this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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chapotraphouse

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I’ve read this opinion on here and other leftist places several times, and it’s gotten to the point where I’m absolutely confounded about whether people even understand geopolitics and know history. Truly weird take that would suggest hidden prejudices and having complete blinders on what is happening in the world.

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[–] CommCat@hexbear.net 2 points 54 minutes ago* (last edited 53 minutes ago)

India is a major factor in the US' "containment" strategy against China, so they are doing everything possible to get India into their sphere of influence, but the major hurdle is India's long relation with USSR/Russia. India is a big user of Russian military hardware, but since the US/West are trying sway India in their direction, India has started buying overpriced Rafale Jet fighters from France. Territorial disputes with China and the occasional scuffle keeps India and China from closer relations, which is useful for the US/West.

[–] Chronicon@hexbear.net 11 points 2 hours ago

I guess it's easy to just go "shitty neolib in power? probably a vassal state" but that turns out to be a really bad heuristic and really misses the point

[–] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)
[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 26 points 4 hours ago

Online leftists having extremely simplistic understanding on imperialism and mostly got their political education from internet memes? News to me.

[–] AnExcellentSteelHorse@hexbear.net 6 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Most Canadians would agree with this take, as (CW: description of the average anglo-canadians opinions and, therefore, racism)

spoilerTrudeau has turned Canada into a vassal state of India (by forcing upon Canadians the indignity of having Indian people move and live here)

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Canadians just seething that India was able to get away with assassinating those Sikh separatists because the US doesn't want to antagonize India.

[–] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

India tried the same against a Sikh seperatist in the U.S, failed, and has been very quiet when compared to boasting about the same with Canada.

[–] jwsmrz@hexbear.net 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

tbh I feel bad for the indian folks that decided to move here, shit's grim

[–] Stalins_Spoon@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Arguably Pakistan is though

[–] CommCat@hexbear.net 1 points 1 hour ago

and Pakistan is China's biggest ally in the region, we'll see how that unravels when China-US heats up.

[–] Vampire@hexbear.net 20 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Lazy post OP. Make your case.

You say they're not marshalling the facts of history and geopolitics, but neither are you.

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 4 points 2 hours ago

Well, they send a team to assassinate Sikh separatists holed up in Canada for one. This led to political fallout with India and Canada expelling diplomats from their respective countries.

[–] Lussy@hexbear.net 9 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

How and since when do you think India has been a vassal state?

[–] Dolores@hexbear.net 9 points 2 hours ago

a general vibe of neocolonialism transposed to a former colony irrespective of the specifics of the country's history. no-one's going to have a nuanced perspective on every country but 'still controlled by the imperialists after achieving independence' will be close to the mark in a lot of places. not investigating that impression wrt the most populated country in the world is a bit incurious tho

[–] Tabitha@hexbear.net 15 points 4 hours ago

The school system in the US taught me approximately nothing about India, maybe only it's name and the fact that it's shape was British Empire colo~~u~~red in that one historic map, but those were more like background details for smart kids who can piece together clues and grand narratives on their own rather than say actual intentional history lessons.

I'm not even sure I learned who Gandhi was in school, I think I absorbed that from pop culture references/movies/motivational posters/pacifist propaganda.

I've never heard of anyone calling India a vassal state tho, I'm not even sure who the liege state would be.

[–] Lemister@hexbear.net 24 points 5 hours ago

Of course it isnt, one must look at the history of the cold war (and India's role) to see that it isnt the case. The membership in BRICS also shows its lack of vassalage. Indian society is still effected by neocolonialism and the interference of the empire, but that is like every place in the world (maybe sans north korea).

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 40 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

Several people on this website believed Greenland was "rich and white" until recently, too, so there's more than one sign that the people here may have hidden prejudices and some amount of ignorance about the world.

[–] Zuzak@hexbear.net 2 points 35 minutes ago

Looks pretty white to me, checkmate smuglord

[–] Horse@lemmygrad.ml 27 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This is a yankee website, they're kinda known for ignorance of most places outside their borders

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 23 points 5 hours ago

Most places inside their borders, too, let's be honest.

[–] CliffordBigRedDog@hexbear.net 23 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

someone here once said that the Sámi were not Indigenous because they "looked white"

jeez i wonder why they "look white"

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 15 points 5 hours ago

...Because the native-settler dynamic is the result of a material, economic base, irrespective of skin color?

Also, one person said that supporting Indigenous rights was the same as supporting primitivism.

[–] CTHlurker@hexbear.net 7 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Famously, Tumblr also described Finland as a colonialist country, so maybe we shouldn't get all up in arms about the historical analysis done by the most propagandized people in the history of the world.

[–] Lemister@hexbear.net 1 points 30 minutes ago

From what I remember Finland has/had some paternalistic and colonialist attitudes towards Sami and Karelian populations - like enforcing their "proper" dialect over local languages. They also tried to colonize East Karelia during ww2 and put russian citizens into camps.

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 11 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Sorry, I don't see what's wrong with calling Finland a colonialist country...? Suvi Keskinen of the University of Helsinki has spilled a lot of ink on this topic, I think. Am I just misunderstanding what's meant by this?

[–] CTHlurker@hexbear.net 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That specific comment might be more of an artifact of the fact that Greenland is often not mentioned as anything other than a part of Denmark. Denmark is famously both rich and white, so I kind of want to give our comrade (who was rather apologetic IIRC when you corrected them) a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.

If you were a regular american, you'd mostly only hear about Denmark in the context of being a "progressive" nation in Scandinavia, who isn't as crazy as Sweden (Denmark used to be the most far-right of the Nordics when it came to the treatment of refugees and MENA-immigrants).

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 12 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Greenland was also under direct US occupation in living memory, still has the northernmost US military base in the world, and is notably located on the same continent as 49 of the 50 US states — with its Kalaallit natives being closely related to several Indigenous groups of the USA's biggest state, the USA's biggest neighbor-slash-puppet, and even the easternmost region of Russia. Even if you had only ever looked at the very first picture at the top of the Wikipedia article for "Indigenous peoples of the Americas", you would've seen that Greenland is overwhelmingly Indigenous.

...Now I really shouldn't get so ticked off about it, since obviously everyone's going to be ignorant about some things, but I really can't help but feel like when even such superficial prodding into Arctic or Indigenous history and issues as even just looking at a map of pre-contact language families, would've revealed that Greenland is an Inuit country — that you probably haven't been doing your due work to learn your own continent's history. So if it was just one person with that misconception, I don't think I would be so bothered by it, but it was several people, which might point to this being a broader issue.

[–] Lemister@hexbear.net 1 points 27 minutes ago

The closest thing most americans learn about Greenland is from history simplified or whomstever who say shit like "oh vikings named iceland and greenland but did wait - they did a switcheroo- the ice land is called green pog!"

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 18 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Everything outside of international-community-1internationlal-community-2 is just a gradient from "relatively rich" to "you will die of an antediluvean disease" going from north to south

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 4 points 4 hours ago

I before E except before Ark

[–] RedWizard@hexbear.net 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It's funny, I'm seeing this now and just saw that Ben Norton posted a video over at Geopolitical Economy Report entitled, Is India the world's next economic superpower? I intend to watch it, but god-damn it's an hour and 45 minutes long.

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] space_comrade@hexbear.net 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I know it isn't but how come it isn't? It seems like a prime candidate for the west to hold onto as a vassal. Was it always as independent since they gained statehood or did something change in the last few decades?

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 23 points 5 hours ago

India is too big to control by the West, and they ran a careful gambit by buying Soviet arms while not alienating the United States during the Cold War. India was a huge part of the non aligned movement and didn't embrace neoliberalism until the 90s. Only End of History vibes fooled some into thinking India is a Western vassal state, but it's very much its own thing.