Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

The South African National Party picked up a lot of ideas from the implementation of Jim Crow. And, frankly, South Africa was basically a fascistic police state wearing a pseudo-democratic mask when I lived there.

But, people back away from calling South Africa of the 50s-early 80s "fascist". Because it fought on the side of the Allies and was (mostly) anti-Soviet.

There was a lot of toing and froing between the Voortrekker states and the Confederate states from the C19th. They bounced off each other in mutual hatred of all things British/Yankee.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 6th 2018 at 5:33:42 PM

Yes, as much as I love my nation, I feel like, "Yeah, America actually did go there and encouraged others to. It is the OG of racism and genocide."

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 6th 2018 at 9:27:18 AM

My Spanish ancestors ask you to take that. You think that the silly british were the worse? Spaniards would teach you what is true pain.

The OG of Amerindian deaths is Spain. Seriously, the levels of abuse were absurd.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 6th 2018 at 12:33:39 PM

We are in agreement. It's just that English-language pop culture tends to tie the degree of Nazi evils to its foreign origins. That's why fewer people seriously call their political opponent a "Confederate". That's why actually comparing ethnonationalist policy proposals to Nazism still gets you seen as hyperbolic and earn scoffs of "it couldn't happen here". It's hard for people to see their country tracing the path of Nazism if they think of it as a foreign ideology, and not a universal one.

What if your country have no historial with fascism but yes with authoritarianism?

Sadly, in most parts of America, being called a Confederate is a compliment still.

"Be proud of your heritage" is a never-ending horror here.

I actually got some fan mail for one scene in my novel AN AMERICAN WEREDEER IN MICHIGAN where I had three separate readers comment on a moment where the protagonist gets confused by a bunch of rural guys driving around a truck covered in Confederate flags and bumper stickers.

The protagonist going, "They know we fought for the Union, right?"

Apparently, it hit a nerve with people.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 6th 2018 at 9:41:10 AM

shifts nervously

Slightly beyond the scope of this thread (i.e. race), but look to the unethical elements that the society is tolerating, or actively endorsing. Appeal to strongmen figures? Red Scare? Economic populism?

Not to whitewash the LKY government's historical repression of leftists, or its embrace of a security state, but it's a pretty interesting case study on what happens when an authoritarian government takes a look at the racial violence and populism of the '50s-'60s and go, "let's not do that shit."

Strongmen are a phenomenon common to most of the world. Red Scare happens only if you're massively Right Wing. Populism is a phenomenon of every society at some point.

Fascism isn't that common. Authoritarianist tendencies are common, but Fascism requires other parameters.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 7th 2018 at 6:58:25 AM

As comforting as it is to blame the US for all the world’s ills, this really isn’t accurate. Europeans had been doing the whole “racism and genocide” thing for a very long time before the US came around.

Also, as far as the conversation on the previous page: I’d hesitate to call the confederates the “2nd most evil” government, given we’ve had places like Soviet Russia, China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, North Korea as a whole, and dozens of other absolutely horrific governments I’m probably forgetting.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 7th 2018 at 4:11:38 AM

The Confederacy gets points because it is 100% for and by an evil institution.

Rarely do you get a government that states in their charter they're only for evil.

Trying to quantify "evil" is a pointless exercise, honestly. It's more productive to look at the common threads and make sure that they don't wrap around our own societies. The big picture I'm getting is that dehumanisation - whether of ethnic minorities, landholders, intellectuals, dissidents, or folks with different ideologies - is a one-way ticket to Hell. The perpetrators' nationalities and whatever other belief they hold are entirely secondary to that.

Makes me think of a Discworld quote, from Carpe Jugulum.

Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 7th 2018 at 6:23:11 AM

Nah, it's just the evil that hits the closest to home for a lot of Americans.

Edited by M84 on Nov 7th 2018 at 9:22:25 PM

@archonspeaks Europe is where Americans got their ideas about racism and genocide. It's where most of the immigrants into North America came from, after all.

x5 Even by that (admittedly unquantifiable) metric there are plenty of governments way worse.

A trend I’ve noticed is that it seems hard for people to acknowledge degrees of “worse”. Something doesn’t need to be the worst thing ever for it to still be vile and evil. Trump can be evil without being a fascist, and the confederate can be evil without being the 2nd most evil government of all time, and so on.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 7th 2018 at 6:13:47 AM

Eh, Europe settled America to promote slavery and lay the seeds of genocide as well as racism.

So it's a back and forth there.

Because you kinda need to quantify evil to do that. And what makes a government worse than the others? Absolute number killed? Number killed as a percentage of total population? Number killed over time, or per perpetrator and unit resource? Centralisation and planning? Variety of atrocities? Choice of target? Level of remorse and atonement? Second-hand atrocities sponsored?

Honestly, ranking evil seems an exercise in futility and inherently disrespectful.

So I regret doing it.

Ranking evil is a necessary thing when you have an evil vs evil scenario. See Hitler vs Stalin for example.

I do think that playing genocide olympics with past events is only useful if you're looking to justify some previously-held viewpoint. It doesn't really serve any function otherwise. Honestly, "we might be bad but at least we're still better than them" is probably one of the most abused rhetorics in human history. That said, it's a difference of degrees with the classification of things like ongoing systemic discrimination, so I get where the idea comes from.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Nov 7th 2018 at 9:51:27 AM

If someone wants to make claims like "The Allies and the Nazis were equally bad" bullshit that started this whole discussion in the first place, I'm sure as shit going to challenge them to compare body counts.

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 1:59:23 AM

That's what I meant earlier where it's a dumb thing because picking sides is inherently stupid and obscures as well as justifies atrocity. Stalin and Hitler are equally evil and they both should go to hell.

The Nazis vs. the Soviets is NOT Stalin vs. Hitler.

One is an army dedicated to destroying a people under a brutal dictatorship.

Doesn't Stalin edge out Hitler then?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 7th 2018 at 10:03:08 AM

Not during World War II.

After World War II...well then you gotta start comparing the USSR to the USA.

But hey, if you really want to make the argument that the Soviets were worse during WWII than the Nazis...

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 2:06:51 AM

The Nazis had a lower kill count than the Soviets only because they were stopped.

Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost