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Comment by owaislone | Hacker News Reader

I think you misunderstood my comment or I failed to explain what I was trying to say. My point was that any nation state unilaterally revoking the autonomy of a region is undemocratic unless the people of that region vote for it. Imagine the Spanish military marching into Catalonia, shutting down all means of communication, arresting most Catalan politicians, lawyers and activists, and then unilaterally dismantling the Catalan parliament and constitution, just because people in Madrid felt so. I can't imagine anyone on HN trying to justify such a hypothetical event. I don't understand how anyone can justify this.

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> Imagine the Spanish military marching into Catalonia, shutting down all means of communication, arresting most Catalan politicians, lawyers and activists, and then unilaterally dismantling the Catalan parliament and constitution, just because people in Madrid felt so

I can't tell if you're being ironic. Because many similar things happened to Catalonia two years ago: arresting Catalan leaders, suspending parliamentary rule and autonomy, violently suppressing protests and dissent, censoring the Internet, imposing martial law.

Many of Catalonia's political leadership and activists are still in jail, and facing years of prison: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/12-catalan-leaders-fa... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41678086

The only thing that categorically did not happen from your list was an incursion by the Spanish military into Catalonia, although even that seemed possible for a period of time.

I agree with your stance re: autonomy, but Catalonia was a rather poor example.

I know similar things happened in Catalonia but no where near to this extent. AFAIR, Catalonian parliament was planning to hold a referendum on it's own and the Spanish police used force against protestors. That said it was no where as bad as what India has done. If Catalonia was cut off from the rest of the world, military deployed everywhere and no voices could be heard from them, Europe and the test of the would would go crazy over it. Also, don't forget Indian forces history in Kashmir.

May be Scotland and the UK would have been a better example but I wanted to cite something that felt a bit more real and relatable.

> Also, don't forget Indian forces history in Kashmir.

Yes, this is the major difference between the two regions. But in terms of recent events, the main difference between Kashmir and Catalonia -- other than the lack of military involvement in Catalonia -- is the greater degree of oppression in Kashmir. Similar strategies and tactics were used by the more powerful polity in both crises.

> May be Scotland and the UK would have been a better example

Yes, I originally wrote that in my comment, but deleted it because it seemed too rambling. In any case, I wouldn't hold up the reaction of the Spanish government to Catalonia's moves toward greater autonomy to be some kind of democratic ideal.

And more importantly Catalan is a economically output generating region and not a consumer.

Let's see, a challenge!

Just kidding, I don't view the world that way. But I will highlight that, historically, it's been common to have various degrees of autonomy across nation states. Even today, Californians are consistently choosing less autonomy than other U.S. states.

But I digress. Another digression might involve suggesting undemocratic things are not implicitly bad, even if the rule of democracy is better. Putting down rebellions, for example. Or increasing police presence in high crime areas where criminals, or those scared of them, wouldn't vote for it.

But more to the core of the point, I'm not sure it's helpful to proliferate the perspective that variation in autonomy (or standard of living or what have you) is primarily a consequence of group identity without extraordinarily convincing reasons to believe so. Doing so opens the door to suggesting that that ought to be how it is, if the Other is, in your your view, trying to reduce your autonomy. An example where this might be justified is the literal concentration camps that the Chinese continue to impose on their religious and ethnic minorities.

The American culture is starting to see everything through group identity colored goggles, and that spells complete destruction for the country and our ability to reason about diplomacy.

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