this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
1008 points (93.2% liked)
Anarchist Memes
1182 readers
1 users here now
This forum is for anarchists to circlejerk and share zesty memes
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wtf is the "imperial core"
Thanks this helped
It should, considering that you're being willfully ignorant at this point.
Many would rate the USSR as an imperial core country, while I guess you and I maybe won't. Stop assuming privilege of those you talk to and demean them with willful ignorance. There is always something more that may be learned about an issue and people should not be vilified if their attempts to learn more are genuine (and I think you can not determine it was not from this interaction, comrade).
https://hexbear.net/comment/4158598
No, that person is just a piece of shit and you're either concern trolling for them or maybe even their alt.
I think your response was unwarranted. Hardly makes me a "concern troll" (had to look it up because I've never seen the term before). I am obviously an alt for calling you out though. Made this account 5 months ago and interacted with myself for the first time in this post just because you are so fucking special.
Calling people pos is also uncool, even if they invade other people's safe spaces. Their comments on the post you linked didn't even seem aimed to be hurtful or invalidate anyone else's experience, though ill placed for sure.
"Speaking on behalf of Team Me, I think hostility toward Team Me and anyone I assign to Team Me, no matter how transphobic or otherwise blatantly ignorant, is unwarranted."
Go on, go the full length and conjure up a mental illness that you believe I must have which would invalidate anything I said, Reddit style. You clearly want to.
No, I said fucking special with regards to how much time I would spend talking to you. Almost didn't even bother responding, hence your "theory" about alt being ridiculous.
So it's just arrogance on your part instead of ableism. That's nice.
Maybe you shouldn't, especially because you've gone so far out of your way to defend a mysterious stranger with a bad take that has a very dubious recent post history.
I might be somewhat arrogant for sure. Not going to apologize to you for being arrogant after your vilifying claims of alt and concern trolling though.
Whose post history is dubious?
EDIT: Also, how the fuck is calling you fucking special ableist?
No shit.
You popped up out of nowhere to stick up for someone with a bad take that had a recent history of bad takes.
If you're not bullshitting me (and the jury's still out on that), "special" is a pretty common way to talk around implying that someone came from "special ed" or has "special needs" in a condescending way.
A little bit of a stretch to add the "needs" in "special needs" in order to make me out to be ableist. I do not believe you will admit as such though, but let me ask you this: Is it not reductive to the actual experiences of those with special needs who experience actual ableism, whenever someone makes up context so they can claim being subjected to it on internet forums?
Speaking of a stretch, how many replies is this so far for you going this far out of your way when you piously claimed you shouldn't be bothered (and you really shouldn't have been) by the plight of an apparent total stranger with bad takes?
Oof, now we are getting to the real questions. Not going to post it here, but will tell you in a message.
The answer is already here: you were full of shit about how you oh so very nearly didn't reply the first time, especially not for the sake of a mysterious stranger with bad takes, but you were compelled to against the odds anyway.
EDIT: I just got your private message. Oh boy.
There's that ableistic concern trolling that I had suspected all along.
Countries that are doing the marxist definition of imperialism basically.
You best start believing in Imperial cores... you're in one!
It's always the same map.
Can you explain why some of the nordic countries, i.e. Norway, Sweden, Denmark are part of the imperial core while Finland, Iceland, Greenland are not? I can put color on a white map too, doesn't mean it portrays a real issue adequately. Also wtf, why is Portugal not part of the imperial core?
The map is a reference to the one you see whenever just about any international issue comes up and the same crew are all in agreement, I'm not actually positive what specific issue this map was taken from.
The website has a more serious explainer (with a couple versions of the map) but I'm with you, Iceland and Portugal and Finland are core countries probably. The real answer is that it's fluid and historically contingent, not set in stone. It's a question of how your economy develops and how it relates to 'peripheral' countries that are primarily extracted from, not a literal list pulled off an emoji.
I looked through that article and found it somewhat problematic. Especially the description of core countries as:
For example, Iceland does not even have a military, but can still be part of capitalist neo-colonialism as part of the "imperial core". Even so, one should also keep in mind that Iceland historically had been under Denmark's dominion and it is wrong to say that it has been a primary benefactor of classic colonialism leading to the rise of western powers in modern history. On the other hand, Portugal has been a strong colonial power historically. Still, the development index of Iceland is way higher and I would argue there are lots of factors in play as to why, and one cannot say that there is a direct equivalence between development index and imperialism. Both Norway, Iceland and Finland gained independence in the 20th century, never had proper colonies and are part of the economic elite. Norway is still in large an economy based around export of natural resources, which is atypical for being an imperial core member. I often feel that many facts like these are overlooked in discussions of imperial cores in favor of simplistic ideas such as equivocating HDI and imperialism. Can we not have better discussions around the mechanics of modern imperialism than throwing around a map and calling out people for not being intimate with the idea of an imperial core, an idea whose simplicity makes itself highly flawed?
I agree that I gave a simplistic answer, you can read literal books about it. But Iceland, as an example, does actually have a history of being closely tied to the military of the US and the UK voluntarily, I think Greenland is actually a better candidate for peripheral than Iceland. And realistically it's going to be more of a spectrum than a binary, you're usually going to fall somewhere in the middle rather than being on the extreme end like the US and Israel.
And even then you might have internal dynamics that complicate it. Parts of the US (Appalachia, "Indian Country") are clearly peripheral within the US economy and subject to exploitation that other areas are not. So agreed, it's complicated.
Dialectics as a method warns us against assumptions that "the state of things" is static, these things are always changing. But I think there's value in the basic observation that world economic systems work in tension, where opposed interests are not equally met in a mutually beneficial exchange a la neoliberal dogma. Even if you have to acknowledge that it is much more complicated than "it's the same map every time" I think the concept is useful.
What would you say is a better way of talking about this sort of thing?
I think what bugs me (generally, not you so much specifically) is what I perceive to be so many ideas conflated into one. One can talk about a lot of different issues under the "imperial core" label, but I think one should be careful about considering who one talks about as imperial core according in context of the issue in question, since the imperial core is not a homogeneous group in a lot of matters, much like any other collection of countries. In particular, I think it is important to allow for some more varied terms of imperial core, else risking falling into a false dichotomy. I see that it might look pretty similar from a global south perspective, but I believe it is helpful to be more nuanced in the approach about who are imperial core to better analyze and understand the mechanics of the imperialism in play.
I think you're probably right, at least when the participants are all familiar with the concept and prepared to get more detailed. On a forum post where someone is ostensibly being introduced to the idea for the first time I worry that trying to get into all of the nuance might be overwhelming when the other person most likely just needs 'the basic idea' to get what someone means. Given that the left is full of nuanced jargon I feel like this is a perennial problem of balancing accessibility and thoroughness.
Totally get that. I was probably just being a little bit of an ass because I had seen some similar things earlier that I thought missed the mark.
High HDI gang
Unironically yes. The development in the imperial core came at the expense of the rest of the world, that's what the term is referring to, the part of the world economy that is accumulating through imperialism the wealth and resources of the whole planet.
Nothing ironic about my post to begin with