• PeachMan@lemmy.ml
    46·
    1 year ago

    1. They said communists didn’t commit a genocide, not that the US didn’t.

    2. What the US colonies did to natives could reasonably be described as a genocide, but it was very slow, and often fueled by apathy and self-centered, quiet bigotry. I think I read that 2/3rds of Native Americans were killed unintentionally by diseases that colonists brought over, right? Then the last third were killed off or moved slowly over hundreds of years, kind of like a death by a thousand cuts. Not even in the same league as the Holocaust. That was very intentional, organized, targeted, and fast.

    However, to your point, the fact that Americans deny that a genocide happened here is very problematic. Maybe not as problematic as Holocaust denial, but not every atrocity has to be a competition. It was an awful, horrible thing that our ancestors did and we should acknowledge it. Pointing at something worse that also happened doesn’t make it better.

    • abraxas@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Not entirely inaccurate. There was always an undercurrent of us treating Native Americans as sub-human. We would ally with them to get what we need, then break our side of bargains because they were not entirely seen as deserving of them. We saw a few small parts of this behavior in 2016-2020, but we were doing it to countries and agreements who do just fine without us. When the deal is “we will guarantee you safety, but you can’t keep this land” and “we will guarantee you safety” falls away, then it is basically genocide.

      I think it was unforgivable, but it certainly means the US doesn’t have some special moral highground.