Damn, that sucks. The French should have taken up Louverture on his offer instead of backstabbing him, then.

louverture-shining jb-shining

As it turns out, the Wikipedia page is shockingly wrong/misleading. The new Haitian government specifically carried out a vengeful campaign against the French whites including the poor “Petit-Blancs” who didn’t own slaves but largely supported slavery and white supremacy throughout the colony’s history, at some points even more fanatically than their rich counterparts (there was genuine threat of a mass revolt from them when the colonial government wanted to grant more rights to free mixed-race Haitians). Polish soldiers who assisted the revolution and German farmers on the island were spared, as well as non-French nationals (a common if unverified story is a white Frenchman who survived by pretending to be American).

This isn’t to say genocide under any circumstance is “okay” but I’m don’t think anyone is under any position to lecture people who were put under the sheer inhumanity of Caribbean sugar cane plantation system in particular or Transatlantic slavery in general. To say nothing of the depraved lengths the French, slave-owning or not, went to to preserve slavery in the revolutionary war (such as, as some in the comments point out, reprisal massacres, mass rapes, feeding prisoners to dogs, etc). It’s also inaccurate to say this was done only out of revenge when the fear of white French petitionining to have France reinvade was very real (as had happened). Even then, Dessalines’ mandate was far from uncontroversial or even universally-enforced. As with other things, this falls solely on France which has not even pretended to pay back the damage it has done to Haiti before, during and after the revolution.

Also, though rightoids and fashies like this guy are expected, it’s funny to see more liberal whites pearl-clutch over the 1804 massacres but somehow handwave the rest of the period as “simply another time”. You’re sure to find them under any post about the Haitian revolution bringing it up but if you bring up the fact that the American Founding Fathers were slave-owning, genocidal hypocrites on any post commemorating the 4th of July, you’re suddenly a party-pooper who doesn’t understand history.

Link if you hate yourself

  • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]
    ·
    4 days ago

    It’s not even true lol. The Haitians didn’t kill the Poles or Germans because they were not slavers, and in fact protected them during the retaliation against the French colonizers.

    • Łumało [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      One of the good things in my people's history. Some of them recognized the similarity between the Haitian people's struggle for independence and our own at that time, and joined them to fight against the french. There's even a village of a "Polish minority", that being Cazale.

      EDIT: I remember during history lessons in high school, the Haitians were praised and spoken well of by our teacher and even the textbooks. But I don't know how it is now, seeing how the textbooks have gotten more and more unhinged and rightwing in their contents.

    • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Plus to do this, they abolished the concept of whiteness that was part of the oppressive colonial heiarchy by declaring the new Polish citizens of Haiti to be black.

  • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
    ·
    4 days ago

    The idea that revolutionary action on this scale is comparable to genocide is kinda dumb when you realize that the violence against the "victims" was almost always retribution. Like the landlords in China. There were thousands and thousands of them killed, but they weren't killed by some state organization that marked them for death, they were killed by the people who they directly oppressed for generations.

    Slaves killing their masters isn't genocide, slaves killing their masters is a return to the natural order of things.

    • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Cuban people killed so many of Batista’s men after the revolution against the new government’s wishes that they had to implement executions again to keep them orderly

      • MaoTheLawn [any, any]
        ·
        4 days ago

        Same goes for Mao iirc. The people wanted to lynch mob the landlords.

  • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Death to slavers.

    If you want to rules lawyer this in a way that chuds and liberals will be amenable to, or at the very least you want to giggle while they suffer cognitive dissonance, remind them that even if the police kill a bystander while trying to apprehend a criminal, it's the criminal that is charged with murder. Were the criminal not engaging in the wrongful behavior then the death would not have happened, or so the reasoning goes. Same concept on pain of legal consistency should apply to slavers and any backlash violence. It's the slavers brutally torturing and dominating human beings for decades who make ripe the conditions for incredible blowback violence. If slavers didn't want themselves and their families to be brutally executed, then don't force people into bondage and torture. The slavers are culpable for all violence proceeding from people ensuring their own freedom.

  • sinstrium [none/use name]
    ·
    4 days ago

    The Hatian revolution was very feared by the southron plantation lords. In fact haitians only killed white french men or unmarried french women who refused to ever marry black haitians. They spared french widows and other white people who didnt oppose them.

  • x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    So 200 years ago is too soon
    But murdering 50 million natives 200 years before that is what exactly?

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      4 days ago

      It's quite clear, actually, simply look at this chart: us-foreign-policy

  • KoboldKomrade [he/him]
    ·
    4 days ago

    The western "civilized" treatment of Haiti might be one of the most cruel and evil in history. Constantly beating down on them. The fact the French are allowed to exist after extorting them out of "reparations" for the "lost" slaves just shows how evil this "rules based order" is. That isn't to mention us American's BS.

  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Ahem We won, you lost. Get over it!

    Despite CHUDs yammering on about how fascism is the most wholesomest chungus ideology ever, they never seem to like it when the global south steals their "perfect" ideology and uses it as a punitive tool. If you don't like being on the receiving end of fascism, then you don't like fascism.

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      If you don't like being on the receiving end of fascism, then you don't like fascism.

      If you don't like being on the receiving end of a gun, then you don't like guns smuglord

      Nah, these fascists are just mad that they've been at the receiving end of one, after many years of shooting global southerners

  • Outdoor_Catgirl [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    4 days ago

    Massacring the whites was not a good thing, but it was a logical consequence of their actions. If you build an oppressive society, don't be surprised if the people you're oppressing kill your ass. Like if the zionists didn't want there to be an operation al aqsa flood, then they shouldn't have made apartheid.

    • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Massacring the whites was not a good thing,

      Fym? Milling slave drivers and their waterbearers wholesale can only be a good thing.

    • hypercracker [he/him]
      ·
      4 days ago

      Any settlers not killed by the colonized people after achieving freedom are due to grace, not moral obligation. If the settler counter-revolution succeeds the slaughter is unimaginable and the settlers whose lives were spared go right back to their comfortable role as oppressor.

    • Kuori [she/her]
      ·
      4 days ago

      Massacring the whites was not a good thing

      given what they were there to do, i fail to see how this is in any way true.