[ SECRET POST #3130 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3130 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Will.i.am and Miriam Margoyles on the Graham Norton show]


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03.
[One Direction]


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04.
[George Takei, Bruce Lee]


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05.
[Tales From the Borderlands]


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06.
[The 100]


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07.
[Sense8]


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08.
[Genshiken Nidaime]


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09.
[Lawrence of Arabia]


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10.
[Doctor Zhivago]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 015 secrets from Secret Submission Post #447.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[meadowphoenix]

Hmmm, I thought you were going to say something like he wanted Britain to leave completely.

Because at this time, honestly, short of leaving well enough alone, which none of the imperialist countries were want to do, nothing would have prevented a lot of bloodshed. That area has historical implications for Britain in particular; regardless of whether they kept their promises, they were going to interfere and interfere and interfere so...

And I'm not sure how Lawrence viewed imperialism, tbh. Some people view the mild form of it as benign, which I'm guessing he shared considering his first profession.

[(Anonymous)]

Britain was originally only supposedto have VERY small parts of the Middle East. Lawrence was VERY pro-Arab by the end of the war. He basically committed treason when he told Feisal about the Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France that carved the region up.

But I think one important effect of supporting Feisal is that we would have seen a much more moderate form of Islam take hold in the Middle East. Instead, ibn-Saud and the Islamic fundamentalists took hold and the Wahhabists (ultraconservative Islamists) basically became dominant in much of the region.

Lawrence warned that they were fundamentalists and not representative of most Muslims. ibn-Saud was Sharif Hussein's main rival in the region --> it was Sharif Hussein that Lawrence supported and Feisal was one of his sons.

Lawrence was extremely prescient when he said that if the Wahhabist sect prevailed, "we would have in place of tolerant, rather comfortable Islam of Mecca and Damascus, the fanaticism of Naj" and described the Wahhabists as being, not reformists but "with all the narrow-minded bigotry of the puritan" and hardly representative of Islam.

[meadowphoenix]

I mean, what does it matter what Britain was supposed have? My point is that even getting a small part they were always going to want more, and probably would have participated in destabilization attempts until they got it. They and others did just that in several other areas in Asia, Africa and South America.

I'm with you that we would have gotten a less fanaticism in general, however. Fanaticism and fundamentalism depends on strife to succeed, so I agree that he was prescient there. Although, I'm not convinced that the way those countries drew up the Middle East was completely a matter of ignorance, so it's not surprising to me that the government didn't listen to him.

It's nice to know that Lawrence was pro-Arab and willing to actually follow through with it. So many people do not walk the walk. But war is not the only sign of imperialism there is (although he basically never stopped trying to be part of the military, so), and many otherwise progressive folks are fine with mild imperialism, especially when it's an entrenched part of a profession like archeology, or the more insidious cultural version.

Ngl, considering his views and the movie itself, I'm always curious at the reception of Lawrence of Arabia in Britain.