Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

And? How many people get taught about him in what passes for your civics classes?

About the same as people who learn about Susan B. Anthony.

He had more flaws than those. He was something of a Hitler apologist for one thing. And while that faded, he took commitment to pacifism to weird territory when he claimed that the Jewish people should have "offered themselves to the butcher’s knife." rather than try to resist genocide.

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:23:24 PM

I mean his aims towards fighting for India's freedom from their colonial masters were noble but everything else...?

Yes, I know he had way more flaws.

Riddle me this: what proportion of the population are women, again? Who are likely to pay attention in class?

Versus the blokes who are likely to doze through the one paragraph of the still very important extending of the rights of the enslaved they might get, simply because they're not black or mixed race...?

Of course that's what I'm doing, rather than highlighting a very human thing which is paying more attention to what we identify as as a cognitive bias...

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 1:31:42 PM

And now you're dabbling in misandry. Thanks a bunch.

For the record, I paid attention in my history classes when they covered abolitionists, even though I'm a bloke who has no black ancestry.

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:29:19 PM

I don’t know. The comment from that article and the fact that a majority of white woman voted for Donald Trump might suggest they were not paying to close attention either, or just didn’t care.

I mean that is the larger point about the varies isms, the need for intersectionality, and the pitfalls of idolization.

Edited by Mio on Nov 8th 2018 at 8:32:33 AM

Which is all valid.

But, at the same time... great and good things have been done by horrible people. The praise for those good things is not unwarrented. What is warranted is more context taught at all points. And, more praise heaped on others who also did great things, but were less flawed in the doing of them.

Going a little spare because somebody put a sticker on the grave of somebody you deem flawed, well... It's hardly shoving Lenin into a glass casket and turning his corpse into a propaganda-rich Snow White pilgrimage for your dodgily-Communist cause levels of "lionised", that sticker.

I just don't think the way to deal with current racism is to launch into an iconoclastic repudiation of everything done by historical racists. Sure, Civil War "memorials" commissioned in the 50s-70s as a fuck-you to the civil rights movement? Fair game.

Gang canny, is all.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 1:45:20 PM

If it was just one person putting a sticker there, maybe. But it wasn't just one person. Nor was it the only time — this happened in 2016 too.

And if you're criticizing a black woman for "going spare" over the lionization — and that is what this is — of a person who threw minorities, including black suffragettes, under the bus...

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:44:40 PM

Skipping straight to Lenin feels a little disingenuous in the context of this conversation.

I think the issue is that a lot of these famous legacies have been “whitewashed”, so to speak. No effort is made to acknowledge problematic facets of these people’s lives, which is not only not fully faithful to what they actually were but also distorts our perception of history. Which, as we all know, is a dangerous precedent.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 8th 2018 at 5:45:30 AM

Which the author of the article is very much aware of.

Seriously, no one is saying don't admire Susan B. Anthony. They're just saying don't whitewash her faults.

Which does need correcting, yes. But, getting frothing mad when somebody affected by that whitewashing does something to commemorate an actual good and great thing? Perhaps not the way to go about maybe letting them know?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 1:49:14 PM

She wrote an article and posted stuff on Twitter.

That's not "frothing mad". She's not advocating anyone vandalizing anything. It's frankly disingenuous to portray the writer as some angry lunatic.

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:50:47 PM

OK — I don't understand why what I say often gets taken out of context, but... a rant online counts as "frothing mad". Writing an article or letter in indignation is pretty traditional!

Yours sincerely, Slightly-Bemused of Newcastle.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 1:56:37 PM

Again another incredibly disingenuous response. Pointing out that people seem more than happy to cast an uncritical eye over historical heroes hardly qualifies as frothing mad.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 8th 2018 at 5:56:33 AM

“And while that faded, he took commitment to pacifism to weird territory when he claimed that the Jewish people should have "offered themselves to the butcher’s knife." rather than try to resist genocide.“

He recanted on that btw.

He might have been sorry later but what he said was unforgivable,like I'm looking what he said and wondering why he would say that

Just putting it out there, for what it's worth, attempting to portray reasonable criticism as irrational rage is a common tactic of the far-right.

Because it's an extreme example that it's better to die and be killed than kill?

People can and often do advocate that it is better to allow yourself to be killed than kill in self-defense.

I believe that myself. I don't say other people should but it is my belief for myself. When my house was broken into, my wife wanted to get a weapon and I'm like, "I can't do that because it would require me to use it."

"And what if I'm threatened?"

"I'd tell you to run and I'll slow them down."

It is easier to do that when calling the cops is an option. The whole point of civilization is so that you do not necessarily have to be responsible for your own defense.

But in the face of genocide...

Gandhi's activism was backed up by the fact that the British Indian military had 2,500,000 men under arms, the largest volunteer fighting force ever assembled in history.

In my family's personal experience, pacifism is often touted by authoritarians as a nefarious means to gently persuade their subjects to "not cause instability in society" or "stir chaos". While at the same time said authoritarians put dissidents to death and are more than happy to preach without practicing their words.

Hell, one of the most inconvenient facts in East Asian history is that Buddhism was spread by various rulers in different nations discovering the practical utility in promoting a religion that preached that all violence is sinful. Hence, the Abrahamic religions were typically repressed because they held that violence is justified in various contexts (e.g murder vs war).

The value of pacifism as a viable opposition tool is still limited by how willingly the opposed are to use violence.

You could have a 1000 people marching and not using violence and you'd have 1000 people dead. Specially when those 1000 people belong to a group the major ethnicity or ruling group really don't give a fuck about.

It is like asking what the average person belonging to the Han ethnic thinks of all the Uighur protest because the CCP is practically wiping out the out of China or trying to a non-violent slave protest in the middle of a Confederate state during the Civil War.

None of those are going to end well.

The problem with people who are pointing out pacifism is a poor defense against getting killed misses....yes, that is the point.

Being killed is the price for living true to the principles of absolute pacifism.

Certainly, it's a possible consequence.

It's also a religious form in multiple faiths that, yes, if you are faced with a Nazi and have a gun—that it is better to let them kill you than to kill them. Because If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!.

That's how it works.

That you must be prepared to die for your beliefs for it to matter.

You can argue with it but the idea is that the best way you can destroy the Nazis and other violence based societies is refuse to obey them and give them no power through violence.

Mind you, Gandhi turned his back on this because he decided, no, in the face of people who are absolutely evil and will kill you without a thought that violence is a proper action—but he believed the other at one point.

Edit:

Spreading pacifist sentiments usually backfires among people who try to do it as the oppressive governments tend to find out that if people are willing not to fight in the face of being killed, they are less able to be controlled period.

And bluntly, the irony is that pacifist religious groups can and do tend turn on a dime and have very little loyalty to the governments who control them in general.

Doesn't this ignore the shit ton of Buddhist warrior sects?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:17:01 AM

Gandhi made some particularly clumsy statements about nonviolent resistance and its benefits to the Jewish struggle while Nazi Germany was ghettoizing their communities and exterminating them. Yes, he changed his mind when the unmitigated brutality of the Nazi regime became clear, but half-heartedly, and in a way that sounded more like, "It's not for everyone" rather than "Holy shit, this regime must be stopped at any cost!" The fact is, he succeeded in India because the British were fundamentally hypocritical and could only stomach atrocity to a point. The Nazis were not, and had an appetite for atrocity. An India nonviolently resisting German occupation would have been exterminated to the last man.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Nov 8th 2018 at 12:27:49 PM

There's also, y'know, the millions of armed and battle-hardened Indians who were already starting to mutiny against British command all across the Asia-Pacific theatre.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Nov 8th 2018 at 9:30:47 AM