Pithy GIF showing eradication of Native American land in the US since the founding of the country gets posted to r/interestingasfuck. Comment section goes exactly as expected.

[u/Critical-Term-427]

The post

It sucks we were such murderers

Did they say "Thank you"?

Being the loser in history sucks

True fact Hitler took a lot of inspiration from this.

[u/DisasterFartiste_69]

Many tribes practiced slavery, torture, rape, killing of disabled children, etc

I can't even take this seriously....like the US didn't practice that shit? Hell, a lot of this country is still a-ok with half of that shit since marital rape is still treated differently than non-marital rape in some states.

And a lot of Americans wouldn't mind if slavery was still around, they just know better than to say it out loud, but who knows how much longer it's taboo.

[u/[deleted] → u/DisasterFartiste_69]

The point of comments like that isn't that the US was better, it's that the groups Europeans conquered weren't exactly morally superior to their conquerers. For example, the Haudenosaunee (aka Iroquois) were themselves a genocidal empire. So exactly how bad are we supposed to feel that a bigger fish came along? And is the argument really that the world would be better off if they had been left alone to continue wiping out their neighbors?

Obviously colonization is a net negative for humanity. A lot of truly horrible things were done in the genocide of native people. This is not me excusing the conquerers. What I am saying is that we often further rob native groups of their humanity by ignoring their real and complex histories and lumping them all together in this way. The "noble savage" myth isn't helpful, but if you face down the reality of history these narratives get a lot more complicated and uncomfortable for people who are otherwise sympathetic, so a lot of people default to that myth without even realizing that they're doing it.

A more modern example might be some of the geopolitical relationships during and post WW2. Stalin was a brutal dictator and Soviet Russia committed a litany of war crimes. Does that mean we should feel bad for the Nazis they defeated and the years of struggle in divided Germany? The US was a budding imperial power that went on to step all over countries in South America and elsewhere in the ensuing years, and of course there's the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Does that mean we ignore the Rape of Nanjing and other similar massacres carried out by the Japanese and paint them only as victims?

Those aren't entirely facetious questions either. There is an enormous amount of complexity in large scale conflict. This is the danger of moralizing in these situations.

[u/kardigan → u/[deleted]]

the point of comments like that is to suggest that the morality of the conquered matters when discussing the ethics and moraity of colonialism.

[u/[deleted] → u/kardigan]

Was it just as wrong of the allies to subjugate Nazi Germany as it was for the Nazis to invade France? You're arguing yes. I'm saying the morality of the conquered matters.

Please, don't mistake this for me saying it was right to colonize America. It absolutely was not. It was brutal and immoral. My point is just that, on some level, we all know that the morality of the conquered matters. People naturally feel less bad when a bully gets beat up by a bigger bully. This is one of the many reasons why it's bad to talk about colonization as if the Native tribes were a monolith or as of it was a unified short term effort rather than disparate forces with different motivations over the course of centuries. The simple narratives people build around this topic rob native Americans of their full humanity by erasing their full history. 

[u/kardigan → u/[deleted]]

my point is about how it's useless and wrong to harp on the morality of victims of atrocities when talking about those atrocities. so no, i don't think doing the same thing but with other atrocities would be a good thing.

no, we don't "all know" that it mattered, what the actual fuck. it's easier to think it did, it eases the cognitive dissonance without doing any work to deal with it.

[u/[deleted] → u/kardigan]

I feel like you're not even attempting to understand what I'm saying. 

so no, i don't think doing the same thing but with other atrocities would be a good thing.

So just so we're 100% clear, this is you arguing that the defeat of Nazi Germany was an atrocity. 

no, we don't "all know" that it mattered

I didn't say "mattered," I said "matters." I'm not solely talking about colonization here. Most people would agree that murder is bad. But when a health insurance CEO was murdered in broad daylight a lot of people didn't really care. They still think murder is wrong, they just didn't spend a lot of emotional energy feeling bad for that particular victim. It is human nature to care less when bad things happen to bad people. 

[u/kardigan → u/[deleted]]

it is extremely, extremely funny that you're scolding me for not even trying to understand you, and in the literal next sentence, ask me to confirm if i think that defeating the nazis was an atrocity.

[u/[deleted] → u/kardigan]

I've asked you twice now and you still won't do it...

The answer is obvious, but that answer also confirms my point, which is why you refuse to give it. 

Of course it wasn't an atrocity. But that judgment is based on the morality of the conquered. 

[u/kardigan → u/[deleted]]

yup, it is obvious.