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If I wanted to be contrary I'd say that the cartoon is itself is "populist propaganda" in its purest form, and that the very oversimplification of it obscures other important factors in the equation.
Empire and Economics are two very different concepts, and I should have elaborated on what I meant there: I was using "Empire" as a sort of shortahnd for both the literal imperialism rampant in the Victorian and Edwardian eras—that is, the administration of territory by persons not native to that territory—and to the imperial style of governance common in Europe at the time: by which I mean that there was, even in those countries that were not technically monarchies, a general lack of functional democracy and self-determination. Further, the empires of the day tended to operate in a fortress mentality, viewing interaction between their empires as a zero-sum game—attributable mainly, I think, to the lack of concepts that we take for granted today, such as "international community" and "international pressure." The Empire is resonsible only to itself (and, theoretically, God), and has carte blanche to do as it will—until it bumps up against its neighboring Empire.
These concepts are primarily political, ideological—perhaps even, at their roots, theological—and not economic. These concepts, I would further argue, helped create the conditions for the Great War, even if they did not cause it as such:
That's a lot of baggage for a single word, I realize—and in a misguided devotion to pithiness, I fear I may have confused the issue.
I will, further, cop that the paragraph on the rise of antisemitism in today's antiwar Left constitutes a digression, which has undoubtedly confused the issue. For that I can only beg forgiveness: as you may have noticed, I am not so Swift as some. |
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