It Could Happen Here - Dividing the World, Pt. 1 feat. Andrew

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

James and Andrew discuss different ways of splitting up the world, and what they tell us about the way their proponents see the world. Sources/Links: Rome: https://europe.factsanddetails.com/article/entry-1087.html China: Rome, China, and the Barbarians Ethnographic Traditions and the Transformation of Empires by Randolph B. Ford European Colonialism: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1mf71b8.7?seq=1 Edward Said - Orientalism Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities John Lewis Gaddis - The Cold War: A New History Samuel Huntington - Clash of Civilisations Immanuel Wallerstein - The Modern World System https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elia-j-ayoub-the-periphery-has-no-time-for-binariesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, Hello and welcome to IKRAPAN here. I'm here once again with... It's James again.

Great to talk to you again, James. Yeah, likewise. Glad to be here. You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about the world and how it works and all that jazz, and I assume you do as well? I do, yeah, yeah. Increasingly worrying about the world and. Yeah, this place, this home is quite the puzzle. And much like a puzzle, it has been carved up and divided in so many different ways, sliced, labeled, ranked and measured from all kinds of different angles. And that's really what I'm interested in talking about today. The different ways that we try to explain the differences we see on the global stage.

So going from the concept of civilized and primitive, to the east and west binary, to the imagined communities called nations, to the clash of quote unquote civilizations, to the concept of first, second and third worlds, to the development spectrum, to the global north and global south, and finally to the core and the periphery. So we have a lot of ground to cover in this episode. Yeah, I really like this stuff like as a historian like we're always kind of forced into certain divisions right like even when you apply to your funding right like you're normally in like a geographical area or like you're trying to shoehorn something that's just interesting into one

of these boxes that gets funding. And I think like often that impacts how we see the world. So we have to write with that goal. Absolutely. Absolutely. I find the way that we approach the telling of history so fascinating. And in another life, maybe I would have been a historian. I know if I can recommend it.

Yeah. It's, I enjoy the doing of history. It's the doing of academia that I don't enjoy so much. So I suppose as a historian, I'm going to ask you a discomforting question. Great. Would you consider yourself civilized or primitive? Oh, that's a fun one. I don't know. Like I, I don't like that binary because I think it's a value statement.

Right. And then I think like, um, James C. Scott talks about this, actually, this is a really interesting. This I've had this James C. Scott, right. Talks about the idea of people who exist outside of the state being labeled as primitive by the state. Um, it's in the art of not being governed. And that's the sort of the narrative there, the inherent message is that the state is the final and superior form of human organizing

and people who have chosen to exist outside it are not because they chose to, but because they haven't made it there yet. And of course, Scott problematizes that, suggests that maybe it's a choice, not a failure to accede to that civilization. And it's a concept that like young Burmese fighters have echoed back to me. I don't think they're aware of James C. Scott, if I'm being honest, but they will say to me like when, because when they left the cities to live with the ethnic revolutionary organizations there, they had always been told that the reason those people lived outside of the Burmese state was because they were primitive violent. But then they came to live and fight alongside them and they were like, no, these are our, these are our family, they're brothers and sisters and siblings. And like, they want the same thing as us.

Like they're not primitive. They just like they want the same thing as us, like, they're not primitive. They just don't want the state. So I guess in that sense, I would want to be labeled as primitive too. I think the primitive people are doing cool shit. And then the civilized people are not. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's one of, I think, one of the more enduring global binaries, one of the oldest, you know, you'd hear that kind of juxtaposition of civilized and primitive or civilized and barbarian. You know, in ancient Rome, you see that distinction between the civilized Roman citizens and the

barbarian other. In that instance, and in a lot of instances, it's used as this ideological tool to assert superiority. Definitely. Yeah. And like, I think we have to be really careful as historians about that these assumptions that we make. Historians will have to make a lot of like assumptions about revolutions too. And I would wager that I've attended more revolutions and many of my academic colleagues, and I think many of those are grounded in the truths that people accept as truth without ever testing them.

And like, I think this sort of civilized barbarian one, it's kind of the same like that. Yeah. It's a classic one. I mean, do you know where the word barbarian even comes from? Isn't it the language thing? Like, because they didn't speak, is it Latin? They were just going like, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. Is that right?

Yeah. It's because of what, you know, Rome did this all the time where they just borrowed wholesale from what the Greeks were doing. So in Greek, barbaros meant anyone who did not speak Greek. Okay. As the Romans just kind of took that and expanded it to talk about anybody who wasn't on their whole wave of urban planning and, you know, codified legal systems, their philosophy, their education, their art, all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. The barbarians didn't have those refinements. Right, yeah.

But of course, the relationship between the two is not so simple, right? Because then later on in Roman history, as you'd know, barbarians, quote unquote, were incorporated slowly into the state and became very useful armies and a reserve pool of labor and all these different things for what Rome was trying to do with the ex-partnership. Yeah. And luckily contemporary American right has been very normal about that and isn't using that for like, it's sort of eugenic, eugenic agenda right now. Yeah. Very, very much eugenics vibes these days. Yeah. Where my father lives is right on the border between England and Scotland.

And you can visit Hadrian's wall. I rode my bike all along it a couple of years ago. Oh wow. That's cool. Yeah. It's like a fun edge of empire kind of thought experiment. Like, you know, you're beyond this line of the barbarians or the uncivilized people. Today it's like an unremarkable, you know, like, beyond this line of the barbarians or the uncivilized people. Today it's like an unremarkable, like, it's literally, it keeps some people sheep in their fields at points along the way.

It's like a two-foot, a couple feet high. Exactly. Yeah. Like, there's some stones kind of piled on top of each other. And they say it's kind of an unremarkable novelty, but it's funny to think that at one point there was this binary world, right? And they, and they felt that the outside was's funny to think that at one point there was this binary world, right? And they felt that the outside was so dangerous to them that they had to provide a physical

barrier, something we're still doing. Indeed. And as we're speaking of walls, by the way, this reminds me of another major empire, where this sort of dichotomy was occurring. You know, it wasn't just taking place in the Mediterranean world. You had, of course, ancient China, this whole identity constructed around these moral and cultural and political ideals. Of course, you had the whole Confucianism, Taoism, and legalist thought all shaping what it meant to be conducting yourself properly and in a civilized manner. Yeah. And so those who did not ascribe to those ideals would have been people who were labeled

barbarians. Yeah. Often the people on the other side of the Great Wall. Yeah. We are, the United States is literally doing the exact same thing, right? Like it's, we're building a giant wall and labeling othering the people on the other side of it. Yeah. You definitely see the genealogy there.

Yeah. But I think there's a closer genealogy we could draw upon for that particular reference though, which is how later European empires would appropriate the Roman civilized barbarian binary to justify their assimilation, extermination and colonialism. Definitely. One of the things I like to do, even with the United States and its informal empire, I love to show my students cartoons, political cartoons.

There's one of the white man's burden which dist distilled you know sometimes a picture is worth thousand words but it distills that whole binary so well in a way that seems like repugnant. I to most of my students today I guess I know maybe maybe folks are moving back that way. But like the imagery and the distinction between the way or even like Lewis and Clark when they're addressing the indigenous people they meet and calling them children. Right. Like this binary distinction is so, it's so apparent and like, I know it seems so outlandish, I think, to most folks today. But then we do similar things, I guess, in a slightly more subtle way sometimes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you look at what was taking place with the Enlightenment and that whole development of this particular order, what's steeped in these particular

values, where the European culture was the ideal standard and everything that did not measure up to that standard was barbaric or primitive. It's just that has never really gone away. You know, and it's continues to be used to justify the domination of Western powers. Yeah, particularly in the way that they've instilled these European norms and practices across the world. When it comes to things like relation to the land, when it comes to things like the divisions between people, between genders, all these things, all these attitudes

that are now so widespread originated from in part this elevation of one above the other. And speaking of, I mentioned the word Western there, and that's really another way that we've sort of maintained this binary in a different coat of paint, although it's not quite the same. So there's this sort of lingering framework of the notion of the East and the West, right? In the ancient times, it was China versus Rome. These days, it's was China versus Rome. These days it's probably China versus America.

China really is that old. Yeah, yeah. And okay, this is probably a very, very, very Gen Z reference for me to make, but I don't know if you've seen these edits circulated on social media of um the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, going like, what's up Beijing? And there's like a whole bunch of like skyscrapers and like, like hardcore like electronic music edited to show like all these advanced ones. and people in the comments are saying things like be China, do nothing, win.

And I have not seen those. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely dating me a little bit in terms of my social media diet. But yeah, just seeing the dynamic between China, between the East and the West, the Orient and the Occident, to use an older term. It's just another way that we've created this sort of boundary between people that either on one side or the other, there's a necessary tension between the two. You know, this concept of the Orient and Orientalism is something that Edward Said identified famously as something that was constructed by the West as an exotic, irrational, decadent and dangerous place. And so that whole dualistic narrative was then put into the Imperial project to legitimize their domination

and to position the East as a passive subject without a voice of their own and in constant need of Western intervention and guidance. So this West becomes a sort of stage for modernity and science and region and progress, this whole idea of the protagonist of history and the Orient, the East, they're the primitive, I guess, side of that binary. Although unlike the civilized primitive binary or civilized barbarian binary of old, I think while there could have been racial components to it in the past, this one is more explicitly racial and geographic in its division. Because I mean, in ancient Rome, anybody could essentially become a Roman citizen. Because I mean, in ancient Rome, anybody could essentially become a Roman citizen. You know, it wasn't necessarily racially, you know, pure Aryan sense that a lot of new

Nazis and stuff today like to look back at that period as you had a quite a diversity of phenotypes in the Roman Empire. But you know, when you come to this Orient and Occident dichotomy, it's very much racialized. A lot of times when people talk about the Western Woo, it really tends to be, I guess, a more politically correct way of saying the White Woo. Yes. At least in my observation. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

That's often the subtext. Because I mean, that's something I've always struggled with pinning down, right? Because why isn't Brazil considered part of the West? You? Because why isn't Brazil considered part of the West? You know, why isn't Mexico considered part of the West? Right. What are we West of? Like, it's not even, it's not the Western hemisphere. Like, as you say.

Yeah, I mean, Western hemisphere is more straightforward, but is it because there are too many colored people in Mexico and in Brazil? It seems to be, right? Is it because there are too many colored people in Mexico and in Brazil? It seems to be right. Like it's not even countries strongly either from Western Europe or strongly impacted by settler colonialism from Western Europe, because the entirety of Latin America is impacted. And they should be included, but they're not.

They're not. Yeah. Yeah. And it, yeah, it's, I've always struggled with that one other than get neoliberal capitalist white countries. It seems it's, it's what people don't want to say. And Japan, some, sometimes. Yeah, yeah.

Japan, strangely enough. Yeah. Yeah. You're like an honorary member of the club. Yeah. Or like sometimes also not Spain. This is a particular like bugbear, I guess, of Spanish historians. Really?

I don't think I've seen that one. Yeah, for years, like literally you would be excluded from European history. Like, like Africa starts at the Pyrenees is a sort of phrase that needs to be used. That's hilarious. Yeah, like, I guess it compounded because Spain was so isolated under Franco, right? But like, yeah, they call it the black legend that like Spain does not belong to Europe and, and it's not again, it's racialized, right? It's because Spain had this exchange with the Muslim world, right? And like that, that culture deeply impacted Spanish culture.

And even after Reconquista, it's like, you know, the French historians were just like, nah, you guys are tainted. Like you, you don't get to come back. It's kind of a similar situation with the territories of the former Ottoman Empire as well. Technically part of Europe and yet, you know, maligned in some way. Yeah, yeah. Little less than still. It's like, ah, you'll have too much, too much Turkish, too much Muslim influence. You'll got to... Yeah, you need like a thousand years to decompress before we let you back in.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, if the Pope wasn't based in Italy, I'm sure Italy would have a similar dynamic. I mean, Italy is a recent construction, right, in terms of as a country. Yeah. When you look at the two Sicilies for example that was under North African rule for a significant period of its history. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's black music month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type

of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the goat. He's a legend, so he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me, just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. That's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide

Listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast podcast or wherever you get your podcast. But let me not get too far off track. One more tangent and that is I'm far from being a dengist by any means or a Maoist or anything of that nature. But there is something to be said for the way that the East or the Orient has been sidelined, marginalized, treated as lesser than for so long. And now they're at a point where their geopolitical sway has to be respected. Yeah. I'm not rooting for them by any means.

I'm not one of those people who's like, yeah, multipolar world. I would rather we have no poles, you know, as an anarchist. Yeah, yeah, I do know what you mean. But it's like, it's a bit of Schadenfreude, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, you know, ironic in a, but yeah, not necessarily in a good way. Like I just seen Xi Jinping meeting with Min Aung Hlaing, the dictator of Myanmar today. And I'm like, I'm not excited for that pole of the world. Not at all.

Not at all. Yeah. I feel the same way about the way that the Sahel Federation has kind of kicked out France. I'm like, yeah, stick it to France, but also military who? Yeah. Yeah. Like the rebranded Wagner court now, like, uh, yeah. And the, the, the collaboration includes collaboration with Russia, but they know

a lot of this thing is really, a lot of these relationships, these geopolitical leaders relationships are so opportunistic. It's all opportunism. Yeah. At the end of the day, they're not really necessarily guided by principles. Yeah. Like the difference, I guess, between like, for instance, I've been thinking a lot about anarchists at war, right?

And people go and fight in other people's to defend other people, right? Like the people who went to Rojava to fight, people who went to Myanmar to fight. Like there's a difference between doing something out of a sense of solidarity and doing something out of root opportunism. And that always shows itself in the end. Jason Vale Yeah, I mean, the Wagner Group's involvement in Africa is the most blatant capitalist-driven opportunism ever. Samon Lett Yeah, these people are not there for the anti-colonial.

Jason Vale They're not standing with the oppressed peoples of the world. Yeah, yeah, like watching the battle of Algiers and setting off to liberate the people of Africa. Literal moosenaries, right? Yeah. But getting back onto the main topic, talking about all these ways we develop the world. Out of the linguistic and cultural and geographical differences that we observe around us came this concept of nations, right? Nation as an idea also came out of the European imagination.

It's commonly defined and it's used worldwide today, but it's commonly defined as a large community of people who share common identity, often through language, culture, history and sometimes ethnicity, and who usually inhabit a specific geographic territory with its own political organization. They can be nations without states, as simply a cultural community forces people to feel a collective belonging and share destiny. But nations are, as we know, mostly tied up with states today, hence nation being used as a synonym for country. Yeah, this is one of my bug bears, I guess,

as an academic. Like, I tried to develop this concept of Catalan nationalism that like at the time was inherently anti-fascist, I think, or was trying to be like, but it ain't now. Like, that's a very, very, very Catalan right now. And yeah, I do still find it hard when people say nation instead of state, especially Americans, like it's very hard, right? Cause state is like a subset of the state here. Like it's sort of most of division of the federal state. So it can be hard to explain those differences. And as you mentioned, the sort of way that that Catalan nationalism has shifted.

It really, I think, gets to the whole weakness of the nation idea. So Benedict Anderson famously called nations imagined communities because the community exists as a collective fantasy. Um, you know, they imagine a deep comradeship with people who they've never met. And this fantasy has boundaries, not just about who is included, but also famously who is excluded. And this fantasy is not necessarily something that is automatic or natural as we tend to see it today.

But it's really the rise of things like print capitalism with the mass production of books and newspapers. And that's what really shaped the standardization and formalization of these imagined communities through the creation of like common cultural referents and a shared sense of history. Yeah. And then of course, you had the nation idea of further being developed by liberal revolutions and through the shared experience of colonial rule, you know, where subject populations would mobilize nationalism to claim self-determination. Yeah, definitely. Like it, I'm sure I'm trying to remember, I've borrowed this from someone, but the idea of like identity entrepreneurs is one I like. Like it's when religion loses its claim on universal truth,

specifically in Europe, that's like a market for identity that is open. And the creation of nations is like, to my mind, like a bourgeois project, right? Like it's an entrepreneurial endeavor that they seek to, to create something of benefit from it. And like yet to a degree that's turned against them. It's still an entrepreneurial endeavor, right? Like still you could be creating a nation which wants to kick France out of Morocco, right? That that nation may not have space for everyone who inhabits that territory of Morocco.

Like it's still for some people construct. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the elite intellectual current of a lot of nationalist movements can go understated. You know, oftentimes what stirs up the masses toward that specific direction, because I mean, the masses will revolt against their conditions, but what sort of directs it in that national independence direction. And this concept of nation is tends to be that sort of elite intellectual current. I often look at the history of Trinidad and Tobago as a reference point, seeing as that that's where I come from. The whole process of nation building is always ongoing and we are in a position where

there's an effort, there's a very strong effort to both push for a nation building, but also recognize our divergent pasts. You know, because we have this sort of almost equal in population, Indo-Tranadian and Afro-Tranadian populations and then a mixed population as well. And then you have some Chinese and Syrian and Lebanese and, and Venezuela and then Filipino and all these different groups come into Trinidad. And because of that colonial past, the tensions is between those groups and things are still play out to this day.

But while those tensions are played out, there's also an effort to create, to construct a unity through allegiance to the nation of Trinidad and Tobago to create a to construct a unity through allegiance to the nation of Trans-Bago to create a sense of national identity. And as a very young country, it's still quite difficult to do. I could imagine, especially in the little United States, it might have been a similar situation where you have all these different European populations and different populations from around the world who are in the US. And there hasn't quite yet been a fully built up American identity yet. And so a lot of those tensions are still kind of playing out. And so it takes a couple of generations for there to be a sense of American identity that arises out of that.

Yeah, definitely. True and add, being one, a younger colony and two, only recently becoming independent in 1962. It hasn't had enough time yet to, I suppose, develop that patriotism that America is so known for. And so you still see a lot of people continue to have allegiances to the ancestry, to the heritage, even before they have any sort of sense of connection to the country concept of Trinidad. Yeah, the American one is interesting because the people who did the American Revolution would often call themselves English, right? Like, and it's this kind of post hoc

nationalism that is applied, right? Like they did begin constructing a nation, but after they, that is applied, right? Like they did begin constructing a nation, but after they gained the apparatus of a state, right? Like sometimes they'll talk about their freedoms in terms of English freedoms, which they themselves are not granted, right? They don't have the same freedoms as English people in England when they are a British colony. This concept of freedom, they will elucidate. Like so much of it is based on like English common law, right? They didn't necessarily see themselves as distinct that comes later. And like the US one is interesting because they have to develop this kind of civic nationalism, much, I guess France does that too, of course, but like France, probably the OG there, but like, um, this idea that like you subscribe to these ideals, therefore you're an American.

Uh, because they're like this, this nation constructed by people from all over Europe for the most part, the phrasing is universal, but the, uh, implementation is not right. It's also a country where people own other people. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, like I was saying earlier, it does help in our struggle for autonomy

and independence from colonial rule to have this construct as a nation, right? But it also obscures a lot of the real material divisions in society, you know, between the working class and the elites. And so you have this national identity that is constructed by intellectual and, you know, economic elites and it's overlaid onto a population that does not really have a say in that construction. And so these nationalist projects will try to downplay or suppress differences and conflicts. And that is part of why nationalism so often lends itself to fascism. Because fascism is an outgrowth of

this idea of nation, where they promote this vision of national unity and stifle class conflicts and create a collusion of classes that pushes aside the people who don't fit within their concept of the nation. Yeah, I often think like when I'm talking to my undergrads about nation, like the most succinct way I can say is like the salient we through both space and time, right? Like it's the people you identify with, it's the us. And fascism weaponizes us against the rest of humanity or against us mostly like against escape the goat group who become them right and then like the nation is for us the state is for us it's not for them thus they must be exterminated exactly is a obvious outgrowth of nationalism hence

xenophobia hence anti-semitism anti-blackness anti anti-indigeneity, all these prejudices. I mean, and that's the thing about nationalism. It's not necessarily consistent because you'll say, oh, people from this land, you know, we should be united, except for those people who are also from this land. They don't get to come, you know, they are perpetual outsiders. They don't share the true culture. They aren't part of our destiny. So even if they're legally citizens

or legally long term residents, or they haven't residents there for a long time, their entire lives for generations, or if the case may be, they don't count. They're outside forever. Yeah, they can never ascend to like a sort of higher status of being one of us. British people like to mobilize this one a lot, right? Like you can be British, but you can never be English. Yeah. I forget who coined that, coined the phrase cricket nationalism, but it's just particularly kind of ridiculous.

Like, Oh, if, you know, if there's a test match between Britain and Pakistan and a Britain and Trinidad and Jamaica, who do you support? Like, is that like, are you really going to make that the core of your national identity, like the sine qua non of being British is like which flag you take to the cricket match. Like it is particularly like ridiculous. Oh yeah. And it's if it doesn't reflect exclusion, right?

People aren't taking their flags to the cricket match cause like, that's the core of the entity. They just say, yeah, well kind of I get treated differently because of my ethnic boundary, like makeup, right? Methodic presentation. So I guess you guys don't like me. So like, it'll be funny when we kick your ass cricket.

Like it's the cause of arrow points in the wrong direction, I guess. I can imagine. I will not be bringing any flags to any cricket match because I don't attend cricket matches. I'm not too big of a fan of cricket. I can't be doing it. I'm going to stick to my football. And I say football in the international sense. Good.

Yeah. I hope to. Yeah. I can't stand around long enough to play cricket, to be honest. As we're talking about national liberation, these struggles often took place in the context of the Cold War, right? Which is where we get this other sense of this other framework for divvying up the world. Now, growing up, I was always told that, you know, Trinidad and Tobago is a third world country. I had a social studies textbook and I taught first world, second world,

third world. But I didn't teach first world, second world, third world. But I didn't teach first world, second world, third world in the context of the Cold War because I grew up in a post-Cold War world. And these terms came from the Cold War but persisted after the Cold War. So what happened? I was taught we are third world because we are still developing. We're not at that intermediate stage of development where we could say that we're second world. And we're not at that first world level of development like America. Right? And that's a smaller side for me, but I've always found

it mildly irritating when I see people use this famous social media catchphrase, or America is a third world country in a Gucci belt. I haven't seen that one yet. That's annoying. I'm sure you've seen similar sentiments this idea or America's third world America's third world. Yeah, I have like, it's just annoying to me. Yeah, fuck off. Yeah, it's annoying to me too. But one it completely divorces the concept of third world from its actual origins. And to it also, I think reflects a kind of a blindness to what's happening in the rest of the world, in the countries that are actually considered third world and the differences between them. You know, for

everything that we can express frustrations about in the US, anybody in the third world, I think, and I've visited the US, I've seen it with my own eyes, you know, there's still things there that Americans might take for granted. Oh yeah. That are just not 100% that would never be taken for granted in another context. I want to, and I see, of course, the division, see in America's version of the first world versus, you know, some of the European social democracies version of the first world. So I get that frustration, you know, the lack of free health care and that kind of thing, investment in infrastructure and all that. But let me just get into the

background behind the tomb, right? I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need the talk is tapping in. I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the goat. Like he's a legend. So he gets it.

What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. As we step into the Cold War, you have this concept of the three-world model that came after World War II. The pre-war status quo was over and you had new conflicts on the horizon. Also, the term First World originally described the capitalist bloc, led by the United States and Western Europe, where capitalist markets, liberal democracy

and economic progress were celebrated. And then you had the Second World bloc, which referred to the communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, where what I would consider state capitalism and centrally planned economies shape their societies. So in the first world, you had countries like the US, Australia, Africa, today, might be shocking. Iran was even considered part of the first world block during the Cold War. That might be shocking now because when we think of some of these countries, like, oh, those are third world countries, those are underdeveloped countries. They're not at the developed level of the West yet. But in the context in which

this three world model originated, these were countries that explicitly aligned themselves with the policies of the United States and its allies as capitalist nations against the Soviet Bloc. And in the Soviet Bloc, you had, of course, countries like China and Vietnam, Laos, Ethiopia, Yemen, Cuba, all these different countries align themselves explicitly with the Soviet Union. But in the Third World and where the Third World concept came in was with all the countries that stood against picking a side. and where the third world concept came in was with all the countries that stood against picking a side. A lot of these were former colonies and nations that chose not to side completely with either. And so this whole concept, this whole idea of the non-aligned movement, it really kicked

off thanks to the joining of the Indian Prime Minister, the Canadian president, the Indonesian president, and the president of the United Arab Republic alongside Yugoslavia. And so all these countries who all had very different economic arrangements, Yugoslavia famously was kind of doing its own thing compared to a lot of the other countries associated with socialism. India and Ghana, they were also kind of doing their own thing, kind of a mix. Trinitibago was also considered part of the non-aligned movement. And so this, these classifications at the time, these were geopolitical. And they were all political

ideologies, not necessarily economic development. So technically speaking, the terms shouldn't even be relevant to us today. I mean, the Cold War of the 20th century is over. But over time, the narrative began to twist. You know, so because you didn't pick a side, you didn't pick the red team or the blue team, you didn't pick the first world or second world. This narrative developed where all you didn't pick a side, you're politically independent. So you're poor, you're chaotic, you're a failed state, all these different things.

And of course there were incidents, in part influenced of course by state actors in the US and state actors in the Soviet line block who would have contributed to this outcome. But over time you get this sense of, oh the third world is failure. All these states were trying different paths of development, different approaches to governance from either of the two camps, mixed hybrid approaches. But in the end, this just got them stuck with the label of underdevelopment and at having them being seen as lesser. Now today people don't use third world as much as they use developing, at least in the more above board discourse, but that division also has its own implications,

right? The developed countries versus the developing countries. It's kind of a softer sort of version of the same thing. Yeah, it's kind of gentler. Yeah, same shit. What those terms do implicitly is like, you know, you're a fish in water. So you can recognize water. It's hard to recognize these things, these ideological impulses

when we're submerged in them. If you take a step back, you realize, oh, these terms developed and developing, they have very heavy implications. And the implication is that there's a single linear path to progress, modelled after Western capitalism, that all societies are progressing towards. Through industrialisation, through consumerism, through the almighty GDP growth. And so development, or your under under development becomes a tool of intervention. It becomes a way to mask imperial interests with the sort of veneer of, oh, we're just kind of

helping you out. You know, it's like we move from you're a savage, you're a primitive, to you're just not developed yet, but don't worry, we'll help you out. And that's how you get the whole sort of IMF and World Bank introductions of models of debts and policy conditions and metrics and all these different things to sort of shape these countries into client states. States that can be used to further Western development. The Cold War is technically over now as I said, so I suppose we've reached the end of history, as the famous saying goes, but not exactly. In the early 1990s, Samuel Huntington came up with a thesis to explain the conflicts

that were defined in the post-Cold War world, and as we entered into the 21st century. And so he argued that the future of global conflict would not be defined by competing ideologies or economic systems, but by cultural fault lines. In his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, which later expanded into his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Huntington predicted that the primary source of conflict in the new era would be between distinct civilizations. His model would have pointed to clashes between the West and other groups, Islamic nations, the Confucian East, and of course set up this sense that the West is this pinnacle of rationality and modernity and all these others were in competition with the fantastic and amazing

West. And I always like to call out some of the strange ways that he has divided the world, right? So Sub-Saharan Africa is all grouped up into the African camp. All of North Africa, the Middle East, into West Asia, all of that is considered part of the Islamic civilization. Forget all the differences between any of them, by the way. Indonesia is also part of the Islamic Bloc. You have the Sinic or the Confucian Bloc that includes China, both Koreas, Taiwan and Vietnam, except for the parts of China that are under the Buddhist camp, such as Tibet. So Tibet is kind of carved up on its own as its own camp. Mongolia is

also under the Buddhist camp. Thailand and all these others in Southeast Asia are considered part of the Buddhist camp. Yeah. And then you have the Latin American block, which is everybody part of Latin America and even people who are not technically Latin American are kind of swept in there. And I'm going to be about the base of the map that I saw on the Wikipedia article on the subject. I found that map now. It's some very bizarre divisions and ways to cut up this. Well, they have the Western rule versus the Orthodox world, which includes

Kazakhstan and Greece and Ukraine and Russia, all under that civilizational banner. Yeah. The Philippines is somehow part Islamic part Western and part Sino. Interesting. Yeah. It's a very unusual blend.

Yeah. And then he's just got like Japan. It's just hanging out there by itself. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention Japan is kind of, it's a one thing. Yeah, it just literally says Japanese. I forgot about that. And then he goes on to freak out about like, uh, the like Latin world as he sees it, like,

uh, it fucking dividing the United States, right? Like in his, his five, is it called like who we are or where we are or something? His book about migration in the United States. It was after clash of civilizations. He wrote this book about like how the, uh, like, I think I don't quite remember how he terms it, like to see his Latino or Hispanic or something else. Uh, but like that, that population increasing in the United States will like divide the United States into two fundamentally opposed civilizations. Yeah, yeah, he has some interesting compulsion. Yeah. And

unfortunately his thesis found its voice following the events of 9-11. Politicians, media, these people were taking his ideas to kind of justify the war on terror that would unfold. It also creates sort of cultural divides that settle into place at home. It will not create but shape those cultural divides as you create a sense of, oh, if we're experiencing a clash of civilizations right now, then this flood, quote unquote, of people from another civilization is a threat to invasion. It's something that needs to be targeted and fought against. And so in a sense, his Clash of Civilizations is kind of a repackaging of a lot of the binaries and divisions we've spoken about before. You have elements of nationalism, you have elements of

civilized versus barbarian, you have elements of east and west. The Cold War dichotomies. All of that kind of comes together in this neat package. Finally, we enter the 21st century and there are two very popular ways that we now categorize the world. People tend to use the phrases global north and global south as a softer or more politically correct alternative to develop developing or first and third world. It's considered less loaded, more neutral

sounding and has recently popularised via UN frameworks and the Brandt Line which was done in 1980 which drew a literal line across the globe separating the wealthier north from the poorer south. To be clear though, despite the geographical language, it's not literally about hemispheres. Australia is considered part of the global North, and Mongolia is considered part of the global South, but generally speaking, the global South refers to the post-colonial regions and the global North refers to the wealthy industrialized countries of the world. To me again, it's not really a flawless framework. It has all the same binaries and smoothing over of complexities of internal class divides

between for example, rich elites in the global south and poor communities in the north. It gives the impression that entire countries share unified class experience. I think. Yeah. entire country share unified class experience. I think. I think it also has the potential to obscure inequality between South-South relations. So yes, two countries may both be a part of the global South, but there could be a massive power differential between them that sets them up for interventions and equal treaties and also different sorts of meddling. For example, Saudi Arabia, at least in one map that I saw, is considered part of the

global south. But as we know, Saudi Arabia is famous for its meddling across Africa and the Middle East. It's interventions, it's financing of different conflicts across the region. Now I get why the term is used. It creates a sense of shared struggle, especially in anti-imperialist and climate justice spaces. But I think it has weaknesses, you know, in how we construct solidarity on that basis. Yeah, very much so.

Yeah, and the other and final system that I wanted to mention that has gained popularity these days is World Systems Theory, which is actually older than Clash of Civilisations. It came out of Immanuel Wallerstein's work during the Cold War. And he kind of stood out and said that he was rejecting the three world system and the simplistic country by country development models. Instead he created this World Systems Theory that saw capitalism as a single global system, not a patchwork of individual national economies. So the focus was on labour roles, on commodity flows and on power concentration. And I think in an even more globalised world it makes the most sense.

So to Wallerstein they have three different zones of the global economy. You have the core, which has strong states, financial capital, tech heavy industries, controlled over global institutions, and they tend to exploit the labour and resources of the periphery, while exporting high value goods and debt structures. And the periphery of the countries tend to have weaker institutions, extractive or agrarian economies, reliance on export and raw materials, debt dependency and structural adjustment policies, and are often the dumping grounds for pollution, waste and arms from the global north. The semi-periphery are then considered under his model the countries that mediate between

the core and periphery. These are industrialised economies with mixed labour and capital exports. They sometimes exploit others while being exploited themselves. These include countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, Turkey and South Africa. They tend to serve as the buffers that stabilize the system while chasing core status. I think this model is very dynamic. It could be more dynamic, but it does have the capacity to highlight the systemic interdependence of this global system. That one region's wealth is contingent on another's dispossession. It makes it very useful for understanding that poverty is not something that just happens. It's something that is very clearly structured and developed by the wealth of the North.

And I think also with the corporate free model, you see this sense of a one way flow, where value and labour goes from the periphery to the core. But there is another direction that flow goes, right? Because the migrants from the periphery they go to the core they fill precarious roles in core economies like care work and agriculture and logistics and so they almost become an imported periphery within the core and their absence from the periphery also deprives the periphery hence the phenomenon of brain drain where people are siphoned away as labor

and the and the educated population tends to leave their countries of origin. But I'm saying it's not just a one-way flow because you also have that sense of diaspora and diasporic networks that kind of reverse the flow. Remittances for some countries can be a significant chunk of their national income. I think the Philippines is a classic example of this. Some of the Caribbean countries, either historically or presently, were very dependent on remittances from their diasporic population, sending money back home.

Lebanon is another example. El Salvador is another example. They become key parts of the national GDP. That sort of relationship of migration. Yeah. part of the national GDP, that sort of relationship of migration. Yeah. But I think what I want to do with this core periphery model or this core periphery, semi-periphery model is expand it. And one of the ways that I found very useful to do so comes from fellow

podcaster shout out to Elijah J. Ayub. Yeah. I read an article of his that was on the anarchist library called The Periphery Has No Time for Binary's. He made this very crucial point and I quote, We are as peripheral to the global south regimes crushing us as they are perceived to be by the western think tanks and foreign ministers who view their imagined space as the centre

of the world. China and Russia and Iran are peripheral to the West and any and all activists in China and Russia and Iran are peripheral to their governments. So I kind of like this sense of not just looking on the country level, but looking at particular populations, populations within countries, the relationships between them, bringing in that class dynamic between populations more prominently. Yeah. With the teen populations more prominently. Yeah.

Like if you look at the example I'm familiar with, like we could look at Kurdistan or Myanmar, right? There are ethnic groups within that country that are subject to colonialism by the core groups within that country, right? Like Assad's Arab belt stuff or the Burma majority using classic colonial divide and rule tactics right now against Rohingya in Myanmar. And like, I think it doesn't make sense to see that whole country is peripheral, right? Like that binary doesn't function when like the salient colonial violence happening, especially in Myanmar, it's happening

within Myanmar, but it doesn't make any less salient. And like the experience of colonialism is still violent. And if we only use this like state level binary, we will totally miss that. Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's important to be clear. Obviously, I've rejected a lot of these frameworks in covering them. You won't see me using the civilized primitive binary anytime soon.

But some of these concepts can be useful. You know, they do shape the way that we view the world, how we see ourselves. The imperfect, of course, because they're trying to map onto reality and reality is a shifting beast. But I think it's good to have some sense of, or some language to understand the inequality and poodynamics present in the world. So we can reclaim these frameworks or we can reject them. You know, we could use them for solidarity or for division. But the question I want to leave us with to wrap up this episode is, how do we build a world where these divisions are no longer descriptive or relevant? And that's all I have for today. All power to

all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need the talk is tapping in. I'm Naila Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shapes the soundtrack of our lives.

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