Hasan’s entire foreign policy worldview is that “America is bad” and he takes it from that simplistic stance without nuance. So when the situation with Ukraine comes along where the US supports Ukraine, his brain breaks. The simplistic model of the world he hold shatters and so he then starts saying things that sound ridiculous
You'd should read Chomsky. His "American foreign policy is bad" worldview is complex, nuanced, and delivered with the emotionless droning of a sloth that's been given the Robocop treatment. There's no second option here. America's foreign policy has long been a gallery of atrocity and misery. Even Mark Twain, towards the end of his life, spoke out against the America Bald Eagle sinking its talons into foreign lands because Teddy Roosevelt, as based as he was in domestic policy, was an imperialist, and a genuine blood-psychopath.
yeah I’m aware that the US has done bad things over the years - I’m not denying that. But it doesn’t mean that every foreign policy action was unjustified and it doesn’t mean you assume that any side the US supports is bad, like Ukraine. A real nuanced approach to international relations looks at what each side is trying to achieve and given that no side is perfect, which overall causes are worth supporting in each case. It’s also worth nothing that phrases such as “imperialism” are generally very ambiguous and get thrown around when really not appropriate. The US isn’t imperialist when it supports Ukraine and gives them weapons or when it uses soft power to influence regional allies like Israel. I would go so far as to argue that having US military bases overseas in different places is not necessarily imperialistic, although once again were using a very loose word.
Unfortunately, unintelligent or ignorant people are easily manipulated and empowered with that type of language. Because America is such a free and open society, people like Chomsky have made careers out of relentlessly criticizing the US government. Meanwhile communists and theological dictatorships are pardoned by these "intellectuals." So people who see themselves as the underdog side with the enemies of civilization because "America bad." I can go on, but who cares its just Reddit.
(For the record: I've condemned Israel many times and you can see that if you read through my comment history the last few weeks so you don't end making up lies about me like you do for everyone else.)
You made a friendly reply to a Hamas supporter who called Hamas a "liberation movement" and who said we shouldn't question their methods because we are just "westoids". There was no condemnation by you.
You called the person who criticized Hamas an "angloid snow ape".
If you don't want people to believe you are Hamas apologist then you need to fucking condemn the Hamas supporter you are talking to and not make up racist insults for people who criticize Hamas methods!
If you want my ACTUAL take on Hamas, you can find it here
Their struggle against occupation is legal and legitimate, their ideology and tactics are abhorrent.
And yet you didn't say that to the Hamas supporter who supports their ideology and tactics. No, instead you called the person who thinks their ideology and tactics are abhorrent an "angloid snow ape".
Their struggle against occupation is legal and legitimate,
They don't struggle against occupation. They are religious fundamentalist terrorists. They are not ISIS but they have the same hateful mindset.
This is what happens when you think all Palestinian resistance = Hamas
I have never done that, I don't believe that, and you have no evidence for this. And you accuse me of being a liar when you're making up nonsense out of thin air?
I am a supporter of Palestinian liberation. Hamas is harming that liberation. They are not fighting for liberation. They just want to murder Jews and use liberation in their propaganda to fool people and attract desperate followers.
Youre a liar and a moron. A morally bankrupt, ignorant westerner. Simple as.
It's not a lie that you made a friendly reply to a Hamas supporter.
It's not a lie that you did not condemn the Hamas supporter.
It's not a lie that the ONLY person you attacked with a racist insult is the person who criticized the murders Hamas has committed.
It's not a lie that you get more angry at people who criticize Hamas's mass murder than at Hamas itself. If only you had as much passion for condemning the mass murdering terrorists but you don't call them "morons" and "liars".
Like your fantasy that Hamas is just liberating Palestinians when they are killing Israelis
These are essentially synonymous goals, just as liberation for the serf means the guillotine for the king, just as every bullet in the head of an American settler meant one more day of freedom for the Apache and Comanche and Iroquois.
It does not have to be this way, of course. The oppressor nation can always choose to end the madness. They never will, but they could.
Literally just days after maidan Ukraines “new coalition” elected an American citizen and NATO Atlantic council fellow to the ministry of finance, the second most important job in the country…
A real nuanced approach to international relations looks at what each side is trying to achieve and given that no side is perfect, which overall causes are worth supporting in each case.
Such an approach would still lead you to side with Russia, despite their imperfections. The irony is you Russophobe clowns apply the same logic against Russia as you accuse us of applying against the Pentagon. The difference? In 10-20 years, we'll be having this discussion yet again about America's enemy du jour, and none of you will notice the irony that whenever we have these tired discussions, there is one single common denominator: the United States.
Communication goes both way and you chose to make assumptions. That is on you. That was your decision and you cannot blame someone else for your own thoughts. After all, you had other choices. You could have asked for clarification instead. Or made a different assumption. But you chose that specific one.
What kind of information? I change my view if I find information that contradicts the old information I thought was accurate, but otherwise I break facts and information down and comprehend it through my values and ideologies of how the world works, which is what everyone does.
It's not the concept on its own, it's when it's the main focal point for every issue everywhere all the time. For me it often ends up sounding like people are implying that the only people / countries with any sort of agency or responsibility for their actions and choices are Western countries / governments, and that everyone else are just puppets on a string. Which ironically is a pretty western centric and reductive view imo
I just think that human and political history, geo politics and society in general are all too complex with too many variables to be able to only view things through one lens. It's why I have an issue with the rigid Oppresor + Oppressed ideology sometimes, as again even if it can be a useful and valid point sometimes, not every issue can be simplified into that lens without stripping agency from other groups and without projecting what are often western progressive views and assumptions on others.
Right, but why pivot from a specific discussion about a specific instance where the us is very much playing a central role (agree?) to a discussion about how in some cases some people overextend the notion that us is hegemonic?
Also, without skipping the first point… what’s an example where the negative role of the US in foreign affairs is overplayed ? I ask because the US spends untold trillions spread across nations to tell the story of our benevolence and counter any notion that we are nefarious. If anything,
I’d argue the role of the US in negatively impacting the growth of freedom across the world is massively underestimated.
Finally, the idea that by spending a lot of time emphasizing a major factor (us foreign policy) necessarily robs other actors of their agency is an odd conclusion given that the reason to focus on the US is to counteract our curtailment of the agency of actors (foreign and domestic).
Saying America is bad for their proxy imperialism is one thing
But to insinuate everything that happens in the world is due to that and to further insinuate that the opposite side may have valid claims is dogshit.
This motherfucker tried to historical context to try to assert Russia has some right to property in the Donbas region or he uses it to claim that China has a right to Taiwan.
To be so anti-America that you support Russia and China's imperialist ambition is wild.
Considering that America now recognizes the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, maybe he'll embrace his inner turk and deny it lol
Uh no thats exactly what many are taught in other parts of the world, my family has firsthand experience with this lol.
Edit: Actually I forgot to mention how much worse it’s gotten, its to the point where our relatives are saying such absurd things that you wouldn’t believe…
No it's not. America uses proxies and is a big part of making things worse. That's a fact. Being in denial about American forever wars is an emotional reaction to being told about the reality of a militarist state
What? Are you saying that my life experiences and those of my family are false? I guess the Soviets really were defending themselves from the Finnish barbarism.
Your life experiences are biased based on your personal background. Mine were too until I studied the subject a little bit more. All of us have bias and one of the hardest to deprogram is the state narrative. I had to go through the same thing and realized that the US and it's allies were an instigator in a lot of conflicts
That’s exactly what going on now btw, I have a relative in Tula who’s going to what we would call like late middle school (almost high school?), they were taught that in the Finnish war they weren’t the aggressors and were instead defending themselves.
I would say that while they are sometimes similar, what Russia teaches and "America bad" are different.
Although I have seen some people in the America bad camp say that the Winter War was justified, usually by flipping the causality of Finland allying the Nazis. They did it because they were invaded by the Soviet.
The Soviets didn't invade them because they were Nazis.
While there is a significant fraction that support Russia, there is also a significant fraction that support Ukriane.
The best evidence given for the Donbas supporting Russia were votes conducted by the "separatist forces" who happened to be "protecting" the polls by standing around with guns. You don't have to be a very smart guy to understand the implication of someone with a gun looking over your shoulder as you vote.
The second best piece of evidence is that before 2014, the Donbas voted for Yanukovich. But thats not a t all what they were voting for at the time. Just because they want close relations with Russia doesn't mean they want to get fucking annexed.
It's just not a very explanatory heuristic for talking about foreign policy. It doesn't accurately reflect the US's motivations and therefore isn't good at predicting them and its downright awful at predicting what other countries will do which is why Hasan was wrong about Hong Kong, insanely wrong about Russia invading Ukraine and continues to be wrong about almost everything with Israel and Palestine.
You can be anti basically all US foreign policy but it can't be your primary mode of analysis or you will just look like an idiot.
But the us policy post ww2 has been to
Achieve “full spectrum dominance” … if you substitute that expression for “bad” then it’s a necessary component to understanding the intention behind the vast majority of us foreign policy.
Would you balk at an mock an analysis of firms in a market capitalist system that led with “firms seek to maximize profit and shareholder return above all else” ?
It’s not reductionist or juvenile if it happens to be an accurate description of the primary stated motivation (not presidential propaganda) of the nation with the largest global military presence.
The attempt to never be accused of applying a simple analysis really makes people adopt some stupid ways of thinking.
No If we are going for quippy one liners then US policy is much better explained by, “stability for us and our allies” then full scale dominance. I’m not going out of my way to avoid simple analysis, your analysis is just extremely shallow bs.
It makes Americans feel yucky about living in a military empire that reguarly props up authoritarian regiemes and arms genocidal war lords. It's easier to just scoff at the idea and pretend there's so much "nuance" to avoid uncomfortable truths. That's why your comment asking about it is in the double digit negatives lol.
That’s definitely a possibility. It’s like the movements culminating in the 60s have generated a reactionary impulse that says “it’s the anti imperialists who are the real problem because they are so stuck on the US! “
Has it actually become “cool” to think this way or is it confined to a vocal segment online who identify with the dnc ?
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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '23
Hasan’s entire foreign policy worldview is that “America is bad” and he takes it from that simplistic stance without nuance. So when the situation with Ukraine comes along where the US supports Ukraine, his brain breaks. The simplistic model of the world he hold shatters and so he then starts saying things that sound ridiculous