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The Borders of Genre: The Glorification of Fascism Within Alternate History

As someone who read Davidson at a somewhat formative age, a fair of amount of Cabral and the odd writing by (Aristedes) Pereira since then, I have to disagree.
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”

- Edward Said, Orientalism
Not being Portuguese, I must say I do think Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe should never have been part of Portugal at all, and would have been much better off as such. The United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands have overseas territories, and these are all* legacies of slavery and genocidal oppression.




* Yes, yes, the Falklands, St Pierre et Miquelon.
Sure, but as a Portuguese person it really isn't up to you. Self Determination is the only ethical option.
Both Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe were uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered them and there were no insugencies there during the Portuguese Colonial War.
 
Both Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe were uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered them and there were no insugencies there during the Portuguese Colonial War.

Wait, we're only talking about islands filled with slave plantations? I take it back, that's completely legitimate grounds to keep them under the enlightened rule of the white man.
 
Both Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe were uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered them and there were no insugencies there during the Portuguese Colonial War.

Um. MLSTP was founded 1960. PAIGC 1956. The fact that there were no major military actions in either country doesn't signify consent to colonial rule
 
This is now comfortably the most amount of comments any article has ever had, and Monroe's only other article is also in the top ten. The average Monroe article has 60 comments, the average non Monroe article has 8.5 comments.

That's star quality folks. Need to offer them the big bucks to get them writing regularly here.
 
This is now comfortably the most amount of comments any article has ever had, and Monroe's only other article is also in the top ten. The average Monroe article has 60 comments, the average non Monroe article has 8.5 comments.

That's star quality folks. Need to offer them the big bucks to get them writing regularly here.
Yes.

Please do.

This really is an important article for the AH community as it deals with an issue a lot of us feel unhappy with, both in professional and amateur writing. Provoking? Encouraging? this type of discussion is a talent
 
Um. MLSTP was founded 1960. PAIGC 1956. The fact that there were no major military actions in either country doesn't signify consent to colonial rule
I am well aware of the PAIGC and the MLSTP but they were exiled intellectuals. We don't know to what extent they were representative of the general population of Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe.
 

To be fair, Archangel isn't in this thread explicitly arguing that black societies would be better off under white colonial rule.

Tell me, Ricardo, how many 'exiled intellectuals' were killed in the Batepá Massacre in 1953? Were all those people who were slaughtered by the government for the crime of objecting to slave labour communist plotters?

I don't think you're arguing from a place of bigotry as such, but I don't think you really have thought about what you're actually saying either.
 
Can we please drop this, at least on a thread about fascism in AH

I crossposted with this and I'll drop it if people want me to, but I think it's extremely relevant to the article; if we're talking about the glorification of authoritarian regimes, a casual remark that some parts of Africa shouldn't be independent seems pretty of a piece.
 

Because former metropoles whitewashing their own empire solves everything, doesn't it?

I don't think you quite understand how offensive this is, especially to those who have family from colonized countries.

I crossposted with this and I'll drop it if people want me to, but I think it's extremely relevant to the article; if we're talking about the glorification of authoritarian regimes, a casual remark that some parts of Africa shouldn't be independent seems pretty of a piece.

I agree wholeheartedly.

This ties into what I said before, about the tendency to cast the Axis as the 'other' to the Allies and their empires, when the difference is really one of degree, not of kind. So much of Nazism was the application of colonial methods to Europeans, and this drive to separate the two leaves a bad taste in my mouth
 
I crossposted with this and I'll drop it if people want me to, but I think it's extremely relevant to the article; if we're talking about the glorification of authoritarian regimes, a casual remark that some parts of Africa shouldn't be independent seems pretty of a piece.

Agreed

I don't think you quite understand how offensive this is, especially to those who have family from colonized countries

Agreed, and also for those of us whose families fought for independence.

tendency to cast the Axis as the 'other' to the Allies and their empires, when the difference is really one of degree, not of kind. So much of Nazism was the application of colonial methods to Europeans, and this drive to separate the two leaves a bad taste in my mouth

for all that Estado Novo wasn't militarily allied with the Nazis, the ideology was fascist

But as you point out, being oppressed or indeed genocided by a country that was explicitly supremacist in Europe, or one that proclaimed liberte egalite fraternite or one that proclaimed itself the mother of Parliaments made no difference when it was their jackpot on your throat, their maxim gun on your village
 
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