We live in a capitalist society in the West and it has delivered spectacular benefits to most of us, more so than any other economic model that’s been tried.The fundamental problem at the moment isn’t “colonialism”, it is that the balance of power in our capitalist society has shifted over time to benefit the rich more than the middle and bottom of the economic spectrum. From WW2 until about 1975, we had a pretty good balance, but real wage growth stalled after that. How do we fix that? By whinging about colonialism (in 2024!?!) and engaging in worthless and destructive zero-sum oppressor/oppressed victimhood identity politics? Fuck no. We need to shift the political balance in economics to something more reasonable. We need Bernie Sanders-type practical working class socialism, not academic champagne socialism that is obsessed with language policing and fantasy-based kumbaya communism.

Yes, the Germanic tribes most certainly did eventually impose their culture and law on the Romans. Do you remember who sacked Rome in 410? It was Alaric of the Visigoths, which was a Germanic tribe. The Visigoths definitely imposed their laws, the Visigothic Code, when they could on the territories they colonized. And that was after a couple of hundred years of various Germanic tribes setting up relatively peaceful colonies in the Roman Empire. After they sacked Rome, they wanted to adopt the authority and prestige of the Roman Empire, so they became foederati, left Italy, and colonized southern Gaul. Then they colonized Spain by booting out another Germanic tribe, the Vandals, and imposing the Visigothic Code on the locals there. However, this weakened their position in Gaul, so the Franks came along and booted them out, imposing yet another culture and set of laws and creating the basis for modern France. Then the Arabs came along and defeated the Visigoths in Spain and imposed yet another culture and set of laws. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera ad infinitum for all of human history. So, remind me again who the bad guys and the good guys are?

Edit: And with regard to North America, I wouldn’t say that Europe colonized North America in any kind of organized way at all in the beginning. European countries competed with one another for land and trade, and many colonists were independents fleeing religious persecution in Europe. My first ancestor in North America was a poor French farmer who left Europe in 1650 because the nobility owned all the land in Europe and he didnt want to be a serf. He didn’t have some evil plan to trick the Indians and eventually take the whole continent. His small group of farmers didn’t even bring many women. My ancestor married a local native girl. He and his little group largely integrated with the native people. They got the benefits of French farming techniques and crops, and he got the benefits of a new family and culture and the know-how of the locals. Of course, the Church also came along an their motivation was to convert the natives, but from their perspective that was about saving souls (misguided as that was), not conquest and genocide. A while later, after many more Frenchmen had migrated to North America, the French nobility became more interested and the king decided that he would make a more serious claim, but even then he was mostly trying to keep the British out. The French largely remained allied with the natives. Eventually, it got to the point where North America was no longer just a source of furs and an outlet for unpopular religious minorities in Europe and colonization kicked into high gear. The natives were literally at the Stone Age level of technology – no metal-smelting, no written language, not even the wheel – so they simply had no ability to maintain their sovereignty and culture once the European machine really got going, so they got steam-rolled. Thats not even considering the terrible effects of being exposed to Old World diseases that they had zero immunity to. Modern estimates are that 90% of the indigenous population of North America died of various Old World diseases long before serious permanent colonial expansion began.

My point is, once again, that many people have been indoctrinated to a narrow, black-and-white view of colonization. It isn’t a separate thing from migration, it is one part of the continuum of migration. If you think of it on a continuum, it becomes hard to sustain the binary good vs. evil narrative that you seem to be stuck on.

Sure. How do you imagine colonization actually happens? It is rarely a bunch of conquistadors invading and defeating the local population and then genociding them. It is almost always a long process of migration, perhaps punctuated by conflict and perhaps not. The Greeks founded colonies all over the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, some of which exist to this day. Not every colony becomes an overwhelming nation state. When various Germanic tribes invaded Rome at various times, they came and settled on Roman territory in their own little colonies, sometimes with authorization and sometimes not. When the first Europeans came to North America, they set up tiny little agricultural colonies and mostly had a peaceful (if awkward) coexistence with the local native tribes.

Over time, though, the power balance may change and then the colonists may start to demand more control. If the original and the invading cultures aren’t compatible, or if resources are scarce, they may end up at war with each other. What you think of as “colonization” is the most extreme form where one side is so technologically superior and aggressive that the original inhabitants simply have no chance. The weaker culture is subsumed and perhaps even destroyed by the stronger one. But it rarely starts out that way. Colonization is a spectrum from small colonies within a larger dominant culture to extreme cases where the colonizing culture completely displaces the existing inhabitants, and everything in between.

So, is it really as simple as good guys and bad guys? If you think so, think about it some more with a more objective and less doctrinaire lens.

And thank you

Look at the result of the US election and tell me why you think it is beneficial to promulgate this simplistic colonizer/colonized, oppressor/oppressed narrative. It is no longer useful. Identity politics has become the new McCarthyism of the left. I am on the left, and I want us to extract our heads from our collective asses and start talking about things that matter to non-indoctrinated people.

When Germanic tribes invaded the Roman Empire because they were pushed West by the Mongols, were they the bad guys? When the Romans killed Germanic peoples to prevent them crossing the border, were the Romans the good guys? When illegal immigrants cross the US border in their literal millions to escape the poverty and oppression of central America, are they the bad guys? When the Anishnawbec tribes invaded the territory of the Sioux and expelled them because they were pushed West by the Algonquin, were they the bad guys? The Inuit killed the Dene who were encroaching on their territory because of starvation, were they the bad guys or were the Dene the bad guys? When Hannibal invaded Rome and killed thousands of Italians over several years and attempted to genocide Rome, was he the bad guy, or was Rome the bad guy when they subsequently invaded Carthage and ended the war once and for all? Who were more evil, the Arabs who bought Afrcian slaves, or the African tribes who kidnapped their own people and sold them to the Arabs? History is a series of actions and reactions, not a set of good guys and bad guys.

I’m listening to the CBC right now and the prevailing opinion I’m hearing is that the Democrats lost because Biden waited too long to step aside. Talk about learning all the wrong lessons.

Watch how the Liberal narrative will emphasize that. They want Trudeau to step aside, and if (when) they lose to the Cons they’ll say it’s because Trudeau wouldn’t step aside. Or if he does step aside, he didn’t step aside early enough.

Even if they are 100% First Nations, their ancestors were also colonizers. First Nations tribes warred and displaced one another regularly.

This is a lazy and simplistic worldview. Every single square mile of land has been colonized, conquered, re-conquered, and conquered again. In other words, every culture has been both colonizer and colonized. Human migration has been occurring since time immemorial, and human migration generally means displacing whomever was there before. It is often a chain reaction, where one migration causes another, causes another, ad infinitum throigh history. In the most dramatic situations we sometimes label it genocide, but usually it’s more of a slow blending of cultures (and genes) over time.

I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would. I’ve been an NDP voter all my life, so like most lefties I was shocked by Trump’s win in 2016, horrified by his COVID bullshit, and appalled by his conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric in the 2024 campaign. Trump is so obviously horrible that I kept asking the same question: how could HALF of the US electorate support him? I just can’t believe that HALF of America are fascist misogynistic white supremacists.

So, I started listening to alternative media. For example, I listened to Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan (yes, the whole three+ hours). I listened to Bari Weiss’s Honestly podcast, where she talks to disaffected progressives, and had a great debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro. And many others.

So far, this is what I’ve come up with:

1. The Democratic Party has abandoned the traditional working class, or at least the working class feels abandoned by the Democratic Party. The Dems have become “cultural elites” that too many average people just can’t identify with at all. Trump may not be good for the working class, but at least he speaks to them and their concerns. This of course leads to a discussion about how the Dems would have a better relationship with labour if they hadn’t fucked over Bernie Sanders.
2. The Democratic Party has become obsessed with identity politics, at the expense of real issues that matter to most people. Identity politics is pure poison that has become the leftist version of McCarthyism to a lot of people.
3. The Dems foreign policy is seen as weak by both the left and right. They fucked around on the Ukraine war to the point where Russia is now winning. And they lifted the sanctions on Iran that allowed it to fund Islamist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis and blow up the Middle East. And the left is pissed off that they don’t speak out against Israel’s aggressive policy toward the Palestinians. So, the Dems aren’t pleasing anyone when it comes to foreign policy.
4. The Dems had a good issue with reproductive rights, but a lot of states are moving to protect reproductive rights on theor own (including ballot measures), which may have relieved some of the pressure on Trump.
5. People talk a lot about Trump being better for the economy. I’m not sure economists would agree, but that is a large part of the sentiment favouringTrump. Edit: 6. Immigration. How could I forget immigration. Illegal immigration really pisses off Americans, including and perhaps especially among legal immigrants. I’m not sure that immigrants love Trump’s immigration position, but most of the country see the Dems as too ideologically compromised by identity politics to be able to do anything constructive on immigration.

You don’t have to agree with those positions and I don’t plan on defending them. This is just what I’ve picked up in trying to understand why so many people vote for Trump.

There are some important parallels and lessons here for the next Canadian election. Trudeau and the Liberals parallel the cultural elitism of the establishment Democrats. Singh appeals more to the identity politics culture warriors than he does to the working class. This is a big departure from the NDP’s traditional roots in the labour movement. And Poilievre is Trump’s mini-me. So, what can we do in Canada to avoid a repeat of the left’s failure in the US election? Doubling down on identity politics and cultural elitism isn’t going to go well.

Virtue signalling: the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc.,

Virtue signalling is used by both left and right as a signifier of their political affiliation. You can recognize it by the fact that the signalled statement doesn’t make any sense except as a political signifier. For example, people who say that Trump won the 2020 election when he obviously did not are either virtue signalling or are complete idiots.

The “United Nations pontifcate”…that’s a great phrase I don’t think I’ve seen before.

With respect to your comment, though, aren’t we all hypocrites to some degree? We all talk a better game than we actually play, and that is not unique to the West. It is a part of human nature. In fact, you could say that hypocrisy is the first step towards aspirational improvement. I also disagree that the West expects perfection from the global south. Far from it. If that were true, we wouldn’t give aid to anyone. It seems to me like you are virtue signalling without thinking through your claims.

I’m not sure what your point is. The argument is about whether there is a false equivalence between communism and fascism. You are veering way off topic into something I doubt you and I even disagree about. Yes, genocide is bad. Yes, authoritarianism is bad.

It wasn’t me that brought up capitalism. We were talking about forms of government (fascism and communism) and then someone else said, WhAt AbOuT CaPiTaLiSM. That said, there is quite a bit of overlap in practice between economic and governmental systems. But I digress.

I agree with you that authoritarianism is bad. That was my central point, in fact. Comparing fascism and communism is not necessarily a “false equivalence” insofar as all of the major 20th century examples of both converged on authoritarianism.

As for oppression, I’m not going to argue that no one is oppressed in the West. But I will stand by my assertion that the scale and degree of oppression under Mao, Stalin, and Hitler (the largest 20th century examples of communism and fascism) is not comparable to what trans people may be experiencing in some Texas town.

As for indigenous people, yes, historically the scale of the original genocide is certainly comparable to the communist and fascist regimes of the 20th century. However, it is also important to remember that over 90% of the indigenous people died naturally of diseases they had no immune defense against. It was inevitable given the level of medical technology of the time, much like the plague in Europe. The starlight tours specifically are shameful but actually illegal for the police to do. Those are not state-sanctioned actions, unlike Stalin’s pogroms or Hitler’s concentration camps. A better example for your case would be the residential school system, which was both state-sanctioned and very oppressive.

Capitalism certainly has flaws, but if you think the “oppression” in the US or western Europe is in any way comparable to that under the major fascist and communist regimes of Stalin, Mao or Hitler, I’m not sure what to say. We are from different planets.

The underlying ideologies are different, but I suspect the common feature the commenter was referring to is the practical tendency of both fascism and communism to develop into a totalitarian state.

How is that a false equivalency?

What are you even talking about?

That’s really inappropriate.

That’s true, but my point was that the commenter was implying that Twitch was making some kind of political statement about Israel vs. Palestine, which it probably wasn’t.