Something that I've noticed, both in the fediverse and other places, is that when marginalized people within the US complain about the US, non-USians arrive to remind us that we're still American, and therefore the ways we're marginalized don't matter and they don't care... in a way they do not talk to or respond to privileged Americans.
They use Black and Indigenous people in the US as acceptable targets for their hatred of the US instead of the people driving policy and holding the world hostage.
For example, I made a thread about the US being an empire comprised of many parallel societies—internal colonies is another term—so there is no cultural, linguistic, or religious standard, and that generalizations about American cultural/linguistic/religious behavior, you're ignoring those colonies and you should specify which Americans exhibit these cultural normals. My thread was exclusively about culture, language, religion...
and yet someone decided to remind me that Black Americans can be colonizers too.
Which is true!! But also it's not relevant. It's taking a conversation about the erasure of various communities including Black Americans and saying "well we have a right to erase you because you can engage in colonization"...
Why don't you have that kind of energy for the architects of the empire? The pilots of the empire, the people in power? The remaining 87% of the empire? Black people are only 13% of the US population and yet you've made us the focus and poster children of American colonialism?
Today, a Native woman was talking about losing her family home, to which a Danish man popped up to say this is what Americans get, this is what Americans wanted.
And when she pointed out that's she's Native and they never asked for any of this, including the whole damn empire, he said he doesn't care because Native people still join the military and engage in imperialism. Do you see it???
If you go through this person's posts, do they treat white Americans as punching bags? Of course not.
If a white American came online to talk about their unique regional culture, it's "wow! so cool!" and yet when a Black or Native person shows our faces, it's always "You're still American."
We're the human shields of a fucking empire, and people continue to do its dirty work instead of showing an ounce of solidarity or understanding.
Case in point: a whole thread encouraging people to recontextualize thinking of the US as an empire that swallows the identities of the communities it colonizes, just for a rando to tell me that Black people are same as white nazis and the structural violence we experience doesn't matter, all because the empire that forcefully abducted, enslaved, dehumanized, and colonized us has claimed ownership of us.
Mind you, this is totally unprompted, uninvited.
"I treat you just like a white nazi" is not a sign of equality.
It shows a lack of discernment and either a refusal or incapability to comprehend nuance. It's disrespectful, callous, and replicating the structural violence of the empire you hate so much.
Foolish!
@guerrillarain
It's so much less painful for Europeans to embrace the idea that the US is the root of all evil than it is for them to examine the relationship which *they* have to imperialism/colonialism.
They are saying "shut up, marginalized people! You are asking me to think about the oppression which I also benefit from. How dare you try to make me think about this!" They need the US to be the monolithic source of all the world's ills, so they can continue without having to learn & change.
@guerrillarain
As if the wealth of the Americas (and the rest of the world) has not been plundered & brought into their nations for centuries.
Telling someone he is scum or he is guilty of something because he is for a specific country is a form of discrimination, not very different to racism or xenophobia. There are no exceptions.
Being European, I don't think the US is the root of all evil. The root of all evil lies in prehistoric times, for starters. As in every country, from the US comes a mixed bag of good and bad things.
But it is undeniable that the US, specially with the current administration, has a very neocolonialist view of the world; Trump acts are clear proof that he considers Europe and the other American countries as colonies or vassal states of the US.
