America is genocidal, sure, but so is every single other society in the history of civilization. America is exceptional because of the technology and the art it contributed to genocide, which is the goal of every civiliztion, remember. Pointing out the difference in scale of US atrocities just prevents us working together for greater justice.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/6343679 https://hexbear.net/comment/4329347
What the fuck are you talking about? The vast majority of modern states don't even have the military capabilities of 'making the mistakes' the U.S. makes (here's a thing, they aren't mistakes), let alone at the scale they make them. Are you gonna claim like Uzbekistan is invading countries half-way across the globe or killed off 97% of it's native population?
This is besides the fact that most of the time, genocide wasn't economically on the table for most ancient empires, outside of re-settlement, and even then, that was pretty damn rare and thus was mentioned often when it did happen (Babylon, Persia etc.). Often rulers would brag of commiting genocide, but the historical (archeological) and genealogical record doesn't agree with their proclamations. Actual genocide is usually fueled by a want for economic lesbarum or previous colonial economic divides and relationships.
For example, when ancient Pharaohs went south to 'Subjugate Upper Egypt' they surely fought battles (though again what battles they fought and how large they were are probably exaggerated) but Egyptian control of the area was always limited to a series of small forts that would mostly protect the gold mines and trade routes. It was not about population control. Imperialism? Sure. War Crimes? Sure. Settler-colonial genocide? No.
I think the only ancient empires which did treated resettlements institutionally and did it routinely was Neo-Assyrian Empire and to way lesser extent, Neo-Babylonian, and they get shit for that in every single text about them, both contemporary and later.
It was the Neo-Assyrians, I always mix them up with the Persians.
Yup, Persians are famous rather from allowing people resettled by NA and NB empires to go back, and iirc they also did resettle some people but the topic is much less researched since it was not done as much and less documented, unlike Assyrians which not only documented everything (and even bragged about it), but their archives were preserved in much better state.
I was going, in my head, "I know the Babylonians and like one other one were really really into resettling, it was super uncommon. Eh fuck it, I'll just put the Persians, the whole ancient Egyptian thing is what really blows that whole settler-colonial thing out of the water." And then it was just a matter of figuring out whether I wanted to mention that the Jewish people who had been resettled by the Babylonians basically made up a story about being previously resettled in Egypt, in an attempt to foster a whole "We have been resettled once before and God brought us back." parallelism with the Babylonian exile (which is a huge part of Jewish myth-making), which ended up being a huge part of the Old Testament, which is partially why people who's only real exposure to history is like, the Bible and the Roman Empire (because of the Bible) (who also were not huge on resettlement, but arguably did some genocide on the Gauls), thinking it was common, when the archaeological record does not support that.
I should really look more into the Neo-Assyrians, if their records are better kept. Probably a bunch of cool reading or podcasts around it.
Romans actually did resettled people, but their resettling method was often mass abducting into slavery (usually after conquest or rebellion), so way worse than even Assyrians.
It’s all oppression down to the first turtle. I’m not sure that you are picking up on my position. I’m concede the US is the great satan. But what I’m not doing is allowing the oppressors to divide me from other human beings of good will in the hope that we are stronger United.
And if you think that the building of the pyramids did not involved slavery, oppression, and genocide, you’ll need to crack some books.
The building of the pyramids didn't involve slavery they were built by paid laborers, maybe learn to actually read a book instead of just cracking it.
I can't site any sources cuz this was a while ago, but I looked into it and apparently there is some debate over this among historians. It's likely some slave labor was used building the pyramids but generally the guys doing most of the actual masonry work were paid freemen, cuz most slaves didn't have the craft skills to do that kind of work.
And… it’s a controversial topic but yes, the ancient Egyptians used slaves. So… it does not absolve the US for a single second — what the US did was hideous and horrible.
Hardly however makes America mean murderer.