Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Valmy]

While I know what you mean Josqs, "crimes of white people" can also be pretty offensive. I consider myself and other Hungarians "white people". There are lots of dark spots in our own history that Hungarians as a nation haven't honestly owned up to (most painfully our national conduct during the Holocaust). However exploiting Africans isn't one of them and if we refuse to treat rampant Ottoman and other Muslim enslavement of Europeans and Africans as an Islamic civilisational sin (a view I agree with), then we cannot hold rampant Western European enslavement of Africans as a European Christian civilisational sin either.

Yeah I don't know how much Estonians should have to face up to the crimes of the colonization of the Americas.

The Latvians on the other hand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonian_colonization_of_the_Americas  )

Sure I guess we living in nations that committed horrible colonial atrocities should own up to our past, but right now I would just settle for humanity stop doing this sort of thing currently. That would be nice, but we seem powerless to stop this behavior.

[Admiral Yi]

But when we're talking about British or American history that's not really relevant. That's something Algeria, Nigeria, etc... need to come to terms with. It is the crimes of white people that are ours to own.

But we're not talking about British or American history, we're talking about de-colonization, or at least I am.

My point is that if quote unquote colonized people claim a universal principle then they only have standing to judge others by that principle if they are willing to judge themselves by the same principle.  So if the starting point for the principle is that the first people to show up on uninhabited land have right to that land in perpetuity, by my reckoning that applies to very few current nations or ethnic groups.  Australian aborigines, Pacific Islanders. 

Take the example of India.  Everyone agrees that the British colonized India.  But before that the Mughals colonized India.  And before that the Aryans colonized India from the Dravidians.  So I maintain if northern Indians want to complain about British colonization then they first need to accept the same judgement.  Or Zulus in South Africa.  Or, in what I think is the weirdest case, Inuit in Greenland, who displaced Vikings.  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

[Josquius]

But when we're talking about British or American history that's not really relevant. That's something Algeria, Nigeria, etc... need to come to terms with. It is the crimes of white people that are ours to own.

But we're not talking about British or American history, we're talking about de-colonization, or at least I am.

My point is that if quote unquote colonized people claim a universal principle then they only have standing to judge others by that principle if they are willing to judge themselves by the same principle.  So if the starting point for the principle is that the first people to show up on uninhabited land have right to that land in perpetuity, by my reckoning that applies to very few current nations or ethnic groups.  Australian aborigines, Pacific Islanders. 

Take the example of India.  Everyone agrees that the British colonized India.  But before that the Mughals colonized India.  And before that the Aryans colonized India from the Dravidians.  So I maintain if northern Indians want to complain about British colonization then they first need to accept the same judgement.  Or Zulus in South Africa.  Or, in what I think is the weirdest case, Inuit in Greenland, who displaced Vikings.  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

It's hard to talk a out decolonisation without talking about the colonisation which is part of the history of a particular place.

It's definitely true that you get an awful lot of nationalists who are keen to grab a stick to bash past colonisers where their "team" was the victim but are remarkably quiet or vocally defensive, making excuses or whataboutisms, when they're the pereptuators.
Many Chinese are particularly awful for this.

But... It's like the whole thing far right nuts trot out about how we should oppress Muslims because it's not like they let Christians practice freely in Saudi Arabia.
We shouldn't be lowering ourselves to the level of those that behave like shits.
We should seek to behave better than arse holes.
And this means being honest about history rather than just seeing it as a dick waving points scoring exercise.

Also there's a bit of a different situation at play when you've colonialist policies still actively at work as in Palestine.
Then you aren't just looking at history. You're looking at innocent people being hurt in the here and now.

[Oexmelin]

Land restitution to original inhabitants isn't what decolonization is about.

[Josquius]

Land restitution to original inhabitants isn't what decolonization is about.