Split Historical Genocide - Derail From Sudan Massacre

[DrZoidberg]

How I went about making my argument was wrong. What I'm trying to say isn't. Ethnic cleansing isn’t unique to Europe or colonialism. Civilizations have been eliminating or relocating populations based on identity since the earliest empires, Assyrian deportations, Chinese frontier purges, Mongol massacres, and Ottoman relocations all fit the pattern. What changed with Europe wasn’t the idea but the infrastructure, modern states turned ethnic dominance into formal policy, justified by race science and nationalism rather than raw conquest.

The massacres in Sudan differ from Mongol or early Ottoman atrocities in motive and structure. The Mongols’ violence was a military strategy to enforce surrender, not ethnic purity. The Ottomans began as conquerors too, but by their decline were already showing the modern and learned logic of homogenizing populations, culminating in the Armenian Genocide.

What’s happening in Sudan today ain't a god damn conquest, it’s internal ethnic cleansing. It’s about erasing specific groups, not expanding rule. The pattern of mass killing repeats through history, but the ideology behind it has evolved, from imperial dominance to ethnic purification.

Wait a minute. What western colonialism introduced around the world was that war wasn't equated with ethnic cleansing.

First invented by Cyrus the great. Ca 600 BC. The idea made it to the Greeks, then the Romans and then spread around the world in the age of colonialism.

The Chinese arguably came up with it indipendantly, sort of.

Scientific racism was invented until at the end if the 19'th century. It was a backward inference trying to explain how the west managed to conquer the world. When Europe began on the imperial project, in the 15th - 16th centuries, it was from a position of civilisational inferiority.

Up until the late 18th century Europe were terrified of the Ottomans and felt inferior, cultually and technologically.

It wasn't until Napoleon conquered Egypt European confidence exploded. Before this the British administrators looked up to Indians. As made evidence of all the Brits in India "going native".

Same deal with how the Europeans viewed the Chinese.

The only people Europens consistently looked down upon as inferior were sub-saharan Africans, Native Americans and the various technologically stone age tribes around the world.

Its also interesting that scientiffic racism popped up out of nowhere ca 1870 and collapsed around 1970. From then on it is viewed with great suspicion by the mainstream. Even when westerners today are racist they will jump through all manner of intelectual hoops to convince themselves they're not.

Anyway... I think its factually incorrect to see genocide or ethnic cleansing as a especially western thing. Its not. Westerners have historically been less genocidal than any other imperial power in history

 

[Emily Lake]

@Gospel I've been thinking about this topic for a while now.

I don't agree with your premise, but for the sake of discussion, let's assume that european colonialism introduced something uniquely evil and abhorrent into the world when it comes to justification for killing entire groups of people.

You know what else european colonialism introduced? The formal acknowledgement that killing groups of people for what they are is inherently immoral and wrong. The formation of rules for warfare that require that civilians cannot be intentionally targeted, and that civilians should be protected by all parties engaged in a conflict. The creation of war crimes as a concept.

The idea that it is immoral to target civilians for death on the basis of their immutable physical characteristics or their religious beliefs isn't just european, it's specifically protestant in nature. Separation of church and state, freedom of conscience, freedom from persecution, liberty from oppression, all of those stem from the protestant framework for christianity.

 

[Gospel]

Whatever. I’m honestly tired of the bad-faith bullshit from users here, especially the claim that I’m “assuming European colonialism introduced something uniquely evil.” Who said uniquely evil? What does that even mean in this context? That’s not an argument, it’s a dodge. All I stated was the obvious. North and South Sudan did not exist as political entities before British rule. The borders were arbitrarily drawn, divisions were hardened, and those divisions were left behind when Britain exited. The border did not disappear just because the colonizers did. I also pointed out something very specific that keeps getting ignored: the motives behind historical atrocities in the region are not the same as the motives driving what Arab militias are doing in Sudan today. That particular ideological motive has been used by only one other group in Sudan’s recent past, and that group happened to leave the country not that long ago. Conflating all violence across history into one vague moral bucket is lazy analysis, not nuance.

I have better things to do with my time. I’m done engaging with bad-faith fucks like you and Zoidberg.

 

[Emily Lake]

I’m done engaging with bad-faith fucks like you

This makes me sad.

 

[steve_bank]

Genocide is the intentional elimination of a culture or people.

Hitler and his 'final solution' with Jews of course.

Some as I do see Gaza as genocide. Theeradiocation and displacement of a people for colonization by Israel.

Japanese in WWII.

The biblical Jews were commanded by god to eradicate an enemy.

Alexander's conquests.

Egypt versus Assyria.

Genghis Kahn.

Ancient wars of annihilation were common. I'd say genocide is a modern moral term referring to a limited set of actions.

As to Arabs and Europeans, Europeans were still sleeping with their animals wen the Arabs, and Persians, had clean cites, hospitals, and universities. Science. As I have heard it framed.

Some civilizations that evolved in the Americas in isolation form the rest of the world were quite brutal.

The idea European civilization starred it all is a modern anti west myth. The idea if not for Europe the world would have been peaceful free of conflict.

What we now call India was a collection of local warlords. I think it can be argued the structured bureaucracy the Brits left behind enabled the eventual rise of India as a democracy with some stability. Contrast to the Arabs , Iraq, and Iran and constant conlifct and turmoil. Based in large part in region. The Iraq Iran war. Arab states do not get along. They live in a kind of medieval anachronism

Iran clerics have long sought to topple the Saudi monarchy.

In contrast in post WWII Europe the rise of the European Union and NATO. Mutably assured prosperity instead of repeated destructive war.

 

[steve_bank]

Islamic world contributions to Medieval Europe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

During the High Middle Ages the Islamic world was an important contributor to the global cultural scene, innovating and supplying information and ideas to Europe, via Al-Andalus, Sicily and the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant. These included Latin translations of the Greek Classics and of Arabic texts in astronomy, mathematics, science, and medicine. Translation of Arabic philosophical texts into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with a particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics.[2] Other contributions included technological and scientific innovations via the Silk Road, including Chinese inventions such as paper, compass[3][4] and gunpowder.

Europe and the Islamic lands had multiple points of contact during the Middle Ages. The main points of transmission of Islamic knowledge to Europe lay in Sicily and in Spain, particularly in Toledo (with Gerard of Cremone, 1114–1187, following the conquest of the city by Spanish Christians in 1085). In Sicily, following the Islamic conquest of the island in 965 and its reconquest by the Normans in 1091, a syncretistic Norman–Arab–Byzantine culture developed, exemplified by rulers such as King Roger II, who had Islamic soldiers, poets and scientists at his court. The Moroccan Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote The Book of Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands or Tabula Rogeriana, one of the greatest geographical treatises of the Middle Ages, for Roger.[6]

And Persia

Yes, Persian culture significantly influenced the rise and development of Europe
through cultural exchange, introducing concepts in governance, philosophy, art, science, and even military traditions, with lasting impacts seen from ancient Greece through the medieval period and into the Renaissance. Key influences included Zoroastrian ideas impacting Western religions, Persian administrative models adopted by successor empires, and the transmission of chivalric and knightly traditions by Iranic peoples migrating westward.