While it’s true all of Western Europe is guilty, there’s a reason why people point to Britain first and foremost. Its empire was pretty much the codifier of what people think of when the word “superpower” is used. There wasn’t such an uncontested concentration of power in a single polity that could be projected globally until the UK came out on top from the Napoleonic Wars then went on to subjugate Asia and Africa by the mid-late 19th Century, essentially becoming master of the world market and trade networks (at least until the onset of WWI). Not even the Spanish and Portuguese Empires held such a monopoly. Even after the start of Britain’s terminal decline into becoming America’s lapdog in the cold war, it still influenced world politics in ways that still affect us today (relevantly, it was originally Israel’s patron power before the US supplanted them sometime in the 70s/80s).

Me looking at virtually any problem stemming from the 19th and 20th Centuries:

This was about settler-colonial states in particular. Not to say I wouldn’t love to see the Bourgeois Russian state go through another 7-11-1917.

You see, social democracy came about because smarter heads in the the working class just kindly asked and voted the bougies to give them a bigger slice of the pie. It had nothing to do with those radical tankies, or the gigantic bear in the room in Moscow scaring the shit out of the said bougies. Bernie Sanders was able to coast his way into office and get shit done without being ratfucked whatsoever!

In seriousness, it’s just darkly hilarious to me that we’ve come full circle on a century’s worth of concessions being rolled back, and the supposed “socialists” in the West are somehow more up their own asses than the old Social Democratic parties, who at least understood some class analysis.