51–59 of 59 posts
Read the article and read the comments section. For HN the current debate (28 comments) really reflects how charged this topic is. Cancellation of ideas is a topic worth discussing. If we can't discuss it here, a much more rational place than other venues, where can this be meaningfully discussed?
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Was the USSR an "empire" in the imperial sense (genuine question) ? I had thought the revolution was to destroy all that, remove the czar, bring in autocratic states, etc. I feel like there is a distinction here but I can't easily point to it. But they were very anti-empire afaik
It wasn't colonialist , in that the USSR did not expand into overseas areas of nonwhite people, because by that time there weren't any left uncolonized, but it had all the other attributes of a Russian empire over the satellite republics. The liberatory aspects of it collapsed very early on in infighting. Then there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Uni...
That is a peculiar definition of "colonialist".
For instance, the ancient Romans colonized Great Britain, despite the fact that the Romans and the Britons were both "white". The Arabs colonized Spain, despite the fact that the Arabs were "non-white" (by some definitions) and the Spaniards were "white". The Mongols colonized a whole bunch of areas, of pretty much every ethnicity that exists in Eastern Europe and a large swath of Asia. And so on.
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It was successfully cancelled at one publisher, he was just lucky/famous enough to find another. How many people don't get a second chance?
Do you have a right to be published? Free association is also an important liberal right.
I will happily point out that pride in the former empire is exactly what's driving Russian aggression in the Ukraine at this moment.
Isn't it more one specific person's ego, wanting to leave their mark in history before they shuffle off?
Of course it was driven top-down, but I don't see how that has any bearing on anything. The US didn't invade Iraq because there was some kind of grassroots fear of it in particular, and the English didn't get an empire spanning half the world because some blokes down at the local thought it was a swell idea.
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I think this is predicated on the ends justifying the means since the author seems to acknowledge that there are some deeply problematic things with colonialism while simultaneously acknowledging that they should have pride in the results. What should be of no surprise to anyone, anywhere, is that people are deeply unmotivated to ever see the ends in a positive light if they were on the other end of that barrel full…
It has nothing to do with ends vs. means, and I have no idea where you got that from. It is about reaching truth. To give a simple example, the question is "Did the Umayyad caliphate bring new irrigation techniques to Spain? What was the overall balance between harm and benefit they brought to Spain's population?", and not "Do the new irrigation techniques justify their colonization of Spain?" Somehow, we are able to…
Same reason people aren't interested in objectively discussing the 'harms and benefits' the USSR brought to Poland[1].
Because there are people still alive who remember the occupation. A lot of them in fact. And the ones who weren't alive then are dealing with all the direct consequences thereof.
[1] Or of a Russian annexation of Crimea / the rest of Ukraine. Empires look kind of scary and nasty when you're on the receiving end of them.
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It has nothing to do with ends vs. means, and I have no idea where you got that from. It is about reaching truth. To give a simple example, the question is "Did the Umayyad caliphate bring new irrigation techniques to Spain? What was the overall balance between harm and benefit they brought to Spain's population?", and not "Do the new irrigation techniques justify their colonization of Spain?" Somehow, we are able to…
> So why should we look at Britain's empire any differently? Same reason people aren't interested in objectively discussing the 'harms and benefits' the USSR brought to Poland[1]. Because there are people still alive who remember the occupation. A lot of them in fact. And the ones who weren't alive then are dealing with all the direct consequences thereof. [1] Or of a Russian annexation of Crimea / the rest of Ukrain…
Because it's politically useful to demonize their enemies, got it. In any case, if someone openly isn't interested in an objective view of history, then by definition they've confessed to wanting only propaganda.
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An empire is not defined by its internal form of government, but by having a poweful core state that keeps other territories (provinces, colonies, client states) in permanent subservience.
Surely not, an empire has an emperor/empress (an Imperator of some sort).
Because what some ruler calls him- or herself isn't really a useful category.
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Do you have a right to be published? Free association is also an important liberal right.
RTFA. He had a contract, which the publisher asked him to cancel. He wanted a transparent explanation for the reasoning behind the cancellation, and never got one. The correspondence was well considered and polite, but the obvious conclusion is that the publisher caved to the woke mob, and didn't want to admit it.
This is just such a weird perspective.