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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020·

You’re 100% right.

Democracies are going to collapse in a lot of places because the people in these places never really wanted democracy or even cared much for it. They were just handed it down because the people the colonizers left in charge were born and bred within the colonizer’s own political systems.

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Good example: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial...

Although I think it's not quite about "democracy." Many people don't want liberal democracy. They might be fine with non-liberal democracy: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/shadi-hamid-on-i...

Which arguably may not be a bad thing. Letting the indigenous people of the land govern it according to their own cultural norms and values will allow new and diverse values to flourish.

"Cultural norms" and "diverse values" like the oppression and subjugation of women, or mass government censorship as above? Some nations don't deserve the sovereignty they have. I don't think anyone would shed a tear if the UAE was taken over and replaced by a government that actually guarantees some basic human rights.

You do know that the oppression and subjugation of women and minorities was often brought by colonizers, right? Singapore's anti-homosexual laws, for example, were promulgated by the British. They didn't always bring enlightenment.

Same with India. Homosexuality was an accepted (not necessarily always approved) part of the culture for hundreds of years until the British outlawed it in the 18th Century.

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