Yesterday, a Declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity was voted at UNO. As usual, Israel and the USA voted against. How did your country vote? Any thoughts about it?
The abstaining countries mostly has a Problem with “the gravest crime against humanity”, because there should be no ranking in crimes against humanity.
Where do you place the Holocaust, the holodomor, the crusades? The conquest of the americas?
Yeah, sure, it was a semantic problem. Not a reperations problem. /s
Side thing, but I don’t see the Crusades as at the same level of the Holocaust or the Holodomor. They were religious wars of conquest not campaigns of extermination. They were brutal, sure, but if you add them, then you have to start piling a bunch of other wars in there too, like the Mongol conquests, the Timurid conquests, the Arab conquests, the Ottoman conquests, the Aztec conquests etc. Which kind of dilutes the point of “grave crimes”.
There is nothing particularly unique about the Crusades, and at the time, the Roman Empire that invited them and tried to sanction them actually had a legitimate claim of them being reconquests of Roman territory (even though they ended up killing it off anyway in 1204).
But you recognise a ranking is not helping the thing?
Yes, obviously there is no total order. There is a partial order though.
That’s why I prefaced my whole comment with «Side thing,…». I’m doing an «um ackchyually» about the history of the Crusades, nothing more.
The crusades involved kicking muslims and jews out of the land. It was definitely a genocide and there is some genocide that are worse than others
The Reconquista in Spain, yes. In the Levant/Outremer? That’s just not what happened.
PS. I know that in the US, (CW: Hegseth) the christian nationalists are using crusading iconography to promote their deranged fascist apocalypticism. They are instrumentalizing the past the way fascists always do. Knowing and insisting on the actual history is a kind of negation of that instrumentalization. Don’t be tempted to just mirror a reverted image of their anti-intellectualism back to them.
Bullshit excuse
Bullshit counterargument
The transatlantic slavery trade lasted 400 years there was definitely more death caused by it than the Holocust .
How about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Your dad was probably alive when it happened
If it’s about duration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade lasted longer and it had more victims.
For sure, for sure. 15 million humans forcibly relocated and an estimated 30-60 million deaths over 400 years is certainly among the gravest human tragedies.
On the other hand could you imagine if tragedies like the holocaust or holodomor or the Chinese three years famine were extended to even a fraction of those 400 years? Or if a handful more cities had been nuked? Or if we let the 50 million people living in modern slavery die in bondage? What about the billions of people that have died from preventable diseases over centuries of neglect?
…Why are you even bothering to argue about this? There’s no objectivity in these conversations, and yet you insist that everyone but you is wrong.
If they extended to 400 years then yes they would be worst than the slave transatlantic trade
You don’t abstain from a resolution about slavery that include reparations to the victims because you think another crime against humanity is worse.
They could even vote for this then introduce another resolution citing the holocaust as the gravest crime against humanity
If someone walked up to me and told me to label anything as the gravest, worst thing to happen in human history I would definitely abstain. It’s just not possible to say that [as a representative of millions of people] unless you’re OK with diluting the conversation around serious ongoing problems with hyperbole.
Sorry to the millions of people being genocided in Gaza, the real gravest tragedy is something else (or vice versa). There is no correct objective answer to such loaded propositions.
You shouldn’t frame honest attempts at reparations and progressive policy in black/white terms. The point of this resolution is the same as everything in the UN: toothless posturing that goes nowhere to the domestic political benefit of everyone involved.
The Nay votes can say they’re defending whatever tragedy plays best to their audience, the Yea can play off their moral superiority (either in opposition to Nays or for support of their tragedy) and the Abstainers get gold stars for their deft diplomatic balancing. And it didn’t cost anyone anything but ink!
Us peons are supposed to slurp up the drama and pump our echo chamber full of our chosen narrative (see: this post). But there’s another secret option: stop engaging with rage porn content, it’s better for your health.