Sathnam Sanghera with John Oliver: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

[@bcRockstar]

“ You don’t have to look at your country with pride or shame, you just need to understand it”. Perfect, thank you.

[@jasvirkaur2941]

John Oliver and Sathnam Sanghera in one frame! My life feels complete.

[@MoofManiac]

Fascinating. As an American, I consider the subject extremely timely. The only thing shocking to me is how humans have failed to become “civilized” and how the extremism and denialism have become so prevalent here.

[@katsong3302]

sadly the brutality against the First Nations people who lived here, the importing of slaves, using denigration against others to keep them down while harnessing their labor (ie Chinese and Irish for building the railroads), the claiming of islands (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Virgin Islands, portion of Cuba for Guantanamo prison, keeping 270+ military bases globally…etc.). People say democracy and equality but nope.

[@dsbdsb6637]

Because same/similarly privileged people are trying to implicate whole societies when most societies have either never been that privileged to own slaves & they want to claim moral privileges by confessing their past. Only one thing makes rational sense i.e. Survialism everything else is semantical pontification.

[@19698868]

I've only recently started reading Sathnam Sanghera's books after hearing him on the BBC History Podcast. Timely material in our lives, coming from one of the colonized.

[@tabianamoto]

Glorious conversation - so much to consider and think about.....

[@aurelied.6805]

I’m currently reading Empireland - super interesting. I’m learning a lot, even more so as a French person who barely new anything about the British empire to begin with. I was wondering if you knew of any equivalent - in English or French - about France colonial past ? Looking forward to the sequel.

[@anthonyyoung6489]

This was refreshingly funny and an apt discussion of the day.

[@kimthaongohoango4596]

Bài thuyết trình thật hay thật tuyệt vời bạn của tôi thanks you like 👍🤩

[@RajFama]

Sir Salman Rushdie claimed with a straight face on the Real Time with Bill Maher in 2007 that India is a democracy because the British built rails and roads in India. This is the same Rushdie, who in the 1980s when he had not been knighted, interviewed Edward Said and cogently criticized Raj nostalgia. Now that he has been knighted, he has come to believe in, and actively promote, what might be called the Civil Engineering Theory of Colonialism: The British went to India not for rape plunder and genocide, but to build rails and roads: they had this neurotic civil engineering urge and had to go elsewhere because they had run out of places to build rails and roads in their island. Of course, It occurred neither to Sir Salman nor to a perhaps incognizant Bill Maher (or to other panelists on his show) to ask why democracy had not even survived let alone flourished in Pakistan where Sir Salman's colonial masters had also built railroads. Ill-informed though otherwise sane David Remnick of the New Yorker thinks that Sir Salman Rushdie should be given a Nobel Prize in literature, among other things, for his enlightened views on British colonialism. A Nobel Prize in Literature for Sir Salman Rushdie may in fact be a fitting honor, given that Churchill, who murdered millions of Bengalis in 1943, was also given the Nobel prize in literature. Years later, Nobel prize for peace was awarded to another mass murderer, Henry Kissinger.

[@rahuldahoob]

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[@OldEarthWisdom]

I am shocked that John Oliver is shocked.

[@Isthatsimple]

@@abbefolkseger6927 is it hard to have Israel Visa ?

[@davidward805]

It’s absolutely true that the early years of the US were heavily influenced and shaped by Britain.

[@petercolledge8204]

Embarrassment is very British, John. I share it. But what can one do except illuminate the history and try and spread the gospel?