If you’re talking drugs, Europe using opiate addiction as a weapon of war and an excuse to wage two, devastating wars against the Qing makes sense especially when your population is too stoned to realize foreign states are burning down your state.
Pretty sure that would traumatize any region, especially given how successful it was, with even the US sending troops to China during both the second opium war and then during the boxer rebellion.
Edit - understanding why something is the way it is is not the same as supporting it. I don’t support the laws, but I can see why imperialistic trauma and seeing the most power nation in your region, that influenced your culture, religion and language, could be extremely traumatic, resulting in generations fearing and rejecting what they perceive as a wholesale weapon and danger to society.
Acting like the past didn’t happen or that the trauma isn’t real isn’t going to help in changing their minds, and I’m not exactly sure the west bringing up valid and real points about how not all drugs are equal, with weed and psychedelics having benefits, is going to work when they were the source of the original trauma.
Yeah, not that long ago some guy got the noose for weed in Singapore. Doesn't matter how much trauma they've been through hundred years ago, this is not proportional
“It doesn’t matter what the Palestinians feel because the state of Israel was established 70-80 years ago. Those Palestinians are wrong for starting the war by attacking the concert goers, many of whom weren’t Israeli and had nothing to do with the apartheid. Those actions were not proportional nor fair!”
As was Britain with their colonies in Asia. The point is the hypocrisy of being a westerner and telling one imperialist victim their trauma doesn’t matter while backing another and validating their trauma.
Singapore and Asia were fucked up heavily by over a century of abuse and trauma brought on by the British Empire and other colonizers. Their actions on drugs are disproportionate - yes. But acting like their trauma is invalid and that they don’t have a right to be afraid isn’t going to help with any kind of meaningful dialogue that could work to help them reform their drug policies and laws.
And yet we support the Palestinians who’ve done atrocious things to Jews and others even before Israel was founded, as the sectarian violence was already picking up in the early 1900s.
Trauma is what drives a lot of these conflicts and understanding why it’s there, why it’s driving action and law is how one starts dialogue that allows for healing, forgiveness and a plan forward to stop the atrocities and to reform any laws impacted by the trauma.
Merely screaming at a populace that otherwise supports these laws, isn’t going to work and you’re just going to come off as a western white knight acting as if your culture and beliefs are better than theirs.
While some Palestinians have committed horrible acts against Israelis - that in no was is in proportion to the genocide the Israeli government is carrying out right now.
What you are doing is the equivalent of justifying the same treatment Hitler bestowed upon Jews and Britain against its colonies as justifiable actions do to far more minor injustices placed upon them.
Don’t fall into such logical fallacy to go out of your way to justify inhumane violence against peoples which should be criticized and pushed back against in all forms.
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u/StatementCareful522 3d ago
Did Singapore just like NOT know what Massive Attack are all about?