Is the person or group criticising a country just as revealing as the country being criticised?

What I mean is that, is it possible to objectively criticise a country for its culture, policies and behaviour, or does doing so merely expose the hypocrisy and propagandistic aims of the person or group doing the criticising?

Example (A) In Soviet Russia in 1936, Grigori Aleksandrov and Isidor Simkov created one of the most popular films of the day. Circus was a tale of a white woman who has to flee her small-minded town in America, where the locals literally chase her out of town because she has given birth to an interracial baby with a father who is black. The woman runs away with the circus and ends up in Soviet Russia. While the Americans in the movie are portrayed throughout as bigoted and racist, the contrast with the great Soviet people could not be clearer. Indeed, when the heroine’s “shameful” secret is exposed in front of an audience at the circus, the entire Russian audience protects the baby. The film ends with them singing a great lullaby to him in which all the Soviet peoples are presented showing that they will protect this little black baby whom the American imperialists have cast out. Then everybody gathers together, holding the baby in their arms, to join in a great parade in honour of Comrade Stalin.

Example (B) In 1927, an American journalist named Katherine Mayo wrote a best-selling book called Mother India about the degraded position of females in that country. India's ills, she argued, had nothing to do with British rule and everything to do with child marriage and the oppression of women, which led sickly, ignorant mothers to raise devitalized, sexually perverse children. "The whole pyramid of the Hindu's woes," she wrote, "material and spiritual . . . rests upon a rock- bottom physical base. This base is, simply, his manner of getting into the world and his sex- life thenceforward." At a time of mounting Indian nationalism she argued that the sexual organization of Indian society made self-rule impossible.

Mayo's book became a sensation in both England and the United States-- there was a Broadway play based on it about a twelve-year-old Indian girl married off to an old man-- while Indians so reviled it that some demanded it be banned.

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Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

What I mean is that, is it possible to objectively criticise a country for its culture, policies and behaviour, or does doing so merely expose the hypocrisy and propagandistic aims of the person or group doing the criticising?

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It can be either one. It depends on the person.

For example, mainland Chinese tourists are not well liked because they're loud, obnoxious, and they allow children to shit in bushes (if they're considerate enough).

This is a real issue, unfortunately. I say 'mainland Chinese' because the Taiwanese, Chinese from Hong Kong, ethnic Chinese of Malaysia, etc. don't have this terrible reputation.

The above is a legitimate concern based on people's experiences in various nations and clearly isn't racism in that the issue is with one group of ethnic Chinese and not another. They have signs in Chinese Disneyland asking people to use toilets instead of the outdoors, for fuck's sake.

On the flip side, you'll see people dehumanize groups to make themselves feel better. You see that at this forum all the time.

Online it is a definite yes. In real life there is more space for ambiguity and genuine concern, methinks.

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Originally Posted by Andullero

Online it is a definite yes. In real life there is more space for ambiguity and genuine concern, methinks.

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What would you say specifically regarding the two examples I posted?

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Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

What would you say specifically regarding the two examples I posted?

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Even if done from a position of "the West is bestest ever", I think Mayo's criticism was more sincere/well meant/well founded than the Soviet one, even if the latter was founded in a truth as well.

1.) The working classes have no country. Stalin cynically tried to create Socialism in one country which has no warrant in Marx et. al.

2.) The bourgeoisie philosopher Schopenhauer said this :.


" However that may be, individuality is a far more important thing than nationality, and in any given man deserves a thousand-fold more consideration. And since you cannot speak of national character without referring to large masses of people, it is impossible to be loud in your praises and at the same time honest. National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. If we become disgusted with one, we praise another, until we get disgusted with this too. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right."

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Originally Posted by Andullero

Even if done from a position of "the West is bestest ever", I think Mayo's criticism was more sincere/well meant/well founded than the Soviet one, even if the latter was founded in a truth as well.

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Certainly not well meant, maybe founded yes, but she argues self rule is impossible at a time they were ruled by the british empire... and wanted independence, certainly not well meant and sincere, and that their ills had nothing to do with the british empire....
and in 1936 it was certainly not just a little bit of truth, that they hate interracial couples, it certainly was very much the truth.

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Originally Posted by Mortimer

but she argues self rule is impossible at a time they were ruled by the british empire.

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And I partially agree with her. Not all nations are capable of self rule. See Haiti and Somalia, to put just a couple of examples.

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Originally Posted by Andullero

And I partially agree with her. Not all nations are capable of self rule. See Haiti and Somalia, to put just a couple of examples.

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Clearly some nations are more successful than others, but ultimately who gets to arbitrate as to which can be self-governing and which cannot? And who would govern the latter group?

Ironically, George Bernard Shaw argued that the mistreatment of Blacks in the US showed that the USA itself wasn't civilised enough to govern itself, and that some other country like Britain, France or Japan should administer it instead.