Trump tells minority Congresswomen to "go back where they came from"

[Darth Yan]

I was talking about Effie. She said “do you concede the US should be disbanded” when I said “it’s like only the us is evil enough to warrant being disbanded.” THAT is what I was referring too. I was paraphrasing what I saw as Straha being hypocritical and not applying consistent standards.

Considering it was immediately after mine, which was well over an hour earlier, I don't believe that for a second.

It was late at night. You were the one who asked “so you concede the US should be disbanded?” I made a mistake late at night. Simple as that

[Civil War Man]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm just going to contribute a few thoughts regarding the topic.

What's different is that the US mode of ethnic cleansing was of its own devising, and then modeled to a greater or lesser extent in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Most of the other countries in the Americas have either had active decolonial projects, or had brutal revolutions that helped to force the decolonial project forward. To deal with them in a wide swath is unfair to them, and not useful to exploring the more basic question poised here: "Is the US fundamentally racist?"

It takes a breathtaking amount of historical myopia to look at the genocides committed by the US, a former British colony, along with similar native genocides committed by Canada, Australia, and South Africa, also former British colonies, and declare that the US's methods must have sprung fully formed from Zeus's head and was then later adopted by the others. All of them continued the very British practice of destruction of native populations, either physically or culturally, that was practiced in every corner of the empire, including in places that you did not mention like India and Ireland. It is very accurate to say that the US is built on a racist foundation, but it is at best naive and at worst willfully misleading to try to pretend that foundation was built in a vacuum.

And even then the British likely had some inspiration from civilizations that came before. It's not a coincidence that several common languages in Europe (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) are derivations of Latin. Here's a hint: it's because the original languages of the tribes that lived there were eradicated when the Romans moved in and either assimilated them into the empire or exterminated the ones that refused to bend the knee.

We educate them that what is being proposed is not to 'vote themselves out of house and home'. As Straha would say, it's interesting that you focus on the angle of total disposession when what is proposed both by him and by all but the extreme end of Indigenous sovereignty movements is nothing of the sort. What is proposed is an equitable resettlement, so it's not 'out of house and home' but 'into a different house and home', on a relatively limited scale, in certain areas where necessary to return traditionally occupied lands or protect sacred sites. This ties in to what I first posted: Those against this idea continually return to the idea resettlement must be inequitable, violent, and imposed from the outside. In one post you have returned to all three.

For those still unwilling to be resettled, you simply exercise the legal remedies available. It is no different to compulsory acquisition under eminent domain principles, which is well settled under the law as a valid exercise of government power. Those who would resist violently are no different than those who would resist violently under the present system - why are we to give them special consideration when it is a matter of an equitable resettlement of colonized territory?

It is really naive to think you can get a significant percentage of people to go along with it by simply educating them. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get people to understand something when their entire livelihood is based on them not understanding what you are trying to teach them.

Any major social upheaval, especially one that comes with forced relocation of massive amounts of people, is going to come with a hefty dose of violence, regardless of whether you make sure to compensate the people being relocated. That is simply the nature of the beast. Generally speaking, if violence in some form is not required to implement the change, then it probably would have already happened by now. It's not a uniquely American thing, or even a uniquely Western thing, but is something that manifests across humanity. The violence can take many forms, on the part of the state, the resistant population, or both. Even famous "nonviolent" movements like civil rights in the US or Quit India/Swaraj both a) had violent subgroups, and b) built support locally and overseas by using civil disobedience with the express purpose of provoking violence on the part of the state.

There is no solution to this problem that doesn't come with its own host of moral, legal, and/or ethical issues. Anyone who claims that there is an easy problem-free solution is either wrong, lying, or trying to sell something. Even in a hypothetical fantasy world where the whole thing goes through without any violence or resistance, there are question that are not necessarily easy to answer, like how you qualify someone as sufficiently native to be eligible to live in the repatriated areas. Do you go by the tribal blood quantum laws, for instance? Different tribes have different rules for qualifying members. Some only require documented descent of a single original tribe member, even if the person is otherwise entirely of white European descent, often because, to be blunt, the genocide was that effective.

Are tribal members limited to moving into the territories that used to belong to their tribes? For example, if someone of Seminole descent currently lives in New York on land that used to belong to the Mohawk, can they continue living there, or would they be required to relocate to Florida? What if they want to live there, but the returning Mohawks only want members of their tribe to be able to resettle there? How about someone who is descended from multiple tribes?

What if someone is ethnically native, but has no way of proving which tribes they are descended from because those cultural ties have been eradicated, much in the same way that it's near impossible to trace the African lineage of many black Americans? No recognized tribe allows DNA tests to serve as qualification of tribal membership, since there is no way to tie those results to a particular tribe.

How about those tribes that, as mentioned earlier, barely exist for all intents and purposes? Do we continue to allow the descendants of white settlers to live in that land, thereby teaching the descendants of other white settlers the lesson that if you don't want to be forced to relocate, you need to make sure you are thorough in your genocide?

What about tribal land that crosses current national borders? The western powers (including the US) are well known for drawing borders with absolutely no regard for native populations, so there is a lot of land that crosses the borders between the US and Canada or the US and Mexico.

[Broomstick]

For those still unwilling to be resettled, you simply exercise the legal remedies available. It is no different to compulsory acquisition under eminent domain principles, which is well settled under the law as a valid exercise of government power. Those who would resist violently are no different than those who would resist violently under the present system - why are we to give them special consideration when it is a matter of an equitable resettlement of colonized territory?

Here in the US eminent domain takings/movings have on occasion been tied up in the courts for years or turned violent, and those have all been small-scale situations. Trying to do this on a large scale, given US culture, is not going to end well.

There have been problems with eminent domain for national parks, for example, that has been resolved by allowing current inhabitants to live out their lives on a site but not being able to pass it on to their heirs which seems to work OK (most of the time), but that represents a multi-generational approach as it can take decades for the occupants to either expire or decide to move. Multi-generational projects for the benefit of others can be a very hard sell.

[Broomstick]

If you're going to be the one who tries to go deep on "Well, Straha, why don't you talk about Brazil?" I think it's fair that you defend why you cherry-pick Venezuela, and Venezuela alone, as the alternative.

I did not "cherry-pick" Venezuela, I have also mentioned Brazil and Haiti, among others. Brazil has an on-going problem with Natives in the Amazon being murdered and/or dispossessed, women raped, land stolen, diseases spread, etc.

Haiti is a mess in so many ways.

Venezuela is not the only country targeted by the US - Cuba, for instance, has been languishing under the embargo for decades, yet did not collapse in the way in which Venezuela did. Yes, I'm aware they are two very different nations, but also how they dealt with a superpowered enemy also varied.

On the flip side - right now the US is better observing treaties with the Natives than ever before. Which, admittedly, is a very low bar to get over but the point is that you might not have to completely destroy the current structure to get what you want. When New York State yelled bloody murder about the Seneca selling cigarettes without paying state taxes in the first decade of the 21st century the Federal courts backed the Seneca. Indeed, it seems nearly any and every tribe in the US is selling tobacco and setting up professional gambling, enabling the Natives to fleece the majority culture for money and given them cancer at the same time. There is a lot wrong with the reservation system, but no one is forced to stay on the reservation. Leaving it can be difficult, but there is no legal bar to doing so and many do (many also return for a number of reasons). My mother-in-law was of predominantly Native background (Eastern Band Cherokee - the ones who evaded the Trail of Tears and were able to stay on their land. I realize that "Cherokee princess in the family tree" is a trite and often wrong cultural meme, but for my late husband's family there were many, many cenus records and photographs going back to the mid-19th Century as well as maintenance of both language and lore, so this isn't a vague family legend but something with actual documentation) and spoke Cherokee somewhere between well and fluently but neither she nor her family were ever compelled to stay on reservation in her lifetime.

I am NOT claiming that any of this makes up for centuries of abuse and murder, nor do I claim any of this is an ideal state, but does show that change can and has occurred.

Regarding my in-laws, it illustrates the additional problem that in many cases the Native tribe/nation/other organizational term is in no way "pure" - the Cherokee being a group that early on intermarried with both Europeans and Africans. What do you do about people with heritage from multiple groups? Do the Oklahoma based Cheroke even want to up stakes and move back to the Carolinas and Georgia? After all, they've set down roots where they are now, they've been living there two centuries. What about the Natives displaced from Oklahoma to make room for the Cherokee that currently live there?

I would be great if I had an infinity gauntlet and could just snap my fingers and make it happen all neat and tidy and no loose ends but that's not reality.

[Effie]

Regarding my in-laws, it illustrates the additional problem that in many cases the Native tribe/nation/other organizational term is in no way "pure" - the Cherokee being a group that early on intermarried with both Europeans and Africans. What do you do about people with heritage from multiple groups? Do the Oklahoma based Cheroke even want to up stakes and move back to the Carolinas and Georgia? After all, they've set down roots where they are now, they've been living there two centuries. What about the Natives displaced from Oklahoma to make room for the Cherokee that currently live there?

I would be great if I had an infinity gauntlet and could just snap my fingers and make it happen all neat and tidy and no loose ends but that's not reality.

The vast majority of decolonization activists also reject the notion of blood quantum as determinative of ethnicity, and have an understanding of ethnicity and culture that understands it's possible to be a member of multiple groups at once. So this is a particularly strange question.

[Straha]

1.) Except they DID butcher french folk who aided the revolution. In any case how is killing children ok?

Again, see Effie's posts. They're handling this question quite nicely.

2.) Nice try but you were certainly implying it. You kept saying the US needed to be dissolved for the sake of justice; that has loaded overtones no matter how you spin it.

Please explain to me how "Evil is an abstraction best kept for Disney movies." somehow implies that I think Evil is a useful concept? And I don't think there are 'overtones' to me saying the US should be dissolved for the sake of justice. I think I'm pretty explicit in saying that the land was taken in a morally repugnant process of overt ethnic cleansing and genocide.

3.) Don't be cute. I'm well aware that Haiti was an exception and provoked by YEARS of abuse and cruelty (especially during the war of independence.) However that doesn't change that a.) Women and children were still slaughtered like cattle and that b.) the justification was a desire to "keep new frenchmen from being born." (i.e. the same logic the germans used to justify killing Jews). If they had just tried the people directly involved in the regime I wouldn't be bothered. If they had merely forcibly sent the white people away....it would have been dickish maybe but relatively humane and one could argue there was justice in those acts. Killing almost every man woman and child of french descent is NOT justice and that you seem to think it is really says a lot. In short I DO believe the subaltern is entitled to justice. I do not believe that mass murder is justice, whereas you seem to think it is.

I'm not being cute. I mean this sincerely. Like here, it's fucking fascinating that within a paragraph you call race based chattel slavery combined with ethnic cleansing 'abuse and cruelty' and then compare the people who fought against it to Nazis and its perpetrators to Jews. It's fascinating that your immediate response to this is to show overt sympathy for the people in power, guilty of some of the worst crimes in the history of man, when they are thrown out of power and show no understanding of the subaltern. And it's fascinating that your response to "The United States holds land unjustly and should be dissolved in its current form to undo this crime." boils down to "Like hell, they might kill us all!" Like, if you're going to bring up rhetorical implications, making your direct comparison of Native Tribes seeking restitution a concocted fear of mass murderers seeking bloody vengeance for decades of horrific injustice speaks volumes. Especially when Effie, Loomer, and I have all made clear that we're not seeking to model Haiti. This also begs the obvious question as to how you view white folk compared to Natives given the premises that swirl around your fear mongering.

And, as a gut-check: You're relying on a trope that was historically popularized and mastered by Southern slaveholders to justify slavery at all costs. How do you think people are going to read that?

(As an aside, it's also interesting to me that you keep trying to place all the blame for what happened on the feet of rebelling slaves when the French (and British, and Spanish) had repeatedly gone back on their word and treaties over the course of ten years, refused to recognize free black folk, and sought to re-enslave freedmen because the idea of their being black people held to the equal level of White French folk was viewed as so deeply repugnant that it required continued costly and pointless military intervention. When the French have militarized the bodies of their children to make their mere presence in Haiti sufficient reason to continue campaigns of ethnic cleansing against Black folk what do you think the impulse is going to be on the part of the revolution?)

4.) As far as I see it after a generation it becomes historical. You seem to honestly think White people are going "hee hee hee let's fuck over native americans hee hee hee". You also seem to think it would be justified for POC to kill civilians en masse. Like it or not the ink has dried. Other people live there now, and relocating them would require not only willpower but resources. Again it's why the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank are a major issue. In practice they won't be removed.

Why a generation? How is the forced sterilization of women to decimate future tribes not a crime now when the women who were systemically assaulted like this are still alive and we are living in a generation that should be but isn't because of these actions?

It also astounds me that your response to injustice committed in living memory with their victims still alive is to engage in a massive shrug and effectively declare 'Eh, too complicated to try and fix. Just get over it' It's a fucking weak ass vision of justice and one that has no empathy for the oppressed.

5.) In my mind it becomes historical a generation or so after the policies involving genocide have ended. We are no longer sterilizing natives or trying to suppress their culture. Therefore we are not actively practicing genocide against them. The effects can linger but the genocide itself is over.

You need to provide a reason why a generation is a sufficient brightline. As it stands it's an arbitrary and nebulous figure with no specificity or reasoning behind it which also seems to miss the point that genocide and ethnic cleansing are, by their very nature, trans-generational acts.

Also, what makes you think these crimes have ended? The reservation system, with its mass enforced systemic poverty, still exists. Native religion was only unregulated in the 70s (really, the 90s), there are continued encroachments that seek to destroy Native Lands and culture (DAPL in the Dakotas, the TMT in Mauna Kea), and the institutions that have run and directed these genocidal acts still exist in direct continuity today. It seems a fucking stretch requiring more than a handwave to assert that policies are different today, and I'd love to see why you think there's been a substantive break in these policies and when (be precise please) that break took place.

In summation it's impossible to redistribute land on the scale that you desire in the way you desire. You're constant spouting that "white" is inherently racist also says a lot.

Are you trying to bring up a thread from a year ago where I said that 'Whitness' was constructed category that was created to justify settler-colonial expansion and racism? Because that thread had a whole shit ton of nuance and explanation that I'll point you to that explained exactly what I was saying there. If you want an answer to that, go read it.

Otherwise, I want quotes from where you think I've done what you just said in this thread.

Do you expel them by force (presuming it were possible to do so without a massive civil war that Straha's side would definitely not win)?

This has been answered at some length.

If so, what country will take them all in? Do you allow them to remain, but disenfranchise them to ensure that the government of the new nation remains First Nations controlled? These are not easy questions.

A. Either the polity reformed after the dissolution of the US or the Native Tribes who can set up a mechanism to ensure their assimilation and control.

B. I think that's a question up to the tribes and pursuant to negotiations. Obviously this will be different in different places, but I'm okay with that level of nuance.

C. Why is the idea of a negotiated and peaceful process to oversee resettlement so horrifying but living in the aftermath of this process done at gunpoint with genocidal intent so completely untroubling to you?

[Effie]

If you want an example of currently-existing genocidal policy, the continued existence of blood quantum laws to determine tribal membership is extremely relevant, as it deliberately encourages the creeping destruction of tribal groups as legal and political entities by requiring them to either establish totalitarian control over the reproductive activity of their members or accept a creeping decline in tribal membership as people marry outside the tribal group.

[Broomstick]

I'm oretty sure that post is referring to the dead children of Hiroshima/Dresden/et al.

The dead children of Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden/etc. where not directly targeted. Their deaths were the result of entire cities being targeted and the fact that cities have children as well as adults within their limits.

In the 1804 massacre in Haiti, however, with one-on-one killing of people, the revolutionaries could have easily spared the children by simply not killing them. Potentially, they could have raised those children in a new Haitian society but they didn't. They killed them just as if they were adults.

That is why the two "deaths of children" are not equivalent.

That is not saying it was OK to kill children as "collateral damage" while blowing up/fire bombing entire cities, just that the two forms of mass killing are different.

[Broomstick]

Are tribal members limited to moving into the territories that used to belong to their tribes? For example, if someone of Seminole descent currently lives in New York on land that used to belong to the Mohawk, can they continue living there, or would they be required to relocate to Florida? What if they want to live there, but the returning Mohawks only want members of their tribe to be able to resettle there?

Actually... the Seminole didn't exist before the 18th Century, they are a result of Natives fleeing from oppression and forced relocation in George and Alabama (and other places) and, to a smaller extent, runaway slaves fleeing to what was then wilderness. In some cases they displaced the Natives already there, such as the Apalachee (most of whom are now in Louisiana). Quite a few tribes either went extinct, were forced elsewhere, or were absorbed into the Seminoles which often meant losing their Native tongues and local cultures and adopting those used by the Seminoles (with the Seminoles adopting some stuff in return, but not as much as the prior occupants were giving up).

Which just further illustrates the complications of all this - extinct groups, displaced groups, groups displaced more than once (most Seminole these days live in Oklahoma, having first been displaced to become Seminole, them being forcibly removed from Florida and put in Oklahoma), groups assimilated, group split (there are currently three Cherokee nations, not one), and so on....

It's layers and layers of wrongness, for multiple centuries.

[Broomstick]

The vast majority of decolonization activists also reject the notion of blood quantum as determinative of ethnicity, and have an understanding of ethnicity and culture that understands it's possible to be a member of multiple groups at once. So this is a particularly strange question.

Well, I'm happy that they do... but who, exactly, are these "decolonization activists" of which you speak? Are they solely POC or are white folks allowed to be among them as well? How many people do they speak for and how were they chosen? The historical Geronimo was certainly NOT a peaceful relocater-of-colonists, as just one example (and I do think much if not all of what he did was justifable in the context of an on-going war between his people and both the US of America and the US of Mexico. I'll also note that the case of Jimmy McKinn shows that the Apache, unlike Dessalines, did not slaughter children of their oppressors indiscriminately but actually cared for them), are you saying there are NO Natives who would advocate force?

This reminds me a great deal of one politician mocking another for claiming Native ancestry (not Native tribal membership, just ancestry), or squabbles about whether or not the descendants of slaves held by the Cherokee are or are not legitimate members of the Cherokee Nation. Native Americans are just as diverse a group as anyone else and I don't recall any committee being voted in to represent all of them, and I very much doubt they all have the same outlook, needs, and desires. The politics of someone on the Pine Ridge reservation will probably be different than those of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma or the Hopi or Navajo or the Seneca, all of which have different history, needs, grievances, and land claims (some on that list actually do retain ownership of some of their original lands, some have been entirely displaced). Some are very particular about tribal membership, others are more like a nation-state in that one can immigrate into the tribe and become a full member by marriage or adoption (or, pre-Civil War, by ownership but I don't think any of us want to go back to that).

Which is all the more reason to address each group's grievances on their own merits and not just as a monolithic whole. Maybe some do want their land back, maybe some would prefer a lump-sum settlement, some other group a different arrangement. I'm pretty sure they all want treaties to be properly enforced, which may be the only point of agreement you'll get all to agree on. At the very least we need to start with that.

[Rogue 9]

I don't know, if it was comparing the inevitable consequences of aerial warfare with unguided and nuclear munitions to deliberate face to face massacre of children, it would be strange to specify the European theater. Effie can feel free to clarify, of course.

Was such a retaliatory slaughter not a foreseeable consequence of keeping and brutalizing a population of slaves to the point of armed revolt? If so, did the French not effectively sign their own death warrants and if not what would make such a slaughter a foreseeable consequence?

Allow me to clarify: I am 100% down with slave revolts. I wish Nat Turner and John Brown had had more success, and I'm glad the Lincoln administration pointedly recognized Haiti in 1862 after previous Southern-dominated administrations had refused for obvious reasons. Slaughter down to the last man, woman, and child is certainly overboard and unfortunate, but I understand why it was done. I was questioning Gandalf's interpretation, not condemning Haiti.

[Broomstick]

(As an aside, it's also interesting to me that you keep trying to place all the blame for what happened on the feet of rebelling slaves when the French (and British, and Spanish) had repeatedly gone back on their word and treaties over the course of ten years, refused to recognize free black folk, and sought to re-enslave freedmen because the idea of their being black people held to the equal level of White French folk was viewed as so deeply repugnant that it required continued costly and pointless military intervention.

And yet, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was a French General in the French Revolution, a black man born in Haiti (in slavery, because his mother was a slave even if his father was a white master) who rose to brigadier general in the French army as a freed black man. So... um... I guess not ALL Frenchmen were unable to recognize a freed slave as a free man or relegate him to the permanent role of servant during that time period (Dumas died in 1806, two years after the 1804 massacre. True, Napoleon did shit on the man's family and deny them a military pension but as the two men had butted heads multiple times in real life that might well have been due more to personal animosity than racial prejudice.

But, hey, it's OK to massacre every French person in Haiti right down to infants because all French people are alike.

Or maybe we can agree that you don't have to be white to be a rampaging homicidal bigot.

Haiti is a bit more complicated than simply white vs. black, master vs. slave. Not the least because it was not unusual for a financially successful free black to become a slave owner, pre-revolution the mixed race creoles held a level of society for themselves, and post-revolution dominated politically and economically those whose ancestry was mostly or exclusively African. Post-revolution, the creoles became the new oppressors, keeping the masses poor and uneducated. One oppressive group replaced by another.

5.) In my mind it becomes historical a generation or so after the policies involving genocide have ended. We are no longer sterilizing natives or trying to suppress their culture. Therefore we are not actively practicing genocide against them. The effects can linger but the genocide itself is over.

You need to provide a reason why a generation is a sufficient brightline. As it stands it's an arbitrary and nebulous figure with no specificity or reasoning behind it which also seems to miss the point that genocide and ethnic cleansing are, by their very nature, trans-generational acts.

I have to agree with this. While there is room to argue that the reparations/compensation granted to a descendant may be different than what a direct victim is entitled to I think there is room to argue that claims extend past a single generation.

Also, what makes you think these crimes have ended? The reservation system, with its mass enforced systemic poverty, still exists.

It is not, however, enforced by the US military these days.

I will also note that the reservation owned by, say, the Seneca is part of their original lands and suitable for many things from agriculture to tourism. Pine Ridge? Not so much. Only 4% of Pine Ridge is usable for agriculture and it's in bumfuck nowhere which makes building a casino or hotel/conference center somewhat problematic. Well, there is now an attempt to set up solar power generation at Pine Ridge, which may help the Sioux living there get something out of their land, and the Seneca have made some progress in controlling their lands including evicting white settlers on reservation lands which has been upheld and enforced by the US Federal government. For a change. There is also the Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians who split off from the Seneca nation due to disagreements on how to form a tribal government, among other things.

It seems a fucking stretch requiring more than a handwave to assert that policies are different today, and I'd love to see why you think there's been a substantive break in these policies and when (be precise please) that break took place.

It's not so much a sudden break as a gradual change - like treaties being enforced instead of ignored. Things are still pretty fucked up, but the trend is going in the right direction more often. You can certainly argue the change isn't fast enough, or that it's still not enough, but it would be inaccurate to say the situation is unchanged from a century ago.

[Straha]

I'm oretty sure that post is referring to the dead children of Hiroshima/Dresden/et al.

The dead children of Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden/etc. where not directly targeted. Their deaths were the result of entire cities being targeted and the fact that cities have children as well as adults within their limits.

So, killing families in a racialized total war: Unforgiveable. Destroying cities, the abstraction of large masses of families and property living in a location in a racialized total war: Understandable? That's a real stretch of a distinction.

Or, maybe, the distinction is property. So, if the Haitian revolutionaries had wanted to burn down the houses of the white families and just happened to do it when the families were inside it would have been read completely differently?

In the 1804 massacre in Haiti, however, with one-on-one killing of people, the revolutionaries could have easily spared the children by simply not killing them. Potentially, they could have raised those children in a new Haitian society but they didn't. They killed them just as if they were adults.

Maybe the Americans could have told the Japanese and Germans to send their children out to see so that they could be raised in a new Japanese/German society without their dead parents. Instead they killed them just as if they were adults.

That is not saying it was OK to kill children as "collateral damage" while blowing up/fire bombing entire cities, just that the two forms of mass killing are different.

So, straight up, this is just a distinction without meaningful difference?

[Darth Yan]

1.) Except they DID butcher french folk who aided the revolution. In any case how is killing children ok?

Again, see Effie's posts. They're handling this question quite nicely.

2.) Nice try but you were certainly implying it. You kept saying the US needed to be dissolved for the sake of justice; that has loaded overtones no matter how you spin it.

Please explain to me how "Evil is an abstraction best kept for Disney movies." somehow implies that I think Evil is a useful concept? And I don't think there are 'overtones' to me saying the US should be dissolved for the sake of justice. I think I'm pretty explicit in saying that the land was taken in a morally repugnant process of overt ethnic cleansing and genocide.

3.) Don't be cute. I'm well aware that Haiti was an exception and provoked by YEARS of abuse and cruelty (especially during the war of independence.) However that doesn't change that a.) Women and children were still slaughtered like cattle and that b.) the justification was a desire to "keep new frenchmen from being born." (i.e. the same logic the germans used to justify killing Jews). If they had just tried the people directly involved in the regime I wouldn't be bothered. If they had merely forcibly sent the white people away....it would have been dickish maybe but relatively humane and one could argue there was justice in those acts. Killing almost every man woman and child of french descent is NOT justice and that you seem to think it is really says a lot. In short I DO believe the subaltern is entitled to justice. I do not believe that mass murder is justice, whereas you seem to think it is.

I'm not being cute. I mean this sincerely. Like here, it's fucking fascinating that within a paragraph you call race based chattel slavery combined with ethnic cleansing 'abuse and cruelty' and then compare the people who fought against it to Nazis and its perpetrators to Jews. It's fascinating that your immediate response to this is to show overt sympathy for the people in power, guilty of some of the worst crimes in the history of man, when they are thrown out of power and show no understanding of the subaltern. And it's fascinating that your response to "The United States holds land unjustly and should be dissolved in its current form to undo this crime." boils down to "Like hell, they might kill us all!" Like, if you're going to bring up rhetorical implications, making your direct comparison of Native Tribes seeking restitution a concocted fear of mass murderers seeking bloody vengeance for decades of horrific injustice speaks volumes. Especially when Effie, Loomer, and I have all made clear that we're not seeking to model Haiti. This also begs the obvious question as to how you view white folk compared to Natives given the premises that swirl around your fear mongering.

And, as a gut-check: You're relying on a trope that was historically popularized and mastered by Southern slaveholders to justify slavery at all costs. How do you think people are going to read that?

(As an aside, it's also interesting to me that you keep trying to place all the blame for what happened on the feet of rebelling slaves when the French (and British, and Spanish) had repeatedly gone back on their word and treaties over the course of ten years, refused to recognize free black folk, and sought to re-enslave freedmen because the idea of their being black people held to the equal level of White French folk was viewed as so deeply repugnant that it required continued costly and pointless military intervention. When the French have militarized the bodies of their children to make their mere presence in Haiti sufficient reason to continue campaigns of ethnic cleansing against Black folk what do you think the impulse is going to be on the part of the revolution?)

4.) As far as I see it after a generation it becomes historical. You seem to honestly think White people are going "hee hee hee let's fuck over native americans hee hee hee". You also seem to think it would be justified for POC to kill civilians en masse. Like it or not the ink has dried. Other people live there now, and relocating them would require not only willpower but resources. Again it's why the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank are a major issue. In practice they won't be removed.

Why a generation? How is the forced sterilization of women to decimate future tribes not a crime now when the women who were systemically assaulted like this are still alive and we are living in a generation that should be but isn't because of these actions?

It also astounds me that your response to injustice committed in living memory with their victims still alive is to engage in a massive shrug and effectively declare 'Eh, too complicated to try and fix. Just get over it' It's a fucking weak ass vision of justice and one that has no empathy for the oppressed.

5.) In my mind it becomes historical a generation or so after the policies involving genocide have ended. We are no longer sterilizing natives or trying to suppress their culture. Therefore we are not actively practicing genocide against them. The effects can linger but the genocide itself is over.

You need to provide a reason why a generation is a sufficient brightline. As it stands it's an arbitrary and nebulous figure with no specificity or reasoning behind it which also seems to miss the point that genocide and ethnic cleansing are, by their very nature, trans-generational acts.

Also, what makes you think these crimes have ended? The reservation system, with its mass enforced systemic poverty, still exists. Native religion was only unregulated in the 70s (really, the 90s), there are continued encroachments that seek to destroy Native Lands and culture (DAPL in the Dakotas, the TMT in Mauna Kea), and the institutions that have run and directed these genocidal acts still exist in direct continuity today. It seems a fucking stretch requiring more than a handwave to assert that policies are different today, and I'd love to see why you think there's been a substantive break in these policies and when (be precise please) that break took place.

In summation it's impossible to redistribute land on the scale that you desire in the way you desire. You're constant spouting that "white" is inherently racist also says a lot.

Are you trying to bring up a thread from a year ago where I said that 'Whitness' was constructed category that was created to justify settler-colonial expansion and racism? Because that thread had a whole shit ton of nuance and explanation that I'll point you to that explained exactly what I was saying there. If you want an answer to that, go read it.

Otherwise, I want quotes from where you think I've done what you just said in this thread.

Do you expel them by force (presuming it were possible to do so without a massive civil war that Straha's side would definitely not win)?

This has been answered at some length.

If so, what country will take them all in? Do you allow them to remain, but disenfranchise them to ensure that the government of the new nation remains First Nations controlled? These are not easy questions.

A. Either the polity reformed after the dissolution of the US or the Native Tribes who can set up a mechanism to ensure their assimilation and control.

B. I think that's a question up to the tribes and pursuant to negotiations. Obviously this will be different in different places, but I'm okay with that level of nuance.

C. Why is the idea of a negotiated and peaceful process to oversee resettlement so horrifying but living in the aftermath of this process done at gunpoint with genocidal intent so completely untroubling to you?

I actually reconsidered some details after reading Loomer's post on what exactly he and others wanted. While I think actually IMPLEMENTING it is not going to be doable the underlying idea is an admirable one and shows that he did actually think about it. However as Broomstick and Civil War Man pointed out actually implementing it will be impossible due to a wide variety of factors (each tribe has their own needs and wants, the fact that simply educating people isn't going to make them want to leave their homes). My stance is less "they might kill us all" and more "you're fucking delusional if you think it's going to be as smooth and peaceful as you think it is even if it is from a position of justice".

With Haiti Dessalines could have EASILY kept women and children alive and integrated them into a newer more just society. Instead he committed mass murder because he was afraid they MIGHT either give birth to future oppressors or become future oppressors. That kind of logic (killing someone because you're scared of what they might become) is EXACTLY how the Nazis operated; hell it's how John Chivington justified the deaths of women and children at Sand Creek (his "charming" way of saying it was "nits begat lice.") The Revolutionaries basically lowered themselves to the same level as the French Slaveowners

Also there is a difference. When you fire on a city it's relatively random and unfocused. With Haiti (and Sand Creek, and the massacres committed by the white slaveowners in Haiti, and the holocaust and any other act of mass ethnic violence) they were specifically making the decision "let's kill children as well. Hell we WILL kill children." That's different than randomly dropping bombs on a city.

[Rogue 9]

That is not saying it was OK to kill children as "collateral damage" while blowing up/fire bombing entire cities, just that the two forms of mass killing are different.

So, straight up, this is just a distinction without meaningful difference?

The meaningful difference is rather obvious: In the case of strategic bombing, the objective is not the deaths of minor and civilian victims. In a house to house rampage, killing the victims is the entire point. If warmaking capacity could be destroyed from the air without killing bystanders, that would absolutely have been done; most weapons advances in the past few decades are in more precise targeting in part for the purpose of more accurately hitting the target rather than the target and everything else for a kilometer around it. By contrast, Dessalines' mission objective was to kill all the French down to the last child. The difference is one of mens rea. If all you care about is that the victims are just as dead, then you can argue it doesn't make a difference, but to a just legal system it absolutely does.

[Jub]

Allow me to clarify: I am 100% down with slave revolts. I wish Nat Turner and John Brown had had more success, and I'm glad the Lincoln administration pointedly recognized Haiti in 1862 after previous Southern-dominated administrations had refused for obvious reasons. Slaughter down to the last man, woman, and child is certainly overboard and unfortunate, but I understand why it was done. I was questioning Gandalf's interpretation, not condemning Haiti.

We agree then. I also think it was unfortunate but with that much anger and a rebellion of yet uncertain success, I can easily see how things got to the point of mass murder on an up-close and personal level. I can't honestly say I wouldn't participate or at least not attempt to stop such an act if I were in the Haitian's shoes.

[Effie]

The vast majority of decolonization activists also reject the notion of blood quantum as determinative of ethnicity, and have an understanding of ethnicity and culture that understands it's possible to be a member of multiple groups at once. So this is a particularly strange question.

Well, I'm happy that they do... but who, exactly, are these "decolonization activists" of which you speak? Are they solely POC or are white folks allowed to be among them as well? How many people do they speak for and how were they chosen? The historical Geronimo was certainly NOT a peaceful relocater-of-colonists, as just one example (and I do think much if not all of what he did was justifable in the context of an on-going war between his people and both the US of America and the US of Mexico. I'll also note that the case of Jimmy McKinn shows that the Apache, unlike Dessalines, did not slaughter children of their oppressors indiscriminately but actually cared for them), are you saying there are NO Natives who would advocate force?

This reminds me a great deal of one politician mocking another for claiming Native ancestry (not Native tribal membership, just ancestry), or squabbles about whether or not the descendants of slaves held by the Cherokee are or are not legitimate members of the Cherokee Nation. Native Americans are just as diverse a group as anyone else and I don't recall any committee being voted in to represent all of them, and I very much doubt they all have the same outlook, needs, and desires. The politics of someone on the Pine Ridge reservation will probably be different than those of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma or the Hopi or Navajo or the Seneca, all of which have different history, needs, grievances, and land claims (some on that list actually do retain ownership of some of their original lands, some have been entirely displaced). Some are very particular about tribal membership, others are more like a nation-state in that one can immigrate into the tribe and become a full member by marriage or adoption (or, pre-Civil War, by ownership but I don't think any of us want to go back to that).

Which is all the more reason to address each group's grievances on their own merits and not just as a monolithic whole. Maybe some do want their land back, maybe some would prefer a lump-sum settlement, some other group a different arrangement. I'm pretty sure they all want treaties to be properly enforced, which may be the only point of agreement you'll get all to agree on. At the very least we need to start with that.

"Decolonization activists" is not a code word for "Native people".

That is not saying it was OK to kill children as "collateral damage" while blowing up/fire bombing entire cities, just that the two forms of mass killing are different.

So, straight up, this is just a distinction without meaningful difference?

The meaningful difference is rather obvious: In the case of strategic bombing, the objective is not the deaths of minor and civilian victims. In a house to house rampage, killing the victims is the entire point. If warmaking capacity could be destroyed from the air without killing bystanders, that would absolutely have been done; most weapons advances in the past few decades are in more precise targeting in part for the purpose of more accurately hitting the target rather than the target and everything else for a kilometer around it. By contrast, Dessalines' mission objective was to kill all the French down to the last child. The difference is one of mens rea. If all you care about is that the victims are just as dead, then you can argue it doesn't make a difference, but to a just legal system it absolutely does.

His mission objective was to eliminate any legal French claim to Haiti. If he could have done so without killing them all (and in a more humane fashion than kidnapping and reeducating the children and the women, what on Earth) he would as assuredly have done so as the US would not have incinerated Tokyo in 1945 if there was any other option for aerial bombardment of the effects they desired.

[Darth Yan]

Oh bullshit. He was openly salivating for blood. The soldiers refused to carry out his orders until Dessalines himself personally visited the cities.

[Broomstick]

I'm oretty sure that post is referring to the dead children of Hiroshima/Dresden/et al.

The dead children of Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden/etc. where not directly targeted. Their deaths were the result of entire cities being targeted and the fact that cities have children as well as adults within their limits.

So, killing families in a racialized total war: Unforgiveable. Destroying cities, the abstraction of large masses of families and property living in a location in a racialized total war: Understandable? That's a real stretch of a distinction.

Or, maybe, the distinction is property. So, if the Haitian revolutionaries had wanted to burn down the houses of the white families and just happened to do it when the families were inside it would have been read completely differently?

I'm not claiming any of that is morally good. It's all pretty horrible. But here's a possible aid to understanding:

Burning down a house without knowing if there is anyone in it - bad, very bad, but not premeditated murder.

Burning down a house you KNOW has people in it - worse bad, and premeditated murder.

So - bombing a city for strategic reasons - bad thing (war is hell, after all) and you know you're going to kill some people whether or not killing people (as opposed to, say, shutting down a tank factory) is your objective.

Slitting the throad of an infant or toddler with your own hands, or shooting an infant or toddler in the head with your own hands, or otherwise killing a child standing in front of you - well, that's worse for many people because you don't have the excuse of not knowing or being unaware of it or the death being an unintentional side effect of something else. It's deliberate murder of a defenseless human being who has not lived long enough to commit a wrong against anyone. Even in war that is not necessary.

In the 1804 massacre in Haiti, however, with one-on-one killing of people, the revolutionaries could have easily spared the children by simply not killing them. Potentially, they could have raised those children in a new Haitian society but they didn't. They killed them just as if they were adults.

Maybe the Americans could have told the Japanese and Germans to send their children out to see so that they could be raised in a new Japanese/German society without their dead parents. Instead they killed them just as if they were adults.

The Germans actually did take some children from the people they oppressed and murdered and raised them a "Aryans" and Germans. It was NOT a good thing they did, but arguably better than throwing those kids in the gas chambers. It's a complicated issue and some of the children taken in that manner have written about the topic. I would say that those people have had a wrong committed against them, but I don't think you can argue they'd be better off dead.

Note, this is different than stealing children from living parents, or killing the parents just to get the children.

So, straight up, this is just a distinction without meaningful difference?

Nope. As mentioned there is a difference - at least to some other people if not to yourself.

[Broomstick]

His mission objective was to eliminate any legal French claim to Haiti. If he could have done so without killing them all (and in a more humane fashion than kidnapping and reeducating the children and the women, what on Earth) he would as assuredly have done so as the US would not have incinerated Tokyo in 1945 if there was any other option for aerial bombardment of the effects they desired.

Bullshit.

He could have shipped the women and kids back to Europe. Or, yes, the adult women could have been given the option of living in the new Haiti under black rule and leave it up to them to decide, or he could have taken responsibility and seen the orphans adopted/fostered into families to take care of them until adulthood (possibly with white families that remained in Haiti, if black families were deemed unsuitable, although with all the creoles running around clearly inter-racial groupings were nothing new on the island). No, he chose to deliberately kill them.

And, not to get too technical, the US did, in fact, come up with an alternative to firebombing Tokyo. They atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not sure that was any better morally even if it was technically more efficient.

[Jub]

As a general question, I get why killing kids is worse than killing adults, but why is killing a surrendered adult woman considered any worse than killing a surrendered adult man? I know woman are less likely to be combatants, especially in that time period, but when we're talking about already captured and pacified civilians I don't see how gender makes a difference anymore.

[Straha]

I'm not claiming any of that is morally good. It's all pretty horrible. But here's a possible aid to understanding:

Burning down a house without knowing if there is anyone in it - bad, very bad, but not premeditated murder.

Burning down a house you KNOW has people in it - worse bad, and premeditated murder.

So - bombing a city for strategic reasons - bad thing (war is hell, after all) and you know you're going to kill some people whether or not killing people (as opposed to, say, shutting down a tank factory) is your objective.

The blowing up of factories wasn't the objective. General Arthur Harris, head of the bombing wing of the RAF had this to say:

"The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."

The Dehousing Paper made clear that this was deliberate well thought out policy. The Americans may have protested that they were only engaging in precision bombing, but nobody took that claim seriously once they began serious bombing efforts. And by the 44/45 they were deliberately firebombing cities in both Germany and Japan, which had the effect of burning everything down. When your target is everything you can't claim that there is 'targeted damage' and 'collateral damage'. There's just targeted damage.

Slitting the throad of an infant or toddler with your own hands, or shooting an infant or toddler in the head with your own hands, or otherwise killing a child standing in front of you - well, that's worse for many people because you don't have the excuse of not knowing or being unaware of it or the death being an unintentional side effect of something else. It's deliberate murder of a defenseless human being who has not lived long enough to commit a wrong against anyone. Even in war that is not necessary.

So, because you don't see it happen in front of your eyes you can't deny it happening and therefore you're intrinsically guilty, but if you press a button and thousands of feet away you directly kill a civilian family it's not 'deliberate murder' because you didn't see it happen? So far as I can tell your only distinction is 'one uses technology to kill at a distance and the other doesn't.' Which is a distinction without difference if I ever saw one.

The Germans actually did take some children from the people they oppressed and murdered and raised them a "Aryans" and Germans. It was NOT a good thing they did, but arguably better than throwing those kids in the gas chambers. It's a complicated issue and some of the children taken in that manner have written about the topic. I would say that those people have had a wrong committed against them, but I don't think you can argue they'd be better off dead.

So, to be clear, in the matter of a couple dozen posts we've gone from "Haitian revolutionaries can be directly understood as acting like Nazis" to "They should have taken tips from the Nazis." The mind fucking boggles.

Again, the point was that the distinction you're trying to create between carpet bombing/terror bombing/area bombing/fire bombing and the mass murder of civilians at gun-point is pretty fucking weak.

So, straight up, this is just a distinction without meaningful difference?

Nope. As mentioned there is a difference - at least to some other people if not to yourself.

If the distinction is "Hey, when I do it like this I can try and convince myself that I might not have killed people so I can sleep better at night" I think it's a fucking piss-poor distinction that's being used to justify mass murder.

[Effie]

Oh bullshit. He was openly salivating for blood. The soldiers refused to carry out his orders until Dessalines himself personally visited the cities.

"When we're done the Japanese language will be only spoken in Hell" - Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.

His mission objective was to eliminate any legal French claim to Haiti. If he could have done so without killing them all (and in a more humane fashion than kidnapping and reeducating the children and the women, what on Earth) he would as assuredly have done so as the US would not have incinerated Tokyo in 1945 if there was any other option for aerial bombardment of the effects they desired.

Bullshit.

He could have shipped the women and kids back to Europe. Or, yes, the adult women could have been given the option of living in the new Haiti under black rule and leave it up to them to decide, or he could have taken responsibility and seen the orphans adopted/fostered into families to take care of them until adulthood (possibly with white families that remained in Haiti, if black families were deemed unsuitable, although with all the creoles running around clearly inter-racial groupings were nothing new on the island). No, he chose to deliberately kill them.

And, not to get too technical, the US did, in fact, come up with an alternative to firebombing Tokyo. They atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not sure that was any better morally even if it was technically more efficient.

The US also chose to deliberately incinerate cities, when they had other options. Which they did to Tokyo with conventional incendiaries well before the nuclear weapons, by the by, so the nukes weren't an "alternative" to that.

[Broomstick]

The Dehousing Paper made clear that this was deliberate well thought out policy. The Americans may have protested that they were only engaging in precision bombing, but nobody took that claim seriously once they began serious bombing efforts. And by the 44/45 they were deliberately firebombing cities in both Germany and Japan, which had the effect of burning everything down. When your target is everything you can't claim that there is 'targeted damage' and 'collateral damage'. There's just targeted damage.

Part of the rationale is that the US (and probably the other Allies, but I'm not sure) would drop pamphlets beforehand telling people to leave the area because it was going to be bombed in the near future. At least some of the time. Which was pretty useless, admittedly, because where was the population of a city supposed to go? Some people did leave, or send their children out of the cities, but realistically the cities weren't going to be evacuated.

I'm not saying any of this was good in any send of the word.

The Germans actually did take some children from the people they oppressed and murdered and raised them a "Aryans" and Germans. It was NOT a good thing they did, but arguably better than throwing those kids in the gas chambers. It's a complicated issue and some of the children taken in that manner have written about the topic. I would say that those people have had a wrong committed against them, but I don't think you can argue they'd be better off dead.

So, to be clear, in the matter of a couple dozen posts we've gone from "Haitian revolutionaries can be directly understood as acting like Nazis" to "They should have taken tips from the Nazis." The mind fucking boggles.

You've got the timeline backwards there. And, again, I never said any of this was good. Stealing children is bad. Dealing with the orphans of war is often problematic.

Are you arguing that the children of white French Haitans were better off dead with their parents than being orphaned but still getting a chance to grow up? Still a sucky fate (orphans have not often fared well in history) but is it better or worse than being dead?

Again, the point was that the distinction you're trying to create between carpet bombing/terror bombing/area bombing/fire bombing and the mass murder of civilians at gun-point is pretty fucking weak.

Again, I'm not arguing that any of this is good. At best, one is a little less bad than the other. I don't know why you're having a problem wrapping your brain around that concept

[Elfdart]

Trump might as well have had a cross burning in the background when he incited his baying mob into chanting "Send Her Back". But he had a lot of help ginning up his horde of imbeciles in their Two Minutes Hate against Ilhan Omar. Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens of the New York Times, Batya Ungar-Sargon of The Forward started the witch hysteria against Omar back in January, when Weiss deliberately misquoted a seven-year-old Twitter post, trying to paint her as a Jew-hater. Then they had the gall to act surprised when the police had to break up several assassination plots against her -including one from Coast Guard officer.

Notice how Pelosi, Hoyer, et al were all set on lynching Omar: they had already picked out a rope, a tree and which robes to wear for the occasion. They also dispatched their henchmen through the halls of Congress to twist arms to pass their disgusting smear of a resolution. Were it not for a revolt from the Congressional Black Caucus and some Lefties, the corpse of Ilhan Omar's reputation would have been dangling from a tree.

THEN notice how Pelosi & Co handle Trump's numerous criminal and despotic acts. She won't even open an inquiry.