When European settlers arrived in the Americas, historians estimate there were over 10 million Native Americans living there. By 1900, their estimated population was under 300,000. Native Americans were subjected to many different forms of violence, all with the intention of destroying the community. In the late 1800s, blankets from smallpox patients were distributed to Native Americans in order to spread disease. There were several wars, and violence was encouraged; for example, European settlers were paid for each Penobscot person they killed. In the 19th century, 4,000 Cherokee people died on the Trail of Tears, a forced march from the southern U.S. to Oklahoma. In the 20th century, civil rights violations were common, and discrimination continues to this day.
Multiple millions of people were captured in Africa and sold as slaves as well
Surely we’d attribute most of those murders to the British Empire and the other colonisers at the time, no? The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.
Again, not disputing that all of this is fucking horrible, but it’s not somehow “worse” than the sum of crimes committed by Nazi Germany (as far as comparing atrocities goes that is, which feels like something one shouldn’t compare too much. Each one is one too many after all).
The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.
Disgusting take, acting as if genocide was not colonial policy. You desperately need to read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - an indigenous people’s history of the US.
Of course it was colonial policy. But it doesn’t stand to reason to primarily attribute those to the US as an entity, rather than the British, French or Spanish empires who instituted these policies and were responsible for them.
That’s not to say the US doesn’t have its own share in this history, but attributing the entire genocide to the US makes little sense since they didn’t exist for the majority of it.
The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.
Germany didn’t write the holocaust out of their history like Americans did.
To mock the line I keep seeing in this thread full of apologists: Nazi Germany wasn’t quite there yet. They would have been as bad as the US if they had time.
Nazi Germany literally modeled their society off of the United States from Jim Crow apartheid to the frontier genocide.
You’re wrong. It’s not a contest. If they had been allowed to ‘let things that happened a hundred years ago fade away’ like they were planning THEN it would be a contest because they would have succeeded in creating a European America.
The project of Nazi Germany is literally the same project as Israel is literally the same project as America
It is exactly one thing: Settler colonialism and the only difference is the conditions of when and where and who. But that only goes as far as the particulars.
The US nearly completely wiped out the indigenous people who lived there
When European settlers arrived in the Americas, historians estimate there were over 10 million Native Americans living there. By 1900, their estimated population was under 300,000. Native Americans were subjected to many different forms of violence, all with the intention of destroying the community. In the late 1800s, blankets from smallpox patients were distributed to Native Americans in order to spread disease. There were several wars, and violence was encouraged; for example, European settlers were paid for each Penobscot person they killed. In the 19th century, 4,000 Cherokee people died on the Trail of Tears, a forced march from the southern U.S. to Oklahoma. In the 20th century, civil rights violations were common, and discrimination continues to this day.
Multiple millions of people were captured in Africa and sold as slaves as well
Gosh, I guess we should talk about the British then as well.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
Yes. They are the predecessor to the American empire.
They also partook in widespread ecocide to starve the natives. They deliberately killed every buffalo they could and let them out to rot.
Surely we’d attribute most of those murders to the British Empire and the other colonisers at the time, no? The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.
Again, not disputing that all of this is fucking horrible, but it’s not somehow “worse” than the sum of crimes committed by Nazi Germany (as far as comparing atrocities goes that is, which feels like something one shouldn’t compare too much. Each one is one too many after all).
Disgusting take, acting as if genocide was not colonial policy. You desperately need to read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - an indigenous people’s history of the US.
Thanks for the recommendation comrade, I’ll add it to my list
Of course it was colonial policy. But it doesn’t stand to reason to primarily attribute those to the US as an entity, rather than the British, French or Spanish empires who instituted these policies and were responsible for them.
That’s not to say the US doesn’t have its own share in this history, but attributing the entire genocide to the US makes little sense since they didn’t exist for the majority of it.
Germany didn’t write the holocaust out of their history like Americans did.
To mock the line I keep seeing in this thread full of apologists: Nazi Germany wasn’t quite there yet. They would have been as bad as the US if they had time.
I think it’s not unreasonable to think that Nazi Germany was worse than the US. Given time, it wouldn’t have even been a contest, absolutely true.
You’re also very right in criticising the US for not properly owning up to their atrocities. Germany has indeed done much better on that front.
Nazi Germany literally modeled their society off of the United States from Jim Crow apartheid to the frontier genocide.
You’re wrong. It’s not a contest. If they had been allowed to ‘let things that happened a hundred years ago fade away’ like they were planning THEN it would be a contest because they would have succeeded in creating a European America.
The project of Nazi Germany is literally the same project as Israel is literally the same project as America
It is exactly one thing: Settler colonialism and the only difference is the conditions of when and where and who. But that only goes as far as the particulars.