This is literally me I do this

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are people on this site just really racist? croatia is a majority catholic slavic country in the eu what about it is functionally different from slovenia or czechia or dare I say austria. they’re culturally not much different and economically pretty similar
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  you guys are the ones coming up with essentialist definitions of the west based on racial categories. you can ask anyone in the latin america world, which is hundreds of millions of people, and they'll tell you they're western due to historic and cultural and religious ties. and your argument against that is because you can imagine some reactionary in america or europe who would disagree? why even bring up the germany ww1 portrayal thing are you trying to argue that germany wasn't western until after ww1?
  
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  The point is that "Western" is a changing category (for those outside the five eyes anyway) without any rigorously defined criteria. Russia is a good recent example.
  
  It's not a changing category. It's just Europe.
  
  Within Europe, those borders can change. But nothing outside of Europeans (including European Americans) will ever be treated as "Western"
  
  "some people believe that being western has a racial component ergo the west defines itself as being white" complete nonsense
  
  you can ask anyone in the latin america world, which is hundreds of millions of people, and they'll tell you they're western due to historic and cultural and religious ties.
  
  lmao
  
  Clemente: "I'm in the club too amigos!!"
  Cletus: cocks shotgun
  
  this is pretty much how that goes
- No we recognize racism exists and are pointing it out to you. You are in denial
- thousands of people who look like you, who were US citizens, were illegally deported to Mexico by US police. This would never happen to an indigenous inhabitant of an actual Western country, even if they were here illegally. Illegal immigrants from Poland don't get questioned on the street, while LEGAL US CITIZENS OF MEXICAN DESCENT get illegally deported: does that sound like people who are part of the same bloc to you?
  
  I personally know light skinned US-born Indians, who would "pass" as any Latino ethnicity, perfect US-American accent, who were killed in broad daylight in the rural areas of Missouri and the police purposely ignored it
  
  You are just not western and you never will be. You seem obsessed with being considered part of the west, but the reality is that you just aren't.
  
  Nobody here is obsessed with race, our enemies are obsessed with race (and they know better than to admit it in public). So we learn quickly
- As a European I can tell you that Croatia is not considered part of Europe proper. Its where we go for vacations and cheap booze.
  
  It doesn't matter that they're white and Christian. They're Slavic or Balkan which means they're not "european" in the common conception.
  Same goes for Slovenia.
  The Czech kind of get an on/off perception of wether or not they're European. The Czechs are mad about this, since they are very obviously "culturally" european, however they're also an old east block country, which makes them slabs, which means they cannot possibly be real europeans.

Why does the US consider everything south of it its “backyard” and not Canada? I promise you the average American doesn’t think of some white German descendent when you talk about South America unless it’s Argentina

the monroe doctrine definitely included canada after it stopped being a UK colony. and what does americans thinking latin america being full of germans have to do with anything?
also if you're looking for "Germanic" looking people in Argentina you'll be pretty disappointed. They're basically 30% Native (Mapuche, Toba, and Guarani) and 70% Southern European (Spanish Italian)

Doesn’t matter, that’s not what people in America or Europe think and they don’t consider them in the club. The “collective west” and the “global north” and the “first world” are racist clubs filled with white people and nobody in those groups consider Latin America part of it

that’s not what people in the US think, perhaps, but you’ll be surprised to learn europe is a fairly diverse place with a range of opinions
- I’m talking about the media classes and elite and rulers who use the terms. When they say “first world” they are not talking about a single country south of Texas
  
  uh no? It's entirely the common people in the west too.
  
  the average white westerner uses "North America" as a term that excludes Mexico, for god sake. Yes, whites are literally retconning the geographic term "North America" to constitute an ethnoracial zone which excludes Mexico, in the same way that they retconned the terms "Caucasian" "Indian" "continent" "Aryan" and many more, all of which had actual rigorous definitions but now literally just mean "white people"
  
  any Latino who thinks they're "western" in any sense other than cardinal directions is beyond me, they've literally been doing this shit for 300 years kek
  
  I agree with you. This user was being a pedant so I went with the most airtight argument and just accused western elites of being white supremacists instead of the majority of westerners as it’s easier to prove
  
  media classes and elite in what country and language? different countries and different languages have different media and different terms. also first world is different from western
  
  If it isn’t in English, German or French then it’s not First World it’s just Sparkling Collective West
  
  It doesn't matter, almost everyone in Europe speaks fluent American English, and in 20 years' time you can remove the "almost"
  
  European American culture influences Europeans 100x more than vice versa. Most Americans can't name anything about modern European mindsets or politics. Most Europeans know everything about America's dirty laundry and social culture.
- europe is a diverse place with a range of opinions
  
  not really
  
  https://i.postimg.cc/MWGZ93zF/image.png
  
  Almost every European country would not be willing to help Colombia if it had a major crisis.
  The only Euro country majorly willing to help was Spain, which makes some sense considering the entire continent is partial descendants of them.
  
  But even then, Spain was less willing to help Colombia than it would other Southern European and even Northern European countries which are MUCH richer than Colombia.
  
  Since Colombia is a Latin American country which was recently loosely allied with the West, doesn't have any major geopolitical disputes with them (unlike Cuba Bolivia Venezuela), and also since it's a very solidly "Mestizo" country (unlike Bolivia Peru) it is a very good proxy for basically any Latin American nation. Their opinion on Colombia, basically, is "as good as it gets" for Latin American countries.
  
  You are not white and never will be, and the honest and emotional conception of the term "Western" is entirely based on race and collective racial interests of white people. Russia isn't in it because Russia wants more stuff at the expense of other Whites. Latin American countries aren't in it because they're not white.
  
  I'm not sure why so much of the rest-of-the-world outside the West is delusional about this. Maybe they're projecting their natural goodwill onto white people lmao? Or maybe they're so ridiculously prideful that they're allergic to seeing themselves as an "oppressed group" that they'll deny the most basic evidence of reality in order to boost their ego?
  
  Some of those results are very funny and interesting. Italy having a specific grudge against Germany that isnt even remotely mutual is my favorite. Followed by Spain being willing to help everyone, except the UK
- You'll be surprised to know that people in Europe don't even consider most of Europe "western" and most definitely not middle or south America.
  
  It's not about religion or culture really. Sweden and France doesn't have a lot in common, but they're both "the west". Poland isn't though. Spain just barely qualifies.

Are you being some kind of weird nazi pick-me, or are you just severely misinformed?

The average person in Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and like 75% of Brazil just doesn't pass as a white person here in the US.

that's like 90% of Latin America or 75% of South America. They're not white, they're admixed with Europeans. Just like Black Americans are.
I know a lot of you think you're white because you're lighter skinned than black people. Arabs and lighter skinned Indians also think that a lot of the time. They're not. Almost everyone in Northern Europe and Anglo America can tell the difference

and tbh even Argentinians don't really look that white to me on average.

Also, South America is FAR poorer than Croatia. Latter is $17k GDP per head. Average South American GDP is $10k according to stats, but these don't weight for population so small rich countries like Chile and Uruguay make it falsely larger. South America is dominated by Brazil whose GDP is $7k per head, so yea Latin American avg GDP/capita is something like $9,000 if we're being very optimistic.

And like somebody already said, Croatia itself is the periphery of the west

why are you people obsessed with race? as a palestinian honduran I can tell you for a fact honduras has nothing in common with the middle east lol. it probably also has nothing in common with africa, east asia, or central asia but that’s speculation from me. it’s very clearly a western country
- We're not "obsessed with race", we're just aware that the rightists who invented the social construct that is "the west" and talk about it all the time are. They're white supremacists. And "the west" is a white supremacist construct. Being aware of that is a good thing. I dont understand what your disconnect is.
  
  the ancient greeks were white supremacists when they invented the term west to differentiate themselves from persians? "the west" is no more a white supremacist concept than arab is a muslim supremacist concept (which sadly many fellow christian palestinians believe alongside copts in egypt or maronites in lebanon) or that chinese is a han supremacist concept. its just a descriptor for a group of people with some similarities
  
  Youre being so pendantic for no reason. Its widely understood that the modern concept of "the west" is a white supremacist concept. Regardless of origina. Thats how they justify things like America and Canada "belonging to white people". Thats how they justify all sorts of imperialist actions (the west civilizing the barbarians).
  
  I can assure you that the vast majority of people in the world, and probably the united states, are not as clued up about white supremacist phraseology as you and when they hear the term western culture don't immediately start to think of roman salutes and blood quantum
  
  Definitly wrong about the united states i can tell you that much. I mean they might not think of roman salutes but they definitly dont mentally include Latam when they hear the term. And its not how the term is used in our media either.
  
  That’s the point of this convo though, it’s you Latin Americans who think they are white and western that are completely out of the loop. You don’t understand how racist the imperial core that draws the lines and makes the decisions actually is, and how little they give a fuck about you and your country. You are in denial about how racist the West is and want to be included in it for some reason when you should seek to destroy it
  
  You are hating on the messenger (us, leftists) for revealing to you the truth about American white supremacists. Don’t get mad at us, take it up with them.
  
  This is delusional. “The West” in modern sense is white supremacist. If you deny this you have internalized white supremacy

Look, neither you or I get to define what "the West" means. It is a racist concept, but that's the unfortunate reality of the situation. "The West" is not defined by who thinks they should belong to it, it's defined by the material reality of exploitation. It's nearly synonymous with "Imperial Core." If you're in the periphery, you are not part of "The West" no matter how much your society mirrors so-called western culture. Just as a regular worker is not part of the bourgeoisie no matter how much they want to be. There are the exploiters and the exploited. Latam, on the global stage, is exploited by the imperial core and there is no escaping that fact. The exploiters will never see it as part of their club because they're exploiting it! It's not like we (hexbears or leftists in general) see this as a good thing or want to perpetuate it. We want to tear it the fuck down. But we can't deny material reality, and it seems like that's what you're trying to do by insisting that Latam is western and getting mad at us for the fact that it's largely racism that determines who belongs to the in-group "Western" and who doesn't.