chapotraphouse

Racism against himself

They did have a fascist government that ran concentration camps though. Plus more than a couple euro nations never had a formal colonial empire, but benefitted/still benefit from western imperialism. Idk where that leaves us re: the original question, but "it's only ok to make fun of European ethnicities that had colonies" doesn't seem super solid.

(I have a hard time communicating tone and I'm trying real hard to not come off all debate pervert, apologies if I failed)

So there was this thing called Polonization whereby Poland seized land from the newly formed Western Ukrainian People's Republic, Belarus, and Lithuania, among slivers of others. This was just flatly a land grab and imperialistic. More than that, they attempted to assimilate the minority populations, limiting the number of schools in their languages. Even when this was somewhat lessened, any Belarusian with a streak of pride was viewed with suspicion and seen as a communist spy.

Ukrainians faced a load of shit, destruction of Greek Orthodox churches explicitly in revenge for the dissolution of Catholic power by the Romanovs after Partition. Essentially taking it out on Ukrainians and Belarusians.

They then worked with the Nazis solely for the purpose of taking Czechoslovak territory. Poland is not colonial inasmuch as it was not a thing for most of the colonial era, but the 2nd Polish Republic was imperialist and locally colonialist with their goals of creating clear ethnic borders within their territory and with their neighbors, with the goal of Polonizing those caught in the middle

lack of a colonial empire doesn't really excuse participation in settler-colonialism. i'm not trying to be ignorant of any particular historical bigotries towards poles, but in the context of being in the heart of empire in 2025, i fail to see what existing bigotries have persisted against the children of white polish immigrants. again, i don't have any onus against regarding making fun of poles to be racist in the sense of the german venture towards extermination. i'm also not sure to what extent one could consider modern poland as under the thumb of us imperialism any more so than say germany or finland.

Even in the US, I remember back in the 80s kids used to crack racist jokes about Poles

but that was white europeans being targeted for their white european nationality. not racism, and to the extent that you can say it WAS racism, it could only be defined that way with the absurd white elite’s constant redefining of who “gets to be white”.

italians are closer to being PoC than Poles and nobody thinks its racist to make fun of italians, because they’re now accepted as white

i by the way, am not “an american”. im iranian and mexican. i just happen to live here because people tend to escape the wrath of the whites by coming here

“polish people are discriminated against in some countries” just gives “i was the only white guy at my school and black people were racist to me”. im not saying they weren’t mean to you, but racist? i dont think so

i also want to point out, 10 out of 10 times someone was being prejudiced towards a pole, if there were an african in the vicinity or an easterner then the pole would have been spared. 9 out of 10 times the pole may have even joined in being racist.