bad Group” (that happens to be largely defined by skin color/geographical origin) subjugating other Groups (of other skin colors), who by the nature of their subjugation and opposition to “Bad Group” are thereby “Good Groups.” “Open Borders,” too, is a policy only sought after when the same “Good Groups” are immigrating into the space of the same “Bad Group,” rather than vice versa. These are intended as strictly one-way ideological roads, and not as equal-use roadmaps for Groups A-Z.

I don’t get the impression that this intersectional solution to the “Open Borders Anti Colonialism” knot is oft-contemplated by the typical “Open Borders Anti Colonialist,” who rather thinks of both notions as having sprung from the same well of humanist good intentions. Is the racial/intersectional question actually essential to this paradigm, or is there some other less invidious key that unlocks the conflict between “Open Borders” and “Anti Colonialism?” in the progressive mindset?

I’ll hand this to RRR: It aptly confounds Western culture-warring by presenting its own set of ideas that may be difficult for some Western progressives to reconcile: It pits noble indigenous revolutionaries against the cartooniest of all racist villains and does so with a strident rallying cry against gun control. One of the protagonists has the stated goal of “putting a rifle in the hand” of every colonial subject, and suggests that a bullet only attains its true value when it kills an immigrant (or, in this exact case, any white person).

Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space.

That sounds more like anti-conquest. A summary of anti-colonialism should at least mention grooming of future generations of Group B to believe Group A is inherently superior. LKY's first memoir talks of such.

Last night I watched the absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR.

Absurdly stupid? Yes. Awful-looking? Only if you're expecting Hollywood-level SFX/CGI and aren't used to South Indian cinema approach to 'realism' in stunts etc. (which is basically "physics is for wusses, does it look cool on-screen?")

Look, I'm Irish, any movie which portrays British colonialism as the baddies is going to have some sympathetic attention from me 😁

Think of it as nationalist mythology, every country has its own foundation myths. Do you think an American movie about the Revolutionary War is going to be any more concerned about "Redcoats Bad"?

One of the protagonists has the stated goal of “putting a rifle in the hand” of every colonial subject, and suggests that a bullet only attains its true value when it kills an immigrant (or, in this exact case, any white person).

Yes, but that is in response to the Head British Baddie declaring that the value of a bullet is more than the life of a native. Exploration of where this line comes from in Indian movies here.

two ideas that I’ve always thought should be in direct conflict with each other but aren’t treated as such: “Anti-Colonialism” and “Open Borders.”

You can twist yourself in knots coming up with a complicated theory that threads the needle here, or you can just accept the much more parsimonious explanation that it’s entirely driven by identitarianism.

As I understand it, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is that Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space.

All this by means of violence is a big aspect of the objection to colonialism I think you're missing.

With an “Open Borders” mindset, there is no stopping Groups B-Z from moving into Group A’s space and altering its culture or assuming control of its institutions if any of those Groups does so with enough numbers or organization. “Open Borders,” on principle, refutes the very notion of any group’s ownership of any space, which more or less dismantles the paradigm of “Anti-Colonialism.” How do these two ideas co-exist in the same mind without producing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance?

But are group B-Z altering Group A's culture and assuming control of its institutions by means of violence? If not, and if violence is the aspect of colonialism that people object to, then there is no tension between the positions of open borders and anti-colonialism.

There's a reason that anti-Open Borders people draw attention to lawless migrant enclaves in big cities where rules different to the ones legally sanctioned are enforced by the sword: They want to say that open borders will lead to the same objectionable consequences as colonialism.

With an “Open Borders” mindset, there is no stopping Groups B-Z from moving into Group A’s space and altering its culture or assuming control of its institutions if any of those Groups does so with enough numbers or organization. “Open Borders,” on principle, refutes the very notion of any group’s ownership of any space, which more or less dismantles the paradigm of “Anti-Colonialism.” How do these two ideas co-exist in the same mind without producing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance?

The way out of this conundrum is just to incorporate open borders mindset as one of the key aspects of the culture. This battle over the identity of let's say Western World is the key component of the Culture War. It is a battle of multiple value systems raging from nationalism, secular humanism, religious systems as well as the new "woke" Critical Social Justice value framework.

But there is also more to it, I like an essay by Bruno Maçães, a former diplomat from Portugal. In the essay he states that:

The modern West broke with this mold [of different civilization organizing their societies differently]. From the perspective of what had come before, Western political societies had oddly misplaced scientific ambitions. They wanted their political values to be accepted universally, much like a scientific theory enjoys universal validity. In order to achieve this — we shall have occasion to doubt whether it was ever achieved — a monumental effort of abstraction and simplification was needed.

I think that this is largely true for many western moral elites. Be it people who endorse Effective Altruism or rationality and who fully believe that this is "scientific" and universalistic moral system that will eventually be adopted and/or enforced by AI. Or be it more liberal or even Social Justice crowd that sees their value system as basic human rights. Meaning their ideas of how the society should be organized is outside of standard political process, rights are inalienable and have advantage of being protected even against disagreement from majority. If they manage to enshrine themselves as new clergy that decides how the Declaration of Human Rights holy book is to be amended, they can manage the whole World. All these moral thinkers believe in some form of "grand narrative" where they are on "right side of history" which indicates a belief that history has some direction and that there exists something like "moral progress" in similar vein as scientific progress.

This is also highly cosmopolitan class that can be at home in New York, Tokyo or Buenos Aires. They do not have allegiance to the national state, in a sense this is too restricting. Effective Altruists claim to give equal moral value to all people who are living or who are going to live. They are proudly declaring themselves as new shepherds of the whole humanity, even if they have to drag these sheep kicking and screaming by the power of the new god in form of AGI aligned with these "universalistic" values.

Also you are not the first one to notice how the supposedly multicultural liberal values are highly colonial. In the wake of invasion of Afghanistan the new military government embarked on the project of instilling the current western values there. We see the whole western world recoil at football World Cup being held in Quatar, a society that let's say does not meet the current requirements when it comes to treating gays or women. I think that there is a little bit of struggle now in the West, where many people are starting to realize that maybe their values are not as universalistic, and that maybe they will not be implemented voluntarily. I think that is one of the reasons why we see the left turning authoritarian.

Their moral beliefs require them to be correct, as mentioned "being on the right side of history". So we see the classic return to mark those who refuse as reactionaries and bigots and extremists who fight against enlightenment and progress. In order to save this narrative the left engages in huge amount of editing and constant revisioning of history. For instance in the past the eugenics movement was huge part of progressive ethos. You had people like Karl Pearson who gave lectures with titles like Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics with the same arguments as progressives of today: bigots and fanatics do not understand impact of science like Darwinism. They are stuck in 19th century so it is on us: scientists, politicians and experts who are armed with sufficient scientific knowledge as well as moral strength to bring humanity over into 20th century. And that vessel will be eugenics. For progressives of today, eugenicists were not "true progressives". They conveniently stuck the whole thing as rightwing coded - ah, it was Hitler who euthanized "undesirables". Pearson was probably cryptofascist posing as a progressive. He was definitely a white man.

So to conclude, I do not think that Open Borders is against many strains of thinking especially prevalent on the left. Colonialism was not bad because it destroyed local cultures, colonialism was bad because it interfered with the higher project. For instance you do not see much of critique of how ideas of certain mid 19th century white German philosopher named Karl Marx infiltrated thinking in countries like China or many African nations. It does not seem that there is a push to topple Marx's statues, quite to the contrary new ones are being erected. The belief is that there is going to be a moral end of history and the whole world will be part of one huge "multicultural" soup sharing the same value system. So in that sense open borders do not matter.

5% of the population are South Asian migrant workers. Perhaps 20% are Iranians. ... The Emiratis are not concerned. Why? Because they’re still in charge.

Sounds right, but it might be short sighted. History has all sort of twists and turns and regimes always eventually change. If that catches them napping, they'll find the largest civilisation on Earth champing at the bit to take revenge for the millennium of humiliation.

the Pakistanis will defend them against the Indians and Iranians.

That's a joke right? Irony can be hard to smell on the internet.

That ability to cycle them is also tied up in immigration proper, not naturalization though. The number of overstayed visas is often used to discredit border-based controls in the US but without the ability to similarly enforce visa rules you won't have that sort of churn in the non-citizen population that stabilizes your gulf example.

I'm having a Gell-Mann Amnesia moment here. I generally respect the comments I read on TheMotte until someone comments on matters outside theMotte's general demographic reach, and the commentary comes across as somewhere between shallow and misguided.

I personally think that RRR is the best and most important blockbuster movie India has made in the last 10 years (since 3 idiots). It has sent a cultural Tsunami through the nation and I believe it will be remembered as the movie that started a sea change in India cinema.

Hilariously, I and my brother had an hour long discussion today morning about how some of the smartest western commentators start sounding like bumbling fools once they start commenting on any culture or religion outside the Abrahamic sphere of influence.

Let's start with the very first comment.

surprise hit

RRR was Rajmouli's (director) 3rd major film after his 2 Bahubali films. They were the 2 highest grossing Indian movies at their time of release. RRR was expected to be his magnum opus, and the last thing you can call it is a 'surprise hit'.

awful-looking

I find this to be grossly untrue, most people in both the west and India seem to disagree with me on this one.

But this bit is the subjective, so I won't contest you on it.

absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR. While slogging through this 3-hour parade of xenophobic melodrama, incoherent action, and kindergarten-level sentiment

I don't have a week to write an entire thesis on how wrong you are. But, RRR to me, is genius of the highest order. It is a layered movie with at least half a dozen meta levels behind it. While the base movie is entertaining at face value, most discerning viewers realize that it operates entirely in the realm of metaphor.

The first thing you need to understand about RRR, is that it might be the first major Indian blockbuster that situates itself entirely within the context of India. Bollywood is notorious for making sure their movies fit into western aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, ending up as at best shallow imitations of western media and at worst creating completely out of touch pander-fests.

India is a civilizational nation with a completely different way of looking at life. From legends, founding myths, core national values to political divides. Movies subvert and play to the expectations of the target audience (non-westernized Indian). So when a movie caters to an audience that is so disconnected from those set in different civilizational contexts (Americans), those outside the target audience are at a high risk of misunderstanding the movie entirely.

I don't think it is possible for me to convey why you are wrong about everything when it comes to RRR. I apologize. I have neither the time nor the space for it. But, do know, that you did not get the movie.

xenophobic melodrama

Do Europeans not understand the deep resentment held by people from ex-colonies towards their (erstwhile) ex-colonizers? Irrespective of revisionist opinions about the good done by colonialism (most of which I find somewhere between laughable and nauseating), the people that live in ex-colonies despise those that occupied their lands.

The blood of the Congolese boils at statues of Leopold II and Indians resent seeing Churchill being hailed as a the hero of the west in the same manner that Jews forth at the mouth when someone begins praising Hitler.

“Anti-Colonialism” and “Open Borders.”

These terms have very different meanings in an Indian context.

India has always been accommodating of immigrants, and has culturally advocated for ghettoized integration. India has been a historic refuge for persecuted Parsis, 3 waves of Jews, Tibetan Buddhists and has preserved millennium-old unique sub-sects of Islam and Christianity. The first Indian movie stars were jewish, the current movie stars are muslim and the richest indians are parsi. The 85% hindu majority treats hinduism in the same manner : practice whichever subsect of hinduism you want, just don't fuck with the way my family does things.

This is unlike the west, where the melting pot ensures that there is 1 pot (winning culture) and the only way to change it is to edit massively by melting a lot of people into it or completely replacing it through conflict. India has always rejected the this idea of mono-everything (theism or culture) and your friction doesn't register in the same manner for Indians.

There is a reason Indian Hindus mostly only run into issues with actively proselytizing subcommunities of various faiths. (Missionaries, Love Jihad, forced conversions, exodus, hard-communists)

confounds Western culture-warring

Nope, if anything, the movie is created with a deliberate ignorance towards the western culture war. To RRR, the west might as well not exist post-independence.

noble indigenous revolutionaries against the cartooniest of all racist villains

YES !!!!!!! There is a reason I call it the best sequel to Rocky 4.

Guess what, all great blockbusters are exactly like this at face value.

Sharks, TRex, Communists, Nazis....every major blockbuster of note has a simple villain at face value.

strident rallying cry against gun control

I am sorry. But this kind of mindless "what does it mean in a western context" is exactly the kind of misunderstanding that I am talking about. Gun Control is not an issue in India and it never will be an issue in India. The guns are entirely metaphorical in this setting. A 100% of Indians agree that gun control is great.

The movie pits itself primarily against the founding myth of independent India, one that every Indian knows cover-to-cover. One interpretation is that the guns stand for Rajamouli's blatant rejection of India's traditional power structures and myth creators which stake their identity on non-violence. It rejects the monopoly held by the Congress, Bollywood, North India, Gandhi and Nehru on India's cultural identity and its narratives. The movie similarly rejects western aesthetics, western sensibilities of movie structure and western dog-whistles in favor of what is most obvious and natural to the target audience : the Indians. The 2nd bit is very important. It does not subvert for subversions sake. It subverts to enfranchise what feels most natural and intuitive to the people it was made for in the first place.

Another meta interpretation of the movie has to do with the unspoken rule in pre-RRR Indian cinema that Hindu stories cannot be told. RRR toes the line by borrowing aesthetics, moments and sometimes direct messages from Hindu epics (esp Ramayana) while still never explicitly breaking that rule.

Lastly, the movie alludes to decolonizing of the Indian mind. Decoloniality is a revived phrase that is distinct from anti-colonialism. This ties into redefining what it means to watch a movie in an Indian context vs a colonial (western) context. You are meant to dance, celebrate, be loud and indulge. RRR is unapologetic about indulging in its best/worst instincts in a manner that no other Indian blockbuster has done before. This bit directly ties into idea behind decolonialization of mindsets.

kills an immigrant (or, in this exact case, any white person)

The movie literally has an entire subplot about the MC dating a white woman to clearly indicate that 'not all white people are bad'. Hard to miss honestly.

Your comment portrays a weird persecution complex. I know conservative white men might find American urban liberal circles to be suffocating. But, in the rest of the world, white people still enjoy a shit ton of privilege. Most 3rd world families view dating white people as 'dating-up'. They are given a shit ton of attention, people defer to their opinion just because they speak English natively and pine for their approval. White monkey jobs exist as a distilled $ value on white privilege.

p.s: this probably needs proof reading. Just know that your opinion on RRR is wrong and bad.

p.p.s: say what you want about the movie, the songs are bangers and the dance numbers are incredible.

This would be the Irish version of such a movie 🤣

Indians resent seeing Churchill being hailed as a the hero of the west

There is (or was) an Irish version of this, too; from the First World War, Churchill was seen as responsible for the Dardanelles, the campaign that killed a lot of Allied soldiers (including the Irish who were enlisted in the British Army). Attitudes after the Easter Rising in Ireland also didn't help elevate his reputation, along with being the son of the man who stirred up sectarian violence in Ulster by 'playing the Orange Card'.

Come the Second World War, and his speechifying (while understandable) about Irish neutrality and how tolerant the Brits had been in not invading Ireland by force received a rebuff by De Valera, our Taoiseach (equivalent to Prime Minister) at the time, which was very well-regarded in Ireland even by those who were not fans of Dev.

Extracts from the speech below, speech can be heard here. Reference to "a quarter of a century ago" is because Dev was part of the uprising:

"Prior to de Valera's political career, he was a commandant of Irish Volunteers at Boland's Mill during the 1916 Easter Rising. He was arrested and sentenced to death but released for a variety of reasons, including the public response to the British execution of Rising leaders. He returned to Ireland after being jailed in England and became one of the leading political figures of the War of Independence. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, de Valera served as the political leader of Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin until 1926, when he, along with many supporters, left the party to set up Fianna Fáil, a new political party which abandoned the policy of abstentionism from Dáil Éireann."

I know the reply I would have given a quarter of a century ago. But I have deliberately decided that that is not the reply I shall make tonight. I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe.

Allowances can be made for Mr. Churchill's statement, however unworthy, in the first flush of his victory. No such excuse could be found for me in this quieter atmosphere. There are, however some things which it is my duty to say, some things which it is essential to say. I shall try to say them as dispassionately as I can.

Mr. Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain's necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr. Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean Britain's necessity would become a moral code and that when this necessity became sufficiently great, other people's rights were not to count.

It is quite true that other great Powers believe in this same code-in their own regard - and have behaved in accordance with it. That is precisely why we have the disastrous succession of wars - World War No. 1 and World War No. 2-and shall it be World War No. 3?

Surely Mr. Churchill must see that if his contention be admitted in our regard, a like justification can be framed for similar acts of aggression elsewhere and no small nation adjoining a great Power could ever hope to be permitted to go its own way in peace.

…I would like to put a hypothetical question - it is a question I have put to many Englishmen since the last war. Suppose Germany had won the war, had invaded and occupied England, and that after a long lapse of time and many bitter struggles, she was finally brought to acquiesce in admitting England's right to freedom, and let England go, but not the whole of England, all but, let us say, the six southern counties.

These six southern counties, those, let us suppose, commanding the entrance to the narrow seas, Germany had singled out and insisted on holding herself with a view to weakening England as a whole, and maintaining the securing of her own communications through the Straits of Dover.

Let us suppose further, that after all this had happened, Germany was engaged in a great war in which she could show that she was on the side of freedom of a number of small nations, would Mr. Churchill as an Englishman who believed that his own nation had as good a right to freedom as any other, not freedom for a part merely, but freedom for the whole -- would he, whilst Germany still maintained the partition of his country and occupied six counties of it, would he lead this partitioned England to join with Germany in a crusade? I do not think Mr. Churchill would.

Would he think the people of partitioned England an object of shame if they stood neutral in such circumstances? I do not think Mr. Churchill would.

…Many a time in the past there appeared little hope except that hope to which Mr. Churchill referred, that by standing fast a time would come when, to quote his own words: "…the tyrant would make some ghastly mistake which would alter the whole balance of the struggle."

I sincerely trust, however, that it is not thus our ultimate unity and freedom will be achieved, though as a younger man I confess I prayed even for that, and indeed at times saw no other.

Solidarity! 😀

Solidarity!

Huh, this is interesting. Besides the visual similarity, both flags have similar symbolism. In Ireland, green is for Catholics and orange for Protestants, while in India, orange (technically "saffron") is for Hindus and green for Muslims. In both flags, the two colours are joined together, representing a hope for reconciliation between the two religious groups.

India's hatred may be unique, but one must surely admit the Anglo-American countries also share a very unique perspective - one of always having been the invader and never the invaded, at least within the last few hundreds of years. US has arguably never been in a situation where there was even a serious risk of the country being occupied as a whole, unless one counts the fleeting moment in time between the colonials developing an American identity and the US independence being acknoweldged by Britain, or really stretches the narratives around the War of 1812. The British have been cocooned quite safely in their little island as well.

I cannot, of course, have an inkling about how the Indians really feel about the British colonization, but I certainly know that when Russians go around invading other countries, an atavistic fury rises in me - and pretty much all other Finns - that is probably not felt in the same way in countries that don't have the same history. When Russians go around explaining that no, it's Russia's duty to teach the smaller, more inferior nations about their true Russian-ness or save them from fascism once again, and that the conquered nations should have been grateful to Russia or Soviet Union for peace or modernization or whatever, it doesn't exactly work to quench that fury.

The importance of national sovereignty - never being ruled by another nation if it can be avoided - is crystal clear to me, again due this history. As such, I can only grant the same to the Indians regarding their conqueror-nation, or one of them - crucially the one conqueror-nation that always remained a foreign one, not one of the ones that set up shop in India and ended up becoming Indians of a sort.

The British have been cocooned quite safely in their little island as well.

UK was bombed a bit during WW II (total death count lower than single big German massacre in occupied areas).

USA mainland was technically actually bombed during WW II with some civilian death - 6 in total ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_balloon#Fu-Go ). But it is extreme nitpicking.

Compare with Belarus (occupied by USSR at that time) where 25% of population died/was murdered, or Poland where 16% of population was killed/murdered during war.

Yeah, that's the "quite" part. The main point was that despite the bombings and such, there has not been a real threat of the island of Great Britain actually being invaded and occupied for centuries. (years of reading soc.history.what-if convinced me that Operation Sealion was never a realistic possibility, and the same probably goes for any threat of Napoleon invading.)

To be clear, I was not disagreeing - just expanding.

In China, where the 'Century of Humiliation' is state ideology. I have found few bear grand grudges toward the British or other colonial powers, despite the fact that China was inarguably treated far worse by the British and West in general than India was.

Care to substantiate or elaborate on this?

The Opium Wars themselves were sideshows at best during this period in China’s history; the impact of opium on Chinese society is likely overstated, both wars were really quite limited (the Chinese lost what, thousands of troops? in each war?), and the both was complicated by the fact that the Qing were fighting other conflicts at the same time - first with Tibet, then dealing with the Taiping (+ other rebellions) at the same time, the latter of which was an actual, existential threat to the empire. What the Brits got out of the wars in treaties were minor territorial gains, civil rights, trading rights, freedom of religion, indemnities, etc.

The Boxer Rebellion was considerably more bloody, but again, was essentially a limited affair; the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded mostly (totally?) above the Yellow River in northern China - at Beijing, near the Hai river, and in Manchuria - and while the pillaging and destruction of the conflict would continue for 2-3 years in the area, it was hardly most of China or even productive parts of China. Additionally, the southern provinces didn’t even care to attack foreigners despite war being officially declared, and many Chinese reformers took a dim view of the Boxers. The conclusion of the Boxer Rebellion also marks a decline in western intervention in China, though there was a massive indemnity to be paid.

None of this is to say that these were trivial setbacks dealt to the Qing by Britain; they were politically disastrous. The losses themselves were humiliating, and stoked Chinese unrest as well as European/Japanese ambition, and lead to the strangling of Chinese economic self-determination in the late 19th and early 20th century. The loss in the First Opium War, in particular, likely contributed to the aforementioned Taiping rebellion, which sees tens of millions of Chinese dead and the ravaging of China’s most industrious regions. The Boxer indemnity would haunt China into the post-Qing era and seriously hamper indigenous efforts at modernization and investment, and exacerbate the warlord issue. None of these are good things to have come out of foreign (British) intervention. Even then, though, China was at least intact as a de jure sovereign nation, even if bits and pieces like Shandong and Hong Kong and parts of Manchuria went missing, and much of this is quite indirect.

But in comparison, to my understanding (Indian history is not my strong suit), India was annexed and ruled by Britain piecemeal, which transitioned it into a somewhat extractive economy operating for the benefit for the Home Islands, with attendant deskilling and destruction of indigenous industrial (not in the industrial revolution sense) links and capacity. I am to understand that many Indians also resent that Britain essentially collapsed their political structure, which has aftereffects in the dysfunction of current Indian politics. All in all, these would be greater direct effects from British influence than what happened in China. There were also multiple famines under the British Raj before the famous WW2 one, at least some of which (e.g. 1769 Bengal famine, the 1876-1878 famines) were exacerbated by British decisions or priorities.

I could be convinced that the relatively minor direct effects of British meddling in China is in fact a greater indignity than what the Indians went through, either because the British weren’t actually so bad in India after all or were actually a positive force in India (I understand that some people earnestly argue the latter), but I don’t find it obviously true.

Edit:lost a thought

The movie literally has an entire subplot about the MC dating a white woman to clearly indicate that 'not all white people are bad'. Hard to miss honestly.

The fact that racism often carves out an """exception""" for hot babes you might be able to sexually conquer is usually considered to make it worse, not better.

No-one ever exculpated an alleged white nationalist on account of his Asian girlfriend.

The blood of the Congolese boils at statues of Leopold II and Indians resent seeing Churchill being hailed as a the hero of the west in the same manner that Jews forth at the mouth when someone begins praising Hitler.

I'll not comment on Belgium, but I assume Indians could admit to themselves that, as the victory in WW2 remains the sole politically correct outlet of Western* (implicitly White) pride, the sole reason Churchill's assessment is still largely positive in the West is that he didn't practice 'appeasement' (whatever that means in context), unlike the dunce Chamberlain.

*technically this is incorrect as the USSR played the main role, of course, but it's also no coincidence that negating, questioning, delegitimizing and outright denying the Soviet role in final victory, especially since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, has become increasingly normalized in the West since a couple of years (I remember when Bush II explicitly condemned the Yalta Treaty)

  1. The USSR did not play "the main role". More of their soldiers died, yes, but they relied heavily on materiel, technology and intelligence supplied by the West. It was a joint effort. Plus, their role in the Pacific was minimal.

  2. This does not mean that the role the USSR did play has not been minimized. However, this minimization did not start in the past few years, as you claim, but during the Cold War, for obvious reasons. (See also: https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bxe58t/poll_in_france_which_country_contributed_the_most/)

I'm sure you're also aware that the Japanese were never going to surrender, no matter how many atomic bombs were dropped on them, as long as the USSR was neutral in the conflict, and thus there was hope, no matter how faint, that they were going to mediate an armistice and eventually peace between Japan and the Western Allies. In the end, they made the decision to surrender only after learning that the Soviets broke neutrality and invaded Manchuria. This was an absolutely necessary step to terminate the war.

Also, it's absolutely possible to rely on material assistance and still play the main role.

This plus the fact that there was a substantial portion of the Anglo/American right who felt that the war started with the invasion of Poland and should have ended with the liberation of Poland. The fact that the Stalin was allowed to keep the territory gained from his alliance with Hitler instead of sharing Hitler's fate stuck in a lot of craws.

Why wouldn't the Yalta Treaty be condemned? My country was stuck on the wrong side of the curtain for 45 years because Roosevelt used us as a bargaining chip.

Edit: And before you answer, I would like you to think very carefully about the role the Red Army played in WWII, in the context of Poland.

Why wouldn't the Yalta Treaty be condemned?

From the selected letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, one from 1943:

Nothing to read – and even the papers with nothing but Teheran Ballyhoo. Though I must admit that I smiled a kind of sickly smile and 'nearly curled up on the floor, and the subsequent proceedings interested me no more', when I heard of that bloodthirsty old murderer Josef Stalin inviting all nations to join a happy family of folks devoted to the abolition of tyranny & intolerance! But I must also admit that in the photograph our little cherub W. S. C. actually looked the biggest ruffian present.

(W.S.C. = Winston Churchill)

When Germany invaded Poland, what Red Army should have done? If they wouldn't have occupied Eastern parts, Germany would occupy all territory of Poland.

  • -10

It's not like they saw the Germans invading Poland and then quickly decided to invade to salvage what they could. The invasion was planned and coordinated between Germany and the Soviet Union from the start.

Was the Katyn massacre also part of the Soviet 4D chess strategy to beat the Nazis?

Yes, there was a pre-invasion plan between Germany and USSR. I don't think it included "Germans attack on 1 sep, then Germans urge Soviets to attack and Soviets reluctantly attack on 17 sep". Germany was more strong enough to beat Poland alone, didn't need Soviet help to do so and began to advance on territories which were planned be go to Soviet zone.

Was the Katyn massacre also part of the Soviet 4D chess

What does this have to do with this? This Soviet atrocity happened on RFSFR proper soil when invasion of Poland was finished

You forgot to mention that USSR and Germany cooperated in starting WW II - both in developing military power before, joint strategy planning, invading Poland and holding a military parade after victory.

what Red Army should have done?

Do not help Germans.

Do not attack Polish Army (also in 1920).

Leave after WW II ended.

Murder, rape and loot less.

The Soviet official explanation for partially annexing Poland may have been flimsy, but I'm sure it was not flimsier than the Allied explanation for invading Iran or Iceland.

The Allied explanation for invading Iceland was to deny it to the Germans, which while not the strongest moral justification in the world doesn't seem all that flimsy as to sincerity.

Why should I assume that the Germans were planning to invade Iceland?

On the other hand, why should I assume they were not planning to annex the whole of Poland?

I'm sure it was not flimsier than the Allied explanation for invading Iran or Iceland.

You are wrong.

Invading Poland by USSR in alliance with Third Reich Germany was done for much, much worse reasons.

And even if that claim would be true, it still does not explain why explicitly condemning the Yalta Treaty would be bad.

I wasn't talking about reasons, which we may or may not fully know in retrospect. I was talking about official justifications.

USSR official justification was flimsy because it was outright lie and fakery, exposed by clear and ongoing cooperation wither Third Reich.

I remember when Bush II explicitly condemned the Yalta Treaty

(it is about Yalta Conference AKA Crimea Conference AKA Argonaut, right?)

why that would be weird? USSR got there permission for brutal colonization of Central and Eastern Europe. I understand why USA and England was not interested in continuing war. At least Poland got a bit smarter about its international relationships since that time.

But why condemning this would be bad?

USSR played the main role, of course

one of main roles - yes

the main role? Not really. And no, share of effectiveness does not scale linearly with soldier death count, especially when deaths are caused by idiotic and murderous leadership.

outright denying the Soviet role in final victory

Denying role in the victory over Germany is lying. Denying role in liberation is quite accurate as Soviet victory was not liberation, just a different oppressor. There was kind of improvement as they were less genocidal and were running outright extermination on far lesser scale and targeting different groups. But "only some subset of you will be murdered and enslaved" is quite a low bar. And they stayed for far longer, so total damage was still very significant.

Unqualified describing Red Army victory as "liberation" and omitting USSR-Germany alliance that started WW II is as big omission as denying the Soviet role in final victory over Germany.

especially since the beginning of the Ukrainian war

Pity that war happened, but self-destruction of Russia in the war they stupidly started is delicious. And no, Russia is not entitled to empire in Eastern Europe, or Central Europe. And fortunately nowadays they have also no strength for that.

Finally consequences of USSR and their empire caught up with them.

More awareness of various Russia/Russian empire/USSR evils is just one of that nice things.

Let's start with the very first comment.

surprise hit

RRR was Rajmouli's (director) 3rd major film after his 2 Bahubali films. They were the 2 highest grossing Indian movies at their time of release. RRR was expected to be his magnum opus, and the last thing you can call it is a 'surprise hit'.

I should have qualified it thusly: "surprise hit in the U.S."

awful-looking

I find this to be grossly untrue, most people in both the west and India seem to disagree with me on this one.

But this bit is the subjective, so I won't contest you on it.

It looks like a video game cut scene, and every visual is both so overly processed digitally and full of CGI, that it's kind of hard to tell what is real and what is fake, because it all looks fake. And there's no visual art to it, it's all just bright and garish, like the master bathroom of a nouveau riche with no taste.

And, seriously, the CGI effects are fucking terrible. I wish I could post clips. It's mind-boggling how shitty some of the CGI scenes are, one in particular that is a long shot of Bheem sneaking into a compound, and it looks like a little video game character jumping from one digital surface to another.

absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR. While slogging through this 3-hour parade of xenophobic melodrama, incoherent action, and kindergarten-level sentiment

I don't have a week to write an entire thesis on how wrong you are. But, RRR to me, is genius of the highest order. It is a layered movie with at least half a dozen meta levels behind it. While the base movie is entertaining at face value, most discerning viewers realize that it operates entirely in the realm of metaphor.

If all dozen meta-levels are written for an audience of six-year-olds, it doesn't matter how many levels there are. Yes, there is a lot going on in RRR -- not enough to fill a 3 hour movie, unfortunately -- but it's all simple-minded busywork performed by the most shallow of characters spouting remedial dialog. Compare it to the work of a master Indian filmmaker like Satyajit Ray, and RRR looks Paul Blart: Mall Cop in the spectrum of Indian cinema. Even compared to a legit masterful musical like Lagaan, everything in RRR is pedestrian and/or insulting.

Part of my issue with how the movie has been received in the U.S. is that it seems like an egregious example of the "soft bigotry of low expections." I've only seen a few Indian movies, but of extremely high quality, so this one seems like an exception in awfulness. I could see how someone who enjoys movies like Birdemic and The Room might find similar qualities here enjoyable, but not unironically.

And there's no visual art to it, it's all just bright and garish, like the master bathroom of a nouveau riche with no taste.

Taste is subjective. When I adjusted my expectations to the acceptance that South Indian cinema is going to be blinged out to the max, I got on a lot better. Yes, it's all bright and garish, so what? At least it's not filmed in orange hues or so dark you can't tell what is going on and any objections are met with "well that's because you have cheap crappy TVs". It's meant to be larger than life, that the Heroes are on the level of mythological demi-gods. These are the equivalents of Achilles and Agamemnon, you don't tell those stories by having everyone wearing mud and shot at night. (Well not unless you're a modern Western movie-maker 'deconstructing' this, that and the other).

I should have qualified it thusly: "surprise hit in the U.S."

It earned $11 million in the US, which ranks it 67th so far this year.

I will suggest that much of what is happening there is invisible to you because you lack the context.

Consider a modern movie that takes place in the American civil war. There's a black character named Forge Lloyd who is totally not on drugs and just has a heart problem, never did any home invasions, and he's killed by pro-slavery police who stand on his back while he yells "I can't breath". And by the way, police were invented to enforce slavery in 1850's USA.

Lets have some flashbacks. Forge Lloyd's mom got pregnant, but no one can figure out who the daddy is, and she quietly admits to someone that she's never been with a man. Forge Lloyd then goes around preaching a message of love and equality. At some point he says he has a dream. Then he makes a thanksgiving dinner for 12 of his buddies, and his bro Jubas kisses him.

After the flashbacks we go back to 1850's USA, 3 days after his Forge Lloyd's death. We see a mysterious figure riding off into the sunset, :insert cinematography here: and it's Forge Lloyd.

Now imagine someone who doesn't know the story of the bible or the story of Forge Lloyd writes a review. He loves the pro-Hindutva messages in the movie, and thinks it makes good points about GST.

That's your review of RRR.

Note: I haven't seen the movie. It would not surprise me if the FX are video-game like, because that is the natural evolution of ordinary telugu cinema + modern CGI. That's telugu film vocabulary, and it's evidently not your thing. That's fine.

You might as well criticize Japanese anime for showing a character tasting some bad food, and then flashing to a scene where the character is being tentacle raped under the ocean. The viewer familiar with that vocabulary knows the tentacle rape isn't literal, it's a visual metaphor for how bad the food tastes. (Food Wars is excellent and you should watch it, BTW.)

You realize that most of these complaints apply equally to pretty much everything Disney has put out in the last 5 - 10 years as well do you not?

I’m not a Disney fan, but there’s still a learned subtlety and visual sophistication to their recent work that is light years beyond RRR, which is like an early 2000s video game in both form and content.

I can enjoy unsophisticated or technically rough cinema as well, but not when it is so narratively and thematically shallow.

dance,

How wealthy are all the people in this video? They largely seem to have huge houses/driveways or are at least in much nicer and more "modern" places than one normally finds watching Indian media, travel videos etc.

The first thing you need to understand about RRR, is that it might be the first major Indian blockbuster that situates entirely within the context of India.

Any recommendations for works like this (strong preference for books, but maybe movies)? One of my favorite things about the new Chinese fantasy novel's I've read was the genuinely alien baseline cultural assumptions. I've long had a fondness for India, but I have no idea what might function as a decent inroad work.

I wish I had a good answer for this. A lot of Indian Literature runs into a problem where the only ones who are interested in translating it to English are English speaking white people or practically-white Indians. So you run into a Heisenberg's uncertainty moment, where the act of translating it makes it lose what made it special in the first place.

There are very few sources that I can blindly trust to do a good job of representing Indian baseline assumptions well, and is further compounded by me not having read any of those books. Let me go to some of my more 'grounded' Indian friends and see if I can find something.

I haven't read this book(finding the raga) but it comes highly recommended from a source I deeply trust and does a great job of outlining the core differences between Indian and western music. (and through it art and aesthetics at large)

2 more books from my more cultured friend:

I wish I had a good answer for this. A lot of Indian Literature runs into a problem where the only ones who are interested in translating it to English are English speaking white people or practically-white Indians. So you run into a Heisenberg's uncertainty moment, where the act of translating it makes it lose what made it special in the first place.

He should probably read Half Girlfriend by Chetan Bhagat.

::cringes in NRI::

It's about how English plays into modern class roles, quite distinct from caste. Chetan Bhagat is also the only famous person I've seen who is willing to discuss this.

What ??

Recommending Chetan Bhagat is like recommending Stephanie Meyers to understand American culture. (edit - which might not be a bad thing?)

He is a bad writer and a bad intellectual.

It is decent schlock , but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone..

It's alright.

If you disagree, name another English language book that covers the particular topic of English language and modern Indian class roles. I can't think of much; most English writers do not generally want to acknowledge it.

I didn't recommend it for the plot. I wouldn't recommend twilight for the plot either, but if someone wanted to understand western female empowerment-by-infantilization, it's a perfectly fine place to start.

IMO, the issues that Chetan Bhagat touches on, don't need as much context about India though. They are fairly straight forward and easily understood even when read from a western lens.

That being said, you make a good point. I'll admit, my reaction to seeing Chetan Bhagat being recommended was kind of knee jerk.

It is especially rich of me, given that I just called RRR the best Indian movie since 3 idiots (a movie loosely based on a Chetan Bhagat book). Also, say what you want about him, he does capture the angst of your average 18-25 yr Indian male pretty well. 2 states was fairly relatable too.

Still not my first recommendation, but I will retrack my earlier kneejerk reaction. Chetan Bhagat is alright.

As I understand it, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is that Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space. However, this school of thought seems to be most popular among the same political/intellectual cohort that also champions very loose immigration controls,

All else I'm agreed with. But the issue in the West is that there's no actual external manipulation of the method of governance! It's the difference between inviting someone into your house and giving them your television, vs them breaking in and stealing it. If you ask for your television back in the former case, you look like an idiot.

It can't be colonialism if the motive force is derived from within. It's not like Germany is scared of Afghanistan sending gunboats down the Rhine thus they grant Afghan 'asylum seekers' leave to enter the country. There's no formal extraterritoriality where the British aren't allowed to control immigration - at least what extraterritoriality there is isn't coming from Iraq... It's coming from the EU and various human rights courts. But colonialism from Strasbourg is laughable. If you're a state and you don't like what a court has to say, you can just ignore it. China does it all the time. If Western countries choose, they can just say 'no, we don't want any immigration, close the borders'. They don't face invasion for doing so. The opposition comes from within, from corporate leaders, human rights lawyers, NGOs and the US state department.

When I was in school I was taught that in the past everyone in the country used to be white but now we have postmen and taxi drivers from every part of the world (and that this is a positive development because everyone thinks differently in some non-specific but positive way)... it wasn't that African Union marines had marched in to re-write all our textbooks (the US did this to Japan post WW2). It wasn't the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the Non-Aligned Movement who required us to embrace multiculturalism wholeheartedly. We did it ourselves.

More precisely, the Open Borders Anti-Colonialists did it and ignored any complaints. Around OBACs, watch your backs!

One could say that these decisions were not really made democratically in that internal opposition to high immigration has been consistently ignored in the US and elsewhere:

In the UK, a credible argument for bipartisan duplicity on immigration: https://twitter.com/t848m0/status/1560662923101347840

In the US, it beggars belief that an extremely powerful country is somehow unable to build a border wall or otherwise prevent illegal immigration. California passed Proposition 187 to restrict illegal immigration only for it to be struck down by a judge. Opposition is internal, it is not as though the US's sovereignty is challenged by foreign forces.

Yet this still isn't colonialism IMO. There should be a different word for it.

If Western countries choose, they can just say 'no, we don't want any immigration, close the borders'. They don't face invasion for doing so.

Note what Poland did when Belarus started sending migrants to our border: they were stopped (yes, using also outright illegal methods which was basically ignored*), fence was constructed and Belarus gave up.

Now border looks like this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zh4JyE2THmc

*still not sure what I actually think about this

It's not like Germany is scared of Afghanistan sending gunboats down the Rhine thus they grant Afghan 'asylum seekers' leave to enter the country.

This feels like a Schelling gerrymander to me: you're finding a distinction, any distinction, between 1800s imperialism and 2000s mass immigration, and then claiming that constitutes the morally relevant crux difference when in fact it's an irrelevant difference.

The "bad thing that complainants are mad about" is "losing self-determination in one's homeland". Whether that happens via the application of gunboat diplomacy or not is at most an exacabatory factor. If Britain had signed sphere-of-influence treaties with the Princely States absent coercion, the people in those states would still have been mad then (and would remain mad now) that in 1800s their ancestors had to kowtow to whitey when he walked past.

Most of Malaysian politics these days revolves around Malays being mad that the Chinese - who immigrated legally and without Qing China threatening to invade anyone - keep taking over the economy. The fact that the Chinese got to Kuala Lumpur without any coercian is small comfort to the Malays who occupy the lowest socioeconomic section in their own country.

The Chinese in Malaysia didn't take anything from the Malays. They just created more on their own than the Malays did.

The cause of the disparity is that the Malays are lazy. Or more charitably: their culture doesn't value entrepreneurship and education to the same extent as Chinese culture does. Or maybe something about HBD. I'm not sure what the exact reason is, but I know it's endogenous, because decades of discriminatory policy in favour of Malays has done little to change things. Much like affirmative action and Black Americans.

The Chinese in Malaysia didn't take anything from the Malays.

Well only in the sense that you can't break into a vault and "take" economic hegemony away in a dollar sign bag.

The point is, the Malays used to have it, then the British had it, now the Chinese currently have it, and the Malays want it back. The dissatisfaction of the Malays is not especially path-dependent on HOW the Chinese got it.

The point is that it's not zero-sum. If the Chinese had never come to Malaysia, the Malays wouldn't have been any better off.

Or, indeed, South African policies.

Whether that happens via the application of gunboat diplomacy or not is at most an exacabatory factor. If Britain had signed sphere-of-influence treaties with the Princely States absent coercion,

To an extent this literally did happen to Hyderabad. I mean there was certainly violent coercion, but mostly from the Marathas - a voluntary alliance with the British worked well for them. But unfortunately the alliance led the Nizams to grow weak, and instead of building up an army they started building infrastructure and universities.

Hyderabad didn't lose self rule until it was colonized by India during Operation Polo in 1948.

The "bad thing that complainants are mad about" is "losing self-determination in one's homeland".

But losing self-determination to whom? A mix of 30 different poor countries? I'd say that people today are angry about losing their say in the running of the country to the whims of the elites. The proper frame isn't colonialism vs anti-colonialism but democracy vs tyranny, or populism vs technocracy. More evidence in favour of this is that the problem is perceived to go much deeper than immigration, it's just one issue among many where the elites have acted with arrogant dismissal towards the concerns of the everyday man.

That's all to say that internal vs external loss of control doesn't seem like an arbitrary distinction, but a central one.

More evidence in favour of this is that the problem is perceived to go much deeper than immigration, it's just one issue among many where the elites have acted with arrogant dismissal towards the concerns of the everyday man.

I'd say from my experience with people concerned with migration and also in my own opinion that immigration still stands out as a central issue. Elites acting with arrogant dismissal is a very old and common problem, a nation's ethnic fabric disintegrating under the pressure of low birthrates and immigration is not.

A nation can survive its elites having ideas that are disconnected from the reality on the ground about taxation, energy policy or transport infrastructure. It's probably not going to survive the population that founded it and which, even as it's in steep demographic decline, still staffs a supermajority of all culturally and economically relevant positions being reduced to a minority. The formalism of the state might carry on as an undead skinsuit for a while, but the spirit which sustained is dead.

This feels like a Schelling gerrymander to me: you're finding a distinction, any distinction, between 1800s imperialism and 2000s mass immigration, and then claiming that constitutes the morally relevant crux difference when in fact it's an irrelevant difference.

I was trying not to say the latter of those things. I think what we're dealing with is bad but a different kind of problem to colonialism. It needs different methods to deal with it. If you're fighting colonialism, you're fighting an external power and their local collaborators. In our case, there is no external power (US excepted), only local elites.

This feels like a Schelling gerrymander to me: you're finding a distinction, any distinction, between 1800s imperialism and 2000s mass immigration, and then claiming that constitutes the morally relevant crux difference when in fact it's an irrelevant difference.

On the other hand claiming that situation is the same is also not helpful. I am not convinced by claim that situation is so similar that using the same name is perfectly fine, it seem mostly trying to use "colonialism=bad" meme.

As I understand it, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is that Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space.

What would you define as 'taking it over?' Immigrants today do bring with them their original cultural values and practices and thereby spread them to their new country, and they do wield some power over it, but they do so while willingly becoming subjects of the native authorities and exercise their political power by voting, campaigning and being elected, just as the natives do. This strikes me as quite different from the way settlers went about colonising places in the past. As far as I'm aware, rather than become subjects of the native authorities they instead set up their own and in some cases subjugated the native authorities by force of arms, which modern day immigrants generally don't. I'm not too familiar with what modern people who call themselves anti-colonial think, but I suspect this would be the key difference they would point to between immigration and colonialism. Of course they would also probably dispute the notion that immigrants have or are in the process of subjugating natives and making them second-class citizens.

All that said I would not be surprised if many of these people would object if white people were to move to say, Benin, in large enough numbers they began to significantly change the culture and threatened to outnumber native Beninese within a couple of generations. Perhaps they would even describe such a venture as colonial. So maybe there is some hypocrisy there, but it's not possible to really prove right now as there is no mass immigration of first-worlders to the third-world as far as I know, and for the time being they can point to some fairly solid differences between old-school colonialism and modern mass immigration enabled by open borders.

As far as I'm aware, rather than become subjects of the native authorities they instead set up their own and in some cases subjugated the native authorities by force of arms, which modern day immigrants generally don't.

This is, generally speaking, not a particularly accurate description of colonialism as it actually occurred. It postulates some kind of actual "native" authorities, a condition which the world often did not satisfy.

For example, the British displaced the Mughal empire. The Mughal empire was not native, it was founded by an Uzbek warlord who was in tern descended from Gengis Khan. Insofar as this Uzbek warlord became native, he then expanded his empire into other quite distinct regions.

Whether you attribute Mughal rule to Uzbekistan or Agra, it was still foreign to Bengalis by the time it reached Calcutta.

Mughals were displaced by the Maratha empire in some places, and the British in others. Eventually the British replaced the Maratha everywhere.

From the perspective of someone from Delhi or Calcutta, "native rule" is so far in the past that it's silly to consider the British as removing it. (In contrast someone from Poona can claim to have been ruled by natives - the Maratha - until the British displaced them.)

And in some cases - e.g. the princely states - the British never did what is considered "colonization". For example, the British had a longstanding alliance with the Nizams of Hyderabad. But in 1948 the British were forced to exit and allowed the Princely states to decide what they wanted to do. The Nizam of Hyderabad chose independence, and shortly after that it was invaded by India.

Was Hyderabad colonized by the British?

Isn't much of Indian Hindu-nationalist historiography based on hating the shit out of Mughals, though?

Probably deservedly so, but then also projecting some of that hatred onto contemporary Muslims who don't really deserve any of it.

Mughals - warlords who steal lots of stuff to buy luxury items.

Contemporary Indian Muslims - owner-operators of bakeries and non-veg restaurants.

This seems to be a new definition of colonialism: colonialism is not determined by any actions or properties of the colonizers, but instead by the actions of their descendants?

In any case, the idea of "Indian culture" is meaningless in the 1526-1760 period. The Marathas and the Mughals today fall under the "Indian" umbrella, but at the time most of their empires were foreign subjugation by a distant ruler - it's just that prior to 1948, "foreign" might include Aurangabad or Poona.

It is far from clear to me that the Mughals were better than the British (or worse). Nearly all the research is too politicized to be trustworthy; leftist academics tend to support the pro-Mughal/anti-Britain position and western sources tend to defer to them. By "leftist" I of course mean what English language Indian newspapers describe as "left", i.e. generally aligned with Congress party and opposed to "right wing" Hindu nationalism.

I've seen some esoteric and well disguised academic work suggesting they were dramatically more extractive than others (most notably "Taxation under the Mughals") and the visual artifacts that remain are consistent with this - just compare the opulence of Mughal tombs to those of Maratha or Bengali palaces. The beauty of Taj Mahal and Bibi Ka Maqbara are the product of taxes paid by lacs of poor peasants.

In contrast, think about British artifacts that persist. The biggest of these are Bombay (about 20% of India's GDP) and EIR/some other companies (today known as Indian Railways). In terms of specific structures they are quite visible today - e.g. an iconic train station which tourists refer to as "Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus", various universities, bridges and museums.

At least based on what I can see, the British certainly seemed to have invested more into building India up than the Mughals did. I visited the Taj once in my life. I've taken trains built by the British more times than I can count.

If we're comparing the tyranny of the two empires,

We aren't, we're disputing the definition of "colonialism".

To be fair, positive effects of the British Empire are probably more noticeable now due to the fact that it was much more recent.

Not that much more recent. The British arrived in India about 80 years after the Mughals, 1610 or so. They built factories.

By 1781 they were building schools cause literacy was profitable. In 1837 the postal service was founded. By 1855 India had a telegraph system. The Mughal empire ended in 1857. All throughout this time they were creating new lines of business, for both domestic and foreign consumption - e.g. widespread chai cultivation.

What did the Mughals do during the time period of overlap? Keep in mind that they were far richer and more numerous than the British, particularly early on.

their policies weren't nearly as egregious as the British Raj since their ultimate goal was to improve the condition of India rather than England; the British implemented all sorts of policies to benefit their own country.

If I plot the graphs of "median wealth of native Indians" under the Mughals vs. under the British, which one do you think will have a higher annual growth?

Also: how do you tell the difference between "this policy was for the benefit of Britain" and "this policy was for the benefit of Indian trade, the fact that Britain profited too just proves that trade is non-zero-sum"?

Spain adopting border and trade laws that were drafted in Strasbourg and enrich France, doesn't mean Spain is a colonial possession of France, it means Spain wants the benefits of smooth movement of goods and people from the EU. If it's not egregious when France does it to Spain, why is it egregious when Britain does it to India?

India was ultimately a net drain on the British Empire, though.

There's a popular position that Europe benefitted greatly from colonisation and therefore owes the world. There's a less popular take that colonialism was in many cases a lose-lose proposition just like any other bad economic system, but despite this Europe still thrived due to other factors.

In Ireland's case I think it was a matter of Britain securing a military weak point at great cost (Ireland gained its independence only after it stopped being considered a valid staging ground for an invasion of Britain), and the counterfactual where they both remain Catholic or both convert to Protestantism or achieve good relations some other way is one where both are much wealthier today.

That would make Indian colonialism a double evil: a burden on the English and a scourge on the Indians.

In any case, I don't think the amount of profit derived from India really matters. The actions I listed were still taken to benefit Britain, even if the resulting profit wasn't huge.

Even if there was no profit I think you could just say it was misguided economic policy intended to benefit Britain, like mercentalism was.

The obvious difference between colonialism and immigration (as these two concepts are generally understood by average modern Westerners) is that colonists tend to primarily be interested in exploiting and expropriating a nation's resources (natural and human) for the benefit of the colonist's home country (even if they do temporarily move to the colony in question to run a business, they aren't intending to make it their home, nor do they expect their children to be natives of the colony). Immigrants, even if they do end up changing the culture of the nation they move to, are invested in the success of their new home country, and the value they create stays in that country, modulo a few small cash transfers back to their relatives in their native country.

I expect, however, if you were to bring up any counterfactuals to this way of thinking to your bog-standard progressive, they would fall back on "Who, whom?" (or, as you put it, intersectionality). The mass migration of British people to its colonies (e.g. Australia and the USA before 1776), replacing the native culture with their own? Bad, because it was bad for non-whites. Mass migration of natives of former and current British colonies (e.g. India and Jamaica) to the UK, changing the culture of the UK? Good, because it's good for non-whites. (Also, curry and kebabs are better than steak-and-kidney pie.)

Even without considering the racial aspect of things, a simple rule might be "If a person moves from country A to country B and is immediately wealthier and more powerful than natives of country B, that's colonialism and that's bad. If a person moves from country B to country A and is immediately a member of the poor working classes, that's immigration and that's good."

As a sidebar, one of the things that fans of immigration might need to come to grips with is that the modern world of cheap air travel, global telecommunications and electronic banking makes it much, much easier for immigrants to avoid assimilating into their new country and put down roots there. They can still talk to their friends and family back home every day, travel back home once a year at least, and send them whatever is left of their income after covering their living expenses, invalidating my claim in the first paragraph about immigrants being invested in and benefiting their new country of residence. This is radically different from the immigration of the 1800s that American history textbooks look back upon so favorably.

As a sidebar, one of the things that fans of immigration might need to come to grips with is that the modern world of cheap air travel, global telecommunications and electronic banking makes it much, much easier for immigrants to avoid assimilating into their new country and put down roots there. They can still talk to their friends and family back home every day, travel back home once a year at least, and send them whatever is left of their income after covering their living expenses, invalidating my claim in the first paragraph about immigrants being invested in and benefiting their new country of residence. This is radically different from the immigration of the 1800s that American history textbooks look back upon so favorably.

The second and later generations tend to assimilate much more.

How much / many of the resources must be expropriated?

Pew has data for 2017 https://www.pewresearch.org/global/interactives/remittance-flows-by-country/

It's not insubstantial the remittances from the US are ~ the GDP of a country like Moroco.

Another difference between colonialism and immigration is the massive investment required by colonialism in infrastructure

Railways through Africa

Dams across the Nile

Fleets of ocean greyhounds

Majestic, self-amortizing canals

Plantations of ripening tea

I doubt any of those things were built to benefit the native populations of colonies. They were built to make it easier for the colonists to do whatever business they were there to do.

Is immigration / mass immigration benefiting the countries subjected to it?

Some of the railways, bridges, dams and canals are still on use, now by the native populations. Some of the native populations benefited from the technology and knowledge transfer and have been able to build on the technological foundation colonialism provided. Some not.

colonists tend to primarily be interested in exploiting and expropriating a nation's resources (natural and human) for the benefit of the colonist's home country (even if they do temporarily move to the colony in question to run a business, they aren't intending to make it their home, nor do they expect their children to be natives of the colony). Immigrants, even if they do end up changing the culture of the nation they move to, are invested in the success of their new home country,

This is definitely not true in the case of British colonialism in India (to go with the example of the movie being discussed). They invested massive amounts into India over long periods of time. For example, many iconic buildings were built by the British over hundreds of years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhatrapati_Shivaji_Terminus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Museum,_Kolkata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Paul's_Cathedral,_Kolkata

As another example, consider the fact that the British spent 70+ years turning the 7 islands of Bombay into 1 island, and then built a city that currently has a population bigger than the Netherlands and accounts for about 20% of Indian GDP.

https://indianculture.gov.in/stories/bombay-joining-seven-islands-1668-1838

A third example is India Gate, which memorializes the Indian soldiers killed in WW1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_Gate

Any claim that the British were not invested in the long term success of India is profoundly ahistorical.

Even without considering the racial aspect of things, a simple rule might be "If a person moves from country A to country B and is immediately wealthier and more powerful than natives of country B, that's colonialism and that's bad.

I don't think this captures the mood pushed by the zeitgeist. Indian immigrants to the US today and Jewish immigrants in the post-WW2 era both fall into the "is immediately wealthier and more powerful than natives" bucket.

Re: iconic buildings in India built built by the British: the fact that all the buildings you provided as examples were built in a British/Western architectural style, and the Cathedral being specifically a house of worship for the West's dominant religion rather than that of the natives, kind of diminishes the claim that these are investments in "India".

Let's say that the United States becomes a Chinese colony, and the Chinese build several large buildings in America that look like this. Would you consider that an investment in America, its people and its culture? Or would you consider it a massive "fuck you, we own this place now"?

First of all, the architectural style is Anglo-Indian. It's influenced by the British but with many local adaptations. If these buildings were in London they would look out of place.

In any case, I don't see why it can't be both. Victoria Terminus is a functioning train station that was build for the long term. It's not anything like what gets built by people solely focused on resource extraction - e.g. a logging camp or oil well. It indicates a long term investment in infra and human capital as opposed to simply a desire to snatch and grab.

You're also glossing over a non-trivial chunk of what British Colonialism involved: the idea that it was Britain's duty to educate and improve the places they colonized. Literacy worked for Britain, why not Bengal? If a negro sets foot in London he becomes free, so why is he not equally free in Dahomey? (Note: literal argument used by imperial abolitionists.) And given proper education an Indian can of course become as competent a soldier or administrator as a Britain - it is the duty of the colonialists to provide this opportunity.

That's the ideal, at least. You can read Charles Napier's biography to hear it expounded upon in detail, as well as a bunch of complaints about how it's not being lived up to. The British were not universally as awesome as Napier, of course.

As for the China example, I do not identify as American so perhaps the example is inapt. However, suppose hypothetically that China was a) far more advanced than the US and b) made a long term investment in transmitting some of that advancement to the US (even while imposing a China-style political system). I would consider that an investment, albeit one I perhaps resented or opposed for other reasons.

Note also that this stuff was not necessarily unwelcome to many Indians. Various princely states were closely allied with the British and more progressive ones treated Britain as a source of knowledge; for example, the Nizam of Hyderabad built Osmania University with assistance from the British. It became more British (e.g. language changed from Urdu to English) after India conquered Hyderabad in 1948.

I’m honestly not sure how well the “looks like has significant investments in the country” is necessarily a good barometer for colonialism (or colonial-ish actions) necessarily being Actually A Good Thing. At the very least it’s missing the entire subclass of settler colonialists, who often would be investing in the country even for the natives, if only to assimilate them somehow (in that I mean things like residential schools) rather than exterminate them.

Consider the fourth era of domination in Vietnam; the Ming, after conquering it, expended significant amounts of money to build numerous schools and temples, implanted a bureaucracy based on competitive examination (like for centuries in the north), etc. in the region, all while expropriating much of its wealth and competitive advantages (e.g. precious stones and metals, dyes and paints, local speciality woods and other produce) and talent (many of which were sent to the Ming court - art and artists, too, were sent off) while Vietnamese were banned e.g. from exporting gold, amongst other things. A forced program of sinicization and eradication of local culture also occurred. In the end the Ming fucked off after 20 years having depopulated the region significantly.

I don’t think the Vietnamese look at that era of history with fondness, even if there were a small minority of local city elites that were pretty okay with the administration at the time.

colonialism (or colonial-ish actions) necessarily being Actually A Good Thing.

That's not what we're discussing.

Scroll up a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/221/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/39886?context=8#context

It was proposed that a distinction between colonialism and immigration is immigrants are "are invested in the success of their new home country". But if you take British India as a central example of colonialism, this distinction doesn't actually distinguish.

Fair enough. Lost the context a bit there reading your reply.

India has been having famines since at least as far back as Sanskrit existed. It's in the Purana. There were plenty of famines under the Mughals and other empires too, e.g. this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_famine_of_1630%E2%80%931632

In any case, I am merely disputing the claim that the British were not invested in the long term success of India. They clearly were, and on long timescales. I wish my region had rulers with the effectiveness and foresight of the EIC instead of our current NIMBY with globohomo characteristics.

I am not claiming to have clear econometric proof that the British were better than other empires which might plausibly have ruled India. (Though I am fairly convinced that the Mughals were terrible.) Perhaps India would have been better off had the Marathas or the Bengalis driven the British out and taken over, or perhaps not. I don't know.

It's a bit different for the British Raj in that famines under the Raj were almost always direct consequences of the actions taken by the Raj's government,

"Carts belonging to banjaras (carriers) transporting grain from the more productive regions of Malwa were intercepted and supplies diverted to feed Shah Jahan’s [Mughal Emperor] royal army in Burhanpur, who were fighting territorial wars in the Deccan (southern) provinces." - Peter Mundy, a firsthand observer

Not so different. Here's another, this time caused by a combination of bad years plus Maratha armies devastating all the cropland on their way to Mysore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doji_bara_famine

That's the story of most famines around the world, at least since the early modern period - bad weather combined with bad policies, e.g. looting grain carts and trampling fields.

As for the Mughals, I didn't say they were less "oppressive" and I'm not sure what you mean by that. I said they were terrible.

They are generally accepted to have average tax rates on the poor of approximately 50%. That's a lot of money going into state coffers and significantly exceeded other empires, including the British. Where did the money go? Traveling as a tourist shows us many opulent palaces and tombs built by the Mughals, and history books also tell us of the opulence of their courts. History books also tell us of their many wars.

Put aside the historical romanticism - that's a story of warlords looting a nation, building very little, and spending the proceeds on luxuries for themselves. And it still wasn't enough - Shah Jahan's fundamental problem was that money spent on luxuries for the rulers was growing faster than the economy, and his empire was so corrupt that he couldn't stop it. Slapping a rainbow flag with a brown stripe on top of this - I mean a "we love hindus too" flag - doesn't change it. (Yes, I'm throwing in a western culture war reference since America is waking up soon.)

The British did not have that problem. Their stated goal, which they do seem to have acted on, was to grow the economy of India faster than the fraction they extracted. Kill the thuggees because the hurt trade. The Nizams of Hyderabad, with whom they were closely aligned, felt similarly. Hyderabad became so rich that India eventually conquered them to capture that wealth.

And if you travel to Bombay as a tourist you see this. There is no British palace, but there is a a British train station. It's nice and you don't need to be royalty to use it.

I don't see much evidence the Marathas thought things through at that level - there is certainly no Maratha equivalent of John Stewart Mill writing essays for them - but at the same time their culture did not seem as corrupt as the Mughals.

Jewish immigrants in the post-WW2 era both fall into the "is immediately wealthier and more powerful than natives" bucket

Seems unlikely, given that 1) Jewish immigration post WWII was quite small; 2) most such immigrants were refugees, and hence unlikely to be either wealthy or powerful. And note that this article on Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union post-1960 indicates that, although they were highly educated, they earned less than native whites.

Do you have a citation for your claim?

I could be wrong about Jews specifically. I was mainly inferring from the fact that Jews have, for all of my lifetime, been considerably wealthier than others. It's possible that this only happened to the children of immigrants. I'll take your word for it that my example should be reduced to only cover Indians.

(Or at least Indians are the only easily identifiable group, due to self-identification with the "Hindu" religious grouping in surveys that also include income.)

Also worth checking whether - by this stated standard - immigration is colonialism in basically every country that uses a merit based system (e.g. Canada, Australia).

Yeah, since most Jewish people in the US are the descendants of people who arrived well before WWII, it seems likely that most in your lifetime are indeed not first generation immigrants.

But TBH I don't see how "immigration is colonialism" works at all; as others have pointed out, colonialism involves political domination, esp the supplanting of political elites and the replacement of political systems. That does not describe immigration.

Left wing Americans routinely brag about how immigration will grant them a permanent majority. So basically, the theory is that an alliance between colonialists and domestic factions will result in political domination.

Or, if you are a right wing person and want right wing mood affiliation, take the same facts and attach the words "great replacement".

Is it your belief that a few thousand British managed to conquer India all by themselves? Indians may not be natural warriors but be realistic. (I know it is a bit difficult to square the Maratha empire with contemporary stereotypes of Marathis.) In all cases it is a story of small numbers of British together with considerably larger numbers of locals conquering a different group of locals. From what I understand of colonialism in the Americas, it was pretty similar - Pizarro certainly did not wage a 20 year campaign and conquer Peru all with only 180 people. He aligned himself with the right locals and tipped the balance.

In all cases it is a story of small numbers of British together with considerably larger numbers of locals conquering a different group of locals.

Right, it was outsiders enlisting (or hiring) locals to help the outsiders take over. That is what colonialism is, by definition: outsiders taking over.

Re immigration, you are positing something completely different: Locals enlisting outsiders to allow those ** locals **to gain political advantage. And note that there is nothing inherent in immigration that gives one group of locals an advantage; nothing prevents right wingers from convincing immigrants to vote for them, as Cuban immigrants do, and as Vietnamese immigrants used to. And, as non-Cuban Hispanics used to in larger numbers, until conservatives pursued policies seen as hostile to them.

outsiders enlisting (or hiring) locals to help the outsiders take over.

Re immigration, you are positing something completely different: Locals enlisting outsiders to allow those ** locals **to gain political advantage.

I understand now.

Assumption: non-whites lack agency.

When the Nizam of Hyderabad allies with the British for mutual advantage, this is outsiders enlisting locals since Indians lack agency.

When white American Democrats enlist Mexican immigrants to ally with them for mutual advantage, this is locals enlisting outsiders since Mexicans lack agency.

I don't know what you mean by "taking over". In terms of control over daily life that is demanded, certainly American Democrats and their Mexican allies want far more control over my life than the British ever did. All the British wanted was for my local ruler to send them some tax money, and maybe they'd build roads and schools.

More comments

If you hold that consensual transactions are generally good, whereas non-consensual taking is generally bad, then there needn't be any tension between opposing colonialism and supporting open borders.

As you note, colonialism violates people's individual rights by one group subjugating another against their will, expropriating their rightful property and reducing or eliminating their rights.

An immigrant entering a country need not do any of these things. He can enter into entirely voluntary transactions to obtain housing, employment, etc. These are transactions where everyone involved is happy to participate and ends up better off; no one's rights are violated.

It is also conceivable that a group of immigrants could band together into a political bloc and use their collective political powers to "colonize" the native population and take away their rights. But there is no particular reason why such an outcome is inevitable or likely. Moreover, such an outcome can occur without any immigration, such as if a country's native protestant population banded together to oppress its native Catholic population. The free movement of people across borders does not require the formation of group identities nor does it require any group to oppress any other group.

The free movement of people across borders does not require the formation of group identities...

Every case of significant immigration I'm aware of has resulted in the formation of group identities for the immigrants. Claiming that such formation is not "required" may be technically true, but fails to account for the evidence we actually see.

...nor does it require any group to oppress any other group.

Leaving aside the question of how to define "oppression, It's obvious that mass immigration often results in some level of conflict between natives and immigrants, and that such conflicts can both grow quite severe and be very long-lasting.

And sure, this doesn't have to happen. Similarly, car wrecks don't have to result in significant injuries. Why is this a useful way to address the underlying concern?

Every case of significant immigration I'm aware of has resulted in the formation of group identities for the immigrants

I don't think anyone can dispute that, but then there's the question of whether those group identities are at serious odds with the native one (beyond the small degree of natural friction that seems unavoidable).

supporting open borders.

What level of consent from natives is sufficient for the immigration being consensual ?

51% of the natives ? 66% ? 100% ?

.01% aka the monarch says "I invite ze Germans; this is now consensual?"

As you note, colonialism violates people's individual rights by one group subjugating another against their will, expropriating their rightful property and reducing or eliminating their rights.

Historically a lot of that has occurred but modernly a lot of things that I see criticized by being called "neocolonialism" don't involve nonconsensual transactions per se

I think most of what gets labeled “neocolonialism” is not colonialism and is basically a good thing. Global trade has lifted enormous numbers of people out of extreme poverty in the past few decades.

I agree. But it is the case that there is a loud faction that is strongly opposed to neocolonialism and I think OP makes a good point that this faction mostly overlaps with people who support open borders and that does seem like a bit of a contradiction

One aspect of anti-colonialism is that it takes a dim view of physical resource extraction. Its proponents would argue, even if granting that comparative advantage is efficient, it does not sufficiently benefit the average person whose country is colonized. And further, in practice, foreign powers are exceedingly likely to enable kleptocracies, as the leaders of those types of states are given incentive to prioritize the concerns of foreign imperialists over those of their own countrymen. It’s all top-down. E.g. colonial Britain much preferred that Arabs from the Sahel fill the top ranks of the government in Nigeria, because it is easy to bribe leaders at the top of a comparatively-hierarchical society, than it was to try and influence the comparatively-educated and democratic Igbo.

What would an apt parallel to immigration be, for the above?

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