Not the wisest decision to debate politics with your father-in-law in his house. According to my partner, he would have kicked me out if I wasn’t family.
Basically - very stubborn white man in his 60s. Travelled a lot in the Asia-Pacific for work most of his life.
I’m an Australian-born Chinese and I know NOW that nothing that comes out of my mouth will ever change his mind. I mean, he HAS said before that “China can never be trusted” so I have no idea why I thought I could have a sensible discussion with him.
He believes in the Tibet and HK crap. He believes NATO is a defensive alliance. He believes NATO is not led by the USA.
He believes the USA is not out to get Russia or China. He believes that Russia had no reason to invade Ukraine but that the USA was justified in being upset over Russian weapons in Cuba.
He believes that the USA, with their 800 military bases around the world, is merely “being prepared”, while China is stepping WAY out of line in the South China Sea.
He believes that the 2 main aggressors in the world are Russia and China. He believes the Australian mainstream media is telling the full truth and that independent journalists are crazy conspiracy theorists.
And because I challenged him on all the above, I’m apparently heading down a ‘dangerous’ path. You know the guy who shot tons of Muslims in New Zealand mosques a few years back? He actually used that as warning of how extreme I could become.
I give up. He can continue thinking that the white man is the noble saviour of the world. I’ll bet he strutted around Thailand, Indonesia and PNG feeling real good about himself.
I’ve learned that too many people just don’t have any room in their heads for a differing point of view or fact. They don’t WANT proof of this or that. Their truth gives them comfort. To challenge it would be to question their entire identity and would cause an existential crisis.
That’s why, to these people, the West MUST be the good guys.
The racism is deep-rooted. That’s at the bottom of it all.
Awwwh dude that fucking sucks, my condolences you have a piece of shit FIL like that, mine are the same 😔
I’m full angloid with some Irish conversely so I don’t tend to get the “you’ll become an extremist” line when I kick off about my families backwards views but of course white people can’t be terrorists right? /s
I just get the “western democracy gave you rights!” spiel cos I’m bi and therefore I owe my life to performative and exploitative neoliberal politics and other wacky bs 🙄😮💨😒
The ingrained racism in the Anglo countries is so intense I genuinely can’t ever see these countries stepping out of their conditioning ever. The chauvinism and racist perceptions of others are too strong. I mean the fact that everytime a white person commits terrorism my family will cope away the association says it all.
Fair play for standing your ground though! Gotta take some courage to argue the toss with someone that dogmatic in their views so respect!
My inlaws and parents are both for the most part consumate idiots and enjoyers of british propaganda so any political conversation gets immediately ended once you bring in any evidence to the contrary so I usually get an easy out for the most part bar my partner kicking me in the shins under the table 🤣
A cool thing I heard to potentially make dickheads of people like this is to ask them “what amount of evidence would make you change your mind about this?” And if they say none then you can attack that anti-intellectual thinking first before you go deep into politics and ideology because let’s be real, there’s copious amounts of evidence to disprove imperialist propaganda.
If they wanna try and be smart then they either have to consider your position seriously or (more likely) make twats of themselves proving they are fuelled by racism/chauvinism and not evidence which is also a fun corner to force these people into if you fancy it.
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Yeah you can imagine why I’ve not told them I identify as non-binary given their “considered” take on bisexuality.
I’ve not heard the specific turkey example myself but thats so interesting and very on brand for the west.
Not just sexuality but gender identity and presentation was nearly if not entirely erased in a historical sense by colonialisation if my understanding is correct.
The example I’ve heard is that several native American tribes had more than two gender identities (among thousands of other examples of cultures with this) but some were more trad. It wasn’t some homogeneous view.
However that doesn’t exist anymore due to the genocide by anglos and now you might hear “two spirits” as a concept which according to sources I read is essentially a white washing of lots of different takes on gender by various native American tribes now homogenised into one tag/term because so much of the cultural history and understanding was erased and lost.
I can’t speak how accurate that explanation is so anyone with any knowledge please correct me if I’ve misrepresented something but for the most part our entire understanding of the human experience has being either destroyed, corrupted or exploited by the bourgeoisie class whether through colonialism, judeo-christian religions, imperialism, fascism, capitalism or a blend of all the above.
We’ve had our very existence corrupted by leeches. It should make us beyond angry but that requires education and listening by the capitalist minority holding everyone hostage and their bootlicking apologists.
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Omg I typed out a whole example of Joe America and how his existence has being taken from him and replaced with suffering and nationalistic extremism to a system that does not benefit anyone but the rich but I accidentally deleted it before posting 😭 it was meant to be an example of how even the apparent “greatest country in the world” 🤮 intentionally sends its citizens into squalor but you’ll have to imagine it now hahaha.
I’ve heard exactly that too! I again can’t remember which people for my sins but I have definitely heard that example.
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Damn hearing it from the horses mouth really paints just how in decline America really is. I guess for a brit I never see the nitty gritty outside of propagandised city crime and poverty but hearing how entire towns just evaporated (if im catagorising that correctly) is kinda spooky vs their slow shambles into irrelevancy that takes place in Britain.
Oooo will have a look now!
Edit: damn american steel production just falls off a cliff.
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That clip is just every ‘capitalism vs socialism’ meme but just the capitalist part.
Fingers crossed that this continued decline kick-starts a big movement towards class solidarity and change 💪
The North of England wasn’t the bombastic class war I think people assume. It was essentially the slow erasure of protections and workers rights both by the government and the corruption of the unions by the Labour aristocracy. For the most part I think a lot of it blindsided the working class as they weren’t educated enough to understand and organise themselves generally and relied on the unions who were already stabbing them in the back. We got a whimper vs a bang when people lost their jobs and livelihoods in the North. That combined with the more trained workers sliding into the new middle class through sheer luck also split the lumpen proletariat into pieces leaving everyone angry but lost.
Honestly Europe reminds me a lot of the rest of the world whenever they weren’t subjugated first by the Romans, second by Christian theocratic monarchs and third by America. The genuine average peoples of Europe have had their own cultures killed and sanitized, some for thousands of years.
Ah, I really should’ve gone this route! I think that will be my approach in the future. Thanks mate!
It never occurred to me till someone mentioned it either! Have a good one pal!