I find it varies a lot from country to country. in honduras its definitely not normal to identify with the indigenous and is widely seen to be an insult to tell others to identify with it while in mexico, most-likely due to the mexican revolution where talk about the mestizaje or cosmic race was popularized, its way more normal and acceptable. it definitely brings up personal issues for those who find it awkward howmuch they should identify with a culture that they realistically have no ties to besides blood or vague talk about grandparents or whatever. its definitely awkward for me since unlike most latinos I’m arab and all my ancestors come from palestine

I take issue with the idea that these terms are, and maybe could ever be, entirely geographic and able to be seen absent the socio-political climate they evolve in but I see your point about interpreting potentially recent latin or antique latin in an overly modernist and prescriptivist way

again I reiterate if were both entirely in agreement and have been in agreement this whole time there is entirely no reason for you to continue to argue. as you claim I am repeatedly strawmanning your argument I’m going to continue to say you’re using the motte-and-bailey fallacy to advance your actual position while then retreating to your more easily defended position when I oppose it.

as to

Are we all your enemies?

evidently some people consider themselves my enemy since they consider me to be a nazi pick-me, a comprador advocate, that my beliefs are akin to white supremacy, that I’m a wannabe american, and an imperialist so you tell me if I’ve been charitable and diplomatic enough

since you continue to pretend to not have said what you said or mean what you said you say

LatAm does not have a single unified set of rules on race, so this was incorporated in different ways, but today we are all familiar with the reactionary nature of so many white-adjascent groups in LatAm and their bigotry towards the indigenous populations. This is the result of centuries of colonization and the merging with the thinking of the British/American/French canonization of their own special “burden” to invade and rule.

Culture is shaped by what capitalism permits and promotes and its form is colored by its vectors, such as attempting to restrict the discourse to what is already in the British or American mythology. Liberalism is Capital’s political ideology, it exports it, including but not limited to the process of imperialism. The use of “Western” here is an outgrowth of Anglo imperialists with a passion for race science doing rationalizing their status from around the 1880s to the 1930s, though we obviously still see the way it was incorporated into culture widely in various forms.

which is in direct contradiction to what you’re telling me now

Third, I don’t think you understood the reference to Nordicism and why it’s relevant. A hint: at no point did I say that LatAm’s categories are imported Nordicism even though that’s the straw man you’re arguing against.

now the entire point of you continuing to argue makes entirely no sense if we are both in agreement that the latin american conception of western is not imported nordicism but you claim that the latin american conception of western is a merging with the thinking of british imperialists who did nordicism. clearly, you seem to think that either at its conception in spanish in the 1850s or 1880s or whenever you claim the beginning of the term or sometime after that the discourse around the term western has been “restricted to what is already in the British or American mythology”

nah my family was highly involved. our hometown is olanchito in honduras which is literally the same place ramón amaya amador is from and was describing in prisión verde when he fled to your country before its untimely coup. typical palestinian shit from the '22 generation lmao

its fine everyone can learn to see things from each other’s point of view and come away more knowledgeable in general

well shes relatively biased considering her family were heavily involved in building railroads for the united fruit company to ship their plantation crops out of the country lol. she is even so insane as to keep an american flag in her home because of how much she loves america. I wouldn’t say its necessarily idiocy than self-interest

are you trying to argue that the terms are entirely geographic and had taken on no political, cultural, or societal overtones until 1850 or whenever the cutoff point is said to be and aren’t predecessor terminology to the modern concept of western/eastern or are you just trying to talk about the origin of these terms because you find it interesting?

thats funny because my grandma loves taiwan for the exact same reason. she is also always talking about how great the united fruit company is which is a hilariously out-of-touch opinion

even if that specific phrase post-dates the point where the modern conception of the west occurs, which variously is being said to me to be either the 1890s or the 1850s which would be after your earliest sighting in english texts, it doesn’t discount other terminologies that would be showing up in Latin either during the late roman, medievial, or early modern periods which are conceivable predecessors to the modern conception of the west. another example being Imperium Romanum Occidentale or Hesperium Imperium which as far as I know are both attestable to the medieval period and the added benefit of Hesperium itself deriving from the greek word for western lands and help showcase the internal division between the eastern greek speaking portion of the roman empire and the western latin speaking portion.

I would say those who aren’t so belligerent as to call me a white supremacist but merely think I am wrong in believing honduras to be western still operate from a very eurocentric and could be described as chauvinistic view and should, as you have done, talk to a latin american and try to understand their point of view instead of considering the concept a complete mockery

can you really say “don’t shoot the messenger” when the messenger doubles down on their, as you say yourself, rhetoric viewed as racist in latin american circles, call you a nazi pick-me, ban you for having internalized white supremacy, and accuse you of being a comprador? “why are you obsessed with race?” is a fairly normal thing to say to someone you view as acting considerably racist but perhaps unknowingly

I dunno if you assume I’m white and have farm slaves but I’m not white and have no farm slaves. I also have no solidarity with zionist settlers, or vice-versa, seeing as I’m palestinian

Constitution literally written by Americans during the occupation

Colombia’s constitution was written directly based on the american one which is why Colombia has a bill of rights, a president, and is a republic while japan’s constitution gives them no bill of rights, a prime minister, and a monarchy. just because americans primarily wrote their constitution does not mean they’re more similar to america than Columbia is. furthermore, japan is a 1 or 1.5 party state where the leading party, the liberal democratic party, has maintained power for 64 of the last 68 years while Colombia is a multiparty country where the ruling party is always changing. even furthermore Japanese do not consider themselves western and still have a vastly different culture to any other western country while Colombians do consider themselves western and have very comparable culture to other western countries

the thread was deleted so I’m unsure if you can link, how you’d do so, nor how to do so without making things substantially longer. I don’t really care if each individual is chauvinistic just that the origin of their ideas entirely fall in line with antiquated chauvinistic racial theories and could be said to at least be partially derived from them

you can’t say the west is core while parts of the west are not core and parts of the core are not the west. clearly they’re describing different things and it don’t map 1 to 1

you said

Claiming anything to be simply Western wasn’t a thing until the last few decades of the 19th century

to which you then later to backtrack and say

I said it wasn’t used in the sense I’m talking about

which are two vastly different assertions and its quite disingenuous to pretend that you’ve been clear and consistent.

now your claim that due to cultural hegemony of capitalism, used in a completely different way to how gramsci conceptualized his theory but whatever, that spanish intellectuals and thereafter latin american ones were forced to adopt a nordicist model of western civilization by the british or whoever (but I guess the dutch or the french or the americans weren’t forced to adopt it since they had capitalism unlike the spanish so they’re intellectually equals) is false. the spanish and latin americans have never had a nordicist conception of western civilization and their conception stems from earlier concepts of The West, Christendom, and Europe. I’d also be curious to know if your idea of cultural hegemony of capitalism means that the italians didn’t invent fascism themselves but instead just imported it from capitalist countries or if hegel and nietzsche didn’t create their theories of german philosophy but instead imported it vis-a-vis capitalism to prussia. all I can say is your assertions that everyone else must be following your definition of western, or a definition which ultimately derives from yours, is americentric as I’ve said before

you misunderstand, latinos aren’t west aspiring and don’t care if other countries consider them western. latinos fully believe themselves to have been western for quite some time and will continue believing. if you want to assume that because latinos self-identify as western it makes them compradors that are selling out their countries that’s on you

and I’d say discontinuing it is a fools errand and would lessen our ability to describe very real phenomenon and cultural forces. how else might I describe the process by which my country, a third world one not part of the imperial core people tell me about, forces its native population to adopt spanish, adopt market forces, adopt wage labour, adopt cultural attitudes and self identification, etc

now you’re just jumbling terms around. you said nothing was claimed to be western until the last few decades of the 19th century and when I point to an example that counters this you say its fake and double down. just because the modern definition of western civilization, western culture, and westernness didn’t exist until recently does not mean that the concept is not coming from somewhere and lacks an older origin that its pulling from.

yeah except it really doesn’t fit well with the western world and spain or portugal. conflating the two is only going to reduce people’s understanding