You can find people like this all around the planet. I don’t think Western is even really the right epithet, the more useful distinction is imperial core vs periphery. Imperial core chauvinists who blather on about things they don’t understand because others’ oppression doesn’t matter to them vs. periphery chauvinists who do the same thing but directed towards themselves or their neighbors. You can go to Venezuela and find these exact same people but they’re going off on local indigenous people as well and clapping for sanctions and bombing campaigns.
But you will find greater political development in the periphery, and we should look to them as valuable sources of information and people with whom to have solidarity. And we should look to imperial core formations trying to build the same types of projects and have solidarity with them as well.
You can find people like this all around the planet. I don’t think Western is even really the right epithet, the more useful distinction is imperial core vs periphery. Imperial core chauvinists who blather on about things they don’t understand because others’ oppression doesn’t matter to them vs. periphery chauvinists who do the same thing but directed towards themselves or their neighbors. You can go to Venezuela and find these exact same people but they’re going off on local indigenous people as well and clapping for sanctions and bombing campaigns.
But you will find greater political development in the periphery, and we should look to them as valuable sources of information and people with whom to have solidarity. And we should look to imperial core formations trying to build the same types of projects and have solidarity with them as well.