• 0 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 17th, 2023

help-circle



  • So you’ve called me an ‘armchair genius’ twice in that comment - I’m sorry that I didn’t fight in WWI, but I am allowed to discuss the definition of Nationalism. You have no idea about my life or my background (or my chair), so leave that out.

    Sure, Post-Colonial Nationalism as a movement played an integral role in establishing independence from European powers. That doesn’t change the fact that Nationalism is a European paradigm that contributed to the exploitation of these places in the first place.

    The fact that Nationalism opposes foreign influence over ones own country - and therefore is an effective ideology of opposition in regions affected by European exploitation - says nothing about Nationalism’s inherent militarism and codification of heirarichal power.

    So yes look at Nationalism as a factor in establishing independence, but then look at where Nationalism leads after that.

    Lets take Nigeria in the 1960s. Nigerian nationalism helped oust the British, cool, that’s great. Then the Nationalist government inflamed ethnic tensions until Ahmadu Bello was assassinated in a miltary coup, and the following ethnic violence led to Civil War.

    While you wait there for me to talk to “every nation state in the (so called) “3rd World””, maybe do some reading that isn’t an internet definition written by people Just like me (whatever that means…)

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/45341491

    And if you come back to me, do it with argument and not random personal attacks next time, thanks








  • Well, they were British chefs with South Asian heritage who of course were indirectly here because of horrific Imperialism

    But it is British, its very British. Despite what Farage and co want you to believe, we’re a multi-cultural nation and have been for centuries.

    British-Indian cuisine is at this point distinct and diverse enough from traditional Indian cuisine that it is its own thing. And its super widespread - even the racists discuss how shitty they are over a curry






  • Well, it was never going to look like the Americas even if it was true. The claim is that they discovered the land, not that they circumnavigated it or were able to chart the coasts with Renaissance-level precision.

    There’s no good or compelling evidence. But there’s lots of ‘evidence’ that while dismissed by most academics, can be used in support of the theory in a vacuum, for example the existence of a pre-Colombian carving in Arabic (which isn’t actually that, but was believed to be by some).

    The idea isn’t based on the map alone, it’s only one piece of the corroborating ‘evidence’.

    Again, I’m not arguing that it’s a true claim, just that it’s not on the surface insane


  • Al-Masudi was a very able cartographer, and his 10th Century map of the world is really impressive. And yes, it includes a continent to the West of the Old World.

    Obviously this doesn’t prove a genuine knowledge or discovery of the New World, but its a noted oddity.

    The theory that a Muslim population discovered and settled in the Americas is widely discredited and shouldn’t been taken seriously, but it is a published theory and supported by at least some academics. Most though dismiss is as either ‘psuedo-history’ or even ‘propaganda’, so yeah…

    This theory might be ahistorical, but how sinister it is is debatable (“Yeagley believed that Shabbas and the other authors were simply trying to gain acceptance for Arabs, further integrating them into American culture by making them ‘native.’”). The American myth making around Colombus might be more based in fact, but lets be honest, there’s a lot of fake history there too.

    The word ‘admiral’ does come from the Arabic ‘amir’, - circuitously via medieval Latin and Old French.

    So yeah the post is untrue, but I wouldn’t call it ‘insane’ necessarily. Its a reasonably common, and interesting, myth.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Masudi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/did-muslims-visit-america-before-columbus



  • Just in the spirit of pedantry, its not really true to say that the US system predated most parliaments.

    Like, maybe its technically true now due to the expansion of democratic and republic systems in the post-colonial era, but parliaments in Western Europe were plentiful and long-established in 1776.

    The first American government was notable in that is was completely divorced from a hereditary Monarch, and I don’t wanna downplay that, but a system in which a representitive body of land-owners is elected by an enfranchised class to decide policy and even pass legislation existed in, for example, Iceland since the 10th Century, Catalonia since the 12th, England since the 13th. It was arguably the standard during the enlightenment in Europe.

    My two cents, the US system does seem to be remarkably inflexible. I guess it’s complicated to unpack why exactly, but a combination of myth-making, bad-faith originalists, and the sheer size of the country probably all play a part in it