For some context, this was a :reddit-logo: thread talking about old dnd settings and whether or not they should bring Kara-Tur back. There were plenty of shitty racist takes in the thread, but comparing the existence of christianity in europe to the brutality that african/asian/south american countries experienced during colonialism seemed especially bad.
There is almost certainly some bizarre european right wing paramilitary formation that has beef with the Visigoths.
Kinda like the TradCaths who are incredibly mad at Martin Luther for translating the Bible from Latin and causing the Reformation.
Actually, we don't ignore Roman colonialism at all. Celebrating survival from Roman colonialism is the basis for multiple Jewish holidays.
So, in conclusion, colonialism has actually always been bad.
Yeah most of the celts basically didn't survive it, it's something to be proud of
Just remember that on reddit you’re usually arguing with 14 year olds that just heard about these things in their history class while half asleep and they really want to wedge them into a conversation somewhere
I feel like there's just a sort of willful ignorance with a lot of people about what, exactly the effects and legacy of colonialism and the various forms of historical slavery even are or how these get carried forwards. Like yes, the Romans were monstrous genocidal slaver fucks who visited countless horrors on many different people for centuries, but in between that and now you have two thousand years of those same peoples becoming Romans too, forming their own states, having their own self-determination, and building empires in the image of the Romans to pillage the rest of the world. They aren't suffering because a hundred generations ago one of their ancestors got crucified by some inbred Roman aristocrat when for at least the past several centuries their ancestors have themselves been beneficiaries of empire.
I feel like libs also feed into this by focusing on the specific character of historic horrors more than their legacy, like focusing on how completely fucked chattel slavery in the US was instead of on the still fucking ongoing legacy of white supremacist terror and hegemony, on the century of pogroms to enforce white supremacist rule that followed the de jure end of chattel slavery, with the largely-still-present systemic recreation of slavery through the rent and debt slavery of the sharecropping system and the establishment of racialized prison slavery. And it's the same with colonialism, where it's still enforced with violence and the relationship between the periphery and imperial core is still brutal extraction at gunpoint so its legacy is still alive and well, but some of the specific most extreme horrors of colonialism have been ended as widespread practices so people act like it's as dead and gone as the horrors the Romans visited on their victims when it's not.
It's like people just think that historic wrongs existed up until they didn't and that whether they were kept going through other, similar means or if they were reversed and done away within generations doesn't matter.
I think the comments in the OP just highlight a fundamental misunderstanding of colonialism, which is that it's a relic of the ancient past. Most people who are this dismissive think that colonization ended in 18th century at the latest. But really what set up our modern world is colonization by America and the European powers through the 19th and early 20th century.
I think we need to be clearer on "colonisation": which is a bunch of people showing up and forming a colony (which can in principle be morally neutral or even mutually beneficial, though generally not)
Colonialism: which is establishing political Hegemony via forming colonies via migration and/or domination, which is something the Romans did.
Empire, which is a political unit of many different cultures, often but not always dominated by one culture and often with a centralised government.
And Imperialism, which most empires ironically didn't do, since it's a technical term relating to the operation of extractive capitalism in Colonialist hegemonies
So you can have an Empire, that has a colony (say, a small trading port) but is neither colonialist (since it achieved empire via direct subjugation or federation with other cultures) or imperialist (Because it's a pre capitalist state)
Oh definitely, I'm not saying Romans weren't colonizers or anything, I just think that trying to compare the colonization of europe over a thousand years ago and the colonization of a lot of other area by europe that basically still haven't ended seems pretty bad.
It's wrong when whites do it to The Other. It's not wrong when The Other does it to whites. It's okay to be as political and biased as you want because everything is political anyway. Public debate is a war of ideas and non-rational means are acceptable. Rationality and logic hold no special status as means of inquiry, they are male, white, and western, they are not in the least universal human values.
calling the Irish colonised is a touchy one (and something I wrote a whole ass long post about on here). it's of those things where it's not a binary either or, but a spectrum. and some people got a much worse end of that. much like we all know "the Irish were slaves too" misses out a LOTTA context on chattle slavery vs indentured servitude, the same is true of the Celtic home nations and their genocides and cultural destruction vs that of different native peoples. Ireland never faced what the native peoples of North America did, and often profited from it in the way the oppressed working classes of Europe always have from imperial spoils.
and on the Roman point. Settler Colonialism is nowhere near the same as the Roman colonies. the Romans engaged in Empire, genocide, settling, and all this, this is true. However, to overlook the sheer horror and genuinely incalculable destruction of settler colonialisn down plays the viciousness of the ideology and how its structures were far more genocidal, extractive of labour and resouces, and how the European settler colonist sees the new land as their God given right as opposed to the naked but honest 'might makes right' of the Romans
acting as though Roman and 14th-20th century European colonialism are equal historical, and contemporary, horrors seeks the centre whiteness and downplay the genocide and ideology of settler colonialism that is very alive and well
Had a friend who was actually asking me in good faith what the difference was between the Washington Football Team's slur name and the Minnesota Vikings. Because the Vikings did pillage and do bad stuff along the English coast 1,200. He wanted to know where the dividing line was.
I explained that the line is "are we still dealing with the issues caused by X in 2022?" So in his example, are there systemic, ethnic, or equity issues currently ongoing in England that relate to the viking invasions? No, of course not.
Now, ask that same question about native Americans...
Same applies here. Yeah, the Roman were colonizers and they sucked. But I think for all practical purposes there aren't lingering issues of that colonization. And if there are then yeah, they should be addressed. But it's insulting to think those issues could be on par with the colonized global south currently has to deal with.
From what I know, it's basically a generic "Asian" fantasy setting, complete with ninjas, samurais and animal-human hybrids, just random elements from various Asian cultures as they were received in Western pop culture. Also, the rule books were written completely by white people, as far as anyone can tell. Worst of all, the first book introduced "Comeliness" as a stat that could make others treat you like a monster, which is some incredibly racist subtext.
I just looked up Kara-Tur and found a page that informed me of some of their regional enemies, that region being called......the hordelands.
Sometimes it's not just subtext, it's just text.
Wow didn't know Europe was still under the boot of capital situated in first world countries, along with white supremacy, racism, imperial bombardment etc etc etc
