theres a difference between what happened in europe to pagans and what happened in later imperialism, but you are ignoring a lot of very real and very violent cultural repression on the part of christians in this post. like theres documents where they talk about how they are going to infiltrate and break up local power structures. they hunted down and murdered religious and political leaders of the pagans. if you posted this about, for example, native americans losing large parts of their culture and heritage, it would be understood by everyone to be cringe imperialist both-sidesing.
'shut up about ur lost culture and genocided population! life is change! culture is change! move on and just accept whatever the current hegemony is, because everything changes!'
There's no meaningful equivalence between the US's deliberate and considered 400 year long campaign of extermination of Indigenous American people and the raucous brawling of dozens of different barely Christianized fratricidal ethnolinguistic groups with wildly different political and economic organizations haphazardly integrating, marrying in to, fighting, conquering, being conquered by, exterminating, or peacefully syncretizing with their neighbors. Europe did not exist until fairly recent history. Idk, maybe Napoleon or something. Christianity in the medieval period was a complete mess of idiosyncratic regional practices and petty heresies with very little central control and authority. Like sometimes the pope could flex, depending on the situation.
You want to talk about, idk, the Teutonic Knights being murderous psychos, we can talk about that. if we limit the discussion to like a specific handful of decades. But Europe and Christianity did not exist in the way they do now.
Like the Crusades? Absolutely not a genocidal campaign of whatever, and they weren't viewed as such by the people at the time. Arab writers of the time considered the invasion of the Franks as just politics as usual. The idea that it was an campaign of extermination waged between ideologically coherent factions is modern nonsense.
i already said that it is substantially different in many ways, but the fact that the cultural imperialism wasn't as unified doesn't make it not cultural imperialism. just because, for example, the christianization of scandinavia was headed by internal forces, doesn't mean it didn't involve some pretty horrific violent persecutions. it wasn't genocide in a physical sense but it was in a cultural sense, forcibly assimilating people into a belief system for political advantages. obviously what the US would do later to its indigenous people is much worse and more unified and insutrialized, but that doesn't make lesser crimes against humanity acceptable. idc about 'europe' or 'chrisitanity' as they are now, i'm just pointing out that it was at times a very forcible conversion. idc how people at the time would categorize events, if something like the crusades were to happen these days we would absolutely call it a war crime akin to genocide if not genocide itself, its the intentional destruction and repression of a culture.
edit: like the civil war in sweden between indigenous belief proponents and christians wasn't as horrific, bloody, and mercilessly efficient as america's ethnic cleansing of the native americans, but it was still obviously fucked up, and is similar in the sense that a socio-cultural hegemony is being violently established/maintained, where a less advantaged cultural/ethnic group is destroyed by a dominant cultural/ethnic group. it was based on different lines than the race realist science of genocidal america but it shares at least some qualities.
why are ancient/medieval paganisms more important than the cultural innovations of the society after it was christian? why not the celtic paganism germans replaced in central europe? or the hunter-gatherer religions agricultural communities replaced?
The germans didn’t replace the celtic inhabitants of central europe, they WERE the celtic inhabitants of central europe. The tradition pictured on the article is an celtic tradition. Germanics in Central Europe had an hybrid culture with the celts they integrated, a lot of times the romans just put them into the wrong category and there are barely any other sources available, since the locals had an oral tradition (sound familiar doesn’t it?).
"Celtic" is an extremely sketchy grouping that encompassed many languages and cultures over a long period of time. It's just a big basket for a linguistic group and spreads across an enormous area.
Modern laypeople make a lot more of "Celtic" culture than they should. There's no meaningful connection between modern "Celtic" nations and the "Celts" running around in 0ad, not least because the "Celts" were a number of different linguistic and cultural groups, not a single culture. There's some linguistic connections in Irish, Welsh, and Scots, but that's it. AFAIK there isn't even a really good consensus on what "Celtic" should mean. Like we're literally basing all this on trends in 2,000+ year old pottery.
And the funny costumes are not "Celtic", that's ridiculous. It's modern people dressing in funny costumes and ascribing meaning to them based on the mythology created for 19th century romantic nation-state building projects. What is this, a Krampus festival or something? Krampus is only attested from the 1400s.
It goes right back to post-christianization cultural practices that have elements of folk Christianity and local flavor. Like the christmas tree, like any number of things. ReligionforBreakfast has some superb videos on this exact thing. He just did one on the christmas tree, and his one on Easter is fantastic at cutting through the BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW06pWHTeNk
So many people want to put all their faith in Bede being honest and correct. It is absurd
So many things are like this. We have 1 source for this 500 sq km region in the entire period from 324ad-545ad, so that source is definitely a smart informed correct guy and not just some shitposter.
and germans replacing the language but leaving some allegedly celtic traditions in tact is fundamentally different from the christians doing similar because...?
theres a difference between what happened in europe to pagans and what happened in later imperialism, but you are ignoring a lot of very real and very violent cultural repression on the part of christians in this post. like theres documents where they talk about how they are going to infiltrate and break up local power structures. they hunted down and murdered religious and political leaders of the pagans. if you posted this about, for example, native americans losing large parts of their culture and heritage, it would be understood by everyone to be cringe imperialist both-sidesing.
'shut up about ur lost culture and genocided population! life is change! culture is change! move on and just accept whatever the current hegemony is, because everything changes!'
There's no meaningful equivalence between the US's deliberate and considered 400 year long campaign of extermination of Indigenous American people and the raucous brawling of dozens of different barely Christianized fratricidal ethnolinguistic groups with wildly different political and economic organizations haphazardly integrating, marrying in to, fighting, conquering, being conquered by, exterminating, or peacefully syncretizing with their neighbors. Europe did not exist until fairly recent history. Idk, maybe Napoleon or something. Christianity in the medieval period was a complete mess of idiosyncratic regional practices and petty heresies with very little central control and authority. Like sometimes the pope could flex, depending on the situation.
You want to talk about, idk, the Teutonic Knights being murderous psychos, we can talk about that. if we limit the discussion to like a specific handful of decades. But Europe and Christianity did not exist in the way they do now.
Like the Crusades? Absolutely not a genocidal campaign of whatever, and they weren't viewed as such by the people at the time. Arab writers of the time considered the invasion of the Franks as just politics as usual. The idea that it was an campaign of extermination waged between ideologically coherent factions is modern nonsense.
i already said that it is substantially different in many ways, but the fact that the cultural imperialism wasn't as unified doesn't make it not cultural imperialism. just because, for example, the christianization of scandinavia was headed by internal forces, doesn't mean it didn't involve some pretty horrific violent persecutions. it wasn't genocide in a physical sense but it was in a cultural sense, forcibly assimilating people into a belief system for political advantages. obviously what the US would do later to its indigenous people is much worse and more unified and insutrialized, but that doesn't make lesser crimes against humanity acceptable. idc about 'europe' or 'chrisitanity' as they are now, i'm just pointing out that it was at times a very forcible conversion. idc how people at the time would categorize events, if something like the crusades were to happen these days we would absolutely call it a war crime akin to genocide if not genocide itself, its the intentional destruction and repression of a culture.
edit: like the civil war in sweden between indigenous belief proponents and christians wasn't as horrific, bloody, and mercilessly efficient as america's ethnic cleansing of the native americans, but it was still obviously fucked up, and is similar in the sense that a socio-cultural hegemony is being violently established/maintained, where a less advantaged cultural/ethnic group is destroyed by a dominant cultural/ethnic group. it was based on different lines than the race realist science of genocidal america but it shares at least some qualities.
why are ancient/medieval paganisms more important than the cultural innovations of the society after it was christian? why not the celtic paganism germans replaced in central europe? or the hunter-gatherer religions agricultural communities replaced?
The germans didn’t replace the celtic inhabitants of central europe, they WERE the celtic inhabitants of central europe. The tradition pictured on the article is an celtic tradition. Germanics in Central Europe had an hybrid culture with the celts they integrated, a lot of times the romans just put them into the wrong category and there are barely any other sources available, since the locals had an oral tradition (sound familiar doesn’t it?).
"Celtic" is an extremely sketchy grouping that encompassed many languages and cultures over a long period of time. It's just a big basket for a linguistic group and spreads across an enormous area.
Modern laypeople make a lot more of "Celtic" culture than they should. There's no meaningful connection between modern "Celtic" nations and the "Celts" running around in 0ad, not least because the "Celts" were a number of different linguistic and cultural groups, not a single culture. There's some linguistic connections in Irish, Welsh, and Scots, but that's it. AFAIK there isn't even a really good consensus on what "Celtic" should mean. Like we're literally basing all this on trends in 2,000+ year old pottery.
And the funny costumes are not "Celtic", that's ridiculous. It's modern people dressing in funny costumes and ascribing meaning to them based on the mythology created for 19th century romantic nation-state building projects. What is this, a Krampus festival or something? Krampus is only attested from the 1400s.
It goes right back to post-christianization cultural practices that have elements of folk Christianity and local flavor. Like the christmas tree, like any number of things. ReligionforBreakfast has some superb videos on this exact thing. He just did one on the christmas tree, and his one on Easter is fantastic at cutting through the BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW06pWHTeNk
So many people want to put all their faith in Bede being honest and correct. It is absurd
So many things are like this. We have 1 source for this 500 sq km region in the entire period from 324ad-545ad, so that source is definitely a smart informed correct guy and not just some shitposter.
and germans replacing the language but leaving some allegedly celtic traditions in tact is fundamentally different from the christians doing similar because...?