The problem is that arguments like this always end with an implicit "QED" that dismisses surviving grievances regardless of how legitimate they may be. What we need to do is hear each other. Responding by saying, "this happened on every square foot of the globe" is implicitly a refusal to listen, a denial of standing to the other. When I read a comment like this, it sounds like a judge tossing a case out of court.
Your comment includes this in other ways too: changing the subject to horrible things the other side did is implicitly a way of saying "I don't need to hear you", and representing the other side as a straw man ("several hundred years ago should be brought forward to modern times") is a way of saying "nothing to see here".
In their 2nd comment below you can see that they are trying to call out the colonization, etc. And also I'm not "defending against my imagination"... there's so many commenters that think history is so reprehensible and modern day people should be directly guilty for things that happened 500 years ago.
I do find it fascinating that every time someone tries to use historical evidence to show the dangers of a current trend, they are inevitably accused of making light of the historical event and people ignore their actual statements. We seem to be actively hostile to learning from the past as a society and just operate on faith that the injustices and atrocities of our collective past will never happen again.
Obviously anything to do with Nazis or the Holocaust triggers this reaction faster and more severely, but it can happen with any subject. Every argument of "Currently A is happening. When A happened in {time/place} it led to B and then C, and we all agree B and C are really bad" will be met with "How dare you compare yourself to {time/place}! B and C aren't happening now and will never happen again" (with no explanation for what will prevent B and C from happening).
I don't disagree that it's happened as an issue of historical fact. I'm pointing out that the argument is most often deployed in defense of very much unsuppressed voices. And I'm implying strongly that it's being deployed in bad faith.
This is a very naive view of history and reconciliation. It's easy to say, "Yes, it was bad, but why don't we move on? Why be divisive and bring up past wrongs?" when you were not the one tortured. I would even call it churlish to preach "forgive and forget" when our countries (assuming you are a Westerner) have been doing wrong by these other countries for centuries.
Pretending history never happened is not only disingenuous, it actively hurts attempts to heal and move forward. There can be no forgiveness if one side tries to pretend something bad never happened. The example everyone cites is South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process, in which the horrors of apartheid were laid bare. Everyone acknowledged what happened, and it laid the basis for moving forward.
Facts are facts. If the ugly history of imperialism offends you, look away. It will be there regardless.
Everything I said is inescapable fact. A victim mentality would be "I can't do anything about it". I have the opposite mindset, so you're entirely wrong to suggest this. An accurate account of history is not victim mentality, it's truth.
It's amazing the level of defensive outrage this event generates 50 plus years on. If we can't have an open discussion about shady events in the past then maybe we need to investigate the current interests preventing that open discussion.
The "let's consider both sides" approach is part of the problem. I don't want to consider the partisan or ideologically motivated narratives of both sides — at least not in isolation — because they are equally likely to be false. Instead I want to understand what actually happened, its causes and consequences, and how it relates to other historical events.
It is an unfortunate reality that the victims of colonialism have no more of a monopoly on the truth than the perpetrators.
The worst part is whenever bringing up such points others are often quick to dismiss them as wacky "conspiracy theories" or even just unfounded pessimism about the state of things as they are today. Merely bringing up comparisons of certain observations about society today to those of Nazi Germany (or other reprehensible regimes throughout history) risks getting oneself cancelled or targeted in other ways. "How dare you compare the horrors of World War II with the relative ease of things today! It's nowhere near as bad today as it was back then!", cry the detractors. And they may be right about that in some sense, but those who don't learn from history and apply its lessons to the present are doomed to repeat certain mistakes, or at least to make history rhyme, as the saying goes. The chilling effect caused by the stifling of open discussion about how things are today and where they could risk going wrong in the future is how we all end up sleepwalking into the well-known horrors of the past that we'd otherwise all wish to avoid.
"Everything" is a bit uncharitable. There are people in that story who, when they found out about a historic wrong, did something about it. That's not terrible. There are people who are inspired by that act of doing the right thing, and have gone on to be partisans for righting similar wrongs. That's not terrible.
That it happened is terrible. Ignoring the good that was done so that we can wallow in the bad is also terrible.
Actually, watching it happen in real time and seeing people insist, in real time, that it's irrelevant... makes me wonder how many times it's happened before and been ignored. How much of what I've been taught about history can I trust?
What a sadly modern philosophy... Sure, why should we learn anything from the past? Let's just adjust the past to be whatever's most convenient for today. If it's not convenient at this immediate moment right now, let's just ignore it ever happened. Those millions of people who died unnecessarily? "Boogeyman" "propaganda" for the "out group"?
While it is true that complete unbiased understanding of past events is impossible, that does not therefore make it unimportant to try for.
The point of history is not agreed upon lies. That's an unethical concession. The point of history is to tell what happened.
Not including other perspectives is exactly what it sounds like, a failure to properly retell history. Propagandized history is immoral. Even if your inner pragmatic, reductionist, contrarian instincts lead you to believe you should accept it just because that is what has happened in the past. There is no ethical reasoning behind it.
This is an extremely common type of reply: Refusing to condemn something as wrong, on the basis that it's hard to write a good law that would fix it.
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten [1], every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
[1] But originals are still kept in archives, and available upon request, so it's okay! Only a negligible number of people will bother so they may as well not exist, but it's okay!
The most unhelpful opinion is "pretend history doesn't exist and pretend people formed their opinions from the collective worldwide knowledge of when I made this comment". It is of no use in the actual world that exist and just is an idealized version of what people who haven't experienced the problems wish to be true.
My real life experience is that people who benefited directly or indirectly from racism and inequalities from the past, want people to not question their status and would rather pretend that living memory is something that was fake.
Edit: Petrov, your entire post history seems to be riddled with whataboutism and seemingly bad faith arguments
“We can’t know what would have happened if $historicalfigure hadn’t done $badthing,” is a very weak line of argument. One could similarly suggest that the Nazi Holocaust was better than what might have happened under other circumstances.
Your comment includes this in other ways too: changing the subject to horrible things the other side did is implicitly a way of saying "I don't need to hear you", and representing the other side as a straw man ("several hundred years ago should be brought forward to modern times") is a way of saying "nothing to see here".
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