Got called a bigot by Mods for crticizing my own country and religion.
So originally there was a post showing tropical or third world countries asking what is the problem with these countries. I am Sri Lankan and it was one of the highlighted countries.
From my lived experience of the corrupt government system and how it affected our country, I answered corruption. My comment got flagged as "bigotry".
Now I understand that a westerner saying this is very lazy and uninformed and referring to the third world as corrupt. But I'm not a westerner and I live here. I am critiquing the power structures and systems of governance which are so fucking corrupt. It seems like the right answer to this is colonization and I said it's letting corrupt politicians off the hook by blaming it on something that happened 75 years ago while they continue to profit off it.
I also mentioned civil war, which is 100% a creation of Buddhist nationalism and post-independence politicians' racism.
A mod replied saying they have a Sri Lankan friend who disagrees. I explained it as much as I could—that it was the Buddhist racism that started it. We had a president that laid out the groundwork for structured racism.
His slogan was "Sinhala Only" "This is a Sinhala Buddhist country. Tamils must accept their minority status." —This is a direct quote from him, and he had many speeches saying Tamils are in the way of Sinhala Buddhist dominance.
Then there was pushback to this, and then ethnic riots, creation of LTTE, civil war for 30 years.
So I said most Buddhists don't see it this way. And we blame it on the LTTE. All media doesn't cover this. They're sipping the Kool-Aid that LTTE are bad and we did nothing wrong.
I am a Sinhala Buddhist myself, and even the most woke people here don't accept the role we played in it. I compared it to Zionism as it is comparable to how the majority of Israel believe a different version of history.
The mod told me I’m disgusting because of my misrepresentation and assumption of Buddhists and muted me so I couldn’t reply.
My criticism of my country’s power structures or my own religion and how it has been used to oppress minorities is "disgusting and bigoted"? LMAO.
Any criticism of third world countries ≠ bigotry. Buddhism has been weaponized to justify so many horrific things here. It's not the zen yoga green juice peaceful thing that westerners perceive it to be.
Buddhist supremacy is undeniable in Sri Lanka. And if your friend doesn’t see that, he might be one of them 🥲
Mods, since I cannot reply to you, please read up:
Posted Aug 8, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC · locked