Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Scotland should be granted full independence and England should be divided up in several smaller countries all under a peacekeeping force.

  • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Just looking back on various photos and clips of life in the UK throughout the 20th century and god... what a wasteland of the soul.

    A land of utterly miserable conformist dregs, living just to drink and smoke and drive cars along grey congested roads through grey congested towns under a grey congested sky. A land of boiled vegetables and beige plastic and black mold crawling up the ugly, ugly wallpaper. A land of paedophiles with knighthoods hosting charity TV specials to fight child poverty (now celebrating its Xth decade - still fighting child poverty). A land of prestige motor vehicles driven by ashen-faced, flabby-cheeked home county men who build model spitfires and write lists of names for fascist governments. A land of simpering desperation to join, that is, fuck your way into, the nobility - endless, breathless news rags and radio programs and television shows obsessed over and obsequious to the persons and paraphernalia of a class of horrid scum that any civilized society would have publically and brutally executed a long time ago. And all of it saturated in the smug, smirking, self-satisfied, delusional afterglow of the Empire, as if reflecting on its deeds should bring a twinkly-eyed smile to one's lips rather than a projectile spray of vomit - and all of it powered by not one single iota of """British""" muscle, but rather a ceaseless, thundering waterfall of blood and sweat from the third world. It sickens me.

    God, it SICKENS ME, and there's so much more I can add to my LITANY OF HATE but for my own sake I'm going to stop. What an awful, awful, horrible place and time to have lived in and what awful, horrible people to have lived amongst - and this was supposed to be better than Soviet socialism? This was the "free world"? Disgusting.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      4 months ago

      It reminds me of an old joke:

      Dude regains consciousness, looks around and found himself in the riding car. Driver is a huge muscled guy with red skin, horns, hooves and a tail.
      "What happened, where am i, are you a devil?"
      "Yes, i am a devil. You died and are going to hell"
      Guy looks through window
      "How ugly everything is, grey, drab, ruins everywhere, jarring noises, ragged human wretches shambling around for no purpose, thick smog everywhere... hell is indeed horrible"
      "Hell? What hell?" devil was surprised "We're not out of London yet"

    • ElHexo
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      deleted by creator

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Stop giving Scotland absolution. Scotland wasn’t another dominated colony, Scotland was a somewhat equal and willing participant in England’s sins. Scotland should be given some level of independence under the oversight of Ireland

    • dannoffs [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      People forget Scotland became part of the UK because they tried to do colonialism and were really bad at it.

      • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Scotland became part of the UK because a bunch of aristocrats wanted the same power england had. The average peasant scot had no say really in the matter.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
          ·
          4 months ago

          When someone says a country took an action, they mean the government or the powerful. When you say America commits war crimes it isn't implying that every US citizen has personally done a war crime

            • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
              ·
              4 months ago

              So pointing out the average Scottish peasant had no say in matters of government isn't worth pointing out

              • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                I mean it is when people bitch at scots for disliking and England and wanting independence, and then do the soy wojack face and say "but scotland participated in the empire too You have no right to complain".

                Which people often do. Like it's some hidden knowledge that the upper classes of lowland scotland were balls deep in the british empire.

                Again, if we're going by that logic wales shouldn't bitch either.

                I don't know, I'm done with this thread though and you either agree with me or don't.

                ( Not you specifically my friend, just people reading this thread in general)

                  • dannoffs [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 months ago

                    I was just talking taking a cheap shot at Scotland for Darien Scheme lmao.

                    • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
                      ·
                      4 months ago

                      I mean yeah I get it. I'm just kind of biased and emotional. My ex was an expat from Scotland and super pro indy.

                      I'm still good friends with her

                      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
                        ·
                        4 months ago

                        I'd wanna distance myself from england as well, but it shouldn't count as a hand wash

                        • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          4 months ago

                          That should for Wales and Ireland as well.

                          They played their part. No complete hand washing for anybody involved in imperialist projects.

                          Obviously england was the ringleader (especially the southeast aristocracy) and scotland was a junior partner, but Wales and Ireland most definitely touched poo as well

    • newacctidk [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Scottish Mandate, with a Highland self governance zone as a test case with right to return for the descendants of the highland enclosures

    • bumpusoot [any]
      ·
      4 months ago

      But this post isn't about historical activity, it's about the present. Where Scotland is a significantly less evil force than England specifically.

    • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      This would include wales than too. The welsh and Cornish participated in the empire. Not as much as the scots, but they did.

      I'm just saying by your logic using participation in the empire as a metric.

        • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          Still participated in the empire and the spread of british imperialism.

          They entered the empire in different ways yes, and you'd think wales being conquered would make them absolutely against participating in the empire in any form, but they did participate , and sometimes enthusiastically so.

          Wales and Cornwall do not get a pass.

          If we are going to try and exclude scotland the same needs to be brought up about wales.

          Don't know much about Ireland besides the plantations.

  • Lester_Peterson [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    no term limits

    no constitution, through Parliament the ruling regime can overrule the judiciary at will and ignore human rights treaties

    antidemocratic electoral system where a party winning 1/3rd of the vote gets 2/3rds of seats

    state media spewing hatred towards refugees and trans people, inciting violent riots

    Chairman Xi, my people yearn for freedom

    • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      4 months ago

      Putting aside that bourgeois democracies are not democracies, term limits are the weirdest thing. If the people want someone to be leader, they should be leader. They get easily cast aside when somebody who really wants the reins of power gets it, so it's not an impediment to that. The only thing it does is stem radical change from taking charge for too long. It's a conservative concept.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        Term limits were invented by ancient Greeks and Romans for the purpose of reducing infighting for the offices among the members of ruling class. Note how bourgeois historians are presenting ancient Athens in V century BCE as the classic example of democracy, while even if we ignore how classist that democracy was, it was explicitly a period when one person (Pericles) basically ruled as informal dictator and turned Delian League into actual empire.

  • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
    ·
    4 months ago

    England can go back to those 5 kingdom thingys, Wessex, Middlesex, Anglia, and so on. Then they can fight over who counts as the most English

  • pooh [she/her]
    ·
    4 months ago

    How about Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Isle of Man, and whoever else forming a new Celtic Union?

      • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        It was actually more likely picts and scoti they were fleeing from and those are most likely the "barbarians" described in groans of the Britain's.

        The anglos were invited over by briton ruling class to push the picts and scoti out.

        And soon became the ruling class themselves.

        Even the english have majority native British blood, because the germanic warriors intermarried with local women. It's why the english are sometimes referred to as 'germanized celts'.

        Honestly the dark ages is my favorite era or history so I'm obsessed with this stuff.

          • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            4 months ago

            Not familiar with the teutons. Did they try and exterminate most of the local men in the area they invaded, and then marry the local women? Because in a lot of england that's what the germanic invaders did.

            Some are starting to think the anglo saxon invasion of Britain similar in some ways to the Spaniards and indigenous people in South America.

            • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              Not familiar with the teutons.

              Ancient Teutons (which were most likely not even of Germanic but of Celtic origin) killed a shitload of Romans, but then were defeated and afaik never tried to do something like that at least in an organised manner. The legend have it that it's Romans who demanded Teutons give up their women after losing the war, but Teutonic women in response killed their children and then killed eachother to not surrender to Romans.

              Medieval Teutonic Knights (unrelated to the above people, just German crusaders) though were the prototype of the western european colonisation system and they did genocided and replaced a lot of people in Baltics which repercussions we still see today and it's one of the major reasons why Baltic countries are the butthole of Europe and such a running dog of western imperialism.
              Hell, they even directly formed Prussia, one of the worst states in entire history of mankind that led to untold suffering.

              • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                Something like that. Except it seems like a lot of indigenous british women willingly married anglo saxon men.

                The upper classes it seems were pure anglo saxons

                Followed by a middle class of mixed anglo and celtic heritage

                On the bottom rung were pure natives who couldn't speak any English and were still culturally brythonic.

                Kind of like Spain in Latin America for example with its caste system.

                White Englishmen today are basically "mestizos" of celtic and germanic people lol.

                Which is super ironic

                • newacctidk [none/use name]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 months ago

                  On that train of thought, you should look into the Ostmen, the Norse who settled in Ireland. Many became Celtic rather than making Ireland successfully Nordic to the point that those who remained in their secluded cutouts like Dublin long after the Viking Age was over just stayed in separate parts of the city. Archeological evidence shows they built special quarters and didn't integrate, which carried over to later place names in Dublin. The British actually let them stay when they eventually conquered Dublin.

                  It is wikipedia I know, but it is a succinct statement

                  The Ostmen were regarded as a separate group from the English and Irish and were accorded privileges and rights to which the Irish were not entitled. They lived in distinct localities; in Dublin they lived outside the city walls on the north bank of the River Liffey in Ostmentown, a name which survives to this day in corrupted form as Oxmantown. It was once thought that their settlement had been established by Norse–Gaels who had been forced out of Dublin by the English but this is now known not to be the case. Other groups of Ostmen lived in Limerick and Waterford. Many were merchants or lived a partly rural lifestyle, pursuing fishing, craft-working and cattle raising. Their roles in Ireland's economy made them valuable subjects and the English Crown granted them special legal protections. These eventually fell out of use as the Ostmen assimilated into the English settler community throughout the 13th and 14th centuries

                  The larger influence was arguably the spread of Irish genes to Scandinavia due to captured and willing brides of Norsemen who brought them home.

              • newacctidk [none/use name]
                ·
                4 months ago

                And importantly, they entered the region after being invited in by nobles to serve them. Turns out brining violent conquerors into your land on purpose will only cause them to enjoy looting and crushing your enemies for so long until they run out of plunder. Thank god Poland learned that lesson and never tried that shit again......

            • newacctidk [none/use name]
              ·
              4 months ago

              They invaded the Baltics as part of a crusade, and very quickly got approval to just annex for themselves the part of Poland belonging to their host Konrad I who they had been hired to serve. They just kept doing this and eventually built a state. Essentially they formed to exterminate "pagans" in Prussia and defend western Poland, and then conquered the Catholic land anyways and then invaded further and further all the way to their wars with the Novgorod Republic.

              For a not exactly accurate but important snapshot of how that turned out watch the Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky which dramatizes the famous Battle of the Ice and has one of the best scores in film history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOgoGCP7Ujw It is such a blatant comparison to the Germans but it fucking works and goes HARD. They have soldiers wearing obvious stahlhelms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4PaJfod4w

  • D61 [any]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Its time for China to Annex West Taiwan (formerly England).

  • MaoTheLawn [any, any]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Cornwall is a reactionary shithole too, tbf. Nice beaches and a somewhat interesting culture but I won't hand it to em.