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10:48pm August 24, 2014

clatterbane:

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where-zozi-dares:

Saw a weird post earlier with someone saying that for people from coloniser countries, to be anti-American is the same as being racist. But surely you can be from one of those countries and be anti-colonialist and anti-racist? No one can help where they’re born. Idgi.

It seems just another symptom of some American people being totally defensive towards outsiders who have any anti-American sentiments, but simultaneously being perfectly okay with judging and criticising European cultures they know fuck all about.

my understanding of this is that a lot of Europeans will read news reports about America and conclude only America has racism problems, and become anti-American because of this, while maintaining their own countries have never done anything wrong.

I didn’t see that particular post, but this.^^^ Though I don’t get the idea that the anti-Americanism actually comes from the (often very sensationalistic) news reports. It’s all part of a bizarre style of nationalism, and the idea that only the US/its citizens have problems with racism is another delusion of superiority to prop that up. Basically the same set of attitudes that led to the colonialism and the continuing legacy of institutional racism in the first place, TBH, slightly repackaged and pushed to cover up all kinds of continuing inequalities at home.

It’s some really absurd form of performance art. And it would be funnier if a lot of these folks didn’t have so much investment in believing this stuff for some feeling of superiority. While giving racist systems closer to home a pass. :/

Wow it sounds like Europe is to America as Vermont is to the rest of America, in terms of the sense of superiority that is… undeserved half the time.  (Sometimes Vermont is superior, but instead of doing things to hang onto that superiority by doing superior things, they just try to prove that they’ll always be superior.)