I'm American, and sometimes i've been told by like francophiles that i'm unjustified in making fun of the French.
but like, cmon. They've been touting themselves as the 'global center of art and culture' for like a thousand years and then go on to do shit like this, I think a little ribbing is more than warranted
I consider criticism of the French entirely justified being from the US, we paid off our war debt to them, we bailed them out of two world wars, and then they had the audacity to threaten us during Nam that they would join the Soviet Block if we didn't help them reclaim their lost colony.
By destroying and razing to the ground our cities and raping thousands of women and children (and the only ones punished were Black soldiers), and only after you've been forced by the Japanese to enter the war? It's not as though you volunteered to help us.
and then they had the audacity to threaten us during Nam
After the OSS funded Ho Chi Minh with Mao's help in his war against the French, so that you can get Viet Nam instead? But that was only one of the times you funded a rebel only to have them turn against you and cause the deaths of your kids, wasn't it? But since those dead soldiers were mostly from your poors, I guess their lives don't really matter?
I mean, I'm not gonna disagree with you on the first points here, though if I recall the Nazis were the ones that razed those cities. Still, the guy saying that criticism is justified specifically because of 'saving' y'all is just wrong.
As for the rest of the post. I think the whole 'only helped us after the Japanese forced you too' is awfully simplistic. Britain, Australia, France, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africs declared war after Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union used false flags to invade Poland.
While public sentiment was pretty solidly against the Axis, that didn't change the fact that Europe had been at war with itself for centuries. World War 1 was caused by that very same web of alliances, and joining that war was opposed by the public because it wasn't our fight. There was no reason to believe that this second war wasn't the same, at the time.
As for Nam, i really don't think either side has the moral ground to stand on here. The US funded HCM because he was talking about how he wanted freedom from French oppression. The second he decided to take funding from the Soviets and Chinese instead, the US supported France's sovereignty. They weren't in that war for territory, they were in it first for supporting revolutionaries and then to stop communism by assisting the French in that war. the next few decades of war don't change that, as messy as they were. The US definitely was not morally in the right for their actions in Vietnam, but let's not pretend like France is blameless when the entire reason for the conflict was French Imperialism.
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u/only777 ☣️ Jul 27 '24
Everyone has the wrong idea here.
This isn’t some sort of statement about gender or societal norms; it’s just France being French and parading nonsensical bollocks around as “art”
Source: I’m British and we have to live next door to this. Trust me, this isn’t being put on for you, they’d be doing this even if you weren’t looking