This past week a post was made by autismdragon criticizing a Spanish meme calling out those who hypocritically denounce reformism and social democracy/democratic socialism in the United States or Europe but are ardent supporters of Latin American reformism and social democracy. within this post I and several Latin American comrades criticized this position from my our perspectives as abandoning revolution and being conciliatory to capitalists and capitalism in our countries. during this conversation I offhandedly mentioned that Honduras is also a western nation, a belief commonly held here, much to the chagrin of the general userbase who found the concept of any Latin American country being western preposterous. A comrade from Brazil, Apolonio, decided to make a separate post to expand on this topic in more detail and help explain the Latin American position so that people can understand where we are coming from. I was banned for 3 days for being a white supremacist for believing my country is western and Apolonio was bullied off the platform and went on to delete their account and every message they have ever made. its within this hostile atmosphere that I am going to analyze the oppositional view and its origins and analyze the chauvinistic attitude toward the predominant Latin American perspective.
1. The Beliefs Of The Userbase
User Dirt_Possum says
The way I’ve always thought of it is that “Western” is just an informal way of saying Imperial Core. That it’s all a matter of who is doing imperialism to whom, who is benefiting from imperialism and who is being exploited by it. That it’s not a matter of culture, language, etc., and is only a matter of race and racism because it’s racist reasoning and racist justification at the heart of imperialism
and SeventyTwoTrillion says
“Western” and “imperial core” are synonymous to me, too, and thus Honduras is not in the imperial core and I assume is in the periphery
while sooper_dooper_roofer adds
This whole debate is pointless because “Western” is just another weasel word, a euphemism, a dogwhistle, for “White”. The point was to make it sound softer and tamer, and the fact that this debate even exists, means they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. “The White World” sounds awkward and racist to the POC across the globe, but “The Western World” sounds soft and tame and inclusive–mission accomplished!
and autismdragon themself who made the original post says
For me, “the west”, “the imperial core”, and “the global north” are very close to being synonymous in how i understand them. But maybe they shouldnt be. This is why i usually use imperial core though, since it seems the most specific.
finally to end with we have supafuzz saying
The white bourgeois insistence on ‘cultural westernism’ or whatever in these countries is just aspiration to the Imperial core that they ain’t in
viewing all these different statements combined, none of which are being detracted by other people as being blatantly wrong and all being surrounded by a conversation about the definition of white and whiteness it is safe to assume that for the community there is no nuanced difference between all these different terminologies and they are not defined in significantly different ways. The West is the Imperial Core is White is The Global North is each other. Western Culture is not a defined set of beliefs, values, culture, religion, or anything else that can be viewed concretely but viewed holistically as just what white people do. This is a racial categorizational view of the world or a racially reductionized view that begs us to ask the question of what is white or more importantly who is white.
on the topic of eastern europeans we have Egon who says
Croatia, while being perceived as a “white” country most certainly is not perceived as western. Polish people, Czech people, Croatians, these people are not treated as equals when they come into “western” European countries. There is immense racism against them. You should hear how people speak of old “east block” countries.
and yet this seems contradictory to what has been established beforehand about western and white being synonymous. thankfully, in the past this sort of contradiction was found and rectified by categorizing eastern europeans in their own subracial category called the alpine race. This categorization allowed for the continued differentiation of eastern europeans in their own group while still allowing them to be caucasian which was the fancy term for white in the past.
on the topic of southern europeans we have sooper_dooper_roofer adding
Italian was considered a different racial category from northern European as late as the 1980s, I’ve seen it on official job applications. Italians also just look different in a way which doesn’t exist for Irish Polish or even Russian people. They’re darker, and they look more proximal to Arabs or Mexicans depending on who you ask. only from the (visibly darker pigmented) European periphery of Spain
or TupamarosShakur who says
However I think another point is that “the west” doesn’t apply to even Spain, I mean not really. There is of course the racial component that someone touched on, where Italians, southern Europeans, are not considered white
from this we can see that southern europeans are both included and disincluded from whiteness with the added fact that unlike eastern europeans, or the alpine race as it would’ve been called, southern europeans are significantly more tan than the real whites. thankfully this problem was also rectified with the sub-racial categorization of the Mediterranean race. this subracial categorization also conveniently solved the next problem on the list; Latin America.
sooper_dooper_roofer explains extensively through talking about admixture within latin american communities saying
that’s like 90% of Latin America or 75% of South America. They’re not white, they’re admixed with Europeans. Just like Black Americans are. I know a lot of you think you’re white because you’re lighter skinned than black people. Arabs and lighter skinned Indians also think that a lot of the time. They’re not. Almost everyone in Northern Europe and Anglo America can tell the difference and tbh even Argentinians don’t really look that white to me on average.
America is technically mixed race, but the average white American is 98.5% white (and western european to boot), unlike any “white” person in any Latin country where even the least mixed people are still 20% Native admixed
Latinos are basically only half white (from a darker than average white country like Spain), that means that Latinos are not Western
while Egon talks similar with
The argument that a lot of Italians went to Brazil, and so the place is “white” is funny to me too. Italians were still treated like an exotic “other” up to the late 90’s lol.
within these arguments we can see that Latin Americans are made up of Mediterraneans and natives and since Mediterraneans aren’t truly white either you end up with non whites and ergo non westerns. this also contains an age old classic The One Drop Rule. Since all Latin Americans are considered to have at least one drop of non-white in them they’re all tainted to be non-white while since the united states is made up of English and Germans mixing with Italians or other Caucasians this has a purifying effect creating real whites.
to further expand we have JohnBrownNote saying
yeah japan is sometimes part of “the west” but it’s not western. i mentioned in another comment that this is perhaps an opposite to the latam situation.
or supafuzz taking even further saying
I’d also argue Japan is more “western” than, say, Colombia in most cultural ways too. Full internalization of Western art, music, and most importantly political and governance structures, which are sort of a superficial veneer in most of Latam.
this comes from an old trope that japan is honourary aryan and that the japanese are special enough to be allowed in an anglo-japanese alliance. this further highlights the underlying racial aspect of this since anyone can very plainly see that very little about japan is culturally similar to western european countries and ties into the final point
in a little bonus 420stalin69 concludes with
I think of latam as having a western layer in the upper and more white classes that exploit a non-western majority.
this highlights the well established in other comments belief in white inherently being successful and dominant. those within latin american societies which are rich and do well obviously have to be white in the same way japan must be atleast honourary white in order to explain their similar success despite being asian. this also explains why the west is also the richest place on earth due to their dominance
now what does this all add up towards? this forum fundamentally believes in Anglo-Saxonism or Nordicism which is an outdated racialist ideology that divides the world into differing Caucasian races who predominantly inhabit different countries of which the Nordic race is the endangered and superior one destined to lead the other white races to greatness. the origin of the Nordic race comes from the Germanic tribes which went on to conquer across Europe and create Germany, The United Kingdom, France, and other countries. In fact, the only significant difference between Nordicists and the people on Hexbear seems to be the belief that white people are bad. This explains the incongruence of ideology between Latin Americans on the forum and the non-Latin American majority. Within Latin America Nordicism is not at all popular and those who espouse it are mentally tied together with the Nazis of Germany in the 30s.
2. Credibility of Those Beliefs
Now I was under the impression that after ww2 racialism was entirely discredited within academia and inside any groups in society who matter but evidently with the rise of neo-nazism, white identitarianism, and apparently this forum its an ideology that makes intuitive sense for some and has grand explanations for others. keeping in line with the talk of admixture some people have done before I am going to start by saying there is no such thing as races and its a concept that makes no sense whatsoever biologically.
https://www.eupedia.com/europe/autosomal_maps_dodecad.shtml
you can see in these simple autosomal admixture maps that genetic diversity is the rule and not the exception when it comes to Europe even within these countries that are labeled as “true white”. the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and France do not have their entire population share any haplogroup which could be used as the basis of this racial theory and the majorities in the UK share with Ireland, France share with Spain, Germany share with Poland haplogroups that they don’t share with other “true whites”. this is also entirely ignoring the fact that hapolgroups from outside Europe is found in abundance within Europe. The lack of scientific rigor for race is precisely why in South Africa they did not follow this ideology but instead used the Pencil Test to gauge who was and wasn’t white. now the only defense for why the need to adopt crazy racialist theory always amounts to “well a lot of people believe this stuff is true so we need to too” which apparently is true for nordicism but isn’t true for the belief that communism is evil or that lowering taxes is good. conveniently, too, no singular person or group is ever pointed to as holding these beliefs its always an amorphous “everyone”. well, as a counterfactual to this apparent majority who all think that western culture and civilization is just white I will point to the two most well known authors on Western Civilization. Oswald Spengler who wrote The Decline of the West in 1918 which popularized talk of western civilization and gave it universal terminology said in volume 2 page 46
But that which distinguished Faustian man, even then, from the man of any other Culture was his irrepressible urge into distance. It was this, in the last resort, that killed and even annihilated the Mexican and Peruvian Culture — the unparalleled drive that was ready for service in any and every domain… the relation between this forceful young Civilization and the still remaining old ones — is that it covers them, all alike, with ever-thickening layers of West-European-American life-forms under which, slowly, the ancient native form disappears.
This aligns with Spengler’s view of Western Civilization not being defined in racial terms, he was actually ardently opposed to the racists of his time and believed a “race” was a population united in outlook not ethnicity or dna and believed that mesoamerican culture was overthrown and replaced with western culture to join western civilization. Samuel Huntington who wrote the foremost modern book on Western Civilization, Clash of Civilizations, writes on page 45 a simple description of Western Civilization as
Western. Western civilization is usually dated as emerging about A.D. 700 or 800. It is generally viewed by scholars as having three major components, in Europe, North America, and Latin America.
more specifically regarding Latin America he says
Latin America could be considered either a subcivilization within Western civilization or a separate civilization closely affiliated with the West and divided as to whether it belongs in the West.
This underpins his disbelief in race being the objective definer of western civilization. this in fact highlights the widely accepted belief within academia, since I sau it once again racialism is no longer the vogue in academia, that other factors such as culture define whether or not someone is within western civilization not race.
3. Why it Matters
Some at this point may believe its fine to have outdated racialist concepts considered reactionary in the early 20th century and that they help explain the world very well despite being demonstrably false. I say that this theory ironically orientalizes Latin Americans, papers over the realities and differences in our specific countries, and promotes chauvanistic and paternalistic thinking towards Latin Americans. Latin American society was born from western conquerers and is defined in this and is not defined in whatever “brownness” that is prescribed onto us by foreigners. when a latino talks to another latino from another country its through a european language, spanish or portuguese, not through a native language. this language, spanish or portuguese is our native language which may not mean much to americans who have no concept of knowing more than one language but it makes a great deal more difference when your family, government, friends, and workplace all speak and express themselves and their identity through that language than when you have to use your second language, which you’re usually not very good at, to negotiate through society as a foreigner or other. we act in a fashion mimicking the mannerisms brought to us by conquers from long ago and believe in ourselves in a way brought to us by these same conquerers. and finally many of us can trace our lineage very recently from elsewhere and may not have any kind of genetic connection to natives. plenty of chinese, italian, german, or in my particular case arab immigrants moved to our countries very recently. I can very easily trace my family leaving palestine in 1922 but nobody in my own country would deny my latinness since we’re not racist in that way. even further, people talk about being hatecrimed immediately upon stepping foot in rural united states, which I have done and can say I am not dead and nobody cared quite as much as it was made out to me, yet you can literally say the same thing about mexicans hatecriming hondurans upon entering mexico and deporting them or mention the fact that the majority of border patrol in the united states is latinos themselves. fundamentally, the theory just does not understand latin america which is why its there is an issue and why it needs to be done away with.
And they are saying that not holding that view actually makes you wrong
They are saying that if you expect them to change that view because Honduras considers itself western, then you’d be wrong
Then why did no one agree with op? if no one here thought their orginsl tske was wrong
Why did no one agree with op that Honduras is western? Because most people on this site live in anglo countries wherein “western” is understood from a cultural context that is largely that shaped by white supremacists and they are mainly aware of “western” as a white supremacist/imperialist dogwhistle, rather than a term to use as to mean “christian, English speaking country, but not the ones in Africa” which seems to be the one op here understands it to be
The white supremecist in usa and other countries are virtue signaling to impress other racists when push comes to shove this 1870 tier standards will be completly wiped out from their brains look what happend when the war in Ukraine started all that “muh Anglo French white other not white” shit was exposed.
The rest of us actual non westerner dont have or will never have that luxury
I don’t understood half of what you said there. Let rephrase myself: most people on this site come from countries where “the west” means it means this, because these are the big imperialists. This doesn’t mean that other countries cannot be imperialist or exploitative, but that, when push comes to shove, other countries wants and needs are subsumed into the will of the machine of these countries.
“The west” is, to most users, understood as a dogwhistle to mean “our team, the guys wearing the boot”. Who gets to wear the boot? The guys who decide that are white supremacists. “Whiteness” is however merely a social construct. So there is no clear cut definition or set of rules of who gets to be in the club and who is out. It’s up to these white supremacist imperialists to decide, because they hold the power.
That is how most users understand “the west” as terminology.
The discussion then of “well you should understand it differently” seems pointless, because if we’re just talking about words we use to describe ourselves, who gives a shit? And if we’re talking “no you should see Honduras the same way you see these large-scale imperialists” then that seems strange too, because Honduras is not akin to these large scale imperialists.
So then when this discussion is opened up, it seems to me - and I think most other users too - to be one where op tries to argue that Honduras is akin to these large scale imperialists, which it just isn’t.
If the discussion is just “people describe themselves in different ways” then there is no discussion and you know it, because I’ve responded to you elsewhere asking why it matters that users here don’t consider Hondurans as “western” if it’s purely an internal classification that the Hondurans do not care what others think of anywaymisremebered who wrote thisWhen people say insert country is western we dont mean that they have to powerful or anything but just thst have cultural similarties
Yes that is what you mean, but other people understand the term differently. They understand it to be a white supremacist signifier, as has been explained many times now
western (orthodox) and western (latam) are different words, they’re just spelled and pronounced the same