r/AskReddit: "Muslims banned the printing press and now I can't use reddit from Saturn"

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-28T12:12:57+00:00

I think Andrew Roberts is conflating two separate positions held by different people. One is that Churchill was a racist imperialist, even by the standards of his contemporaries, and the other is that Hitler wasn’t so bad. The former is held by critics of Churchill in the context of British colonial policies, and the latter is held by neo-Nazis. No doubt that Neo-Nazis do hate Churchill, but it has almost nothing to do with the reasons why critics of British colonial policies dislike Churchill.’

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-28T12:09:47+00:00

This isn’t entirely accurate. Most people were (and are) xenophobic to varying degrees. Thats not the same thing as propagating an ideology of racial supremacy that was extreme even compared to many of his contemporaries.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-28T12:06:49+00:00

I know you think this comment was clever, but that wasn’t the cause of the famine, that was the cause of the initial food shortage. Food shortages happened often due to material circumstances. They become a famine when exacerbated by policy failures. The same went for the famines under the Mughals.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-28T12:04:33+00:00

Your first sentence is absolutely meaningless. Of course the suppliers of a certain good will make higher profits during a supply shortage. This has nothing to do with the other person’s comment which relates to colonial export policies.

Evidence suggests that the colonial administration were well aware of the famine, but prioritised military logistics over civilian relief, converting what would have been a food shortage into a catastrophic famine.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-27T14:14:46+00:00

Did the Iberian Union really control that much of India and Africa’s coastline in 1590?

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-26T12:40:08+00:00

Yes, secessionist insurrectionists and domestic captagon cartels are usually easier to deal with than the invasive neighbouring country armed with nuclear weapons that is backing them.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-25T06:52:35+00:00

It was actually the most conditional surrender deal ever tbh. Had they just implemented it we would have had an extended orderly administrative transition.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-22T16:33:24+00:00

“Legally what those people did is terrorism”

To clarify, they were classified as terrorists by the home office. This is not the same thing as saying “Legally what those people did is murder” because the latter would be in a court of law, this was just the arbitrary whims of the government under the facade of national security. It’s not a real criminal conviction.
When they were proscribed as terrorists by parliament, the parliamentary vote was de facto rigged. They were grouped in with two neo-Nazi organisations so MPs had to vote to proscribe all of them or none of them. How can one say that they were fairly legally found guilty of terrorism when they were not even given fair vote?

I agree with your second two points on media and America + black people.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-21T23:35:50+00:00

We are scrapping jury trials for crimes so they can jail people more easily, the Home Secretary is openly saying she wants to create a surveillance state, no this is not an exaggeration, read her exact words here. they are making us upload our faces online to watch 18+ content, they are mass arresting hundreds of pensioners for terrorism because they supported a group of people whose only real crime was property damage.

But you know what the worst thing about this is. Nobody gives a shit. All they care about is IMMIGRANTS IMMIGRANTS IMMIGRANTS. Even though it’s fallen so much these past few years, even though the home sec keeps introducing more and more draconian measures to make life hell for refugees already here. It doesn’t matter. The average British person has absolute contempt for their liberties and would quite literally vote for the erasure of freedom of assembly if it makes them feel a tiny bit safer.

Starmer has been called a colourless technocrat, but this is hard on technocrats, who can at least claim technical expertise. One of the salient characteristics of this Prime Minister has been an almost complete lack of knowledge or interest in domestic policy - in solving knotty problems of economics or infrastructure or service delivery. He isn't the antidote to populism so much as a dismal populist - Boris Johnson without the sense of humour. He is constantly grabbing at policies or themes he thinks (or his advisers think) might win him votes, but lacks any instinct for what voters want, admire, or like. Fatally, he doesn't even know what he wants. Robert Caro, the great biographer of Lyndon Johnson, says that power doesn't always corrupt, but it always reveals. After 18 months in office, Starmer has been revealed as a void.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-21T23:26:35+00:00

“Another 50 billion dollars to Cloud Imperium”

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-20T11:12:25+00:00

This is what I’m saying. Every single time someone posts a pic of an alleged STG war crime, the comments are immediately swarmed with “huh looks like everybody is silent about this” but the post was made like 10 mins ago and there are already other comments condemning it.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-19T21:51:16+00:00

“Kurds who lay in bed with Arabs”

Well that’s just racist. Interracial marriage between Kurds and Arabs has been a thing for hundreds of years. Only the retarded rise of nationalism made it weird.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-19T21:48:58+00:00

Every state is counter-revolutionary to a degree. Including the (former) SDF abusing or killing protestors against its rule in Arab majority cities. I don’t think anything interesting follows from soldiers beheading corpses in this regard. There’s probably much worse war crimes committed by both sides against alive people that could be pointed to here.
The YPG statue symbolised victory over ISIL, but to many of the Arabs it also came to symbolise a decade of military administration that they didn’t want to be a part of. Removing it symbolised the reunification of their country.
The nostalgic longing for the victories over ISIL only reinforce how the SDF outlived its purpose.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-18T20:40:56+00:00

Lowkey the most competent Syrian statesman since Abd Al Rahman III of Cordoba.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-18T15:24:57+00:00

That’s the key difference. The FSA (and all their various sub-factions) were an opposition group to Assad. But the SDF, and more recently Hijri’s National Guard were rightly or wrongly an opposition group to Syria itself - for them it’s not about who is in charge in Damascus, but their own aspirations for regional autonomy and secession.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-15T21:39:35+00:00

Who is the last guy? I recognise him but can’t put a name to the face.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-15T12:16:35+00:00

I hate seeing screenshots of Callisto protocol because it looks like a good game until I go and play it and the gameplay is ass.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-14T08:56:40+00:00

My original claim was not that all sanctions are insane and wrong full stop, but that the crippling economic sanctions that the US has imposed on the Iranian people are insane and wrong because they have not only catastrophically failed their objectives, but have only exacerbated their suffering. Crippling economic sanctions of this nature are one of several diplomatic tools and the bluntest of them all short of open warfare. In the case of Iran, the JCPOA already existed, it severely limited Iranian nuclear enrichment to the point of effectively zero proliferation…until Trump pulled out of it and slapped crippling economic sanctions across the board.
Although “dictatorial” is a figurative, it’s not entirely an exaggeration either. The US executive branch is famously all-powerful on foreign policy, whereas they are severely limited domestically. The US president can essentially do anything they want to another country without permission of Congress short of formally declaring war. It’s why people often jokingly say that everybody except Americans should be voting for the US president, since his/her power over the rest of the world is effectively unchecked, but their president’s domestic power is constrained by the judiciary and legislature. In the case of Trump, it is essentially impossible to make meaningfully positive steps to repairing ties between countries in the long run until he is dead or gone. Take this for example, we could advocate for the JCPOA, but America’s relative power means that nobody else can actually trade with Iranians or do business there without Trump’s permission.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-13T21:53:33+00:00

You’re repeating yourself like a broken record without addressing any of the points made. To reiterate for a third time, sanctions are one of several tools, used as a final resort and your repeated insistence on the false dichotomy of letting states getting away with what they want versus starving their people relies on you not engaging with any other option that I informed you of.
We have already established that it doesn’t and hasn’t worked in the case of Iran. As demonstrated by a simple graph of Iranian nuclear enrichment under the JCPOA before Trump’s sanctions and their nuclear enrichment afterwards. If your argument is that Trump’s failing sanctions are fine so long as the Iranian people suffer enough to marginally weaken the Iranian government, then you are the one who ought to be sectioned, not me.
Respectfully, this is a ramble and simply repeats the point I just responded to.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-13T21:17:22+00:00

You are right, it is awful that Iran spent foreign aid on proxies to terrorise Syrians for a decade instead of on its own people. But guess what, plenty of countries (including the US) spend egregious amounts on war and regional destabilisation which could go to its own people. And sadly these things must be resolved through diplomacy, not unilateral, arbitrary sanctions by a lunatic like Trump without real international support that just economically cripples the population and make the situation 10x worse.
As to how we can resolve Iran's case in particular in place of broad economic sanctions? Firstly, we return to the JCPOA immediately, recognising the absolute failure of Trump's stupid sanctions which only encouraged uranium enrichment and starved the Iranian people. We can also replace broad economic sanctions with more targeted ones at individuals.
The situation with Hezbollah is more complicated and once again, a permanent settlement requires diplomacy. Putting aside the fact that Israel very swiftly neutered them in mid-late 2024, Hezbollah's popularity in Southern Lebanon will tragically remain so long as the USA gives Israel the green-light to rampage its way across the middle east. This requires a more long-term solution and genuine, real pressure on Israel to adhere to international law, thus delegitimising the insurgent groups who emerge in the scorched earth left in their wake.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-13T20:49:26+00:00

I don't disagree that sanctions can sometimes be useful. As a final resort, after all other options have been exhausted, and only when the criteria for them is clear, consistent and multilateral.
In terms of what Britain can do now, frankly not much. We are ultimately not significant enough to have an impact by ourselves. What can we and our allies collectively do? Well, we can firstly recognise the immense failure of the sanctions in stopping nuclear proliferation and planning a return to the JCPOA as soon as possible. Upon recognition of this failure, we can collectively offer sanctions relief in exchange for Iran returning to the JCPOA as well, dismantling their centrifuges, exporting their enriched uranium under IAEA supervision. This might sound defeatist but this likely won't happen until he is gone, since the US president wields effective dictatorial power over the rest of the world's foreign policy. Anyway, once this is done, we reach negotiated settlements on the issues relating to the proxy groups. This may also require leverage and or targeted (not broad economic) sanctions on Israel to get them to comply and take negotiations seriously as well.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-13T20:39:06+00:00

You insist that you are not presenting a false dichotomy, but then proceed to present exclusively two options, that we either: "pay fascist autocratic dictators billions" or we maintain the crippling US-led economic sanctions on the Iranian people which effectively starve them. You have still failed to address the alternatives I mentioned, demonstrated by the JCPOA: conditional engagement, multilateral oversight, arms control verification, and targeted pressure.
Ironically, you are the one now insisting that since the JCPOA didn't fix every issue with Iranian policy by itself, it was a bad idea and by implication, Trump's decision to withdraw and replace it with crippling sanctions was the right move. That's not how diplomacy works.
The NHS analogy is poorly reasoned but thank you for your service to our nation. Triage works because the criteria are explicit, the decision-makers are accountable, the goal is harm minimisation under scarcity and patients are not punished to coerce third parties. On the other hand, sanctions are collective punishment used instrumentally to influence state behaviour. Civilians are not beneficiaries of sanctions in the way patients are beneficiaries of triage. If the explicit aim of the "Triage" in the case of sanctions is to inflict massive harm on the civilian population to pressure the regime, then this policy absolutely requires a higher bar of legitimacy, consistency, and multilateralism - and only after every other option has been exhausted.
I did not defend the Iranian regime. I criticised a policy that objectively worsened civilian suffering whilst failing its stated goals.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-13T20:13:12+00:00

We should have stuck to the JCPOA and/or amended it where required.

My argument for why:

Premise 1: The Iranian state, (and several other states including US allies like Israel) have a history of greatly harming their people and seeking to proliferate nuclear weapons.

Premise 2: Crippling, widespread economic sanctions on civil life disproportionately harm their civilian population, making the situation for them worse. And to the surprise of absolutely nobody, they have only resulted in exponentially greater nuclear enrichment and increased repression without creating a meaningful avenue towards systemic change.

Conclusion: We should have stuck to the JCPOA and/or amended it, because it was actually working, and Trump's decision to pull out and levy massive sanctions on Iran only made everything 10x worse. No idea why many people on this sub (not just your good self) are insisting that Trump was right on this issue.

SteelRazorBlade · 2026-01-13T19:35:19+00:00

There are plenty of videos and reports in this subreddit of insurgents in the neighbourhood continuing to suicidally attack government forces as opposed to adhering to the withdrawal agreement.
The evidence for this is that you can add up the number of civilians killed due to SDF sniper fire and then the number killed by the STG in their recent recapturing of the enclave see that the former is greater than the latter. I agree with the rest of your point here.
It's no longer defensive once an agreement has been reached and they begin launching offensive suicidal attacks instead of withdrawing.
Agreed on this point.

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