Neutrality in History IS a bias.

[Username17]

With the exception of the gas chambers set up at the end, there really was no difference. People died by the millions and were worked to death and forced to live in subhuman conditions. The acts are equivalent save for the fact that the Nazis managed to use higher technology levels to get things done faster.

People who can't tell the difference between slavery and the persecution of the Jews probably can't even tell the difference between the planet Jupiter and the Sun. There is a major differecne of magnitude.

6 million dead Jews. 3 million dead Africans. That is not a difference in magnitude. That the first was accomplished over a decade and a half instead of a century and a half is impressive. But that's industrialization for you: getting the same evil done in one tenth the time.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

You perfectly prove my point that history cannot be really told under hundreds of years after the fact because the lies of the victors of the war (or in this case the people who wanted to make Lincoln the American Jesus Christ ... marytered for the nation) after the fact.

Please explain to us how the south's declarations of secession are the lies of the victor. Do you doubt the historical integrity of these documents?

Frank beat me to the second part, though I'd like to say that his number is generously small and probably just the number that died in transport. The number enslaved or who suffered other horrible fates could easily be 3-4 times that.

[Prak]

I didn't know that about the Gold Coast (or even what it was), and I just remembered the slave ships, which were actually worse than the transport trains (well, maybe they're equal too).

They were vastly worse, but that may have been a problem of duration rather than conditions; the ocean voyage took far longer than the train journey. Lots of Africans never made it. It is one of the main reasons why the average African American is vastly different in a number of respects (mostly medical) from the average African.

Tzor, you make it sound like the slave ships were just a comically ill-prepared cruise.... this is what the slave ships were like:



I was actually unsure which was worse, the trains where the holocaust victims were standing, packed in, with only a single bucket to shit and piss in, or the the boats where slaves were seated or lying, chained together, and treated like inanimate cargo. But you made that an easy decision with your use of the word duration. Not to diminish the horror of the trains, but the ships were far worse, because the slaves were forced to endure the conditions for far longer. The slavers were monsters even worse than the rank and file nazi, the people who bought the slaves were monsters on par with those who joined up with the nazis for convenience.

[tzor]

6 million dead Jews. 3 million dead Africans. That is not a difference in magnitude.

I love how you compare absolute numbers. Let's put these numbers in their context. There were 9.5 million Jews in Europe before WWII, that's well over 50%.

There were 10-12 million slaves shipped over the ocean. Considering that this is a multi-generaional count you also have to add all those born to them and so on and so forth.

Oh do you want to talk about slavery or the slave trade? The numbers of the later (which really was more of a crime of the NORTH, as it was the merchant companies from northern ports like Boston that drove the triangular trade) 2.4 million slaves died as a result of transport. 1 million slaves died waiting for the transport.

But the "slave trade" was not the cause of the civil war; that had ended a long time before the civi war. No one was suggesting it be restarted. I know this is typical of your argument style, you wave the red herring and proclaim how badly it smells, but it is still a red herring.

The Nazi's wanted to work the Jews to death, that way they got some value out of them before they killed them.

Most slave owners just wanted their slaves to work. Yes it was inhuman, but they weren't deliberatly trying to kill them. To even suggest otherwise is to obscure orders of magnitude.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The slavers were monsters even worse than the rank and file nazi, the people who bought the slaves were monsters on par with those who joined up with the nazis for convenience.

More like monsters on par with Nazi civilians who used slave labor, like Wernher Von Braun and the volks at Volkswagon. Whereas the slavers are akin to the folks at Bayer and IBM (and of course the SS).

[sabs]

1 Million Gypsies
1 Million Armenians

A trully impressive number of Russians.

The Jews don't have a monopoly on people trying to exterminate them.

This in no way lessens the impact of the Holocaust. But lets not get carried away like, noone else suffered. And the Nazi's aren't the first group to try to eradicate the Jews. If they had been, there wouldn't be so many Jewish Holidays that basically consist of "they tried to kill us, they failed, lets eat"

[angelfromanotherpin]

Let us not forget that only one trip in three on the cotton/rum/slaves trade route had to be successful to turn a profit, so if the slavers thought they might get caught by someone who'd arrest them for slave trading... over the side they all went.

[Maj]

The Nazi's wanted to work the Jews to death, that way they got some value out of them before they killed them.

Most slave owners just wanted their slaves to work. Yes it was inhuman, but they weren't deliberatly trying to kill them. To even suggest otherwise is to obscure orders of magnitude.

While I don't really want to agree with you because both are absolutely horrific, I sorta agree with this part. To the best of my knowledge, the Nazis proactively wanted to eliminate the Jews. The slavers wanted a cheap source of labor.

Either way, though, both groups were seen as less than human and treated accordingly. And in the end, trying to decide which is worse - hatred for a group of people or apathy towards the fact that they are people - just seems painfully pointless.

[Prak]

so many Jewish Holidays that basically consist of "they tried to kill us, they failed, lets eat"

...I'm totally stealing that for my character that got turned Jewish in my saturday game.

[Ancient History]

Let us not forget that only one trip in three on the cotton/rum/slaves trade route had to be successful to turn a profit, so if the slavers thought they might get caught by someone who'd arrest them for slave trading... over the side they all went.

Can we please leave out the rum/molasses/slave triangle bullshit? As nice of a self-fulfilling loop as it seems to be, the fact is not a single ship carried out the full triangle, and the Africans were more prone to being paid for slaves in gold and guns rather than rum.

Now, slaves were an important part of the developing economy of the new world, and for example were instrumental in salt and sugar production in the Caribbean - and this in turn went up north, where the molasses became rum and the salt were used to salt cod, with the salt cod being shipped back down to the Carib to feed the slaves (since it was cheap and durable) - but the idea of buying slaves with shiploads of rum has always been ludicrous. (Catchy song though it may be.)

[Koumei]

The Nazi's wanted to work the Jews to death, that way they got some value out of them before they killed them.

Most slave owners just wanted their slaves to work. Yes it was inhuman, but they weren't deliberatly trying to kill them. To even suggest otherwise is to obscure orders of magnitude.

While I don't really want to agree with you because both are absolutely horrific, I sorta agree with this part. To the best of my knowledge, the Nazis proactively wanted to eliminate the Jews. The slavers wanted a cheap source of labor.

Their primary goal means absolutely nothing though. What happened in both cases is millions of people were worked to death, and the people who worked them to death knew this and supported it. The goal could have been "And after each person does a million hours of forced labour, suddenly marshmallows rain from the sky and everyone is happy" and it still wouldn't change the fact.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Can we please leave out the rum/molasses/slave triangle bullshit? As nice of a self-fulfilling loop as it seems to be, the fact is not a single ship carried out the full triangle, and the Africans were more prone to being paid for slaves in gold and guns rather than rum.

Well, my assumption of course is that at each stop you'd sell your cargo for money and then buy the next cargo with money, but I'd really like to know what your source is for 'not a single ship carried out the full triangle.'

but the idea of buying slaves with shiploads of rum has always been ludicrous. (Catchy song though it may be.)

Why? The history of alcohol as a currency is pretty robust. And even today slaves are bought with actual peanuts.

[Maj]

Their primary goal means absolutely nothing though.

Hence my second paragraph!

[PhoneLobster]

Their primary goal means absolutely nothing though... ...The goal could have been "And after each person does a million hours of forced labour, suddenly marshmallows rain from the sky and everyone is happy" and it still wouldn't change the fact.

It doesn't change the fact, but I am prepared to accept some sort of bullshit "gut feeling" wishy washy "but they meant well!" angle.

So lets look at that for a second.

The South plunged a nation into war killing countless humans and attempted to overthrow the basic concept of post enlightenment society, because they wanted to prolong slavery, oppression and mass murder and they wanted to do so FOREVER and primarily out of personal GREED. EVERYONE who fought for the south knew the full details of the plan. They knew what they had done, they knew what they were doing, they knew what they planned to do.

The Nazis went to war killing countless humans and attacked global society at large because they believed they were saving the world for the master race. Their intention was to once and for all implement a "final solution" and if they could profit from the dirty work of the extermination of the dreaded sub humans who were supposedly oppressing them then all the better. MORE Germans SHOULD have known the details, but there DOES exist a fair amount of reasonable excuse for a LOT of the rank and file to not have been fully aware of the full nature of the things they were getting up to and planned to get up to.

In the end the facts are the Nazis were WRONG about their whole save the master race plan, and ended up perpetrating genuinely massive evil. And from an objective stand point the two nations are basically equivalent in their evils they both set out and achieved massive oppression and murder of actual humans as a state organized enterprise.

But from the angle of good intentions paving the road to hell... the South, it's citizens, and it's army recruits are actually WORSE than Nazis their intentions were worse, their knowledge of their intentions was superior. And in a similar light modern people like Tzor making excuses for the South are in fact worse than their equivalent Nazi apologists.

[Ancient History]

Can we please leave out the rum/molasses/slave triangle bullshit? As nice of a self-fulfilling loop as it seems to be, the fact is not a single ship carried out the full triangle, and the Africans were more prone to being paid for slaves in gold and guns rather than rum.

Well, my assumption of course is that at each stop you'd sell your cargo for money and then buy the next cargo with money, but I'd really like to know what your source is for 'not a single ship carried out the full triangle.'

but the idea of buying slaves with shiploads of rum has always been ludicrous. (Catchy song though it may be.)

Why? The history of alcohol as a currency is pretty robust. And even today slaves are bought with actual peanuts.

Historian Clifford Shipton went through records and stated he couldn't find a single ship that went through all three legs of the trade. Granted, I got that from And A Bottle Of Rum, so the source may have been biased, but most scholars agree that the origin of the concept of the triangle trade came up well after the actual era in question.

[Kaelik]

I could certainly see that ships built to transport slaves might be making the best money going back and forth taking slaves, and never being washed out in order to transport sugar.

That sounds far more productive than running a specific set of triples where you use the same ship designed for slave transport to move alcohol and sugar.

Also, I would not be surprised to find out that a hold full of alcohol costs way the fuck more than a hold full of slaves could buy.

[Neeeek]

Hey, tzor, I know you don't ever remember shit like this, but the last time you pulled out this exact line of malarkey,

And I think you went off on an insane tangent on how you thought the author I brought up in defense of the argument was a moron. I'm not going to preach to the preverted. You can believe the Lincoln Lie all the fuck you want.

You perfectly prove my point that history cannot be really told under hundreds of years after the fact because the lies of the victors of the war (or in this case the people who wanted to make Lincoln the American Jesus Christ ... marytered for the nation) after the fact.

Or it could be that the timeline just doesn't support it. The South start ceding before Lincoln took office, and had enough votes in the Senate to block any such tariffs. If you want to believe that Lincoln had powers he didn't have, that's your prerogative. All it makes you is ignorant on yet another subject.

[RadiantPhoenix]

The story they told in my high school was that the south seceded because none of them voted for Lincoln, but he got elected anyway.

[name_here]

My high school taught that the civil war was growing increasingly inevitable, and it becoming clear that Lincoln was going to be president was the last straw because absolutely everyone knew that his policy of preventing new states from permitting slavery would eventually result in current slave states being forced to end slavery once the free states got a supermajority in the senate and could force a constitutional amendment through.

[Whatever]

The story they told in my high school was that the south seceded because none of them voted for Lincoln, but he got elected anyway.

He wasn't even on the ballot in 9 or so southern states, but that was at best a pretext.

We were on the road to the Civil War before they ratified the Constitution; events in 1860 may have precipitated the war, but they did not cause it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... _Civil_War actually has a fairly decent overview.

[tzor]

I was actually unsure which was worse, the trains where the holocaust victims were standing, packed in, with only a single bucket to shit and piss in, or the the boats where slaves were seated or lying, chained together, and treated like inanimate cargo. But you made that an easy decision with your use of the word duration.

I wasn't making an "easy distinction." I was just pointing out that the sardine conditions that existed produce more fatilities over time, thus longer voyages in those conditions is going to cause a greater fatailty rate. Actually I think the trains were slightly more ventilated than those below the waterline holds, but only silghtly.

[tzor]

Their primary goal means absolutely nothing though.

Bullshit. There is a massive difference between willful intent and not giving a shit. If there were not, then the United States was as equally responsible for the holocaust as Germany was. When the Jews tried to flee Germany we sent them back!

Slave owners were not attempting mass genocide. What they did was wrong, no doubt about it, but it is still a massive order of magnitude blow that of deliberate genocide.

[Josh_Kablack]

I totally agree on this point. I came to America as a 13-year-old. After the first two weeks of history class, I raised my hand and asked why aren't the confederates treated like the nazis?

I was met by a very condescending laugh from the teacher who told me that as a non-native english speaker, I had to learn the nuances.

I shut up about it. But, seriously, I've been in America for almost 15 years now. I still don't really see what the fucking nuance was.

The "nuance" is that in some places in the country, asking that question will get you shot.

Oh sure, there's a lot more behind it such as how much the Civil War was about slavery and how much it was about other factors such as: the southern states not getting fair representation in Congress at the time; the conflict between northern industrial and southern agrarian economics; and the ongoing debate between a strong central government vs states' rights vs individual rights; but my guess is that your teacher was just concerned for your safety.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I totally agree on this point. I came to America as a 13-year-old. After the first two weeks of history class, I raised my hand and asked why aren't the confederates treated like the nazis?

I was met by a very condescending laugh from the teacher who told me that as a non-native english speaker, I had to learn the nuances.

I shut up about it. But, seriously, I've been in America for almost 15 years now. I still don't really see what the fucking nuance was.

The "nuance" is that in some places in the country, asking that question will get you shot.

Oh sure, there's a lot more behind it such as how much the Civil War was about slavery and how much it was about other factors such as: the southern states not getting fair representation in Congress at the time; the conflict between northern industrial and southern agrarian economics; and the ongoing debate between a strong central government vs states' rights vs individual rights; but my guess is that your teacher was just concerned for your safety.

That's... plausible. There are definitely places where bringing that kind of stuff up is unwise.

[PhoneLobster]

If there were not, then the United States was as equally responsible for the holocaust as Germany was. When the Jews tried to flee Germany we sent them back!

There are so many things laughable with this response that I can't even...

OK so FIRST he premises this on "the Jews" fleeing Germany and being sent back. Implying, and for this even to BEGIN to make sense pretty much insisting that 'the Jews" was... ALL the Jews (and other guys" killed in the holocaust.

Then he says that knowingly sending people to their deaths at the hands of murderers when it would have been trivially easy NOT to, DOESN'T make you equally responsible for their deaths.

THEN he uses THAT to (very strongly) imply that because the USA sent back (ALL the Jews?) out of not giving a shit and they clearly weren't equally responsible that means they bore NO responsibility the holocaust.

At no point does he even consider that the USA in not giving a shit and sending back SOME Jews in fact bore SOME significant responsibility for the deaths of those specific Jews. And as such WAS in some small proportion actually responsible for PART of the holocaust.

I mean holy heck? Really Equally or nothing? All the Jews? And the at the time pretty much knowing sending of large numbers of people back to their deaths being brushed over as nothing by Tzor. Again.

edit: and even then if you actually want to make an argument about INTENTIONS as Tzor wants to. The Nazis killed the Jews America sent back because they thought they were saving the world America sent those Jews back to be killed because they didn't want to upset local racists for political expediency. Now you tell me, assuming we are for some reason suddenly CARING about the motive for mass slaughter of humans. Which intention there is the BETTER intention when sending large numbers of people to their death? Saving the world or appealing to a few marginal asshole voters?

Such a NICE guy. One wonders why his political movement is so universally reviled as inhuman assholes.