We all know that anti-communism is at the core of fascism. This short thread proposes an interesting corrolary: much of the anti-Soviet attitude found in formerly socialist Eastern European countries, and ultimately perhaps even the motivation of the significant section of the population that did not stand to gain materially yet still supported the restoration of capitalism and the fracturing of the USSR is resentment at having been excluded from the West’s white supremacist global hegemony. This infatuation with the supposed “superiority” of the West, the internalized inferiority complex and desire to be included among the “white” Europeans as opposer to the “inferior, barbaric asiatics” is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of especially countries like Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics, but also Romania and much of the Balkans.
The author of the thread cites Georgia as an example with which they are personally familiar, and i can only confirm that i have experienced the same attitudes and self-hatred among Romanians.
Would others who have experience with the cultural attitudes of these countries agree with this thesis?
Absolutely. Poland over 1000 years history is literally entirely filled with wanting to become part of the western Europe. And being refused time after time for over 1000 years. Mostly insignificant episodes from the participation in shortlived Otton III realpolitik up to being NATO’s doormat are hailed as civilizational successes. Our entire culture is filled with the inferiority complex to the west and superiority to every other Slavic nation, and i’m not talking about only last 30 years but basically always.
Would you say that the 45 years of socialism made any dent in these racist attitudes or only further inflamed them when the reaction eventually prevailed? And how can this issue be tackled in the future by socialists so that it does not raise its head again? I guess there would have to take place a prolonged struggle akin to a cultural revolution to reckon with this historical cultural baggage and create a new paradigm of national identity for these countries.
I’d suggest, following my other comment, that as soon as capitalism was reintroduced, there was no other future except a white supremacist, racist future.
The next time, the socialists just need to keep power. A cultural revolution of some kind might speed up the process. But the shift in material conditions by which the comfort of ‘white’ people does not rely on the super exploitation of ‘black’ people will do for more than half the struggle.
Mostly yeah. When i analyze what went wrong, even in the revisionist times, i get “more time was needed” very often, since improvement was visible.
I guess it only supressed them, after 1989 everything exploded anew an took updated stronger forms of blind bootlicking usa and rabid russophobia. Though again, both are stronger in media and in upper social stratas than in population.
You can see this play out in many postcolonial contexts including Malaysia as well. Although this is mediated through further contradictions (muslim-majority, claims of nativety/indigeneity, colonisation, large immigrant population).
This can be seen through the discourse surrounding the word Melayu or Malay in Malaysian (and also in Singaporean) society. Malay prior to 19th century referred to all inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago. It wasn’t a distinct racial or ethnic group marker. This came about later with Orientalist historiography in describing the people of southeast Asia.
An example of the complexity of “race” and “ethnicity” is the Peranakans, or Chitty Indians, or even Penang Malays, in which Indian muslims, Orang Asli, and varying ethnolinguistic Chinese groups form a sort of continuum between their respective groups and a “pure” Malay ethnic group.
How this relates to anti-communism generally is the juxtaposition that Communism was an imported ideology from Chinese immigrants and that Chinese people did not belong in the Malay Archipelago (even though the previously mentioned Peranakans had resided in archipelago for centuries if not millenia prior to colonisation). The state apparatus, for all intents and purposes remained a colonial institution even after independence meant that the state had to feign legitimacy through artificially building a unified “Malay” ethnicity in which Islam is their true religion. They (supposedly) represent the true natives against foreign influences.
Thus a narrative was constructed between the supposed indigenous Islamic Malays and the athiestic Communist Chinese. This was a convenient propaganda tool employed by the British during the Malayan Emergency. Any vaguely left-wing party was accused of being the fifth column of the Malaysian state during the Konfrontasi (Confrontation, between Malaysia, and Soekarno’s Indonesia). This is continued in the modern day accusing of marginally left-wing parties (centrist at best) at promoting Communism.
Despite their rhetoric, the ruling classes at independence were thoroughly westernised. In fact our first prime minister was known for drinking whiskey. Meanwhile currently, politicians fight over the selling of alcohol in malay-muslim majority constituencies.
Although the form may change, the content remains the same. They rely on eurocentric Western epistemologies in constructing and understanding Malaysian society. Alatas’ concept of the captive mind applies here. In trying to assert an Islamic Malaysia, Malay-muslim chauvinists fall into religious puritanism and difference that was never ever observed in precolonial feudal Malay society.
And in reality, communism wasn’t an imported ideology. It was brutally surpressed by the British and the newly born Malaysian nation-state. Communism involved numerous ethnic groups including the Malay-Muslims who envisaged an anti-colonial and anti-feudal society that threatened the ruling classes, and even allied themselves with radical Islamic groups, but that history is seemingly long forgotten.
My point is that ketuanan Melayu, or Malay supremacy, had inexplicably Western origins, and even if not, was fueled by colonisation and had a symbiotic relationship with white supremacy. The ruling classes at that time were primarily English educated, after all.
Anti-communism is inherently racialised, wherever you go.
Thank you for taking the time to write this! It’s great to learn more about a part of the world that Western leftists, including myself, generally know quite little about. These are the kinds of comments i look forward to reading most of all.
Good points. And if you then consider that capitalism is and always has been racial capitalism, bingo—you get to the material roots of white supremacy and of anti-(‘eastern’)communism.
Now for some double negatives: It’s impossible not to be anti-communist and not white supremacist. Or: anti-communists of any stripe must by definition be white supremacist and racist. This includes all liberals, without fail, although they will deny it.
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I wasn’t able to find where this group is funded by the EU, but it’s stances, it’s actions, and it’s existence despite running counter to the interests of the region, certainly imply this to be likely. Their ideological position of Russia’s SMO being an imperial war, as well as their gap in their line of action (agitate, agitate again, mobilize) which completely lacks both educate and organize infer they rely upon an outside leadership and that is what their preparations are orientated towards, not the lies they assert. This lady is indeed a contributor to this group as admitted on the link you provided. A simple analysis of this group as well as her Twitter (specifically what she and her org she links in her profile retweet) will hint at this to being the case, and the link provided by Hmmmm does the remainder.
Now a new question arises; what does the west gain from revising Soviet history to be viewed in terms of white envy? And I believe simply writing out what the actual behaviors are here is enough to transform this question into a rhetorical one. Explicitly though, It’s an ahistorical attempt at social teraformation (reformatting social conversation, culture, education) so as to make the post-Soviet space more susceptible to western propaganda and thus control. But this will fail, as that link even demonstrates (paraphrasing)“we cannot gain a foothold in several sectors due to ideological differences”. This is far more than ideological differences, but I won’t elaborate at this time.
This doesn’t mean that this social tendency is new, or that this group was responsible for planting this idea, nor that the west now is responsible for it as opposed to their ancestors, or even this being an objective organic development centuries ago. This is just to say that this person and her organizations are using this sentiment, this idea, to benefit the west. It’s origins (as hinted by comrades in other comments) escape this particular comment of which I am replying to, but I just wanted to address this so as to not be misunderstood in terms of the scope of my comment.
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Agreed, It’s quite a weird song they are singing
A Twitter link was detected in your post. Here are links to the same location on Nitter, which is a Twitter frontend that protects your privacy.
