For fucks sake… 1st off, whether or not this qualifies as a “meme”, it doesn’t fit the accepted norm of what most people expect to see when they click on “memes”
Secondly, and this may sting a little, but peace as we know it is a relatively new thing in world history. I’ve seen a multitude of other comments here proclaiming all those other genocides were okay because they were thousands of years ago. It’s that “in my lifetime” mentality that just fucking grinds my gears. Through thousands of years of history, one genocide is cherry picked and held up as the worst ever, and the citizens who"benefitted" from it are supposed to pick up the tab? My ancestors weren’t Spanish or English, and my family has been here for about 130 years having come from Germany in 1890. How much of the tab am I supposed to pick up?
Fact of the matter is, the only constant in human history is war. We’re in a (relatively) peaceful era now, and that’s taking into account Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, and probably another 20 or 30 wars I’m not up to speed on because I’m American and our media doesn’t seem to actually inform us on world events from countries we don’t buy shit from.
Human history is not really a constant war, but that is how Americans have been taught history: as a sequence of wars.
What’s relatively new are the concept of mass conscription, economic warfare, and total war. The ability to enact war and destruction on a global and constant level is new. The brief cessations in conflict aren’t peace, you’re right, but it is also a newer concept that we are constantly in a forever war.
While I mostly agree, I never said constant war, but where I will disagree in a sense is, the prospect of total annihilation would have been a factor millennia ago had the technology been there. Pick your era, the Romans, the various Chinese dynasties, the English, etc… if they had the means, they would have likely used it, having zero regard for the impact it would have later, mostly due to a poor understanding of the technology. I do believe, at least between “the big three”, meaning the US, Russia and China, nuclear war is an extremely potent deterrent to all out war. It’s the “kids who want to be in the club” that worry me, everyone from NK to Israel. It sucks, but the atomic cat is out of the bag in a world we’re all forced to live in, and the polarization of politics and other bullshit only work to drive that wedge deeper and push us closer to… bad shit.
Sure. I get what you mean: greek antiquity has records on the decision to exterminate an entire island of people. The capacity is absolutely there.
But I think a better perspective here is human history is one full of technological and social advances that resolve and prevent conflict. Even, yes, that unbagged atomic cat. It can be power for civilian use or it can be a bomb to burn their shadows into the concrete. War is when the actual prize of humanity: civility, breaks down.
I agree with your points, and yes it’s a better perspective, however, that’s not the world we’re living in. There are some who are hell bent on wiping out continents of people due to any number of reasons ranging from beliefs to the exploitation of natural resources merely for financial gain. I really wish we did live in a world where the word “nuclear” invoked thoughts of clean(er), abundant and cheaper energy vs it invoking dread at the prospect of total annihilation.
I’ve seen a multitude of other comments here proclaiming all those other genocides were okay because they were thousands of years ago.
Where did anyone say it was okay because it was longer ago? Please point me to it, because I read the entire thread and did not see this once.
The genocide of native new worlders is historically unprecedented and that is fact. I highly doubt that genocides on the same scale, magnitude and horror are commonplace throughout history. I would urge you to support your claim with evidence or examples if you are going to repeat it, otherwise it is entirely baseless.
How much of the tab am I supposed to pick up?
However much it takes to bring up the status of the natives to what it would have been had they not been massacred and expelled, and undo the propping up of Western civilization on their backs. If you’d like more specific examples, I’d be glad to give them to you. Just ask.
As I’m too stupid and it’s to early for me to do these inline…
Your 1st point, here’s one, had to scroll about 1/8 down the page for. Granted it doesn’t explicitly say it was “okay”, the point stands:
“China/Russia/Europe are largely inhabited by people whose ancestry traces back 1000s of years to the same region. That’s very different from North America, where most natives where killed (either through disease or “policy”).
That’s not to excuse their past behaviour (Europeans started the genocide in North America), but it’s still very different.”
As you also wanted to be pointed to a source for genocides on the same or larger scale throughout history, allow me to search Wikipedia for you:
As to point 3, who exactly determines who is responsible and who will benefit from this paln to raise up America’s indigenous population to their proper station? Are 1st generation immigrants from Ghana going to be required to pay up? How about Natives who’s ancestry dates back to a tribe that exterminated another tribe? Surely that should also qualify as genocide?
And as to point 4, we, in the west, as I did point out I was American, are in a (relatively) peaceful time, which implies that throughout history it has not been, but I guess I need to spell it out for some people.
At the end of the day, you’re not looking to be enlightened or to learn anything, your post was directed to completely discount my points, or to “troll” I will admit I was getting heated reading some of the off the wall bullshit I was seeing, but superlatives aside, I stand by everything I’ve posted. I apologize if you TRULY didn’t know about other genocides, or if your worldview has jaded you to the point where you don’t initially see posts that clearly illustrate what I said, at least in the abstract, and you took the time to go back and reread them and allow it to sink in.
Feel free to pick apart this post, too. Nothing is more entertaining in a meme thread than for 2 idiots, myself included, to argue about genocide.🙂
Your first quotation is not about someone excusing a genocide because it happened a long time ago. They are saying that unlike the US, the current inhabitants in those regions can be traced back to the inhabitants thousands of years ago. Which means there wasn’t a major genocide or displacement of people. I am not endorsing this statement btw, I don’t know enough to confirm it. But it is not a condonation of genocide. It is in fact remarking that a genocide similar to what happened in North America did not happen in those other regions.
As you also wanted to be pointed to a source for genocides on the same or larger scale throughout history
You provided me a list of genocides on Wikipedia. None of them match the genocide against native Americans. Your link proves my point.
I guess I need to spell it out for some
I didn’t ask you to paraphrase or restate your point. I asked you to prove it or provide evidence. But I never expected you to be able to anyways, so don’t worry about it.
The phrase “That’s not to excuse their past behaviour (Europeans started the genocide in North America), but it’s still very different” effectively translates to “Even though this happened, this is worse”.
If you bothered to look at that list, you’ll note the mention of the California Genocide of 1846. Reported casualties between 9,492 and 16,094, with other estimates as high as 120,000. Absolutely fucking horrible and a black mark on American history indeed. However, there are 31 other genocides on that list that are higher in number, with three of those even happening prior to California-
I guess it depends on how you define “genocide”, but since Wikipedia is generally using the accepted definition, I feel pretty safe in going with what they say.
And I did lay out proof, you’re just too caught up in whatever ideology to see it. Feel free to rebut, down vote, cry or whatever makes you feel better, but my point was the world is a horrible place, and terrible things happen to all kinds of groups of people. The “meme” that started all this IS a cherry picked reference to people who were wronged (I’m not disputing they were wronged, but so were… insert any other group of people here). Throughout history, most civilizations are founded on the conquering of another. As horrible as that is, it’s a fact. And after the fact, many of the remaining conqured are treated horribly. Also a fact.
Lay out some real numbers, cite an authoritative source (sources) and then we can talk. Until then, I hope the best for you and really wish we could get past this bickering bullshit. Life is too short, and trying to pin the sins of one’s father on the current generation isn’t solving shit. Work toward bettering peoples lives without having to exact revenge from people who didn’t have fuck all to do with it.
Oh, I stand corrected. A link to a Google doc. Should probably submit that to the Wikipedia article I linked as clearly thier information is flawed. You win an internet today.
And it’s written by a person, with an agenda and bias just like everyone else. Have a tough time taking anything seriously from someone affiliated with Ward Churchill.
The book is well sourced with tons of evidence. If you can invalidate their evidence, I am happy to hear. Otherwise, please drop this discussion. It’s not a good look.
You don’t have to apologize to me. If he’s someone who would collaborate with Ward Churchill, he’s got a clear agenda. My source for that was looking him up on Wikipedia, as I had no clue who he was. I’m not going to do the effort of sending you a direct link to the article, so feel free to do it yourself. And grant us all the fact that someone who writes a book has an implied agenda to sell the book.
And every time you start a post with “Source?”, it’s a bad look.
I’m going through the sourced materials in the American Holocaust book, (great title, by the way! not divisive at all!), and considering the sources, it’s pretty obvious Stannard has an agenda, he’s a “cultural materialist”, an offshoot of cultural Marxism. But you knew that, you just didn’t think I’d look 😉
Anyway, with as far as I’ve gotten, I can surmise the sources, the majority of them at least, point to textbooks published by “Berkley; University of California press”. Seems a lot of anti-American sentiment comes out of Berkley. Just to appease my curiosity, I’m going to look deeper into this fellow, who, funny enough, cites his own works as well. That’s pretty douchey
Thanks for being open minded and reading through! Even if it’s through a biased eye and a bit of a snarky reply, I still appreciate it. I hope that you open up and consider the sources presented with an open mind.
I’ll be looking forward to your assessment when you’re done, and I’ll do my best to receive it with an open mind as well.
It’ll be a while before I can read further but I do intend to read all of it. In my biased opinion so far, i reads like a propaganda piece, the words seleceted in some of the passages are used to elicit a response, but maybe I’ll see differently as I continue. I do have a question, when you say “genocide”, are you also including open conflicts? It’s my understanding of the word that it would not, but I want to make sure, especially when numbers are involved, that we’re using the same metrics.
Britain has planted the seeds of hatred and bloodshed in the middle east and is now acting as if it has no responsibility towards resolving the conflict.
It is hard to watch the British media coverage of this war acting all outraged and surprised by the violence while being proud of their historical imperial inheritance .
Britain and France are responsible for such an enormous fuck up in Asia, Africa and the middle east, past and present, it’s probably impossible to put it in numbers. The US gets bashed a lot (deservedly), but I think those two were planting something way more devastating for generations to come
Dead, buried, brought back to life, shot, brought back to life again and grafted to AI, beaten with a shovel, and currently laying in its own piss hoping 2024 is better to it.
Oh and Swift is apparently using chainlink for bank transactions, although most are wondering why on earth this would make chainlink holders any richer instead of the dev team and Sergey himself.
I feel like this point is missing the big picture: people create the demand, and companies supply what the market demands. Like or hate “the free market”, this is essentially what it is. If there were magically 1/10th the number of humans on the planet, we would expect those companies to have 90% less emissions. It’s not that some of these companies aren’t bad actors, and have actions that are at times immoral, it’s that they are amoral actors in a market economy that is only responsive to consumer demand.
The example I like to give is that companies’ race to the bottom on quality. They’re responding to human behavior, where if an item on Amazon is $6, and another very similar item is 10 cents cheaper, the cheaper item will sell 100x more. This is a brutal, cutthroat example of human behavior and market forces. It leads to shitty products because consumers are more responsive to price and find it hard to distinguish quality, so the market supplies superficially-passable junk at the lowest possible price and (with robust competition) the lowest possible profit margin.
I feel like YOU are missing the point. Even tho you say exactly why this matters the most.
Yes market respond to demand. Compa oes DGAF whether they pollute, only that people buy. That’s why the ONLY solution is that all these companies are regulated to pollute less. If everyone has to, then they are still equal and people won’t buy a cheaper alternative that happens to be more polluting.
Hell, I’d go as far as to say that it only matters if the top 5-10 countries do it. If China, USA, and India don’t do this, the entire world is fucked and there is nothing to be done by anyone else.
But one side lives in suburbs and the other in an open-air prison, without medical supplies, under permanent drone surveillance, oh and every 5 years all the buildings get flattened.
It’s understandable too, how do you convince someone to stop fighting back so their enemy will stop punching them?
Like, remember when your parents told you that the best way to stop arguing with someone was to just stop arguing?
This is the same situation but instead of just arguing they’re literally committing war crimes and terrorist acts against each other.
Hard to say who started it in the moment when both are acting, and when everyone is acting in it frankly the who started it becomes irrelevant when there is only one good solution, for everyone to stop.
…and you’re treated as culturally insensitive if you point out that it’s partially motivated because of two bullshit ass religions, and the reason they won’t stop is because they’ve each just got to prove their God has the bigger dick, even though they’re technically the same God.
how do you convince someone to stop fighting back so their enemy will stop punching them?
Heck, part of it is you have to convince people to stop treating others as a monolith. Even the language of “their enemy will stop punching them” implies the entire populace of Israel is one monolith united in oppressing the Palestinians and that the entire population of Palestine is one monolith united in actively fighting Israel.
People need to be able to take a step back and recognize that their enemies are not the common folk, the innocent civilians. Most people just want to live their lives. Only a small minority is ever actually actively engaged in the fighting, or the political decisions to continue fighting.
Israelis (at least those that support Netanyahu and the apartheid state) need to collectively realize that having an apartheid state is not “fighting back”; it’s just punishing 99% innocents. Likewise, Hamas needs to realize that mass murdering civilians is not “fighting back”; it’s just punishing 99% innocents. True fighting back requires actually finding the people responsible for harming you, not ascribing blame to rando civilians just because they happen to have been born on the same side of the border as your true enemies.
Israel is genociding Palestinians, and Hamas is resisting them.
If innocents are caught in the crossfire of Hamas resisting, then Israel is to blame, not Hamas. Israel targets civilians, Hamas was targeting the military.
You mean the dance rave held at the gates of a concentration camp and active war zone? The one with many Israeli soldiers positioned and decided to skirmish the Palestinian resistance, and put the ravers in crossfire?
Arab Israeli population went from 1.5M to 2M since 2006
That’s because of their high birth rate. 45% of Palestinians are under the age of 15. The genocide numbers are very well documented, but I admire your bravery with genocide denial despite mountains of evidence.
slight difference here, while Hama’s goal is singular, to kill as many civilians as possible, israels goal is to abolish the hostile militia on it’s border, the civilians killed are a casualty of war, and not the target, once said militia uses civilians as human shields and commits all of these atrocities, you just can’t submit to their shields…
no im not saying that, youre saying that. you are equating what israel has done for 75 years to mere reaction to that. you may not believe that hamas is not killing civilians on purpose and i cannot change that, but that does not change reality.
we have seen just war crimes over war crimes from israel just for the past few days. this is on top of decades of apartheid.
i could accept death for myself, too. but not for my daughter.
I was equating killing innocents with killing innocents, nothing else.
You are justifying mass punishment with …something about your daughter, and with that exposing exactly the attitude that keeps the region in a never ending cycle of death.
“2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for their independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;” www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184195/
war crimes:
Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;
The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory;
Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives;
Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions; www.un.org/en/…/war-crimes.shtml
these are the ones that were committed in just few days.
israel displaced millions of palestinians and replaced them with settlers. the blood is on israel government not hamas. they could easily not replace millions of people and we would not be here today.
i have been saying the same thing from the beginning, but i think your perspective of the situation is holding you back from understanding what im saying.
you can put innocent people anywhere in the world and they dont stop being innocent. but that does not change the fact that they are in someone elses home illegally.
if they did not want to be in someone elses home then it is the fault of the government, if they did want to be in someome elses home then it is their fault.
Again, what’s the justification for killing innocents? Because they walk on land that another claims theirs? That sort of thinking always and everywhere only led to war and war crimes.
As for the Israelis, for those who live there, it’s their home, for many going back three generations. In many cases those ancestors took it it legally under ottoman law. I find that 24-undisputed-hour-rule questionable myself, but your story doesn’t hold up legally in many cases, nor historical. Everyone’s ancestors lived someplace. That doesn’t automatically make that place theirs.
Pointing to an old map and claiming the territory that another currently occupies never leads to peace.
Ok, so before 1918, the Ottomans had that piece of land for about 400 years. I guess that makes a turkish claim is older, and therefore stronger, by your logic, am I right?
Before that there was the Mamluks for 200 years, but that doesn’t seem an ethnicity that’s notable today, so let’s forget that.
Before that, the cruzaders had that land for 200 years, I suppose that means Europe also has an older claim.
Before that, Arabs for 400 years, so I see we’re back to their claim.
But hold on, before that, it was Roman territory for a whopping 700 years. That’s notable. Italia has a really good claim, I’d say.
But even before, there were the Jews there, and for close to a thousand years. So, following your logic the state Israel has all right to be there.
Before that there also lived people, of course, but it’s hard to pinpoint those to ethnicity. Egypt was there shortly. That’s an older claim even, but not very long.
Hmm. Are now all those people justified in killing innocents on some grounds that hasn’t been “theirs” for generations?
Look man, if your options are literally only “do nothing and accept your fate” or “kill a bunch of innocent people who never did anything to you and actually may have supported you” then maybe you should just give up and accept your fate, because we’re literally seeing how many more innocents are dying because of this. They didn’t put a dent in Israel’s defenses. They gave Israel more excuses to the international community to murder even more innocents. Great plan, Hamas. I’m glad it worked out so swimmingly and actually changed things instead of just continuing the same bullshit cycle. /s
If you can point to me out how this is going to result in anything other than more death and destruction, feel free to clue me in. Because fuck nothing has changed. They didn’t take out the people responsible. They didn’t change the power balance, and now even more Palestinians are paying the price because Israel is a fucked up aggressor.
Acting like a bad plan that resulted in more innocents deaths is some great blow against the establishment is dumb as fuck.
Exactly. It’s not a choice between “murder innocent civilians” and “do nothing”; it’s a choice between “murder innocent civilians” and “target legitimate targets such as the military apparatus that actually murders Palestinians regularly or the right-wing political apparatus that pursues a policy of military hyper-aggressiom, apartheid, and settler colonialism”.
If they chose to do the latter, I doubt nearly as many people would take issue with them, they’d receive vastly more sympathy, and they could finally end the systemic murder and oppression of Palestinians faster.
Ok then let’s send better weapons to Hamas. I am sure they will be happy to precise target and hit all military installations. It’s kind of sad to see privileged people pointing out how someone else is supposed to fight the boot on their throat.
I think an apt comparison is Russia and Ukraine right now. I fully support Ukraine in this war, and part of that is not just because they’re the underdog who got unjustifiably invaded, but because they take care to avoid targetting innocent civilians. For example, when they strike Sevastopol, they strike military facilities, never residential areas. Whereas Russia intentionally terrorizes the Ukrainian people, kidnaps Ukrainian children, targets residential areas, and commits so frickin many war crimes.
If the attack by Hamas were against legitimate military targets, I don’t think there would be many people out here questioning it. But they didn’t. They are a fundamentalist religious group that wishes to commit genocide, and they intentionally targeted and mass-murdered civilians. Beyond that, by attacking a music festival, they targeted people who were statistically more likely to be sympathetic to their cause. Clearly their goal is not simply self defense, but genocide.
Also a good comparison is the PLO in West Bank, as they aren’t Hamas and had no hand in this attack. In fact, they and Hamas hate each other. And as far as I’m aware, PLO just wants the two-state solution and haven’t officially sanctioned terrorist attacks in ages. Unfortunately, Hamas has likely managed to discredit the PLO cause, despite them not having any guilt in this.
And as far as I’m aware, PLO just wants the two-state solution and haven’t officially sanctioned terrorist attacks in ages.
That’s… complicated. There is a fund that the PA pays the PLO to administer called the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund. It pays out stipends to the family of Palestinians who have been killed, imprisoned, or hurt while attacking Israel. This has been a point of contention for a long time, but it’s apparently very popular among Palestinians so politicians are loath to touch it.
Hamas knows this. And they knew that Israel would respond with disproportionate force. They only care about destroying Israel and the Jews, per their charter, and they aren’t afraid to sacrifice as many Palestinian lives as it takes.
Maybe Russia got Iran to get Hamas to attack Israel knowing that Israel would go full scale, knowing that the USA is all in on Israeli support, thus reducing their aid to Ukraine?
Alternate caption: “Zionists smuggling in settlers before the British mandate ended to have enough votes to create a State of Israel as a safe haven for Holocaust refugees, then getting populated mostly by Jews fleeing Arab countries out of fear of retaliation for having created the State of Israel a day early and having pushed most Palestinians out by force”
Ashkenazim have European surnames because Europeans literally forced them unto Jews. Austro-Hungary, Russian Empire - both had policies for giving Jews “local” surnames (for taxation purposes). It’s how you get Jews with German surnames in eastern and central Europe (i.e.the ones you have listed), and how you get Jews with Ukrainian and Russian-ish surnames in the appropriate areas (see Abramovich, Litvak)
And they did so in Europe. Which means that people with this family names were Jews coming from Europe to Israel and not from Arabic countries like the comment above claimed.
Interesting info and I’m not arguing against your point, but that source doesn’t address their point at all. The cited source covers recent demographics. The previous user is referring to events that occurred in 1947ish. The time periods are not close enough to be relevant to each other, especially considering the massive changes that occurred throughout that period in the area.
That’s kind of like if someone said that the Caribbean was entirely populated by natives when the Europeans showed up in 1492, and someone responded with demographics from the 1570s after the Spanish had established settlements in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, and conquered the Aztecs to dismiss the initial point. The demographics are going to be vastly different. It kind of sheds doubt onto your rebuttal since there seems to be a logical disconnect.
Does anyone have any sources on the demographics right before the British invited Jewish people to move to the Levant?
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