Split Historical Genocide - Derail From Sudan Massacre

[Emily Lake]

To NHC: I think Gospel’s choice of the qualifying word “colonial” has been taken to mean “white European”, which is unfortunate. It was the logic he described as colonial, and I think it’s more like “human delusion” than “colonial logic” even if colonial refers to the universal proclivity of successful civilizations to “colonize”.

It's exceedingly rare to find the term "colonial" these days meaning anything other than white european, so that's what pretty much everyone without ESP is going to assume. When that's followed up with a reference specifically to europe, it's very difficult to see how something else was meant.

 

[DBT]

I just wonder why a certain someone started this thread. Horrible shit goes on in Sudan. Horrible shit goes on all over the world. There is something new here?

Maybe — let me hazard a haphazard guess — maybe the OP is intended to excuse the atrocities of the West, and specifically the history of slavery and genocicde in the U.S., because, hey, everone does it.

And of course excuse the genocide in Gaza.

Just a guess.

There is no excuse for any of it.

 

[Elixir]

that's what pretty much everyone without ESP is going to assume.

I must have ESP.
Actually, because of context and familiarity with Gospel's general mastery of subtle meaning, I took it to mean what he intended it to, the first time. I was not disdainful of anyone who took it to refer specifically to the world's most infamous colonizers, but I understood (especially given the Arab uniform reference) that he was referring to a fairly universal human proclivity. Gospel is not that sloppy.

 

[laughing dog]

Oh absolutely, my big mistake was assuming people here wouldn’t immediately jump to ‘he’s blaming whitey.’ Then when I spelled out the actual point so folks would stop filling in the blanks with their own assumptions, that somehow became another blunder… because their choice to read it as me blaming whitey is apparently a fault of mine that I shouldn't attempt to undo after the fact..... but you're cool with it.

Moving forward, I’ll be sure to anticipate every wild assumption some dumbass on the internet might dream up before I post anything. Got it.

Lets start with whitey. I don’t believe ‘white people’ exist as a biological category, whiteness is a social construct, not some natural fact. Just putting that out there for those who may assume I think otherwise.

You keep trying to turn this into “people thought I was blaming whitey,” but nobody needed that shortcut, they just read you saying “same colonial logic in Arab uniforms” and then watching you center a Europe-origin story about “where the ideology came from.” Saying now that whiteness is a social construct doesn’t fix that framing, it just adds a side note; the basic issue is that when multiple people independently take your words the same way, that’s not a mass hallucination, it’s a signal that your wording carried those implications whether you intended them or not.

NHC

To be fair, while writers are responsible for their words, readers are responsible for their interpretations. When a writer responds with “I didn’t mean that” to a question and follows it with an explanation, IMO honest and fair readers should accept it and move on.

I agree that writers own their words and readers own their interpretations, but “I didn’t mean that” isn’t a magic eraser. If multiple people independently read the same implication out of what someone actually wrote, that’s not automatically bad faith, it’s feedback on how the point was framed. A clarification that genuinely tightens or corrects the original claim is one thing; a “clarification” that just disowns the obvious implications while keeping the same rhetoric is another. In that second case, it’s not dishonest to say “no, that’s still what your words are doing,” and it’s not unreasonable to keep engaging the text instead of pretending the initial framing never happened.

NHC

Engaging in the text by saying “I don’t understand” is different than “No, it means ______”. The former prompts clarification, the latter doesn’t.

 

[laughing dog]

To NHC: I think Gospel’s choice of the qualifying word “colonial” has been taken to mean “white European”, which is unfortunate. It was the logic he described as colonial, and I think it’s more like “human delusion” than “colonial logic” even if colonial refers to the universal proclivity of successful civilizations to “colonize”.

It's exceedingly rare to find the term "colonial" these days meaning anything other than white european, so that's what pretty much everyone without ESP is going to assume.

I didn’t. I don’t have ESP. I get the original statement could be taken as you and others have said.

 

[pood]

Ethnic cleansing goes back to antiquity but its modern form has become systematized and mass-scale by what Churchill called “the lights of perverted science.”

Hitler practically automated it. But before that there was the ethnic cleansing of natives by white settlers in the United States. Hitler admired that and said it would be his basis for ethnically cleansing Russians from the lands he planned to conquer up to the Urals.

Let’s not pretend anyone’s hands are clean.

What is the point of this thread?

Never mind. Rhetorical question.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Engaging in the text by saying “I don’t understand” is different than “No, it means ______”. The former prompts clarification, the latter doesn’t.

You’re drawing a cleaner line there than real conversations actually have. Saying “I don’t understand” is one valid move, but saying “when you write X, it reads as Y” is also a perfectly legitimate way of engaging the text – it’s not me declaring a divine translation, it’s me telling Gospel how his words actually land. That still leaves plenty of room for clarification or correction; it just doesn’t pretend my interpretation came from nowhere. If writers only ever got “I don’t understand” and never “this is what your framing is doing,” they’d get a lot less useful feedback on how their language is functioning.

NHC

 

[pood]

Indeed, they don’t give a shit about darkies killing each other, particularly when those darkies are Christian darkies.

Muslim darkies are being killed too.

They aren't being killed by jooooos though.

Does that make the killings better to you? I don't get why you're saying this.

I think he is trying to point out perceived double standards/ antisemitism because of all the coverage in Gaza.

Yeah, that is the point. A failed effort (Swizzle Fizzle) to charge hypocrisy and double standards.

I speak for myself and I expect for everyone here that I unequivocally condemn what is happening in Sudan.

Also, NO ONE here thinks “Jooooos” are to blame for what is happening in Gaza. We all have been very explicit that we blame the government of Netanyahu.

This is just another implied slur of anti-Semitism. As always it is false and disgusting.

As to coverage, it is not surprising that most of it focuses on Gaza, given how geopolitically important the whole Mideast is. I imagine this means “coverage” by the media, but a simple Google search shows ample coverage of the events in Sudan.

 

[bilby]

Also, NO ONE here thinks “Jooooos” are to blame for what is happening in Gaza. We all have been very explicit that we blame the government of Netanyahu.

Yeah, it's like being accused of racism if you didn't support Idi Amin.

Amin was vile because of his vileness, not because of his being black, or African, or Ugandan.

Similarly, Bibi is vile, and that fact has zero to do with his being a Jew.

 

[Gospel]

There’s an important distinction being missed here. Ancient empires, whether Roman, Chinese, or anyone else, absolutely conquered, killed, and displaced people, but their violence wasn’t identical to modern racial ideology. It was political, territorial, or tied to rebellion. Groups could convert, assimilate, or pay tribute and be absorbed. Modern ethnic cleansing is different: it’s based on racial theories, nationalism, and the idea that certain groups must be removed or eliminated because of who they are, not what they did. That ideology didn’t exist in the ancient world. So pointing to ancient conflicts doesn’t actually contradict the point I’m making, it describes a completely different system of how identity and violence operated.

Jews in ancient times were persecuted, killed, or expelled, yes, but not because of “race” or biological identity, because that concept did not exist yet.

Dude, the Chinese waged war for the express purpose of killing other tribes, even when they weren't trying to expand their territory. They viewed some of the other dynasties and clans as evil and in need of killing. the Indian caste system wasn't political or territorial - it was predominantly religious, and based on the idea that some people were definitionally of lesser value based on their ancestry. Dalits couldn't "convert" to Brahmin caste or assimilate into them.

The ideology you're calling out *did* exist in the ancient world. It wasn't invented by Europeans.

Good lord. I’m not saying identity-based violence didn’t exist in the ancient world , it clearly did. My point is that what’s happening in Sudan follows the modern, European-developed model of identity-based elimination.

Ancient violence operated under a completely different framework. Conquest-era brutality, including the Chinese example you mentioned, came with the possibility of absorption, assimilation, or integration into the dominant culture once a group submitted. You could change your status by adopting the ruling culture.

Modern ethnic cleansing offers no such path. The identity marker is treated as permanent and unchangeable. You’re targeted specifically because of who you are, and nothing you do can change that. That ideological shift, tying violence to fixed identity categories instead of political submission , is exactly what separates ancient conquest from modern ethnic cleansing.

That's what I'm saying is both Modern and European. I'm done with this shit, believe what you want.

 

[Swammerdami]

Treating Middle-Easterners (Arab) as more violent or immoral than Europeans is a canard. Consider the Spanish Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade just for starters. Accounts I've read of the Crusades make the Muslims seem superior morally. Cyrus the Great of Iran was one of several benevolent ancient Middle-Eastern rulers.

The Jews have largely been accepted in the Middle East; their irrational persecution began in 12th century Europe with the publication of  The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich. Of course it would be self-defeating for the anti-Islam ilk to insist on fast-forwarding to the most recent century, cf a certain moustached man.

 

[Gospel]

Engaging in the text by saying “I don’t understand” is different than “No, it means ______”. The former prompts clarification, the latter doesn’t.

You’re drawing a cleaner line there than real conversations actually have. Saying “I don’t understand” is one valid move, but saying “when you write X, it reads as Y” is also a perfectly legitimate way of engaging the text – it’s not me declaring a divine translation, it’s me telling Gospel how his words actually land. That still leaves plenty of room for clarification or correction; it just doesn’t pretend my interpretation came from nowhere. If writers only ever got “I don’t understand” and never “this is what your framing is doing,” they’d get a lot less useful feedback on how their language is functioning.

NHC

You genuinely believe that's how the exchange played out?

 

[NoHolyCows]

Engaging in the text by saying “I don’t understand” is different than “No, it means ______”. The former prompts clarification, the latter doesn’t.

You’re drawing a cleaner line there than real conversations actually have. Saying “I don’t understand” is one valid move, but saying “when you write X, it reads as Y” is also a perfectly legitimate way of engaging the text – it’s not me declaring a divine translation, it’s me telling Gospel how his words actually land. That still leaves plenty of room for clarification or correction; it just doesn’t pretend my interpretation came from nowhere. If writers only ever got “I don’t understand” and never “this is what your framing is doing,” they’d get a lot less useful feedback on how their language is functioning.

NHC

You genuinely believe that's how the exchange played out?

Yes, I do, because I’m not going off vibes, I’m going off the thread we both can scroll. You wrote “a bunch of Arabs doing what they learned from the ‘civilized world’” and “the same colonial logic, in Arab uniforms,” then followed it with a whole explanation about modern race science, nationalism, and how Europe changed the logic of violence. I responded by saying, in substance, “when you stack those claims that way, it reads as you centering a Europe-origin story and downplaying Sudan’s own dynamics.” That is exactly the X → Y move I just described.

If you think I did something different, that’s easy to show, quote the line where I supposedly leapt from your words to a meaning I never tied back to them. So far your pushback is just “you really believe that?” with no actual example. I’ve put specific sentences from you and from me on the table; either engage those or admit the problem here isn’t my memory, it’s that you don’t like how your own framing looks when it’s read back to you.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

Engaging in the text by saying “I don’t understand” is different than “No, it means ______”. The former prompts clarification, the latter doesn’t.

You’re drawing a cleaner line there than real conversations actually have. Saying “I don’t understand” is one valid move, but saying “when you write X, it reads as Y” is also a perfectly legitimate way of engaging the text – it’s not me declaring a divine translation, it’s me telling Gospel how his words actually land. That still leaves plenty of room for clarification or correction; it just doesn’t pretend my interpretation came from nowhere. If writers only ever got “I don’t understand” and never “this is what your framing is doing,” they’d get a lot less useful feedback on how their language is functioning.

NHC

You genuinely believe that's how the exchange played out?

Yes, I do, because I’m not going off vibes, I’m going off the thread we both can scroll. You wrote “a bunch of Arabs doing what they learned from the ‘civilized world’” and “the same colonial logic, in Arab uniforms,” then followed it with a whole explanation about modern race science, nationalism, and how Europe changed the logic of violence. I responded by saying, in substance, “when you stack those claims that way, it reads as you centering a Europe-origin story and downplaying Sudan’s own dynamics.” That is exactly the X → Y move I just described.

If you think I did something different, that’s easy to show, quote the line where I supposedly leapt from your words to a meaning I never tied back to them. So far your pushback is just “you really believe that?” with no actual example. I’ve put specific sentences from you and from me on the table; either engage those or admit the problem here isn’t my memory, it’s that you don’t like how your own framing looks when it’s read back to you.

NHC

Let me keep this simple. I made a statement. It was misinterpreted. I clarified it. People responded to that clarification with counter-arguments, and those counter-arguments were garbage. End of story.

You’re the one trying to turn this into some bizarre meta-debate where I’m obligated to accept other people’s bad interpretations because my obviously snarky original comment wasn’t spelled out like a legal contract. No thanks.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Engaging in the text by saying “I don’t understand” is different than “No, it means ______”. The former prompts clarification, the latter doesn’t.

You’re drawing a cleaner line there than real conversations actually have. Saying “I don’t understand” is one valid move, but saying “when you write X, it reads as Y” is also a perfectly legitimate way of engaging the text – it’s not me declaring a divine translation, it’s me telling Gospel how his words actually land. That still leaves plenty of room for clarification or correction; it just doesn’t pretend my interpretation came from nowhere. If writers only ever got “I don’t understand” and never “this is what your framing is doing,” they’d get a lot less useful feedback on how their language is functioning.

NHC

You genuinely believe that's how the exchange played out?

Yes, I do, because I’m not going off vibes, I’m going off the thread we both can scroll. You wrote “a bunch of Arabs doing what they learned from the ‘civilized world’” and “the same colonial logic, in Arab uniforms,” then followed it with a whole explanation about modern race science, nationalism, and how Europe changed the logic of violence. I responded by saying, in substance, “when you stack those claims that way, it reads as you centering a Europe-origin story and downplaying Sudan’s own dynamics.” That is exactly the X → Y move I just described.

If you think I did something different, that’s easy to show, quote the line where I supposedly leapt from your words to a meaning I never tied back to them. So far your pushback is just “you really believe that?” with no actual example. I’ve put specific sentences from you and from me on the table; either engage those or admit the problem here isn’t my memory, it’s that you don’t like how your own framing looks when it’s read back to you.

NHC

Let me keep this simple. I made a statement. It was misinterpreted. I clarified it. People responded to that clarification with counter-arguments, and those counter-arguments were garbage. End of story.

You’re the one trying to turn this into some bizarre meta-debate where I’m obligated to accept other people’s bad interpretations because my obviously snarky original comment wasn’t spelled out like a legal contract. No thanks.

You’re telling the story like you’re a referee standing above the conversation: you “made a statement, it was misinterpreted, you clarified it, their replies were garbage, end of story.” But “it was misinterpreted” is not a neutral fact, it’s your own interpretation of what happened.

Once you post something in public, two things are true at once. You control what you intended to say, but you do not control what your wording reasonably supports. People did not conjure a reading out of nowhere. They quoted “a bunch of Arabs doing what they learned from the ‘civilized world’” and “the same colonial logic, in Arab uniforms,” then watched you ground that in race science and modern state logic. From that combination, it is a very normal inference that you were centering a Europe-origin colonial logic that Arabs had “learned” and were now carrying out. You are perfectly free to say “that’s not what I meant,” but you do not get to upgrade “not my intention” into “objectively a bad interpretation.”

A clarification can either sharpen what you already said, or partially walk back what your original wording actually implied. Everyone reading you is allowed to decide which one you did. Saying “no thanks, end of story” does not resolve that; it just signals that you do not want to own that your snarky shorthand carried more weight than you now like. And the rest of us are under no obligation to pretend your first framing never existed just because you have decided after the fact that only the cleaned-up version counts.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

Believe what you want.

 

[Gospel]

Still waiting for someone to give a genuine example of pre-European ethnic cleansing. Emily’s example doesn’t work, because the Chinese tribes she mentioned were ultimately able to intermarry, assimilate, and be absorbed into the dominant population.

Yes, the warfare was brutal, nobody is denying that, but the intent wasn’t the total elimination of a group based on an unchangeable racial or ethnic identity. Ancient states punished rebellion, conquered territory, and absorbed survivors. That’s fundamentally different from the modern concept of ethnic cleansing, where the goal is to erase a people because of who they are, with no possibility of integration. Like the Arabs in Sudan are doing.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Still waiting for someone to give a genuine example of pre-European ethnic cleansing. Emily’s example doesn’t work, because the Chinese tribes she mentioned were ultimately able to intermarry, assimilate, and be absorbed into the dominant population.

Yes, the warfare was brutal, nobody is denying that, but the intent wasn’t the total elimination of a group based on an unchangeable racial or ethnic identity. Ancient states punished rebellion, conquered territory, and absorbed survivors. That’s fundamentally different from the modern concept of ethnic cleansing, where the goal is to erase a people because of who they are, with no possibility of integration. Like the Arabs in Sudan are doing.

You’ve basically defined every real case of ethnic cleansing out of existence in advance.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

Go away peasant.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Go away peasant.

When you’re down to ‘go away peasant,’ you’ve left the debate and entered the concession phase. Noted.

NHC