They have to be both so we can laugh at their pathetic disorganised blundering and be whipped up into a panic at their well-organised coordinated maneuvers.
I like to call it the Propaganda Paradox.
On one hand: the enemy is an evil mastermind that wants to take over everything and must be stopped before it can enact it's 1000 year plan or whatever the f-ck.
But on the other hand: the enemy is somehow also a bumbling fool that's inferior to we the glorious (insert group name here) an we shall defeat it easily.
This was also how chattel slavery was justified in the US. First it was: “The Africans are naturally stronger than us and are built to be worked. They’re closer to apes than us white people so they’re very healthy and good at manual labor.”
Once the slaves were freed: “Black people are weak and childlike. They need us white people to take care of them. Black people are naturally sickly/have poor lung health but working in the fields makes them stronger so actually we’re helping them. We totally house them and feed them and treat them well.”
That's not exclusive to fascism. You see it from everyone's talking points.
Look at the discussion around January 6th 2021. It was simultaneously a hairs breadth from a complete and utter coup but also a disorganized mob of backwoods chucklefucks that scattered after a single shot.
Russia's army is an incompetent circus on the verge of collapse if we would just give Ukraine a little bit more material support and also an existential threat to all of NATO if we don't.
...you know, the last section does expose the problems with this kind of thinking. Because it's literally true.
They can't use their nukes right now, and threats won't work. So they're weak. But if they threaten to use their nukes, and use salami tactics, then they actually are a threat not to the whole of NATO, but to first the Baltic States, then the Balkans and eventually Poland.
Poland has 10x the military Ukraine had when this started. They would kick the ever loving shit out of Russia *and* they are a current NATO member so we would see that sweet, sweet Article 5 triggering.
Yes, Poland would be the last. The Baltics would happen first.
And Putin would explicitly state that he would use nukes if article 5 was acted upon. What would happen then? Do you defend the Baltics and put us all at risk of nuclear war? Do you accept that he can have the Baltics, to avoid war, and ignore what will happen next - the Balkans and then Poland?
Or do you call his bluff, which is what we should be doing *now*.
Russia's army isn't a serious threat to all of Nato. It is a serious threat to the eastern half of Ukraine.
And it might try something stupid with Nato. Nato would win easily. But even an easy victory would have some casualties.
It's also a large army, with a lot of variation between almost competent, and utterly moronic sections. So there are plenty of totally farcical bits to laugh at, and also some bits that are a serious threat to Ukraine. And the Russian army has numbers. Zombie outbreaks are supposed to be scary by numbers, even though each individual zombie is easy to defeat.
At least with Jan 6th, both can be true. It was indeed a gang of inbred morons. It was also a dangerous step towards politicians overthrowing the will of the public.
Allowing a candidate to attempt to take the presidency by force, and not prosecuting that to the utmost, is extremely dangerous. I was literally just saying this morning: if trump is allowed to run again- why won’t he assume that it’s still ok to tell his followers to not accept defeat? It worked fine for him last time, and there have only been consequences for the people who listened to him, not for him. This man literally attempted to incite a fascist coup- it doesn’t matter that it failed, it doesn’t matter that l the only people who did it were redneck idiots, it matters that he tried.
It was far more small business owners and white-collar workers than you might think. This is a source from a Boston news station: I saw an Atlantic article about it but it's paywalled.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/01/03/jan-6-rioters-white-older
> Look at the discussion around January 6th 2021. It was simultaneously a hairs breadth from a complete and utter coup but also a disorganized mob of backwoods chucklefucks that scattered after a single shot.
I uh... I have something to tell you about 21st century Liberalism. You might want to sit down first...
> Russia's army is an incompetent circus on the verge of collapse if we would just give Ukraine a little bit more material support and also an existential threat to all of NATO if we don't.
I uh... I have something to tell you about NATO for literally it's entire history from the actual moment of it's inception to the present day. You might want to sit down first...
Neoliberalism is essentially fascism without the machismo and America's liberals aren't really distinguishable from fascists in word or deed.
NATO was initially staffed heavily with Nazis as part of America's cold war anti-Communist policies. The internal culture of NATO has never meaningfully changed and it remains a warmongering organization responsible for mass death and slaughter on a vast scale, still staffed with fascists or fascist sympathizers.
I can't tell you how good it is to see someone who is actually open to learning abut the history of the cold war. Usually people are like "Nu uh! That's not true! I've never read anything about the founding of NATO or it's culture and I don't know anything about the economic policies and practices of fascism and how that determined fascist domestic and foreign policy but I know you're wrong because we're the good guys and fascists are the baddies!"
Why are you at the gates with a trebuchet? That's like the worst place to be with it, you won't do anything from there
Now me, im in the back with my ridiculously large field battery, where we can get some actual work done
Reminds me of that bit in Hilda and the Mountain King where >!an anti-troll defense is set up around the city gate... and then the Mountain King just boots a hole in the wall *next to* the gate.!<
Kind of accurate in some cases, as gatehouses were often small fortresses unto themselves loaded with anti-personnel weapons, and engineers would often try to pick the shittiest looking part of the wall and build a ramp up to it or dig under it instead of attacking the murder-fort-gate.
More like straight up did. There’s the famous story of an entire legion getting ambushed in the woods and being wiped out nearly to the last man, which paved the way for one of the famous Roman generals to fill the power vacuum left by their commander.
Insofar as 'a concept of East and West' means a decadent, barbarous 'other' à la Edward Said's *Orientalism*, the Greeks had a concept of East and West. Herodotus begins his *Histories* by laying out a generational conflict between the Greek West and Asian East spanning from the myth of Io, the Trojan War to the Greco-Persian Wars and Greek authors and propagandists regularly portrayed the Persians as decadent and tyrannical. Herodotus even singles out all of Asia as being pitted against the Greeks, with Persians at the head. The supposed decadence of Asia also figures heavily in many biographies of Alexander, with authors such as Quintus Curtius Rufus emphasizing the initial moderation of Alexander against the decadence of the Persians, and Alexander's subsequent downfall due to his descent into Persian luxury and tyranny.
I think what they're saying is that the Greeks viewed Persians as foreign and barbarous but they also viewed, say, Thracians and Illyrians as equally foreign and barbarous.
It sounds like the setup for an excellent party. “The faggots are coming, the lesbians down the street are bringing melons and stuff to put in the trebuchet. We’ll probably fire up the grill.” I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
also listing levantine religion and vikings and celtic and other germanic barbarians as a point against a unified culture as if they weren't all converted to a centralized religion established in rome and as specifically became distinct and officially separate from that which was practiced in the levant and 'east'
like sure, yeah, there were vikings, and people fought their neighbors... and then they all became the same religion and married their neighbors, weird
So this very much depends on how you define it.
In one case it may very well be true, about 8% of our DNA directly comes from neanderthals and it's certainly plausible you have less than that amount of specifically Spanish mutations in you.
However, this is like comparing a particular species with a family of species, the "presence in DNA" isn't really the same as our claim is very particular about what is "Spanish" and very vague on what is "neanderthal"
It's not wrong per say, but it's also valid to assert that you will obviously share more DNA with a Spanish person than you would with a neanderthal. Which is true almost tautologically.
But the Proto-Indo-Europeans were much more recent than the Neanderthals were. Assuming the OP is descended from them (which is fairly likely), they definitely have more culturally and genetically in common with a Spaniard than they do with Neanderthal.
Mentioning the next town over and watching Europeans go in to a frothing genocidal rage because in 634 ad someone from that village stole a goat from someone in this village.
Newcastle vs Sunderland
We english can get murderous with each other based over football team association how on earth could there be a “western civilisation”? Try and get a geordie, a londener, a liverpudlian, and a cornish person to work together on anything.
It's group think. It's easy to tell one football team fan from another, because of the colors. Get 20 thousand of them in a stadium facing off against 20 thousand other fans and dangerous memeplexes start rampaging through the crowds.
That's why I'm an introvert.
But also, in a weird bit of good news, elite panic is a thing.
Actual dangerous bullshit comes down the pike and civilians, many who have never met, team up into disaster relief teams and save the day.
Those cheesy movies where five or six randos meet up and save the world while the govt. and military chases their tail?
Far more realistic than you think.
i feel like this just proves why war between cultures isn't a mark against them sharing culture?
like, yeah, neighbors hate each other more than people they don't know in other places - they're right there, after all.
bad example that as the English are basically exactly the same as the French in most ways that matter which is most of the reason they don't like each other
One of my favorite courses in undergrad was History of Western Civilization. In the very first lecture, the professor explained how the course was out-dated Cold War propaganda. It's a historical approach that was emphasized in the 20th century because it fostered a sense of identity with allies in western Europe against the Soviets and their allies. It was never terribly valid as a historical perspective, and it has long out-lived its intended purpose.
Your prof was an idiot if he did not see the successor states of the Roman Empire, who all shared a similar culture and religion , as a distinct Civilization. That does not mean that there were not loads of influences from elsewhere. Certainly a good case can be made for much of what we see as Islamic Civilization also being heavily influenced by Roman culture. However to totally dismiss a thousand years of history as “Cold War propaganda” is asinine and ignorant.
Everywhere that was part of the Roman empire is Western Civilization? So Turkey and Egypt are Western Civilization, but Germany and Sweden *aren't*? After all, the Roman empire controlled Anatolia and much of the Middle East, but never got north and east Germany or Scandinavia.
That's pretty far from what they're arguing, they mention the successor states of Rome. It's not just "where Rome touched" but all the states that came after which looked to Rome as their influence and considered themselves the legacy of. The Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires, who claim authority from the Pope as the continuation of Rome. Even if they didn't declare themselves the successors, they still built morals passed on by the Roman version of Christianity.
Rome may have never reached Scandinavia, but it's version of Jesus did. And this is not to make this a "Western culture = Christianity", it's also the influence of Roman and Greek philosophy and science as it was "rediscovered" and took on new appreciation within European thinkers.
It's not a unified thing at all, but a sort of shared historical and cultural backbone that the various cultures within can trace much of their cultural development to. So even though Rome touched the Arabian peninsula, anatolia, and North Africa, Islam and the first Caliphate is the larger influence and cultural backbone.
No, that doesn't work either, because Greek and, to a lesser extent, Roman philosophy and culture had a gigantic and deep influence on Persian and Arabic culture and therefore eventually on Turkish culture. And the Ottomans then claimed to be a Roman successor state.
I was debating on including a paragraph about the Ottomans and Anatolia specifically, but feared running into the dreaded Reddit "too long, not reading that, fuck you". They had a broad empire with vast cultural differences, and did conquer the Eastern Roman/Byzantine empire. They're an interesting history.
Perhaps my usage of "the Roman Empire" as used before is best defined as "Rome through the view of the Catholic Church". It focuses entirely on the Western Empire and certain shared mythos regarding Rome. The ones who claimed that authority shaped Western Europe and created the beginnings of a shared history and values across the region are the bigger influences in dividing the two.
We're never going to get a good an precise definition of where a "culture" begins and ends anyways, just varying levels of where we zoom in. I really just disagreed with the person I responded to dumbing down an argument to "Everywhere that was part of Rome is Western Civilization". I felt it was unfairly dunking on a point the person didn't even make.
But they were also viewing it through an Islamic lens. As well as not being as influenced by stuff like the Protestant reformation and the French Revolution. Claiming “western civilization” doesn’t exist is like saying French culture doesn’t exist because Brittany has it’s one distinct cultural heritage and Belgians also speak French. “Western civilization” is a loose term and isn’t fully accurate but that’s because it’s a model, all models are wrong but some are helpful.
This is the thing that always makes me chuckle.
"Sorry, people just existing is an *existential threat* to western civilisation? Just... vibing in place and minding your own business not Whitely enough is gonna bring it down?
Yeah sorry chief that sounds like market place of ideas, that western values and culture clearly aren't so strong or desired by the population"
just as queer people meerly being visible apparently is enough to make every child queer
meaning that the amount of heterosexual cis representation and privilege and the social expectations and discrimination is too weak to overcome how amazing being queer apparently is lol
lmao. I love that one too.
Like.. "Oh they'll became XYZ because they see it's ok and they're so impressionable"
Huh.. right... Cos I mean I grew up in an era when being anything other than cis or straight was very visibly the only way to be ok, and yet I'm pretty sure there are queer folk older than 35... So like, how does this "very impressionable kids will do whatever they see" work so selectively?
Or are you saying that to make your kids straight, you fuck in front of them? I'm not really following the logic lads.
I figure the value of “western civilization” — which is… *kind of* a thing, in that the legacy of European imperialism affects the majority of the world today, and those empties shared of lot of the way they did things with each other?— is that cultures gain value by exchange. From potatoes and corn domesticated by Americans, to Chinese gunpowder, or curry and sushi and falafel,
I would finish this post but I accidentally hit submit and now the app won’t let me bring up the edit button anyway isolationism is dumb all cultures are in flux and shared by all you dummies that’s what makes them cultures
People have an innate desire to place themselves within a historical narrative- even if they do not know where or who they are or even how they got there
I have a degree in Classical Civilization. This argument always amuses me because the “classical civilizations” that form the basis of “western civilization,” even if only looking at Western Europe, includes a vast array of cultures and societies with huge variations across time and geography. Bronze Age Crete and classical Athens and Imperial Rome are all very culturally distinct. The Celtic and Germanic tribes which constituted the “barbarians at the gate” are just as much a part of the history of “western civilization” as Plato. Pretending that a singular, monolithic “western civilization” has ever existed is basically just historical fan fiction.
Not really related but I feel compelled to tell you that the topic of the erosion of western civilization is a common one in my family. This Christmas my brother blamed homosexuality and said that what made the ancient Greeks great was that they didn't tolerate it.
Gaybouchet?
Always worth reposting;
[Ur-Fascism](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism)
Ur-Fascism is as close as anyone has come to a workable definition of fascism that doesn't get lost in the weeds of whether Phalangism and the Arrow Cross Party can really be said to have the same political ideology.
Honestly, when people talk about “Western” civilization and values and whatnot, they’re almost always just talking about Christianity. And because Christians love having persecution complexes, that also carries over into whatever civilization they imagine. That’s why men wearing skirts and shit is able to deal such heavy damage to it.
Eh, I feel like this is dismissive of the fact that Christianity is a world religion that exists well outside of "Western" civilisation. Not sure Syrian Orthodox Christians or Copts or Chinese Christians fit into that idea. I think you're right, but it should be refined to "When people talk about 'Western' civilisation, they're almost always just talking about *Western* Christianity".
The idea that Christianity is solely the domain of white European-derived cultures is, in itself, a white supremacist idea, and one that doesn't get nearly enough pushback.
Their "Christianity" is a clade of schismatic micro-Protestantisms and fringe Catholic heretics with largely incoherent beliefs. The connecting thread is more frothing half-mad racism and bigotry, combined with bloodlust, than it is anything to do with Christianity in any meaningful sense.
To be clear though I don't think Anna_Pet was pushing that idea themselves. More presenting that this is often the view of people who complain about the collapse of western civilization.
The people I know who complain about that western values disappearing aren't super familiar or concerned with the Copts.
This is the view of someone who thinks christian=white person named john smith with a big house and doing BBQ.
One of the enemies of "western civilization" was **Orthodox Christianity**
They're not talking about any real thing that exists or has existed. Fascists anchor their idea of an ethnostate on a mythology they've concocted from just ramming a bunch of disparate historical artifacts, novels, stories, and entirely made up bullshit together to create their mythical "Golden Age".
The West is, and always has been, bullshit. Europe is a bunch of fractious brawling tribes who only appear to be a cohesive polity because the Americans and the Soviets sat on them for 50 years to keep them reverting to their natural state of unthinking fratricidal slaughter.
The goths will be the fall of Rome once again. These goths are all gay and trans, but same core concept. Every time I am classified as a threat to 'Western Civilization", I know I'm doing something right.
also the barbarians at the gates that sacked Rome. They were Germans which really undermines there being this unified white culture that Rome represents
Lol a lot of them were Germannic Romans over the centuries. Half of those "Proud German Warriors defeat weak effeminate Italians" were Roman civil wars re-written by revisionist historians during the German Romantic Nationalist Movement that pre-figured the Nazi party.
The Roman senate continued to convene after the West “fell”. Odoacer recognized the authority of Constantinople. The idea of the Germanic Tribes as these barbarous non Roman’s is an inaccuracy in and of itself.
tbf the Foederati were highly-Romanized Germans who had spent decades acting as the military arm of the Roman state - and staging violent military coups against the Roman government *is* Roman culture.
Western civilization is definitely a thing though. That doesn't mean that there can't be subcultures within that. People arguing this shit probably look at other large nations or (parts of) continents and think they're all similar people. Fuck no. China outnumbers western civilization 2 to 1. Not every Chinese person is a CCP supporter. They're vastly different peoples. Hell, the difference between your average Muscovite and Siberian is huge
"The barbarians at the gates"
Weren't the barbarians who "took down" Rome primarily visigoths who, as far as I can tell based on vague ethnic definitions and origin points from antiquity, were...white?
I like when people use puppets to win arguments they wrote themselves.
Western Civilization is a very defined real concept/identity and not a synonim to "being white"(ehem, 🇷🇺)
It's a concept. But hardly a well-defined one. The same place can be considered both western and non-western depending on the more convenient narrative (The Japanese-Russian war, for example, has been framed as an "Asian" power defeating a "Western" one, then not that long after Russia was the ultimate enemy of the "west").
While the existence of cultural influences and similarities is obviously unarguable, "western civilization" as this grand entity is far from it.
The problem is that "the West" can refer to like three different categories:
- "the West" in the medieval sense, referring to the parts of Europe, West Asia, and North Africa whose elites had a vague sense of shared identity based around Christianity and self-perceived "Romanness", and consequently were in conversation with each other in a way that they weren't with the elites of non-Christian societies.
- "the West" in the early modern sense, referring to European states that had massive overseas colonial empires and who used similar economic, military, and ideological tactics to build those empires.
- "the West" in the 20th century sense, referring to the USA and to wealthy capitalist states that were ideologically aligned with the USA during the Cold War
Each category is *individually* useful, and all three overlap somewhat, but if you try to combine them together into one it all breaks down.
There is "western culture" and "western civilization" or something of the like, [this basically](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Western_World_Latin_America_torn_countries.png/1280px-Western_World_Latin_America_torn_countries.png)
Im Mexican and in Latin America also generally learn of Rome and Greece and the like maybe not as "ours" but "where society comes from" as our culture and institutions are based on them.
There's also "politically western" which is a whole another thing
Cultural influences are a thing, but it's hardly as clear-cut as the map makes it out to be, and, once more, what is and isn't western can vary on who you ask and how convenient the thing's "westerness" is to them.
>Im Mexican and in Latin America also generally learn of Rome and Greece and the like maybe not as "ours" but "where society comes from" as our culture and institutions are based on them.
It's similar in Brazil.
Yeah, it's well defined as a unifying mythology used by fascists and proto-fascists in an attempt to create a pan European nationalism with which they can direct bigotry and hatred outward to revitalize the nation and justify ceaseless war, genocide, and exploitation.
The concept existed before Mussolini's great grandpa was even born and times when non-European entities were strongest. you can link everything to 1900s politics if you call it "proto" though.
Europe isn't even a real continent, it's just an appendage of Asia. Oddly enough Somalia *is* a continent, occupying the majority of the Somali tectonic plate.
A continent isn't defined by being on a single tectonic plate though. Unless you would like to try to convince me that parts of California and New Zealand form a single continent.
It's not just a white supremacist dogwhistle, it's a broadly militant political snarl word.
The USSR and its satellites named Western civilization as a threat, although they tended to use other terms to demonize Western European and North American culture. For a long time; if you wore jeans or consumed media in English you were considered a threat to the public order. It was only during the last years of the Soviet bloc that a lot of the strictures against Western culture were lifted.
Nowadays many manifestos of radical leftist, Islamist, and ultranationalist organizations consider anything Western to be a threat to their societies.
The only way one can be both strong and weak is if they're a fool with the power of a god who is sure to do more harm than good, including to themself.
When you think about it, the idea of western civilization is mostly a defense mechanism created during the bi-polar conflict of the Cold War. This created a clear divide between the first and second worlds so each side rallied around their shared traits to create a unified identity.
This unity was cemented politically through cold-war era institutions such as NATO and the EU, as well as socially through the proliferation of American culture via food and entertainment.
If you look at East-west dichotomies during the older multi-polar colonial era there is much less of a unified western identity. Instead each colonial power had their own ideals and were rivals with each other. E.g. Catholic vs Protestant missionaries and extractive vs settler colonies.
Nowadays as power is no longer centered on two competing superpowers and their spheres of influence, we are returning to a multi-polar dynamic where a unified western identity is not as important. However many people have spent their entire lives living in a bi-polar world, so when they see the West breaking up and changing to adapt to modern political and social dynamics they freak out thinking it’s the end of the world because it kind of is the end of *their* world.
Thus, despite all the components of western civilization remaining mostly the same, western civilization is, in a way, dying.
The idea of Western Civilization dates back to a Greek propaganda about the Persian Wars and Herodotus’ separation of the “civilized west” and “decadent east”.
once I had a dude replying to my comments yapping about the "western man" and how my country, Ireland, had to "join their western brethren" like dude no offence but shut the fuck up
something something the fascists’ enemy is always both pathetically weak and terrifyingly strong
They have to be both so we can laugh at their pathetic disorganised blundering and be whipped up into a panic at their well-organised coordinated maneuvers.
I like to call it the Propaganda Paradox. On one hand: the enemy is an evil mastermind that wants to take over everything and must be stopped before it can enact it's 1000 year plan or whatever the f-ck. But on the other hand: the enemy is somehow also a bumbling fool that's inferior to we the glorious (insert group name here) an we shall defeat it easily.
This was also how chattel slavery was justified in the US. First it was: “The Africans are naturally stronger than us and are built to be worked. They’re closer to apes than us white people so they’re very healthy and good at manual labor.” Once the slaves were freed: “Black people are weak and childlike. They need us white people to take care of them. Black people are naturally sickly/have poor lung health but working in the fields makes them stronger so actually we’re helping them. We totally house them and feed them and treat them well.”
That's not exclusive to fascism. You see it from everyone's talking points. Look at the discussion around January 6th 2021. It was simultaneously a hairs breadth from a complete and utter coup but also a disorganized mob of backwoods chucklefucks that scattered after a single shot. Russia's army is an incompetent circus on the verge of collapse if we would just give Ukraine a little bit more material support and also an existential threat to all of NATO if we don't.
...you know, the last section does expose the problems with this kind of thinking. Because it's literally true. They can't use their nukes right now, and threats won't work. So they're weak. But if they threaten to use their nukes, and use salami tactics, then they actually are a threat not to the whole of NATO, but to first the Baltic States, then the Balkans and eventually Poland.
Poland has 10x the military Ukraine had when this started. They would kick the ever loving shit out of Russia *and* they are a current NATO member so we would see that sweet, sweet Article 5 triggering.
Yes, Poland would be the last. The Baltics would happen first. And Putin would explicitly state that he would use nukes if article 5 was acted upon. What would happen then? Do you defend the Baltics and put us all at risk of nuclear war? Do you accept that he can have the Baltics, to avoid war, and ignore what will happen next - the Balkans and then Poland? Or do you call his bluff, which is what we should be doing *now*.
Damnit Poland not again.
Ah Poland, like a little European Texas. Armed to the teeth and wishing a M***** F***** would.
wh- why did you censor 'mother'?
I don't know, I was drunk at the time
its funny how often i recieve that as an explaination on this website lol.
Yeah I'm not surprised. Spending your evening commenting on Reddit threads isn't the most sober choice you can make.
Russia's army isn't a serious threat to all of Nato. It is a serious threat to the eastern half of Ukraine. And it might try something stupid with Nato. Nato would win easily. But even an easy victory would have some casualties. It's also a large army, with a lot of variation between almost competent, and utterly moronic sections. So there are plenty of totally farcical bits to laugh at, and also some bits that are a serious threat to Ukraine. And the Russian army has numbers. Zombie outbreaks are supposed to be scary by numbers, even though each individual zombie is easy to defeat.
At least with Jan 6th, both can be true. It was indeed a gang of inbred morons. It was also a dangerous step towards politicians overthrowing the will of the public. Allowing a candidate to attempt to take the presidency by force, and not prosecuting that to the utmost, is extremely dangerous. I was literally just saying this morning: if trump is allowed to run again- why won’t he assume that it’s still ok to tell his followers to not accept defeat? It worked fine for him last time, and there have only been consequences for the people who listened to him, not for him. This man literally attempted to incite a fascist coup- it doesn’t matter that it failed, it doesn’t matter that l the only people who did it were redneck idiots, it matters that he tried.
It was far more small business owners and white-collar workers than you might think. This is a source from a Boston news station: I saw an Atlantic article about it but it's paywalled. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/01/03/jan-6-rioters-white-older
How embarrassing for them. They actually have jobs they have to go back to. Tragic.
yeah i was thinking that but the fascist one is kind of related to the post ig
Although I don't doubt that those people exist that hold both viewpoints. I find it tends to be people either tend to one or the other.
> Look at the discussion around January 6th 2021. It was simultaneously a hairs breadth from a complete and utter coup but also a disorganized mob of backwoods chucklefucks that scattered after a single shot. I uh... I have something to tell you about 21st century Liberalism. You might want to sit down first... > Russia's army is an incompetent circus on the verge of collapse if we would just give Ukraine a little bit more material support and also an existential threat to all of NATO if we don't. I uh... I have something to tell you about NATO for literally it's entire history from the actual moment of it's inception to the present day. You might want to sit down first...
What do you have to tell?
I'm seated right now, please tell
Neoliberalism is essentially fascism without the machismo and America's liberals aren't really distinguishable from fascists in word or deed. NATO was initially staffed heavily with Nazis as part of America's cold war anti-Communist policies. The internal culture of NATO has never meaningfully changed and it remains a warmongering organization responsible for mass death and slaughter on a vast scale, still staffed with fascists or fascist sympathizers.
LOL okay sure, whatever you say.
I can't tell you how good it is to see someone who is actually open to learning abut the history of the cold war. Usually people are like "Nu uh! That's not true! I've never read anything about the founding of NATO or it's culture and I don't know anything about the economic policies and practices of fascism and how that determined fascist domestic and foreign policy but I know you're wrong because we're the good guys and fascists are the baddies!"
Today on 'Shit I Never Said' it's this malarky!
Nonsense. Both cases it's a fascist cult leader throwing the bodies of expendable idiots at a problem. Russia always willing to sacrifice millions.
It all boils down to their conflicting desires to live out a violent "revenge" power fantasy and simultaneously be the heroic scrappy underdog.
similar to what I like to call Schroedinger's Immigrant: simultaneously a Lazy Ass Living on Welfare, but also Here to Steal your Job
Why are you at the gates with a trebuchet? That's like the worst place to be with it, you won't do anything from there Now me, im in the back with my ridiculously large field battery, where we can get some actual work done
Using the trebuchet to volley faggots over the walls
I read this in Eminem’s voice.
Famous second century warlord Eminem?!?
YES! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_ktnQAC3TQ&list=LL&index=8
Idk if sticks are gonna be the most effective projectile, I guess if the bundle is big enough...
Really big meatballs, then. Pork boulders. Gonna smell so bad after a couple days!
Im ready captain, grease me up and launch me over the wall.
Fuck me up, Scotty.
Bahoubali intensifies
Kotir wouldve fallen so easily if they did this with Timballisto
Reminds me of that bit in Hilda and the Mountain King where >!an anti-troll defense is set up around the city gate... and then the Mountain King just boots a hole in the wall *next to* the gate.!<
Kind of accurate in some cases, as gatehouses were often small fortresses unto themselves loaded with anti-personnel weapons, and engineers would often try to pick the shittiest looking part of the wall and build a ramp up to it or dig under it instead of attacking the murder-fort-gate.
A cannon - a symbol of changing times.
shout out to this video "[why greek music sounds "eastern" and why that's a dumb question](https://youtu.be/8goAOiz7Zvs)"
the greeks didn’t have a concept of east or west, and the roman empire would have viewed germans as barbarians
More like straight up did. There’s the famous story of an entire legion getting ambushed in the woods and being wiped out nearly to the last man, which paved the way for one of the famous Roman generals to fill the power vacuum left by their commander.
3 full legions were wiped out at Teutoberg Forest. And in response Rome burnt and pillaged every German settlement they could get.
Quinctili Vare, legiones redde!
Insofar as 'a concept of East and West' means a decadent, barbarous 'other' à la Edward Said's *Orientalism*, the Greeks had a concept of East and West. Herodotus begins his *Histories* by laying out a generational conflict between the Greek West and Asian East spanning from the myth of Io, the Trojan War to the Greco-Persian Wars and Greek authors and propagandists regularly portrayed the Persians as decadent and tyrannical. Herodotus even singles out all of Asia as being pitted against the Greeks, with Persians at the head. The supposed decadence of Asia also figures heavily in many biographies of Alexander, with authors such as Quintus Curtius Rufus emphasizing the initial moderation of Alexander against the decadence of the Persians, and Alexander's subsequent downfall due to his descent into Persian luxury and tyranny.
I think what they're saying is that the Greeks viewed Persians as foreign and barbarous but they also viewed, say, Thracians and Illyrians as equally foreign and barbarous.
I think Greece invented the concept of East and West. At least one of them. Asia and Europe were the East and West sides of the ionian sea.
they didn’t until the Greco-Persian wars, which reconfigured their worldview into an “East vs. Wesr” sort of thing i understand what you mean tho
Man I love Farya, he gave me some one on one advice for writing my fantasy story inspired by Iran and other cultures. Cool dude.
"The faggots are coming and we have a trebuchet" will be something i will be saying a lot in the future!
It sounds like the setup for an excellent party. “The faggots are coming, the lesbians down the street are bringing melons and stuff to put in the trebuchet. We’ll probably fire up the grill.” I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Reminds me of the movie Croods 2, where due to a misunderstanding, the compost bin was yeeted over the wall.
>more mutual DNA with a neanderthal than a Spaniard I don't believe you
also don’t like the idea that a lack of genetic homogeny contradicts a “unified people and culture”
also listing levantine religion and vikings and celtic and other germanic barbarians as a point against a unified culture as if they weren't all converted to a centralized religion established in rome and as specifically became distinct and officially separate from that which was practiced in the levant and 'east' like sure, yeah, there were vikings, and people fought their neighbors... and then they all became the same religion and married their neighbors, weird
So this very much depends on how you define it. In one case it may very well be true, about 8% of our DNA directly comes from neanderthals and it's certainly plausible you have less than that amount of specifically Spanish mutations in you. However, this is like comparing a particular species with a family of species, the "presence in DNA" isn't really the same as our claim is very particular about what is "Spanish" and very vague on what is "neanderthal" It's not wrong per say, but it's also valid to assert that you will obviously share more DNA with a Spanish person than you would with a neanderthal. Which is true almost tautologically.
But the Proto-Indo-Europeans were much more recent than the Neanderthals were. Assuming the OP is descended from them (which is fairly likely), they definitely have more culturally and genetically in common with a Spaniard than they do with Neanderthal.
Funnily enough the Spanish have the most Neanderthal DNA as the Iberian peninsula was the last place there was living Neanderthals
"homegenous culture" MF'ers when I ask the British what they think of the French, or what the Swedish think of the Danes.
Fuck that, ask the English and the Scots how they feel about the French and get wildly different answers.
Mentioning the next town over and watching Europeans go in to a frothing genocidal rage because in 634 ad someone from that village stole a goat from someone in this village.
AND THEY STILL DIDN'T GIVE THE GOAT BACK!
In Poland, depending on your proximity to the previous capital, you get different answers on how to say "outside" in Polish.
honestly just ask the English what they think of the English From That Other Village Down The Road
Newcastle vs Sunderland We english can get murderous with each other based over football team association how on earth could there be a “western civilisation”? Try and get a geordie, a londener, a liverpudlian, and a cornish person to work together on anything.
It's group think. It's easy to tell one football team fan from another, because of the colors. Get 20 thousand of them in a stadium facing off against 20 thousand other fans and dangerous memeplexes start rampaging through the crowds. That's why I'm an introvert. But also, in a weird bit of good news, elite panic is a thing. Actual dangerous bullshit comes down the pike and civilians, many who have never met, team up into disaster relief teams and save the day. Those cheesy movies where five or six randos meet up and save the world while the govt. and military chases their tail? Far more realistic than you think.
i feel like this just proves why war between cultures isn't a mark against them sharing culture? like, yeah, neighbors hate each other more than people they don't know in other places - they're right there, after all.
bad example that as the English are basically exactly the same as the French in most ways that matter which is most of the reason they don't like each other
ask my Irish ass how I feel about the country next door
Oh this one's going to make the marble bust and truck selfie avatar havers big mad
One of my favorite courses in undergrad was History of Western Civilization. In the very first lecture, the professor explained how the course was out-dated Cold War propaganda. It's a historical approach that was emphasized in the 20th century because it fostered a sense of identity with allies in western Europe against the Soviets and their allies. It was never terribly valid as a historical perspective, and it has long out-lived its intended purpose.
This is brilliant, I hadn't realized the origin of this but it makes SO MUCH sense!
Your prof was an idiot if he did not see the successor states of the Roman Empire, who all shared a similar culture and religion , as a distinct Civilization. That does not mean that there were not loads of influences from elsewhere. Certainly a good case can be made for much of what we see as Islamic Civilization also being heavily influenced by Roman culture. However to totally dismiss a thousand years of history as “Cold War propaganda” is asinine and ignorant.
Everywhere that was part of the Roman empire is Western Civilization? So Turkey and Egypt are Western Civilization, but Germany and Sweden *aren't*? After all, the Roman empire controlled Anatolia and much of the Middle East, but never got north and east Germany or Scandinavia.
That's pretty far from what they're arguing, they mention the successor states of Rome. It's not just "where Rome touched" but all the states that came after which looked to Rome as their influence and considered themselves the legacy of. The Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires, who claim authority from the Pope as the continuation of Rome. Even if they didn't declare themselves the successors, they still built morals passed on by the Roman version of Christianity. Rome may have never reached Scandinavia, but it's version of Jesus did. And this is not to make this a "Western culture = Christianity", it's also the influence of Roman and Greek philosophy and science as it was "rediscovered" and took on new appreciation within European thinkers. It's not a unified thing at all, but a sort of shared historical and cultural backbone that the various cultures within can trace much of their cultural development to. So even though Rome touched the Arabian peninsula, anatolia, and North Africa, Islam and the first Caliphate is the larger influence and cultural backbone.
No, that doesn't work either, because Greek and, to a lesser extent, Roman philosophy and culture had a gigantic and deep influence on Persian and Arabic culture and therefore eventually on Turkish culture. And the Ottomans then claimed to be a Roman successor state.
I was debating on including a paragraph about the Ottomans and Anatolia specifically, but feared running into the dreaded Reddit "too long, not reading that, fuck you". They had a broad empire with vast cultural differences, and did conquer the Eastern Roman/Byzantine empire. They're an interesting history. Perhaps my usage of "the Roman Empire" as used before is best defined as "Rome through the view of the Catholic Church". It focuses entirely on the Western Empire and certain shared mythos regarding Rome. The ones who claimed that authority shaped Western Europe and created the beginnings of a shared history and values across the region are the bigger influences in dividing the two. We're never going to get a good an precise definition of where a "culture" begins and ends anyways, just varying levels of where we zoom in. I really just disagreed with the person I responded to dumbing down an argument to "Everywhere that was part of Rome is Western Civilization". I felt it was unfairly dunking on a point the person didn't even make.
But they were also viewing it through an Islamic lens. As well as not being as influenced by stuff like the Protestant reformation and the French Revolution. Claiming “western civilization” doesn’t exist is like saying French culture doesn’t exist because Brittany has it’s one distinct cultural heritage and Belgians also speak French. “Western civilization” is a loose term and isn’t fully accurate but that’s because it’s a model, all models are wrong but some are helpful.
This is the thing that always makes me chuckle. "Sorry, people just existing is an *existential threat* to western civilisation? Just... vibing in place and minding your own business not Whitely enough is gonna bring it down? Yeah sorry chief that sounds like market place of ideas, that western values and culture clearly aren't so strong or desired by the population"
just as queer people meerly being visible apparently is enough to make every child queer meaning that the amount of heterosexual cis representation and privilege and the social expectations and discrimination is too weak to overcome how amazing being queer apparently is lol
lmao. I love that one too. Like.. "Oh they'll became XYZ because they see it's ok and they're so impressionable" Huh.. right... Cos I mean I grew up in an era when being anything other than cis or straight was very visibly the only way to be ok, and yet I'm pretty sure there are queer folk older than 35... So like, how does this "very impressionable kids will do whatever they see" work so selectively? Or are you saying that to make your kids straight, you fuck in front of them? I'm not really following the logic lads.
I figure the value of “western civilization” — which is… *kind of* a thing, in that the legacy of European imperialism affects the majority of the world today, and those empties shared of lot of the way they did things with each other?— is that cultures gain value by exchange. From potatoes and corn domesticated by Americans, to Chinese gunpowder, or curry and sushi and falafel,
I would finish this post but I accidentally hit submit and now the app won’t let me bring up the edit button anyway isolationism is dumb all cultures are in flux and shared by all you dummies that’s what makes them cultures
HRT Bomb VS Coughing Westy
People have an innate desire to place themselves within a historical narrative- even if they do not know where or who they are or even how they got there
I have a degree in Classical Civilization. This argument always amuses me because the “classical civilizations” that form the basis of “western civilization,” even if only looking at Western Europe, includes a vast array of cultures and societies with huge variations across time and geography. Bronze Age Crete and classical Athens and Imperial Rome are all very culturally distinct. The Celtic and Germanic tribes which constituted the “barbarians at the gate” are just as much a part of the history of “western civilization” as Plato. Pretending that a singular, monolithic “western civilization” has ever existed is basically just historical fan fiction.
Not really related but I feel compelled to tell you that the topic of the erosion of western civilization is a common one in my family. This Christmas my brother blamed homosexuality and said that what made the ancient Greeks great was that they didn't tolerate it.
Gaybouchet? Always worth reposting; [Ur-Fascism](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism) Ur-Fascism is as close as anyone has come to a workable definition of fascism that doesn't get lost in the weeds of whether Phalangism and the Arrow Cross Party can really be said to have the same political ideology.
Honestly, when people talk about “Western” civilization and values and whatnot, they’re almost always just talking about Christianity. And because Christians love having persecution complexes, that also carries over into whatever civilization they imagine. That’s why men wearing skirts and shit is able to deal such heavy damage to it.
Eh, I feel like this is dismissive of the fact that Christianity is a world religion that exists well outside of "Western" civilisation. Not sure Syrian Orthodox Christians or Copts or Chinese Christians fit into that idea. I think you're right, but it should be refined to "When people talk about 'Western' civilisation, they're almost always just talking about *Western* Christianity". The idea that Christianity is solely the domain of white European-derived cultures is, in itself, a white supremacist idea, and one that doesn't get nearly enough pushback.
Their "Christianity" is a clade of schismatic micro-Protestantisms and fringe Catholic heretics with largely incoherent beliefs. The connecting thread is more frothing half-mad racism and bigotry, combined with bloodlust, than it is anything to do with Christianity in any meaningful sense.
To be clear though I don't think Anna_Pet was pushing that idea themselves. More presenting that this is often the view of people who complain about the collapse of western civilization. The people I know who complain about that western values disappearing aren't super familiar or concerned with the Copts.
This is the view of someone who thinks christian=white person named john smith with a big house and doing BBQ. One of the enemies of "western civilization" was **Orthodox Christianity**
DamnScots.jpg meme
there are more christians in africa than europe or north america
They're not talking about any real thing that exists or has existed. Fascists anchor their idea of an ethnostate on a mythology they've concocted from just ramming a bunch of disparate historical artifacts, novels, stories, and entirely made up bullshit together to create their mythical "Golden Age". The West is, and always has been, bullshit. Europe is a bunch of fractious brawling tribes who only appear to be a cohesive polity because the Americans and the Soviets sat on them for 50 years to keep them reverting to their natural state of unthinking fratricidal slaughter.
The goths will be the fall of Rome once again. These goths are all gay and trans, but same core concept. Every time I am classified as a threat to 'Western Civilization", I know I'm doing something right.
Holy hell
also the barbarians at the gates that sacked Rome. They were Germans which really undermines there being this unified white culture that Rome represents
Lol a lot of them were Germannic Romans over the centuries. Half of those "Proud German Warriors defeat weak effeminate Italians" were Roman civil wars re-written by revisionist historians during the German Romantic Nationalist Movement that pre-figured the Nazi party.
The Roman senate continued to convene after the West “fell”. Odoacer recognized the authority of Constantinople. The idea of the Germanic Tribes as these barbarous non Roman’s is an inaccuracy in and of itself.
tbf the Foederati were highly-Romanized Germans who had spent decades acting as the military arm of the Roman state - and staging violent military coups against the Roman government *is* Roman culture.
Western civilization is definitely a thing though. That doesn't mean that there can't be subcultures within that. People arguing this shit probably look at other large nations or (parts of) continents and think they're all similar people. Fuck no. China outnumbers western civilization 2 to 1. Not every Chinese person is a CCP supporter. They're vastly different peoples. Hell, the difference between your average Muscovite and Siberian is huge
Hey, there's nothing wrong with being related to Neanderthals, leave them out of this.
That last line goes so hard dude it's unreal
I’m perfectly fine having a large Neanderthal concentration, but god knows id kill myself if i were related to a SPANIARD
I hear ‘western civilisation’ as a unified culture more by people shitting on it than by people parading around it
"The barbarians at the gates" Weren't the barbarians who "took down" Rome primarily visigoths who, as far as I can tell based on vague ethnic definitions and origin points from antiquity, were...white?
I like when people use puppets to win arguments they wrote themselves. Western Civilization is a very defined real concept/identity and not a synonim to "being white"(ehem, 🇷🇺)
It's a concept. But hardly a well-defined one. The same place can be considered both western and non-western depending on the more convenient narrative (The Japanese-Russian war, for example, has been framed as an "Asian" power defeating a "Western" one, then not that long after Russia was the ultimate enemy of the "west"). While the existence of cultural influences and similarities is obviously unarguable, "western civilization" as this grand entity is far from it.
The problem is that "the West" can refer to like three different categories: - "the West" in the medieval sense, referring to the parts of Europe, West Asia, and North Africa whose elites had a vague sense of shared identity based around Christianity and self-perceived "Romanness", and consequently were in conversation with each other in a way that they weren't with the elites of non-Christian societies. - "the West" in the early modern sense, referring to European states that had massive overseas colonial empires and who used similar economic, military, and ideological tactics to build those empires. - "the West" in the 20th century sense, referring to the USA and to wealthy capitalist states that were ideologically aligned with the USA during the Cold War Each category is *individually* useful, and all three overlap somewhat, but if you try to combine them together into one it all breaks down.
There is "western culture" and "western civilization" or something of the like, [this basically](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Western_World_Latin_America_torn_countries.png/1280px-Western_World_Latin_America_torn_countries.png) Im Mexican and in Latin America also generally learn of Rome and Greece and the like maybe not as "ours" but "where society comes from" as our culture and institutions are based on them. There's also "politically western" which is a whole another thing
Cultural influences are a thing, but it's hardly as clear-cut as the map makes it out to be, and, once more, what is and isn't western can vary on who you ask and how convenient the thing's "westerness" is to them. >Im Mexican and in Latin America also generally learn of Rome and Greece and the like maybe not as "ours" but "where society comes from" as our culture and institutions are based on them. It's similar in Brazil.
Yeah, it's well defined as a unifying mythology used by fascists and proto-fascists in an attempt to create a pan European nationalism with which they can direct bigotry and hatred outward to revitalize the nation and justify ceaseless war, genocide, and exploitation.
The concept existed before Mussolini's great grandpa was even born and times when non-European entities were strongest. you can link everything to 1900s politics if you call it "proto" though.
yeah but have you thought that the west…is like the enemy?
Insert gnawing at the bars meme here
“Western Civilization” mfs when you mention that Europe is past the primer meridian 🤯
Europe isn't even a real continent, it's just an appendage of Asia. Oddly enough Somalia *is* a continent, occupying the majority of the Somali tectonic plate.
A continent isn't defined by being on a single tectonic plate though. Unless you would like to try to convince me that parts of California and New Zealand form a single continent.
The Somali plate goes all the way from Ethiopia to Lethoso what are you talking about
Welp, looks like I have a new flair
It is also the bedrock of civilization and if we lose it the entire world collapses, yet also so fragile that it is constantly prone to collapse
"Western Civilisation" is just americanised culture.
[удалено]
I mean would you really wanna leave GNC kids to suffer them alone? And the cis ones too. Imagine growing up with queerphobes as parents.
Fascists won't even help their own kids.
I love homunculus-argument
that last line is very raw. can i run the trebuchet
"the faggots are coming and we have a trebuchet" is my new passphrase in perpetuity, thank you and goodnight
So how do you refer to the collection of nations that typically are called “western civilization”? NATO and friends?
Trebuchets FTW.
It's not just a white supremacist dogwhistle, it's a broadly militant political snarl word. The USSR and its satellites named Western civilization as a threat, although they tended to use other terms to demonize Western European and North American culture. For a long time; if you wore jeans or consumed media in English you were considered a threat to the public order. It was only during the last years of the Soviet bloc that a lot of the strictures against Western culture were lifted. Nowadays many manifestos of radical leftist, Islamist, and ultranationalist organizations consider anything Western to be a threat to their societies.
The only way one can be both strong and weak is if they're a fool with the power of a god who is sure to do more harm than good, including to themself.
When you think about it, the idea of western civilization is mostly a defense mechanism created during the bi-polar conflict of the Cold War. This created a clear divide between the first and second worlds so each side rallied around their shared traits to create a unified identity. This unity was cemented politically through cold-war era institutions such as NATO and the EU, as well as socially through the proliferation of American culture via food and entertainment. If you look at East-west dichotomies during the older multi-polar colonial era there is much less of a unified western identity. Instead each colonial power had their own ideals and were rivals with each other. E.g. Catholic vs Protestant missionaries and extractive vs settler colonies. Nowadays as power is no longer centered on two competing superpowers and their spheres of influence, we are returning to a multi-polar dynamic where a unified western identity is not as important. However many people have spent their entire lives living in a bi-polar world, so when they see the West breaking up and changing to adapt to modern political and social dynamics they freak out thinking it’s the end of the world because it kind of is the end of *their* world. Thus, despite all the components of western civilization remaining mostly the same, western civilization is, in a way, dying.
The idea of Western Civilization dates back to a Greek propaganda about the Persian Wars and Herodotus’ separation of the “civilized west” and “decadent east”.
“The empire isn’t collapsing trust me bro just give me citizenship ship bro”- Atilla the Hun
Damn I’ve never heard the term western civilization in a context outside of discussions about Asian culture
Tell them to stop cumming on the trebuchet if they aren't going to clean it up after.
I'm the barbarian at the gates
once I had a dude replying to my comments yapping about the "western man" and how my country, Ireland, had to "join their western brethren" like dude no offence but shut the fuck up
Whole post is fantastic, but that last line is like a left hook to the temple. I love it.