Neutrality in History IS a bias.

[A Man In Black]

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.

You've missed another layer, here, in tzor's defense.

Everyone who saw the American south died 100 years ago. Everyone who is alive today was raised on a narrative of reconciliation. Confederate symbols have since been co-opted for causes which are not (at least, overtly) completely awful, like southern regionalism, states' rights, actual states, etc.

There are living WWII veterans who can tell us how awful the Nazis were. Hell, there are Holocaust survivors. The post-WWII narrative was split between "reconcile with the rank-and-file, execute the leaders" and "imprison/execute them all", depending on which side of the line you were on. Germans don't even like to talk about the Nazis. The only people who use Nazi iconography are fascists and racists, and pretty much nobody but assholes likes fascism or racism.

So I'm okay with saying "clueless people trying to make some point with really awful unintended consequences" are better than "skinhead assholes."

[Prak]

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.

[Zinegata]

One important thing to realize about the South before the civil war is that the majority of the population did not own slaves.

The majority of the slaves were owned by very wealthy land owners, who (thanks to their wealth) were also able to control the legislature and government of the southern states.

There is a very real grain of truth behind the post-war resentment in the South that it had been a "rich man's war fought by the poor people", but that narrative has been increasingly forgotten as the post-war Southern politicians were able to focus the anger of their populace elsewhere - helped by the fact that many of the non-slave owners were killed during the war (and most were illiterate and had no chance to get their message out), while the wealthy slave owners were able to dodge conscription and avoid getting killed.

Finally, while the Southern slave plantations were harsh, it is nowhere near the systematic genocide of an entire people. It was a system designed to keep a specific segment of the population in submission, but it wasn't trying to exterminate the said segment. Comparisons between the South and Apartheid South Africa are more valid, but attempting to equate it to the Holocaust is just hyperbole.

What could be compared to the Holocaust are the plantation economies run by the French and British in the West Indies about 100-200 years before the Civil War. Even if you survived the slave ship, chances were high that you would die in the plantations anyway. It was a virtual death sentence, especially when famine was rife in the islands and it was sometimes more profitable to ship in more slaves than to feed the old. By contrast, outright killing slaves in the 1850s South was actually outlawed in specific cases.

That being said, it's also worth noting that the African slave trade wouldn't have been possible without the African warlords and tribal leaders who captured people from rival tribes and sold them off to the Europeans for trinkets.

[DSMatticus]

That being said, it's also worth noting that the African slave trade wouldn't have been possible without the African warlords and tribal leaders who captured people from rival tribes and sold them off to the Europeans for trinkets.

That is true, but not actually worth noting at all. The fact that you have a partner in the systematic enslavement of a group of people does not in anyway mitigate that you are systematically enslaving people. The fact that your partner in crime shares a skin tone, geographic location, or culture with the victims does not make it a mitigating factor, either.

Yes, you can pay people to help you beat up and kidnap people with the same skin color as them. That does not make what you are doing any less horrible, so it's really very irrelevant.

[Prak]

Honestly, in some ways, I'd think it makes things worse

[Sir Neil]

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 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.

This is my story, too. Except I came to Alabama from New Jersey.

[Gx1080]

The nuance is that for keeping the US together, you can't treat a bunch of states like Nazis. Duh.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The nuance is that for keeping the US together, you can't treat a bunch of states like Nazis. Duh.

I disagree. The postwar South was largely left to run itself and was incredibly shitty, but the U.S. occupying and running (West) Germany turned out really well for everyone.

West Germany GNP Growth in % 1950-1960
1951: +10.5
1952: +8.3
1953: +7.5
1954: +7.4
1955: +11.5
1956: +6.9
1957: +5.4
1958: +3.3
1959: +6.7
1960: +8.8

If the South had been forced to industrialize, employ and educate its population rather than being allowed to gripe, moan and disenfranchise them, I think they probably wouldn't be such a shithole today.

[Gx1080]

That kind of "forcing" requieres a series of repressive measures that not even the massive US cognitive dissonance would allow on its fellow countrymen, specially since the Civil War was a relatively clean war.

And there's a big can of "so what?". Unless you are suggesting to take those kinds of repressive measures today, then is just a bunch of fangless gripping. Self-flaggelation on the name of white guilt doesn't solve anything.

[angelfromanotherpin]

That kind of "forcing" requieres a series of repressive measures that not even the massive US cognitive dissonance would allow on its fellow countrymen, specially since the Civil War was a relatively clean war.

What do you mean by 'clean' war?

[Gx1080]

Relatively few civilian casualities (at least on the East side) and the fact that no Confederate commander (except Bill Anderson, which was a wacko) authorized an assasination on Lincoln.

Again, the whole "fellow countrymen" bit.

Compare that to your typical War on Europe or the Middle East.

[Username17]

Relatively few civilian casualities (at least on the East side)

Uh... the Confederate "Bushwackers" went house to house and murdered every civilian Union sympathizers they could find. The civilian dead is measured in the tens of thousands. Considering that the entire death toll of the entire War of 1812 was only fifteen thousand, calling those civilian casualties "relatively few" is clueless.

-Username17

[sabs]

Sherman

[Gx1080]

Minor point.

Still, what the fuck do you people want? That history is taught "and then the evil slave owners were defeated by the Union..."? Won't happen.

a)Putting moral condemnation and rethoric on history books is unprofessional and detracts from the facts, no matter what LAGO wants.

b)The debates of the Civil War are still being discussed up to this day. Both sides don't miss the chance to insult the other anyways.

c)Thanks to the death of Lincoln, the big win of the Civil War (if it was exclusively about slavery, which wasn't) was upgrading from blacks working as slaves on plantations to....blacks working for slave wages on plantations.

d)Again, self-flagelation and "reparations" are meaningless on 2011. All the people that were on that shit are already dead and buried.

[Kaelik]

a)Putting moral condemnation and rethoric on history books is unprofessional and detracts from the facts, no matter what LAGO wants.

This point is undermined by the fact that he's asking for the same amount of moral condemnation we already apply to Nazis. It doesn't seem to undermine WWII history much even though every European or American country puts moral condemnation into their teaching.

I will ignore your other points, because they are just you being a racist.

[Gx1080]

@Kaelik

Uh huh, it doesn't undermine it. The British and the Soviets are considered the "good guys", but that's not undermining. The Holocaust is brought up as a shield when people criticize the influence of the Zionist lobby on politics, but that's not undermining either.

Hope that you like fighting wars for Israel!

[Kaelik]

So you are officially running under the theory that condemning the Nazis is a problem and we shouldn't do it.

Yeah, I'm just going to file that also under your racism and return to not clicking on your posts.

[Sir Neil]

Still, what the fuck do you people want? That history is taught "and then the evil slave owners were defeated by the Union..."?

Yeah, that would be a good goddamn start. I grew up having to listen to these hicks talk about how "we" lost the Civil War. It was all I could do to keep from shaking them and yelling, motherfucker, you are a goddamn American, and "we" won that damn war.

Not angry at you, Gx, it's just a sore spot.

[Whatever]

Black men were still being lynched with impunity in the '60s, and black women were still being raped. Sure, they weren't slaves, but it's asinine to argue that no one alive today has ever experienced dehumanizing racism in the american south. Because they have.

[Zinegata]

That being said, it's also worth noting that the African slave trade wouldn't have been possible without the African warlords and tribal leaders who captured people from rival tribes and sold them off to the Europeans for trinkets.

That is true, but not actually worth noting at all. The fact that you have a partner in the systematic enslavement of a group of people does not in anyway mitigate that you are systematically enslaving people. The fact that your partner in crime shares a skin tone, geographic location, or culture with the victims does not make it a mitigating factor, either.

Yes, you can pay people to help you beat up and kidnap people with the same skin color as them. That does not make what you are doing any less horrible, so it's really very irrelevant.

Actually, it's very relevant in the historical context.

I'm noting this not as an excuse for the blatant racism of the Europeans and the genocidal way they ran the West Indies plantations. But rather, to show how little has changed. Africa is still a mess full of warlords trying to genocide their tribal rivals (see Rwanda for a particularly horrid example), while outsiders are off profitting from their misery.

[Zinegata]

Sherman

Sherman is infamous for advocating what we would now call "total war", but his efforts focused on the destruction of property rather than the massacre of innocent civilians. His army killed very few civilians and these killings were often the result of accidents rather than any systematic program of terror.

He wanted Southeners to suffer homelessness and poverty (because he's also rather sympathetic to the idea that this was a rich man's war fought by the poor folks - and he was hitting the rich Confederates who were sitting idly by in the rear) - but he didn't want them dead.

For the most part - the Union Army and the regular Confederate forces generally behaved within the civilized rules of war. However, as in any war there are exceptions - notably the Confederate's habit of simply shooting any black troops they captured.

The ones who did the most damage against civilians were actually the irregulars and militia forces (which include the Bushwackers that Frank noted), who were particularly active in the "Western" theater (i.e. Kansas). Many ex-Confederate soldiers also became notorious and outright murderous criminals after the war, albeit their shitty behavior has been glossed over nowadays as they've somehow been elevated into Western "Robin Hoods".

[A Man In Black]

blahblahblahholocaustzionismblah

See? Gx is a worse person than tzor.

Black men were still being lynched with impunity in the '60s, and black women were still being raped. Sure, they weren't slaves, but it's asinine to argue that no one alive today has ever experienced dehumanizing racism in the american south. Because they have.

Who are you arguing with? If it's me, I don't think I was claiming that.

[Gx1080]

I'm not telling you to do anything, I'm just saying that you people are too busy on your moral indignation to notice the facts.

"They are evil, end of the story" is not enough. Aking "why?" and "how?" is very important to understand history.

[Whatever]

Who are you arguing with? If it's me, I don't think I was claiming that.

Sorry, should have quoted. I was responding to:

All the people that were on that shit are already dead and buried.

[fbmf]

RE: Confederates Being Like Unto Nazis - Devil's Advocate:

By the 1860's, the slave trade itself was long over, and the people of that generation has grown up in a culture where, appalling though it is, Africans had long been considered agricultural equipment.

In Nazi Germany, the transformation from "Mr. Finkelstein has been my neighbor for years and we're in the same bowling league." to "DIE ZIONIST SCUM!" happened over the course of a few years.

In the first case, these people were raised in an evil culture, but it was all they knew.

In the second, these folks made a conscious decision (true, they were brow-beaten into it in many cases) to turn on their neighbors even when they had personal knowledge that those neighbors were standup people.

Thoughts?

Game On,
fbmf