"Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness."
What do you guys think about the slow progress of secularization in post colonial settings? A lot of reaction movements have seemed to modernize themselves using the same concepts as secular revolutions, is there a future for national liberation?
religion spreads by theocratic means, atheism would have to be spread by atheocratic means.
people are stupid recalcitrant monkeys that only understand force.
An interesting case study is that Israel was supposed to westernize the middle east but instead it is following the stereotypical path of middle east dictatorships. Israel is becoming more corrupt and more religious.
Lucas Murphy
>Zionism, and particularly Labor Zionism, wanted to bring together the disparate Jewish nations into one state; the modernizing of the Judaic belief and people a chief concern. Judaism developed in exile, divine redemption, zionism by definition hostile to Judaism
A lot of the negative concepts of jews actually come from other jews, who call themselves Zionists The first Zionists would probably have never believed you if you told them their state would end up being filled with people who hated them for setting them free Don't you find the modernizing of religions like Islam or Judaism through contact with attempted western secularization interesting? Or would you say it's inevitable?
David Torres
>Don't you find the modernizing of religions like Islam or Judaism through contact with attempted western secularization interesting? I would say there is no modernization of religion. Religion is inherently reactionary and resists change. Which is great because it doesn't have a place in the future.
Better to let religion be awful so people will learn to dislike it, than to let it form into a "modern" version that will eventually go through a revival that will bring back the awful old traditions.
One interesting thing is that the Christianity that Africans are exposed to through European contact is very reactionary Christianity.
Parker Sanders
Trying to spread secularization across pre-industrial societies is literal retard tier, unless you have a totalitarian (communist) dictatorship. Countries should first on industrializing then modernize and then secularization will follow like in Europe, NEAsia, and Japan
Levi Wright
>What do you guys think about the slow progress of secularization in post colonial settings?
I think it is viewed as a wave on nihilism.
You see the same thing in the Middle-East and also in China and Russia. They don't want secular Western liberal democracy because they associate it with meaninglessness, hedonism and consumerism.
In Russia, Dugin is spearheading a kind of quasi-postmodern fascism, and it's happening in Europe too and North-America too, not just post-colonial states.
Daniel Mitchell
okay maybe I put it wrong the methods of an active mass movement include nationalist fervor, past story telling (duh heebs was da best, modern jews are weak, we need to recreate the ancient heeb master race) and creating a "new person" These modern tools for sparking a mass movement and forming a new secular democracy can just as easily be used to create a new totalitarian reactionary regime Another way of putting it is Ghandi, Nehru, the FLN, and Labor Zionists who started these movements were all western in thought and practice, and are hailed as champions of those cultures by the west, but reviled by the actual native peoples the Hindutva movement and recognition of "hindu" as a unified culture as opposed to grouping of beliefs is a modern conception in itself when I say isn't that interesting, it's more the question of isn't it interesting we gave these savages the tools to destroy themselves on accident?
I think that viewpoint is the viewpoint of the third world elite, a myth to keep the people in a reactionary mode to changes which threaten their power Are you saying active mass movements originated with secular movements? I would disagree and say they originated when social groups first formed. When the first collective conflicts broke out. > it's more the question of isn't it interesting we gave these savages the tools to destroy themselves on accident? destroy themselves how? by creating such religious fervor they wage war against the other religions and destroy themselves?
Will religion end by its own hands or will an atheocratic movement destroy it?
I don't know.
Leo Sanchez
thanks for the articles! I'm not saying mass movements originated with secular movements, but rather the majority of post colonial states started with secular movements, and all of those that did are now reactionary states. I'm more trying to make the argument that this exposure to the means of revolution through those secular revolutions learned how to modernize their reactionary mindsets I guess I'm trying to start a conversation more about post modern conceptions of ideology and where and how they formed in their native places trying to keep it history more than politics to honor the modgods the Assumption of the FLN, Labor Zionist, and INC leaders was that religion would naturally die and everyone would accept their beliefs, and the total opposite happened it's a fascinating topic, to me at least
Brandon Cook
>Ghandi stirred deep religious feelings, but ultimately passed reigns to sec'lst Nehru, but in modernizing old ideas set up the very reaction India deals with. What united Arabs and Berbers against French rule (Alg) was islamic identity, which FLN used and then tried to hide
>Nationalist leaders often find religion useful for asserting national fervor, but rended to believe religion was destined to decline; the tools used were misunderstood, the rising nationalism and rejection of the foreign comes to defeat the very principles set up to use those devices in the first place
Charles Peterson
>a myth to keep the people in a reactionary mode to changes which threaten their power yes, i agree, but to be more precise, the elites also have an interest in uplifting their people to an extent because a strong nation (at least so the first generation nationalists thought), so as to prevent their being dethroned by foreign powers. This was the logic behind many third world modernization programs after decolonization. However, if that's not successful or development becomes too uneven I see several trajectories 1) the ruling elite gets overthrown by a revolutionary elite, which may or may not proceed to do something to remedy the nation's problems 2) the contradictions of uneven development lead to national catastrophe (environmental degredation, political crisis and, most especially, civil war), or 3) the elite loses faith in the national idea and proceeds to loot the country through privatization alongside international corporations and """humanitarian""" ngos they invite into the country. the country turns into a nepotistic post-apocalyptic shithole or, in other words, most of the third world as it is today.
Andrew Howard
Bump
Logan Brown
So I guess the question is: are third world shitholes pre determined to be like that or do they actively choose to be shit holes?
Gavin Morgan
they are predetermined to have been shitty in the past, but now they can catch up.
Cameron Nelson
this exclusively depends on their political development and their capacity to end civil war by political negotiation, the next stage is to build government institutions, then get infrastructure for industry and education
Colton Johnson
You need the whole society to be advanced, wealthy and educated for liberalism to truly settle
We had +100 years of democracy and +150 years state-mandated education before women obtained equal rights on the labour market in my country
You need an educated population for democracy to work properly, you need a debate culture and newspapers that are independent and a whole bunch of other things for the points to add up towards liberalism being accepted in the general culture.
When a country has its basic education covered by religious authorities, the population can never become liberal. Which is quite logical, since religious teachings and all about superstition and tyranny and submission towards authority.
Anthony Carter
i'm more pessimistic and lean more toward dependence theory and world system analysis (what are called "neo marxist" schools of though), but I hope i'm proven wrong and at least some third world countries escape dependency, resource traps, corruption
Nathan Gray
>Don't you find the modernizing of religions like Islam or Judaism through contact with attempted western secularization interesting? Or would you say it's inevitable?
Jesus user, I never thought of it that way, I'm not even a /pol/ack, I just never really had an interest in Judaism or Israel.
>tfw BTFO by Veeky Forums again
Camden Allen
which country is yours? What is your definition of liberalism?
Nathan Rivera
I'm not trying to make this a /pol/ sort of thing, the contrast between judaism and zionism is just an easy modern comparison compared to the FLN and the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (which sort of kicked off the newest wave of radical islam) or ancient Hindu and Hindutva
But what happens when the people who run your revolution, such as the labor zionists or INC, demand equality for women and education for all at once, as opposed to incrementally? Do you think South Africa would have been better off if their population was eased out of apartheid into democracy instead of all or nothing?
Brayden Morales
I am not that user. Radical change must be accompanied by radical means.
you might want to read about Hoxha's enforced atheism on Albania. Despite the introduction of capitalism, Albania remains one of the more secular countries.
If atheism is to last after it is introduced it must emulate the theocracies of before.
The pace of South Africa's transition to majority rule is largely irrelevant. there was no great economic equalization and education.
Handing over power from ethnocentric tribalistic whites to ethnocentric tribalistic blacks changes nothing.
full disclosure: In my experience, uncompromising atheist communism is the way to advance the humanity.
Dylan Hill
>uncompromising atheist communism is the way to advance the humanity. >According to (my) experience And what have you experimented? History does not give a good feedback about comunism.
Logan Thomas
I've met people who lived in Marxist regimes.
Anytime Marxists try to be compromising, it sputters out in irrelevancy or they get CIA'd
Cooper Flores
see but even in the case of Albania and radical change, they ended up with an enormous religious reaction, pic related the introduction of the style of modern governance used by the marxists was subsumed by the reactionary native population, which is what I'm positing in this thread
When being irreligious is a foreign idea, how can a native population be expected to be subject to a foreign idea after throwing out their "oppressors" or colonial lords?
You can thank the Balkan wars and Saudi funding for Islamism rising in the Balkans.
>When being irreligious is a foreign idea, how can a native population be expected to be subject to a foreign idea after throwing out their "oppressors" or colonial lords?
the same way anything else happens, an atheocratic state, time and education.
The concept of religion being indigenous is silly, Islam is only indigenous to Muhammad's mind.
Benjamin Sanchez
I actually don't know much about Albania, but it does seem obvious that they're better off than the rest of the "islamic" world, if you'd consider them a part of it it wasn't the religion itself being indigenous so much as the culture of the people in a given area for a prolonged period of time culture can express itself through religion or another ideology, but the secular nature of the state seems to be separate from the nature of the people it's propped over
James Edwards
>The concept of religion being indigenous is silly, Islam is only indigenous to Muhammad's mind. Not really. Religion is indigenous to more than 4.5 peoples billion minds and once your Communist Totalitarian state collapsed, People went back to religion. Same thing happened in Iran and is happening in Turkey now. Hell even Western countries like Russia, Ukraine, and Poland went back to religion once Communism collapsed.
Dylan Walker
>I think that viewpoint is the viewpoint of the third world elite, a myth to keep the people in a reactionary mode to changes which threaten their power Not at all. In fact, it's the third world elite who are not religious. Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, Assad, Kim Jung Un, Sisi etc... The majority of the third world and many of the second world are like Alxenader Dugin. They despise the Liberal, Hedonistic, Materialistic values of the West.
Brody Kelly
> The majority of the third world and many of the second world are like Alxenader Dugin. They despise the Liberal, Hedonistic, Materialistic values of the West. you are speaking out of your ass, Netanyahu has been involved in corruption numerous times and his wife is getting questioned by investigators.
Most of the leaders you mentioned are very corrupt and enjoy much material wealth stolen from the people.
I think you have made the mistake of viewing all third world leaders the same as Khomeini or other ascetic extremist.
Sebastian Hughes
These secular movements typically came from 2 sources >Western-style liberalism >Radical leftism in 3rd world settings, these sources are foreign (if not blatantly foreign-influenced), and thus look a lot like indirect/ideological colonialism
the majority population in these countries was rural/agrarian. an environment that's very self-contained, traditional, and often religious these are also people who don't necessarily care about/have time for platitudes about class struggle or the benefits of free markets. taking into account the urban-rural divide, these ideologies are 'foreign'; if not outright atheist so you have movements that are preaching 'liberation' but at the same time challenging some core beliefs of the majority - a demographic that's key for mass movements since their strength is in numbers
in Europe, mass movements used nationalism. the concept of the 'nation' was well articulated to large groups, in a way that was both populist and historical/traditionalist, and (this is key) relevant to the majority's understanding
in 3rd world countries, you don't have much of a historical basis for nations. this lack of national identity is one of the reasons why created postcolonial countries are so unstable
so what do these people latch on to? what do they understand that seems to go beyond all of humanity? religion. when it comes to how you define yourself beyond your tribe? religion. and when conditions quite frankly suck, religion is an easy mass ideology when all others are too ambiguous, locally irrelevant, or seemingly unstable
Isaac Richardson
Read what is posted again you Imbecile. I said the third world elites are not religious and i mentioned examples, and the majority of their citizens, unlike their leaders despise the Liberal, Hedonistic, Materialistic values of the West.
Cameron King
You can only change people as much as they want to be changed. Many people in China, India, Middle East, and Africa don't want to be Westernized.
Christopher Hill
this is a fair and even analysis, however I think it is entirely possible that things can be changed under people without their notice As I've posted earlier, the Hindutva movement in India, which claims to be a continuation of the old Hindu tradition, is vastly different from classic Hinduism and yet the reactionary forces of the subcontinent tend to favor it over other equally new ideas such as the secular INC
Eli Nguyen
>however I think it is entirely possible that things can be changed under people without their notice No they won't. People are more alert to manipulation than ever. Gandhi got turned into a vegetable by a Hindu extremist, and the Hindutva nationalist movment are about as Secular as my left toe. Just accept that your ideology isn't Universal and move on with your life.
