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Kiwihoppe's thoughts about empires (and why we shouldn't rebuild the British/Roman empire)
By Kiwihoppe ·
Before reading through any further, I want you to go onto Xitter to take a glimpse on the state of Right Wing Twitter. Whether you're in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and America, there are tens or hundreds more people calling for a rebuilding of the British/Roman/Spanish empire, retaking old colonial territories, rebuilding Rhodesia, all that jazz.
b but... muh bushstroke and fireforce
undeniably cool aesthetics, and yes Ian Smith did try to save the people of Rhodesia from communist ruination, his troopies did a fine job destroying the terrs, but I believe that the rot started even before Cecil Rhodes stepped foot in Durban that one fateful day.
The problem with empires lies within the civilizing mission in of itself, something I believe is the Achilles heel of any empire. Whether it is Rome and humanitas for barbarians, Britain's civilizing efforts across all corners of the planet, or now with the PRC's Sinicization of Uyghurs and Tibetians, this is a massive, glaring entry point that is kept open because of "muh fair go" attitude empires require to force a technologically and culturally super group from just annihilating the petrol sniffing stick smashing locals that are thoroughly incompatible with the empires ideals. This same desire to "Civilize" different group egalitarianly also happens to be the main drive of communism, as the logical conclusion of an empire is assimilating all sorts of unequal groups into one brown blob of "humanity" that can work together and have world peace o algo.
but everywhere the british went, the quality of life increased with medicine and education
This is where central planning + egalitarian utopianism goes to utter hell. Colonialism did help undeniably help uplift living standards and quality of life once the colonizing power holds a foothold somewhere, but we have two matters to confront. Are these standards kept/grown after colonization, and do the natives actually even deserve the aid. Most of the time (with some extremely rare exceptions), you can answer these two questions with a resounding NO. After Mugabe and ZANU took power of Rhodesia, it became Zimbabwe, and living standards along with infrastructure rotted (along with countless groups of Ndebeles, who got genocided by Mugabe in the gukurahundi), with Emmerson Mnangagwa (who couped Mugabe out of power) even begging le whitey to come back to farm on their properties (which were expropriated after 2000 because of bix nood gib mes), which were now mismanaged to produce basically jack shit. After South Africa became a rainbow nation, Nelson Mandela (who was jailed for running a terror group bombing innocent Afrikaners) and his cronies at the ANC mismanaged a nation that once had nuclear bombs and world class arms industry to a nation that has a euphemism for blackout (aka loadshedding) because muh raycism. Before the Dutch set foot on what would be now called Cape Town, the area had a few Khoisans that were nomadic, along with some Bantus that had established some few settlements for themselves. By the time Cecil Rhodes and his men stepped foot in Rhodesia in the 1890's, there were ~500-600K Shonas and Ndebeles doing their thing in Rhodesia, according to colonial surveys. With colonialism introducing medicine, infrastructure, and other things to increase the standards of living, these populations multiplied from merely few hundred thousand to millions, resulting in 93-95% black population compared to ~5% white population in Rhodesia by the time of the bush war. South Africa around that time had 76% coloured population compared to a 20.5% white population, which is not sustainable long term, and creates these boom bust cycles we see RWers on xitter reminiscing about.
The point is, combining a hyperstimulated desire to civilize with the strong reaches of central planning characteristic of a strong empire rarely reaches beneficial outcomes that outlast the empire itself. Instead these misallocated resource allocation by colonial administrators (whether it's Whitehall or Rome, or any other imperial system throughout history) makes the native populace dependent on infinite handouts, and multiplies their masses from a somewhat manageable number to an infinite zerg horde that will be infinitely tired, infinitely cold, and will infinitely try to create a fire with your beautiful oak door. Their first few attempts will fail, but because of the numbers game, they will succeed eventually, settlers will have to pull out, infrastructure will rot, and we get what we see today.
hen should we not explore the world then and help people?
Just because I shit on empires doesn't mean we as a people shouldn't go out on the world, build their own slice of heaven and multiply. I just don't want humanity to waste their energy giving handouts to people who are content with smashing rocks and living in mudhuts, and turning them into an unmanageable population that will actively fight against us, and revert into affairs before colonization. If a homeless man wants to help get out of whatever circumstances that got him there, you give him a job and you rehabilitate him, not give him endless money so that he can by a machete and DNB you and others surrounding him. Basically encourage low time preference mindset that is conducive to cooperation and free trade instead of high preference niggery
and how does Hoppe aim to alleviate all of your sore points about muh empire?
One solution that seems to try and mitigate this sort of cyclical lifespan of the leviathan empire is Hoppeanism, which allows private covenants to spread themselves across all corners of the globe, free to associate with anyone they want to, and free to aid each other with mutually beneficial trading, allowing humanity to theoretically reap the benefits of an empire, without the vast consequences of when it eventually falls, both towards the settlers and the natives. If it doesn't stop this cyclical lifespan, I believe this would atleast make it more bearable to humanity by giving more incentive to not fall for subversion, and give residents a better chance of opting out by simply going to a more likeminded private covenant, while putting less people into each societal experiment/gamble.
Basically that sums up my rationale of why I chose to be a Hoppean. It seems to be the best way humanity has to dampen the lifecycle of the civilization from an apocalyptic catastrophe that destroys the lives of millions into something that is less impactful for the average man, who could practically choose what flavour of civilization he wants to participate and build for. In short, we don't need a perfect civilization, we need a civilization that doesn't require perfection