SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Which countries constitute the international community?

https://x.com/nxt888/status/2073101388792594696

The "international community" condemned this.

The "international community" is concerned.

The "international community" demands accountability.

Which countries constitute the international community?

In practice: the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia.

Sometimes Japan. Sometimes South Korea.

Seven billion people in China, India, Russia, the Arab world, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa are not the "international community."

They are the subject of the international community's concern.

They are the recipients of the international community's demands.

They are the locations where the international community deploys its accountability mechanisms.

This linguistic sleight of hand, converting a specific group of powerful Western states into "the international community" as if by consensus of the entire planet, is so normalized that serious journalists use it without irony in serious publications every day.

And the Indian reader, the Nigerian reader, the Vietnamese reader encounters this phrase and has two choices:

Accept the framing, in which case they have accepted their own exclusion from the category of "international."

Or reject it, in which case they are being unreasonable, parochial, nationalist, resistant to universal norms.

The language is a trap.

And it was built so carefully that most people walk into it before they notice it's there.