America is genocidal, sure, but so is every single other society in the history of civilization. America is exceptional because of the technology and the art it contributed to genocide, which is the goal of every civiliztion, remember. Pointing out the difference in scale of US atrocities just prevents us working together for greater justice.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/6343679 https://hexbear.net/comment/4329347
Genocide trivialization is a common refrain of fascist discourse, the point of course is to normalize mass slaughter and paint it as an unavoidable feature of human society, while erasing the sociopolitical uniqueness of every genocide…“it happens all the time its not a big deal, and if it happens again big whoop survival of the fittest”
The a-historical insistence that EVERY “civilization” has committed genocide is another tactic of fascist rhetoric. That attempts to obscure the fact that it’s actaully STATES with a specific class character and political project that committ genocide, while merging the idea of states and civilization as being coterminous with each other and that they can’t be distinguished… “we’re all guilty thru out time and space so it would be hypocritical and traitorious to oppose genocide committed by one’s own civilization”
That form of rhetoric also tries to simultaneously collapse the concept of continuity… “it happened so long ago get over it” while also incoherently extending historical continuity past its breaking point… “oh so you condemn the genocide of native Americans, well what about the genocide carried out by the Mongols hmmm”
Basically fascists are ghouls and historically illiterate freaks
This. Fucking this is why I called out the comment to begin with. I don’t have the theoretical background to truly explain why this horrible sentiment is so insidious. Why it’s so disgusting and weasely. Thank you comrade, for putting to words all those things I found so despicable about the original comment but couldn’t articulate myself.
Happy to be of assistance
Wouldn’t it be fair to actually get the quote right.
I’ve read the work of your theorists here and not one has mentioned a civilization that never made the kinds of disgusting, vile, and despicable mistakes that the US made/makes.
If they have, sorry I missed that, so please enlighten me.
Also — get the quote right?
What the fuck are you talking about? The vast majority of modern states don’t even have the military capabilities of ‘making the mistakes’ the U.S. makes (here’s a thing, they aren’t mistakes), let alone at the scale they make them. Are you gonna claim like Uzbekistan is invading countries half-way across the globe or killed off 97% of it’s native population?
This is besides the fact that most of the time, genocide wasn’t economically on the table for most ancient empires, outside of re-settlement, and even then, that was pretty damn rare and thus was mentioned often when it did happen (Babylon, Persia etc.). Often rulers would brag of commiting genocide, but the historical (archeological) and genealogical record doesn’t agree with their proclamations. Actual genocide is usually fueled by a want for economic lesbarum or previous colonial economic divides and relationships.
For example, when ancient Pharaohs went south to ‘Subjugate Upper Egypt’ they surely fought battles (though again what battles they fought and how large they were are probably exaggerated) but Egyptian control of the area was always limited to a series of small forts that would mostly protect the gold mines and trade routes. It was not about population control. Imperialism? Sure. War Crimes? Sure. Settler-colonial genocide? No.
I think the only ancient empires which did treated resettlements institutionally and did it routinely was Neo-Assyrian Empire and to way lesser extent, Neo-Babylonian, and they get shit for that in every single text about them, both contemporary and later.
It was the Neo-Assyrians, I always mix them up with the Persians.
Yup, Persians are famous rather from allowing people resettled by NA and NB empires to go back, and iirc they also did resettle some people but the topic is much less researched since it was not done as much and less documented, unlike Assyrians which not only documented everything (and even bragged about it), but their archives were preserved in much better state.
I was going, in my head, “I know the Babylonians and like one other one were really really into resettling, it was super uncommon. Eh fuck it, I’ll just put the Persians, the whole ancient Egyptian thing is what really blows that whole settler-colonial thing out of the water.” And then it was just a matter of figuring out whether I wanted to mention that the Jewish people who had been resettled by the Babylonians basically made up a story about being previously resettled in Egypt, in an attempt to foster a whole “We have been resettled once before and God brought us back.” parallelism with the Babylonian exile (which is a huge part of Jewish myth-making), which ended up being a huge part of the Old Testament, which is partially why people who’s only real exposure to history is like, the Bible and the Roman Empire (because of the Bible) (who also were not huge on resettlement, but arguably did some genocide on the Gauls), thinking it was common, when the archaeological record does not support that.
I should really look more into the Neo-Assyrians, if their records are better kept. Probably a bunch of cool reading or podcasts around it.
Romans actually did resettled people, but their resettling method was often mass abducting into slavery (usually after conquest or rebellion), so way worse than even Assyrians.
It’s all oppression down to the first turtle. I’m not sure that you are picking up on my position. I’m concede the US is the great satan. But what I’m not doing is allowing the oppressors to divide me from other human beings of good will in the hope that we are stronger United.
And if you think that the building of the pyramids did not involved slavery, oppression, and genocide, you’ll need to crack some books.
The building of the pyramids didn’t involve slavery they were built by paid laborers, maybe learn to actually read a book instead of just cracking it.
I can’t site any sources cuz this was a while ago, but I looked into it and apparently there is some debate over this among historians. It’s likely some slave labor was used building the pyramids but generally the guys doing most of the actual masonry work were paid freemen, cuz most slaves didn’t have the craft skills to do that kind of work.
And… it’s a controversial topic but yes, the ancient Egyptians used slaves. So… it does not absolve the US for a single second — what the US did was hideous and horrible.
Hardly however makes America mean murderer.
The US generally does not make mistakes, but commit deliberate crimes.
What I’m saying is that their deliberate brutalities are mistakes.
Aside from that not being what a mistake is, others have noted that in fact most countries have shown no interest in doing what the US has done, as can be seen from many countries existing for hundreds of years without sanctioning chattel slavery.
Let’s get the facts straight:
https://www.statista.com/chart/22057/countries-most-active-trans-atlantic-slave-trade/
I don’t particularly remember making the claim that the US was unique in its use of chattel slavery, though your own source admits
And the numbers here are skewed by the US being counted separately from Britain while Portuguese colonies count for Portugal, to say nothing of the fact that most African diaspora slaves in the 13 colonies/US were born there, over 10 million, far more than what Portugal has in your chart.
You’re doing Holocaust-denial-level dogshit apologetics for your precious little white supremacy capital.
You are clearly not reading my comments. There’s no denial here.
Also: no antagonism coming from me.
Pure civility.
And hope for a better future.
You said you’re American and are aware that this country was built on genocide. Then you said every major civilization has committed genocide (equivocating, but that’s beside the point of my question). What genocides have India and China committed?
Follow-on question, what genocides were Indian and Chinese civilizations built on? What about Persian civilization?
The Naga-Kuki war (1660-1948) The Maratha-Mughal wars (1680-1707)
China’s history is filled with Dynastic tyranny— each associated with brutal, repressive military conflicts.
Not sure where you are heading with that.
Like I said, collapsing historical continuity past the point of logical coherence
Also blatantly ignoring the fact Chinese and Indian civilization were not built on the basis of those wars and the fact the states that prosecuted those wars no longer exist
The US state on the otherhand maintains a legal and poltical continuity all the way back to 1776 and continues to inflict atrocities based on the sociopolitical economic logic of its founding
Also I love how you obviously just googled random wars from Indian and Chinese history as if that means something, kid log off and go do your homework
And you seem perfectly willing to completely disregard those wars, oppression, and tyranny because it doesn’t service the narrative that… what? That no country has ever been as horrible as the United States? Really?
How should one regard a 400 year old war perpetrated by a state that no longer exists for a poltical tradition no one alive follows?
The only reason you bring up this irrelevant nonsense is because you want to trivialize and downplay the very recent and extremely relevant crimes of the US empire which currently dominates the world
It’s such a childish and disingenuous argument, but hey I don’t expect honesty or historical literacy from brain dead fascists
Well, perhaps I’ve lost the thread.
Convince me.
Please restate your specific claim? It can’t be simply that you are the superior scholar, right? So go ahead — state it?
What tf are you talking about? The only thing I quoted you on I did so with a screenshot. What did I quote wrong according to you? Do you think I went and edited the image file or something? lol If you’re talking about the person I replied to, who did make use of quotation marks in their comment, it was clear to everyone that they were not directly quoting you. They were demonstrating a sentiment, one that most here can recognize as common among fascists, a sentiment that you also leaned heavily on, even if you didn’t outright say it. You’re just picking some little thing to be mad about like “you mis-quoted me!!” because the content of CyborgMarx’s comment was spot on and you just aren’t capable of countering it.
You’ve read the “theorists” “here”? Do you think I’m talking about other commenters when I refer to theory? lol. No, I doubt you’ve read any theory. Marx and Engels? Lenin? Or maybe more directly relevant to this, Gramsci? Debord? Fanon?
I’ll defer to the other people who commented and answered this, making clear to everyone that you don’t know wtf you’re even talking about.
Well, they did, so I hope you consider yourself enlightened now.
What, you want I should get a higher resolution screenshot next time? lol
Loved that exhaustive list of just societies. Nice. You win.
What, you didn’t like the fact that others already schooled you on that topic, and you wanted me to hold your hand through that too? No, I think it’s actually that you’re embarrassed that you have exactly zilch to say of any consequence in response to everything else in my comment. Whatever the case, I’m happy to leave it as-is, since anyone who can read beyond a grade-2 level will recognize your cringe for what it is. You can’t even fall back on that bullshit you made up about being misquoted, since even that was an obvious lie. 🙄
Seriously — this thread went sideways. It started when someone decided to redefine the word murderer as America. As ridiculous a claim as possible, unless of course you have zero understanding of what America is.
I have conceded from the emergence of the thread that America has committed genocide.
Sadly, I’ll also bring up that your use of contemporary technology and media owes so much to American ingenuity and innovation that you might reconsider your attachment to it. Just sayin’.
I also remember you clutching after your pearls when I mentioned that other states have engaged in brutal, despicable acts of genicidal oppression. Oh — but you seem to want to make the US exceptional here when sadly it isn’t.
lmao kid you haven’t read shit
Well, besides that you are the vastly superior exemplar of refinement and intellect, and besides that I am a cretin, what claim are you intent on supporting in all this?
Oh really? Which ones?
Sadly here I was in fact mocking the other commenters in the thread who failed to establish that the definition of murderer is America.
I did not realize that the conversation had a chance of venue.
I’ve since piece together that the initial comment that I made was on a meme equating the definition of murderer is America.
My response was to simply call to mind the notion that America is so complicated that Americans themselves cannot even agree on a definition.
My reading on the topic has been focused on Chomsky, Zinn, and Klein.
And what’s weird, is that I’m pretty sure everyone here knows and respects those thinkers. I’m pretty sure that despite that we are strangers on the internet — some who want to suggest that the apropos definition of Murderer is America and one who who believes America to be a more complicated place — we have more in common than not.
He hate injustice, oppression, murder. We revile what’s happening in the Middle East right now. We despise fascism and want to see Trump jailed at the very least.
Anyway— the original meme has been downvoted steadily. I’ve been called a fascist despite that I personally faced down federal thugs during the George Floyd protests and took a club to the throat.
And I believe there are also activists here who have suffers for their principles.
What gets me is this tendency to destroy someone you disagree with rather than educate?
You can’t even be bothered to retain one sentence. Don’t pretend you’re here in good faith.
Excellent comment, saving this one for a rainy day.