The American media loves saying that, but does it really have a right to exist? Does an apartheid colonizing regime have the right to exist in someone else’s land?
The American media loves saying that, but does it really have a right to exist? Does an apartheid colonizing regime have the right to exist in someone else’s land?
So what's your solution to this issue?
Decolonization and mandatory re-education of settler-descent persons is really the only sane answer. I could be saying a half-dozen more overtly ghoulish things; but the first step of least harm is a ceding of power and privilege from the colonizers to the colonized, and education as to the fuckery that this country-- and as a result, Israel-- perpetuated to come into existence, and why what they did is an aberration.
Who is included in the colonized and colonist categories in this sense? All "white" people? All white passing people no matter background? Recent (last 50 years) migrants of all races?
What would the differentiation be, and what is the line in the sand? This doesn't seem to be nearly as cut and dry as "Isreali vs Palestinian".
The differentiation is "can we trace your geneaology up to a slave owner, or further up to the pilgrim ships". There'd need to be a party apparatus for this sort of records-checking; but I imagine in this day and age, there's likely a technological solution for this that I'm not immediately landing on. Beyond that, I'm not above the idea of re-educating anyone who's ever flagged themselves "Caucasian" on a federal census; but the priorities are 'do you have slave-owner in your blood'.
That does seem like a good criteria, but that is an extremely small and limited amount of people. Slave owners were by far concentrated in the South, and only the ultra-wealthy could afford to own slaves to begin with. It was only a 1-2 percent of people owning 95%+ of all slaves. As most free people in the South, white or black, were themselves near destitute and extremely poor.
Plus records of that would be difficult to work with, yes a direct relative would be an easy find, but we would go after someone for their great great great great great uncle twice removed owning slaves?
Also the Caucasian label is itself extremely tenuous, as you would catch the decent majority of slavs, turks, some arabs, Romani, and a whole hell of a lot of bizarre and "non-white" groups by going after the Caucasian label.
Plus then you run into the problem of a decent chunk of people being mixed, meaning no single label would work well for them, or you could have a family where one partner could have had a slave owning ancestor, while their partner had a ancestor who was a slave, and one of their children is extremely dark, while one of their siblings could be much lighter, and then another that's white as snow. There would be an absurd amount of unique scenarios you would have to grapple with, this is just one.
Is it such a sin to want to see those who self-identify a certain way educated on the baggage they've associated themselves with? You raise fair points on the concept of mixed families; but beyond that, while self-identification is fine and all, I see a use case for the education.
But its not really "self-identification", its not really a personal choice is it? You can't just self-identify as another ethnicity, race, or background, and most people don't give theirs a second thought.
Education should just be done overall. I just don't see the point in otherizing and targeting certain groups on factors such as race, sexuality, ethnicity, or background, barring other overt reasons. I'm definitely not defending racist white chuds and they're the first ones that could use reeducation, but it just feels like belief and views should be a primary concern. I've met plenty of gusanos, extremely out of touch extremely wealthy minorities, and people with racist families who grew beyond that. It just feels the main separator is class and education more then anything.
Again, going back to it, dividing a clean cut colonizer and colonized just seems to be near impossible in the United States. It feels like other factors should be taken into account first.
I fully agree, and I feel the logic follows that the only actual path to peace for Israel/Palestine is a sort of de-Balkanization, a one-state solution where the one state in question can't be Israel or Palestine.
Naive. It is naive to think that the Zionists won't take and take and take until they're all that is left-- exactly in the example of the crackers. Colonialism is a cancer, and your treatment plan is to just let it ravage the region-- and if this is really the only path of peace, then maybe the conflict deserves to flare up from the Palestinian side, with just as little mercy as the Zionists show them.
I feel like this admittedly old but still very relevant piece by Edward Said makes some good points. Notably:
and
Do you think it possible for the brutalized to live in peace with the people that brutalized them? That cheered brutalizing them? Especially in the same generation that the brutalized were being entirely destroyed? You too, cosign letting cancer ravage the region.
people rented slaves, and for the purposes of this discussion, that should be at least partial credit for "owning"
Sure, but how in the world would you ever prove that? I doubt less then 1 percent of the receipts from those transactions survived.
land ownership would be easier to find records for and is probably a decent proxy.
if the other person's "reeducate anyone who checked the caucasian box" idea is too extreme, maybe a compromise could be reeducation for anyone defending the use of confederate symbols.
Yeah that last bits fine. But land ownership seems a bit extreme, again, just owning land doesn’t signify anything.
owning land in a settler-colonial slave society sure fucking signifies something. holy shit dude
No it fucking doesn’t? A random ass ancestor owning land isn’t something you can pin on a random person in the modern day.
What does that signify? Plus like I mentioned before, the vast majority are dirt poor subsistence farmers playing with second rate dirt while mega plantations owned by the bourgeoisie hog hundreds of square miles of prime land that’s operated by literal slaves. Those subsistence farmers aren’t really the vanguard of the settler colonial force.
But imagine someone came up to you today and said, “Well it seems like one of your ancestors 250 years ago simply existed in a settler colonial area, even though they were dirt fucking poor, and we don’t have any evidence or documentation. Prepare for reeducation!” I’m sure you’d love that?
slavery "ended" only 160 years ago in the united states. Convict leasing wasn't fully abolished until 1942. The 13th amendment allows slavery as punishment for a crime, and prisoners are paid a pittance or not at all for labor they perform.
The genocide of indigenous people is still happening.
american society is incredibly racist (among other structural prejudices) to this day and you are an ignorant, reactionary liberal.
Ok? Everything you said is true. Why are you making it seem like I love slavery or think that slavery and it’s consequences magically disappeared?
Thanks for strawmanning my entire argument.
This entire conversation was based on the fact that you can’t cleanly divide American society as colonized and colonizer except for very niche cases, and that if you can’t make that distinction why is it a prime decider of who gets thrown in reeducation?
Thanks for the name calling though!
where did I do this exactly?
How do you envision this?
They can either give it up peacefully, or we can get into some Greenwood, into some Watts shit again. Would I rather see a 'peaceful transition of power' the way the crackers think their 'democracy' works? Of course. Am I really that naive, though? Hell fuckin' no. I might've been born at night; but it sure as hell wasn't last night, and when I balance out my scales, the weight of a settler life does not mean HALF as much to me as a life of one colonized.
So in the face of that, and a country in which we cannot live with these crackers, cannot be safe around these crackers, cannot find the cultures, practices, and names that were stolen from us by these crackers, and cannot pursue our own self-determination around these crackers, what do you propose we do? Just sit here, lookin stupid, letting these crackers keep exploiting us, raping us, thieving from us, incarcerating us without cause, and eventually killing us?
They who? Capitalists? Politicians? Every white person, going by the poorly defined US definition of white?
By this point you might think I'm some lemmy-tier debate pervert, hampering endlessly for trolling. That is not the case. I'm trying to make sense of what the comrades over at the core envision their future struggles to be, because you know this is coming eventually over to my periphery.
Part of me genuinely does. The only reason I'm still humoring this conversation is because I recognize your username and have seen you about on this fed before.
I see a future in which we have to fight against all whiteness. In which the current-day clarion calls of the politicians and capitalist elites toward the populace to rally 'round in protection of whiteness itself are heeded in full. Every time you hear a casual "slava ukraini" in the west, you are hearing the reaffirmation of solidarity with global whiteness. They've chosen their side and their praxis.
They've started imprisoning our forefront activists again in attempts to shut us up, looking at what's been done to the Uhuru 3, and the RICO charges filed against anti-Cop City protesters. They've already started, and the "White Lives Matter" movements are gaining steam hand-in-hand with the Banderites nourished by the Democrats. This will not end cleanly, and frankly, I'd say it lost the chance to end cleanly years ago.
Just like it has for Palestine.
I think we can look at the Cuban revolution for some answers. They started building their socialist project, and the opponents of that basically self selected. The ex-Cubans of Miami seem in general much whiter than people in Cuba.
I don't think there's a reason to proactively define colonial lines or whatever (though I agree with @absentthereaper@lemmygrad.ml ).
I think a revolution in the U$ will have to be lead (or mostly driven by) colonized people, and decolonization will be a part of that.
The people who benefitted from Cuban plantations, and wanted to keep those benefits, weren't removed in a process separate from the revolution - they opposed the revolution (and the restructuring that came afterwards), and were dealt with because of that.
See, now that is the logic I can actually follow. That makes sense. Thank you
Decolonial Marxism as layed out by Walter Rodney
Guess I'll get back to you after at least skimming that
Give them a bit of germanny as reparations for the holocaust and move them there.
And would that not count as settler colonialism?
Most of em were originall from there yidish is a germanic language after all. And it would be more justified since we can all agree germany did the holocaust. And the jews need their own state to protect themselves from future instances of that. So if the germans broke it they should fix it. Way should the palestinians pay for the duck?
This solution may have been sensible in 1945, for reasons you have described. But now? How many people in Israel even speak Yiddish?
Makes more sense than settling them in the middle east.
They are an european (germanic) people and they were persecuted by europeans(mainly germans) so it should fall to europeans to decide the compensation not to middle easterners.