This is a small part of anglo colonialism by the anglo tech industry.

Let's not forget, the U.S tech industry was originally developed only for English speakers and treated foreign speakers as an after thought.

• Notice how many sites (like Reddit) demand an account identifier that only uses English letters and numbers.
• How many tech infrastructural (like compilers and editors) programs (for example gcc, git, the linux kernel, and emacs) only have English documentation and allows only English use in identifiers and configuration.

Text Mirror:

What does decolonization of Hawaii, and the US look like? From one Native Hawaiian's perspective (me)

The US military is destroying our islands along with the 12 million tourists under foreign billionaire-owned tourism. Too many Americans are buying up our lands forcing us out by jacking home prices to $1.5 million etc.

But the solution in places like Hawaii, North America is not as simple as everyone who is white or non-indigenous simply leaving.

If the people in Hawaii & North America could repair the inequities with the indigenous people there, respect treaties, allow indigenous and ethnic minorities to exist as equal yet different - the way Vietnam, China have 50+ ethnic minorities who co-exist, allow them to speak languages, don't mass-arrest imjpoverish, etc - then everyone would not need to leave.

If the colonizer-mindset people in Hawaii leave and go to N America, that pushes the problem to Native Americans. If they go to Europe, at least you don't have re-settler colonialism.

When the French colonizers were defeated and kicked out of Vietnam, they were < 5% of the population, had clearly delineated 'us and them' lines, and so decolonization was more straightforward. Most French chose to leave Vietnam, because they were there to extract resources and labor from their 'coolies' and when they couldn't anymore, they went back to Europe.

At the same time, all people of French/white heritage were not required to leave Vietnam after the dismantling of colonial yt supremacist rule.

As an example, my Vietnamese friend Luna Oi has a white American husband in Vietnam, and he is not required to 'go back to America' because he's white. He simply has to follow the rules of Vietnam, its socialist anti-imperialist country, and co-exist peacefully, and it is fine. Vietnam is 98% indigenous.

Bolivia is ~60% identifying as indigenous, with a unique history, but they have had great successes with their indigenous-led socialist plurinational - meaning many language, many peoples, coexisting within one state - in the Western sense.

They do not require the 40% white/non-indigenous identifying people to leave Bolivia and go back to Spain, Europe, US, etc. but over time, they will need to learn to co-exist in actual equality with the indigenous.

The US is 98% identifying non-indigenous, with ~20-30% non-white identifying.

The US is the worlds' largest European settler colony by far with 330 million people, and the worlds' capitalist superpower that dwarfs and puppeteers its parent Europe itself.

The process of undoing colonization, and healing the broken people and ways (including indigenous and non-white people who have had our ways and languages severely harmed by colonization) will not look identifical to either Bolivia or Vietnam, and will be unprecedented in human history - but we can learn from each of these struggles.

Education, listening to the marginalized, indigenous etc. and implementing that education in concrete ways is certainly an important part of the process. Which is why the US is banning CRT, anything that makes white people 'uncomfortable' from schools. Because it would indeed be the undoing of the US over time.

Long story short - it will be a long story and there is no easy shortcut out of it, lol.

If you appreciated this thread, consider helping this Native Hawaiian and family keep doing this educational / decolonizational work with ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/silverspook Or consider becoming a Patreon patron! https://www.patreon.com/neofeud

cross-postowane z: https://lemmy.ml/post/307887

First, a decolonial approach to Russia acknowledges the impressed and marginalized existence of non-Russian nations within RF borders. Acknowledgement is a first step in reckoning with RF for what it is: an empire.

And I don't mean an empire in kind of the postmodern sense, like American blue jeans or the EU acquis or some such, but a polity where political power is massed in and wielded by the titular majority over a multitude of nations dominated over time.

This imperial paradigm is not only a political reality, but a deeper principle reflected in its historiography. Botakoz Kassymbekova and Marlene Laruelle point to a „self-image of sacral martyrdom” on a kind of civilizing mission over non Russian peoples.

Though they may not acknowledge it as such, Russians project deeply imperial views over non-Russian regions, often referring to the historically restive North Caucasus, for example, as its „inner abroad.”

In his Captive and the Gift, NYU anthropologist Bruce Grant traces how Russian cultural and social forces reinforced this idea of Russian self-sacrifice in bringing „civilization” and orders to the „lawless” Caucasus peoples.

The irony here being that in subduing the „wild” Caucasus, Russia encounters, for example, two civilizations with far older histories of statehood and Christianity - Armenia and Georgia.

This irony has uncomfortable parallels to Russia's ongoing „denazification” war against Ukraine, and its denial of its statehood, despite Ukraine's far older history.

Of course, a nation need not be „older” or „younger” to be deserving of affirmation and agency, but it does reveal the poverty and inconsistency of this colonialist approach to non-Russian nations.

Any hope for Russian democracy must confront Russian colonial thinking. Historian Jane Burbank shows us how Russian imperial visions are inseparable from its political project, of which the brutal invasion of Ukraine is a natural extension.

And the same imperial, colonialist perspective that creates daily Buchas, Irpins, and Mariupols in Ukraine murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Chechnya; displaced a quarter million Georgians in the 1990s; engaged in mass atrocities against the Circassians; and etc.

More prosaically, but also importantly, that imperial perspective impedes Russian democracy. The idea that Russia can „skip” over decolonizing towards democracy is like saying the U.S. could have maintained slavery or Jim Crow and still be considered a modern democracy.

Or that the UK could repress and marginalize Ireland indefinitely but be considered liberal and democratic. Or France in North Africa. Belgium in the Congo, etc. Decolonization, in some genuine form, is not just a „nice to have,” but an essential part of a healthy democracy.

What can we do? We can start by acknowledging Russia's violently imperial foundations, as Botakoz Kassymbekova and Erica Marat note in their excellent piece.

This includes, as Susan Smith-Peter eloquently and introspectively considers, „a searching moral inventory to see the ways in which we have taken the Russian state’s point of view as a default.”

This should be considered more broadly beyond the confines of the ivory tower, though how we approach scholarship absolutely matters. How else have we wittingly or unwittingly centered the Russian state, or decentered local perspectives?

How often is reporting on the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Ukraine managed by bureaus in Moscow or St Petersburg? What languages do we prioritize for non-Russian but former Soviet places? Why are non-Russians routinely ignored or cartoonized in media depictions?

And what role do Western policymakers have in all of this? This brings us to Casey Michel's excellent piece on Decolonizing Russia, in which calls for a more robustly decolonial approach in U.S. policy towards Russia.

He says, explicitly and at some length, he does not necessarily call for the breakup of Russia. But we do need to take national movements in Russia seriously, which the U.S. government has not always done (often not, in fact), if nothing else as a truer reflection of Russia.

I'd say that while Russia's dissolution isn't the goal per se, a truly democratic Russia might go in that direction. It also may not, as national minorities in other places have found viable means for national expression in other political forms.

Alexander Etkind notes that this process of dissolution is already happening on its own essentially due to Russian cycles of imperial entropy, regardless of Western policies.

Decolonizing Russia is about (1) recognizing Russia for what it is, an empire, and engaging it as such; (2) speaking to a broader array of the population, and not the one projected by the Kremlin; and (3) preparing for risks that come with unwieldy imperium.

To recap: (1) Russia is an empire; (2) Russia can't be an empire and a democracy; (3) To democratize, Russia must decolonize; (4) Decolonization doesn't necessarily mean dissolution; (5) To promote democracy, West must promote decolonization.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/182366

Dear Lemmy, as you may well be aware, racial hierarchies and colonial empires are doing good in these early 2020s. In particular, in the days of the war in Ukraine, it's important to point out the fascist tendencies at play.

Fascism and racial/cultural hierarchies are on the rise on every continent, from Turkey to Brasil, to China, to France, to India... Fuck all Nations! Destroy all borders, and long live autonomous Communes!

On the Ukraine side of things, there's a bunch of neo-nazis in the army, as well as more traditional nationalists/fascists. It's not exactly a secret, and the former president was very close to these circles:

On the Russian side of things, there's also a bunch of neo-nazis in the army as well as traditional nationalists/fascists. It's not exactly a secret either:

Both governments have long fought against popular movements and anarchist/antifascist networks. Both countries have neo-nazi/fascist militias parading down the streets and beating/killing random people. Just like France or USA have them too.

Don't trust me? Check out the wikipedia page on neo-nazism. Follow their sources and make yourself an opinion. It's very instructive, although very incomplete. I definitely recommend to check out the Racism in Ukraine and Racism in Russia pages, too.

Please remember that when you try to paint one side of a conflict as the good anti-nazi hero. Nazis are fucking everywhere. Fascists and nazis have been running the show in much of the world even after WWII ended. Nazi collaborators were responsible for France's war against the algerian people, and their grandchildren (spiritual or biological) are responsible for today's new repression, wars and genocides.

We need to dismantle nazism and fascism at its root: the nation State and cultural supremacy. Yes, you should be proud of your local culture and land. No, that does not justify diminishing other cultures/lands.

All we exploited/struggling people have to stand in solidarity with other people struggling for freedom and equality across the planet. No border divides us in the international socialist/anarchist movement. We will fight against all Empires for autonomous communities worldwide!

PS: If you need more detailed resources on neo-nazi/neo-fascist/nationalist/traditionalist on the rise in a specific country/region, feel free to ask. There are chances i have some good articles/documentaries, and if not i've got ideas about who to ask.

Some testimonies about ukrainian soldiers doing racial/gender profiling against Indians at the border with Poland. Info seems legit at a first glance, and is a good example of how white supremacy still rules EU borders.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/181760

Some news of anti-war protests/actions internationally, as well as a statement by "Food Not Bombs" Moscow and an interview with anarchist "Committee of Resistance" in Kyev.

I found this gem of an interview that I thought might be worth sharing here, and also since Pan-Africanism seems to get shoved under the rug on Lemmy. This video in particular coming from UK academia was rather intriguing for me as well.

There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India – as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence.

New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik – just published by Columbia University Press – deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.