Sudan Massacre

[Gospel]

I’ve never said you called Sudanese actors puppets. What I’ve said is that you keep talking as if “operating under a colonial logic” means the underlying pattern of going after a group as such is uniquely modern and European. That’s where I don’t follow you.

You're not following me because I didn't say that. Like at all.

 

[Emily Lake]

@Gospel I have a question for you. Are you trying to draw a distinction between the intentional extermination of a group of people on religious or political grounds, versus intentional extermination on religious or political grounds with a veneer of scienciness rubbed on it? If that's what you're attempting to communicate... then I suppose you're technically correct that the scienciness bit came out of Europe. But I would counter by noting that the scienciness really only came about because that's where genetics was being studied at the time.

So unless you're going to say that europeans are somehow innately and genetically more disposed toward science... I think that's largely coincidental.

I am not saying Europeans were born with some special disposition toward science or racial ideology. I am saying the specific intellectual framework that turned identity into something fixed, biological, and inescapable was developed in Europe during the Enlightenment and colonial period. That is a historical fact, not an attack.

First off, I'm not viewing this as an attack. You seem to think I am, and that the only possible reason I could object is because I see it as an attack on what you've assumed is some important part of my identity... but you're wrong about that. I think my skin color is of no importance whatsoever to me as a person - nor does my predominantly black family. Sheesh. I feel a bit gross having to appeal to my family and upbringing to even get this idea across.

Viewing identity as something fixed, biological, and inescapable was NOT developed in Europe, and it existed FAR before the enlightenment. Jewish ancestry was viewed as fixed, biological, and inescapable for a millenia prior to the enlightenment. Indian castes have existed for 3000 years - far before europe was even a thing in any rational sense - and those castes were explicitly defined as fixed, biological (based on ancestry), and inescapable.

Your historical 'fact' isn't factual.

Sudanese militias have full agency in choosing to use that identity model. They are the ones racializing the categories now. But the framework they are using did not exist in ancient systems where identity could shift through marriage, culture, language, or allegiance. So yes, there is a distinction between ancient identity violence and modern ethnic cleansing, and pointing that out does not require attributing virtue or guilt to Europeans as individuals.

Anyway, I gave you an emotional off-ramp by chalking your defensive reaction up to you identifying Europeans with whiteness (which again, doesn't exist). I still think that played a role, because nothing else explains how strongly you reacted to my original comment, which I admit was not worded clearly. And that defensive reaction basically boiled down to “well, everyone else did it,” which is a historically debunked line European historians have repeated for years to minimize the uniqueness of modern identity-based violence.

Why are you determined to paint an emotional reaction onto me? I didn't get emotional until you decided to make it all some racial thing. My first post was giving credit to arabs for the invention of civilization!

Just a bunch of Arabs doing what they learned from the “civilized world.”

Wait, what?

Are we just gonna gloss over the whole cradle of civilization, oldest established society known to man, with millennia of conquest, slavery, and violence?

I mean... Arabs have been doing this pretty much since Arabs have been a thing. So have Mongols and Vikings and such.

Seriously, all I'm trying to get across to you here is that this horrific behavior isn't unique at all, and it's certainly not uniquely european - I'm not even convinced it's uniquely human.

What I will grant you is that the application of genetic science as a veneer to excuse identity-based extermination is European. Where I will push back on that is with the seemingly insinuated concept that such a veneer is because Europeans are somehow especially bad people, as opposed to a relatively small collection of actual for-realsies nazis being the first to use it.

 

[Gospel]

You’re focusing on the one claim nobody is disputing, that modern race science and colonial identity systems are European products and skipping the bit I’m actually arguing with. I’ve never said you claimed “Europe invented violence.” I’m saying you go further and treat fixed, inescapable identity as something that didn’t meaningfully exist before colonial modernity. That’s the part that isn’t just “pointing out where the framework came from,” it’s you drawing a much sharper break than your own examples support.

On Sudan yes, we agree the current violence uses a hardened Arab/African line. We also agree those categories were historically flexible. Where we differ is that you talk like “identity hardened and became elimination-worthy” is a uniquely modern, European-coded move, instead of a familiar pattern where fluid boundaries get frozen and weaponized whenever power, fear and ideology line up including in premodern settings.

No I'm treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity. Good lord., that is not an interpretation of my argument, and it is also just wrong historically. The kind of identity that is inescapable, meaning you are born into it, legally marked by it, and permanently stuck inside it, simply did not operate the same way in the ancient world. People shifted identity through marriage, adoption, political allegiance, language, religion and absorption by a conquering state. That is not me creating a sharp break. That is how identity functioned in premodern societies.

What colonial modernity did was turn identity into a rigid category that follows you everywhere and cannot be escaped, no matter what you do. That system is what Sudan is using today. That is the distinction I am describing. You keep trying to move me into some goofy ass version of the argument that I never made because you interoperated it that way.

You know what really shows the problem here. The moment I brought up the Holocaust as a clear example of what I mean by modern, rigid, inescapable identity, your answer is basically that I am “narrowing the requirements.” At that point I have nothing left to argue with you. If you really think Jews in Nazi Germany could have shifted identity through marriage, adoption, language, or allegiance the same way ancient groups did, then there is no shared reality for us to debate from.

 

[Gospel]

What I will grant you is that the application of genetic science as a veneer to excuse identity-based extermination is European. Where I will push back on that is with the seemingly insinuated concept that such a veneer is because Europeans are somehow especially bad people, as opposed to a relatively small collection of actual for-realsies nazis being the first to use it.

What you wrote here is exactly what I am talking about. I never said, claimed or argued that Europeans were “especially bad people,”. You added that yourself because you are hearing an attack that I did not make. That is your emotional connection to whiteness talking, not my argument. Nothing I said implied that Europeans are naturally worse. My point was about the historical development of the modern identity system, not about anyone’s personal identity.

 

[Elixir]

People shifted identity through marriage, adoption, political allegiance, language, religion and absorption by a conquering state. That is not me creating a sharp break. That is how identity functioned in premodern societies.

The degree to which that is true has been shocking me for decades as I learn ever more about it.
In a sense things were a lot more egalitarian. Generally brutal, as the notion of humanity as something special seems to have been invented rather recently. But the value of people as commodities for yourself or your tribe, to be acquired, exploited or joined with according to whatever was expeditious, was a human value with a fairly level playing field.

 

[Gospel]

People shifted identity through marriage, adoption, political allegiance, language, religion and absorption by a conquering state. That is not me creating a sharp break. That is how identity functioned in premodern societies.

The degree to which that is true has been shocking me for decades as I learn ever more about it.
In a sense things were a lot more egalitarian. Generally brutal, as the notion of humanity as something special seems to have been invented rather recently. But the value of people as commodities for yourself or your tribe, to be acquired, exploited or joined with according to whatever was expeditious, was a human value with a fairly level playing field.

I actually agree with most of what you just said. Ancient societies were brutal as fuck, but they were also weirdly egalitarian in the sense that almost anyone could be absorbed, traded, adopted, or folded into another group if the situation called for it. People were treated like resources more than permanent categories. It was bloody, but it was also flexible.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You're not following me because I didn't say that. Like at all.

You keep saying I’m putting words in your mouth, so let’s stay strictly with what you actually wrote.

You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

You also wrote:

“The kind of identity that is inescapable, meaning you are born into it, legally marked by it, and permanently stuck inside it, simply did not operate the same way in the ancient world.”

and:

“Ancient identity was situational. Modern identity in these conflicts is treated as fixed. That is the distinction you keep sidestepping.”

and:

“The identity categories they are using, and the racial hierarchy they are enforcing, operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

On top of that you did a little scoreboard:

“uppity Negro = 1

Folks who… took offence to my pointing out a fact that ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing = 0”

Taken together, that’s not me inventing a position for you. That’s you, in your own words, saying:

1. The kind of fixed, inescapable identity you’re talking about “did not exist before colonial modernity.”
2. Ethnic cleansing “is a modern and European thing.”
3. Ancient systems are “situational,” modern ones “fixed,” and the “colonial logic… did not exist in antiquity.”

If fixed identity (in your sense) did not exist before colonial modernity, and ethnic cleansing (in your sense) is “a modern and European thing,” then yes, you are treating the pattern you care about as something that only really comes into being in that modern European/colonial moment. I didn’t invent that; I just spelled out what your own sentences add up to when you put them side by side.

If you now want to revise that to a narrower and more modest claim that colonial modernity hardened and bureaucratized older identity patterns and added race-science language on top fine, that’s a different discussion and a much easier claim to defend. But you can’t pretend I “made up” the stronger version when it’s sitting right there in your own quotes.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

No I'm treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity. Good lord., that is not an interpretation of my argument, and it is also just wrong historically. The kind of identity that is inescapable, meaning you are born into it, legally marked by it, and permanently stuck inside it, simply did not operate the same way in the ancient world. People shifted identity through marriage, adoption, political allegiance, language, religion and absorption by a conquering state. That is not me creating a sharp break. That is how identity functioned in premodern societies.

This is exactly the sharp break I’ve been calling out, and it’s not “historical fact,” it’s you describing an ideal type and ignoring all the counter-examples. Long before colonial modernity you already have systems where people are “born into it, legally marked by it, and permanently stuck” in practice: caste orders in South Asia, hereditary “stained blood” regimes like limpieza de sangre in Iberia, slave lineages, and outcast groups whose status follows descent over generations regardless of language, loyalty or religion. Yes, individuals could sometimes slip through cracks via adoption, marriage or fraud just like some people under modern genocidal regimes survive by hiding, marrying, converting or fleeing. That mix of hard rhetoric plus limited real mobility exists both before and after Europe’s race science shows up. So when you say fixed, inescapable identity “did not exist before colonial modernity,” you’re not stating a neutral fact, you’re just drawing the timeline so only the period you care about is allowed to count.

What colonial modernity did was turn identity into a rigid category that follows you everywhere and cannot be escaped, no matter what you do. That system is what Sudan is using today. That is the distinction I am describing. You keep trying to move me into some goofy ass version of the argument that I never made because you interoperated it that way.

Colonial modernity absolutely hardened and bureaucratized identity categories and gave states more power to enforce them; nobody is disputing that. The overreach is in “cannot be escaped, no matter what you do,” as if modern regimes ever perfectly achieved that. In Nazi Germany, in the late Ottoman Empire, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Sudan today, people do sometimes escape or transform their effective identity through hiding, mixed families, conversion, flight, forged papers, adoption, or being absorbed into the dominant group. The ideology says “no escape”; the social reality is messier. That’s why your rigid “cannot be escaped, no matter what you do” definition doesn’t really describe how modern systems work either, it just makes your category sound cleaner than the history actually is.

You know what really shows the problem here. The moment I brought up the Holocaust as a clear example of what I mean by modern, rigid, inescapable identity, your answer is basically that I am “narrowing the requirements.” At that point I have nothing left to argue with you. If you really think Jews in Nazi Germany could have shifted identity through marriage, adoption, language, or allegiance the same way ancient groups did, then there is no shared reality for us to debate from.

The Holocaust is obviously one of the clearest examples of modern, racialized identity-based destruction. Nobody is disputing that. What I said is that using “does it look like the Holocaust?” as the test for whether anything counts as the same type of logic is narrowing the requirements so far that almost nothing outside 20th-century Europe can ever qualify by design.

And again, you’re overstating your own case. Under Nazi rule, Jews could not safely, as a group, change category by “proving” loyalty or adopting German culture, that’s the whole horror of it. But on the ground, some Jews did survive precisely through the same kinds of mechanisms you claim are “ancient only”: passing as non-Jewish, being taken into non-Jewish families, hiding in convents, using forged papers, or being protected in certain mixed marriages. That doesn’t make Nazi ideology any less eliminationist; it just shows that even the most rigid identity project never fully matches the all-or-nothing story you’re telling.

So yes, the Holocaust is uniquely modern in its scale, technology and explicit race science. What it doesn’t prove is your much bigger claim that truly fixed, inescapable identity “did not exist” before colonial modernity and only then enters the world. That’s the jump that goes beyond what your own examples can actually support.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

The Holocaust is obviously one of the clearest examples of modern, racialized identity-based destruction. Nobody is disputing that. What I said is that using “does it look like the Holocaust?” as the test for whether anything counts as the same type of logic is narrowing the requirements so far that almost nothing outside 20th-century Europe can ever qualify by design.

And with all of human history, why the fuck is that?

 

[Gospel]

Colonial modernity absolutely hardened and bureaucratized identity categories and gave states more power to enforce them; nobody is disputing that. The overreach is in “cannot be escaped, no matter what you do,” as if modern regimes ever perfectly achieved that. In Nazi Germany, in the late Ottoman Empire, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Sudan today, people do sometimes escape or transform their effective identity through hiding, mixed families, conversion, flight, forged papers, adoption, or being absorbed into the dominant group. The ideology says “no escape”; the social reality is messier. That’s why your rigid “cannot be escaped, no matter what you do” definition doesn’t really describe how modern systems work either, it just makes your category sound cleaner than the history actually is.

The key difference in premodern systems is that violence was usually a way to control or punish rebellion, not an expression of a racial ideology that marked a whole population as permanently inferior. Ancient empires were violent, but the structure allowed conquered people and their descendants to be absorbed into the larger society.

Modern ethnic cleansing is different because the system is designed around permanent identity exclusion. The fact that a few individuals manage to escape by hiding, forging papers, or passing does not mean the system allowed assimilation. It means people will do whatever it takes to survive. The structure itself treats the targeted identity as inescapable. That is the part that did not exist in antiquity, and that is the core distinction you keep ignoring.

I think we’ve both made our points, so I’m fine leaving it as agree to disagree.

 

[Gospel]

You're not following me because I didn't say that. Like at all.

You keep saying I’m putting words in your mouth, so let’s stay strictly with what you actually wrote.

You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

You also wrote:

“The kind of identity that is inescapable, meaning you are born into it, legally marked by it, and permanently stuck inside it, simply did not operate the same way in the ancient world.”

and:

“Ancient identity was situational. Modern identity in these conflicts is treated as fixed. That is the distinction you keep sidestepping.”

and:

“The identity categories they are using, and the racial hierarchy they are enforcing, operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

On top of that you did a little scoreboard:

“uppity Negro = 1

Folks who… took offence to my pointing out a fact that ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing = 0”

Taken together, that’s not me inventing a position for you. That’s you, in your own words, saying:

1. The kind of fixed, inescapable identity you’re talking about “did not exist before colonial modernity.”
2. Ethnic cleansing “is a modern and European thing.”
3. Ancient systems are “situational,” modern ones “fixed,” and the “colonial logic… did not exist in antiquity.”

If fixed identity (in your sense) did not exist before colonial modernity, and ethnic cleansing (in your sense) is “a modern and European thing,” then yes, you are treating the pattern you care about as something that only really comes into being in that modern European/colonial moment. I didn’t invent that; I just spelled out what your own sentences add up to when you put them side by side.

If you now want to revise that to a narrower and more modest claim that colonial modernity hardened and bureaucratized older identity patterns and added race-science language on top fine, that’s a different discussion and a much easier claim to defend. But you can’t pretend I “made up” the stronger version when it’s sitting right there in your own quotes.

NHC

Listing my own quotes does not change the fact that you are adding pieces that I never said. My point has been the same from the start: ancient identity did not function the same way modern identity does, because modern identity is tied to state categories that make identity rigid. That does not mean ancient identity was “nonexistent.” It means it operated differently.

Modern systems create legal and bureaucratic identity that is supposed to be permanent. Ancient systems allowed conquered people to be folded in over time. That is the distinction I have been talking about. You keep treating the distinction as if it automatically means I said “Europe invented everything” or “identity did not exist before modernity,” which is not in anything I actually wrote.

If you want to disagree with the argument I did make, fine. But you keep insisting I made a "stronger" argument that only exists in your interpretation, not in my words.