There’s a tendency in Seppoland to conflate “being American” with “living in America (as a settler)”. This idea is necessary to uphold settler-colonialism: settlers’ claim to the land must be seen as natural, necessary, and just; and materially, settlers must comprise a majority of the colony’s population, to keep the structure from collapsing. But if a settler-descended American like myself can in fact just live outside “America” as a minority, then this disproves the colony’s whole raison d’être, doesn’t it? This is what frustrates many Seppolanders when I call myself an American without having ever lived in the colony — for that matter there’s Americans’ relationship to Seppolandic foreign policy, necessitating the colony distancing itself from Americans.
Americans being negatively impacted by Seppoland’s foreign policy and hegemony isn’t necessarily coincidental, however: I’d argue that Seppoland is actually materially aligned with not only Americophilia, but also, “paradoxically”, with anti-Americanism, insofar as these phenomena discourage settlers from leaving, and encourage the settlers who left the colony to return. The tactic of making “diasporans” feel like perpetual foreigners to vindicate the idea that their “rightful place” is in the colony, should be a familiar strategy from other settler-colonies.
Indeed, if fully quitting settlerism wasn’t made as difficult and burdensome as uninstalling McAfee, we might expect a lot of settlers to quit for “light and transient causes” once the treats started running out — and that type of “settler hemorrhage” would certainly prove fatal for the colony.
The contradictions I’ve described between Americans and Seppos in this post aren’t very prominent at the moment, but these contradictions will certainly grow more prominent as the Empire turns necrotic. There’s a lot more I can get into about this topic, but those other more specific aspects of the contradiction can maybe get their own separate posts…
…In any case, yes, I’m proposing flipping the idea of “true Americans live in America” on its head as “true Americans live in diaspora” — I don’t know how much this makes sense, or if this is cringe and I’ll reach a different analysis later, but in any case I hope this is at the very least interesting for you all.
What is a Seppo?
derogatory slang for an US-american
the etymology is confusing https://hexbear.net/comment/5647240
danke schön
Seppo is a term originating from rhyming slang: Yank(ee) → Septic tank → Seppo (and variants like Sep or Septic, which I often prefer to spell as Septick). — I believe I heard that the term Seppo originated more specifically in the slang of Garramilla (i.e. Darwin, Aus.), where the term was first applied to the “US” soldiers stationed in the area, who were (and still are) harassing the locals and causing all sorts of trouble for them.
The way I’m using the term Seppo here — which I hoped was clarified by the attached chart — is to refer to “American” capitalists, and their lackeys whose professions directly uphold “American” colonialism and imperialism, and for that matter some of those lackeys’ relatives. So this would apply to, say, the “Zonians” of old, or to military families in places like Uchinaa and Garramilla, et cetera.
honestly the chart is confusing, mainly because the same colors are used on the left hand spectrum and the right hand map, but with different meanings. (people in south america aren’t Usonians, I assume)
It’s also a bit confusing to me to only denote Guna Yala, not the lands of any other people
Guna Yala is on the map because that’s where the name Abya Yala comes from. I figured that if I was already going to mention the fact that the name Abya Yala comes from that language, that I might as well put it on the map, just as a way to more thoroughly acknowledge the name’s provenance.
New Afrikans certainly aren’t Seppos, either, no. I hadn’t considered that the map could be misinterpreted in that way — I just figured using fewer, more contrastive colors would make the whole chart easier to look at, I didn’t think people would assume colors used in one section would have the same meaning in another section.
The reason I initially got there was because white wasn’t labeled on the key for the map so my eyes gravitated to the other side where it was. I think in the context of Hexbear and with a little knowledge of the terms used it makes sense, but could be clearer if you plan to use it as propaganda to a broader audience. And I didn’t immediately connect that they were semi-unrelated sections, I assumed they were more inter-related. separating them differently would’ve been clearer to my eyes at least, vertical separation or separate images entirely.
Thanks for the feedback, this is why it’s vital to run designs by other people first.
Half-formed thoughts: You know how americans (I guess seppos and usonians in this taxonomy) will go around calling themselves irish or german or whatever because their great4 grandparents were from there? It occurs to me that calling yourself “american” as a minority living somewhere else could be seen along the same lines as calling yourself “white” or “heterosexual” or “cisgender;” these people will resent their “default, natural, normal” status being pulled to the forefront and made into a category, rather than “the lack of ‘other’ categories”
It’s an interesting thought. I think this maybe goes into a thought that I’d wanted to write about, that I called “ethnic null pointer error”.
