TotallynotJessica

The Soviet Union was functionally a Russian empire. It centralized power around its imperial core, refusing to exist in a coequal federation with the other member states. It's why it fell apart and why Putin sees its collapse as such a tragedy.

China is imperialist without even considering Taiwan. They violate the sovereignty of all their neighbors in the same ways Chinese empires have done historically. They embrace social conservatism in their moves to take rights from women and suppress queer people. They play into nationalism more every year, not because they're a smol beans, but because they're embracing increasingly fascist strategies with the rest of the world. It doesn't make them unique, it makes them no different from the rest.

Assuming ideology trumps geopolitical "realism" is naive. Ideology is a inconvenient but necessary tool for building power in hierarchical systems.

When the fuck did I say they were worse than the evil empire? It's definitely a better place to live for most people right now, but that's mostly incidental. Just like whenever the US or USSR were better in one context or another, empires can support themselves in good and bad ways. Fascist states are typically all bad, where liberal and Marxist spouting empires tend to have both genuinely redeeming qualities and broken ideals to their name.

There are no good empires, and the second you buy into one being fundamentally different you've eaten the propaganda. Many Marxists forget how imperialism is an evil that far predates capitalism, an evil necessary for allowing capitalism in the first place. Thinking that evil will meaningfully destroy capitalism is the greatest con imperialism ever pulled. Even the empires that actually rejected capitalism in the 20th century were big fans of genocide, violent repression, and cults of personality. Now those empires are all fascist or neoliberal.

I actually really like many of Cameron's movies, it's just that Avatar is so mid and forgettable, even compared to a crowd pleaser like Titanic.

It apparently had the most impressive cgi water ever, with technical breakthroughs being the only interesting part of the series to me.

looks more like a lake tbh

Fair enough

I feel like Britain kinda had that, as did other less imperialistic countries in Europe that also fought the Nazis. Does that make the British empire any better? No, they were still an empire that did bad shit, and they're on track to lose all those gains to human well-being they've seen since WWII

China is the biggest example. They might've been knocked down for a while by western powers, but they're on track to dominate the 21st century after exploiting global capitalism better than America ever did. They've been exerting economic coercion and disputing the borders of basically all their neighbors so much that many of them would rather ally with the evil empire just to balance things out. Russia also got severely curtailed following the collapse of the Soviet empire, but they're looking to rebuild it.

There are many other smaller scale forces that seek more local conquest and spheres of influence. Turkish nationalists wish to rebuild the ottoman empire, which is extra funny when you're in a federation with some of the places you're trying to conquer. India could be a major empire in the future, but they're not quite there yet. Israel is looking to carve out a Jewish ethnostate with the backing of western supremacists.

Of course, that's a bit more than one 😁

You're against the unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine that uses genocidal tactics, thus you are against the unjustifiable invasion of Palestine with the goal of genocide, especially the West Bank which explicitly opposes Hamas?

I'm uncomfortable about advertising it directly, but let's just say it's related to this comm.

I guess we should rep up and coming empires instead?

not 100% sure. maybe Jordan Peterson?