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There is a great PBS Frontline documentary called ‘Firestone and the Warlord’ about the Liberian Civil War in the 80’s and 90’s and the role that the Firestone

There is a great PBS Frontline documentary called ‘Firestone and the Warlord’ about the Liberian Civil War in the 80’s and 90’s and the role that the Firestone Tire company had in legitimizing Charles Taylor (who was convicted of war crimes and is now in jail). I had no idea about Liberia let alone that they had a civil war, which was mainly about the dominance in Liberian society of black Americans.

bsanr2 6y ago
This is one of the things that is so insidious about the colonial culture of Western powers during the latter half of the last millennium: how easily it reproduces in subjugated lands. See also: Japan in the run-up to WWII. They just took the oppressive status quo that they'd learned from the US and replicated it, with the "white/colored" dichotomy replaced with a regional variant.
- rbecker 6y ago
  So, for example, before exposure to the West, Japan was mostly egalitarian? Or China? Or India? Or the Aztecs? No significant oppression was going on there?
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    Before exposure to colonial Europe, >Japan, China They weren't expansionist. It should be noted that these tendencies were predicated on the West's unwillingness to perceive them as equals, with full respect for their sovereignty. >India From the Wikipedia article on the caste system (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India): "Although the varnas and jatis have pre-modern origins, the caste system as it exists today is the result of developments during the post-Mughal period and the British colonial regime, which made caste organisation a central mechanism of administration." "The British colonial era census caste tables, states Susan Bayly, "ranked, standardised and cross-referenced jati listings for Indians on principles similar to zoology and botanical classifications, aiming to establish who was superior to whom by virtue of their supposed purity, occupational origins and collective moral worth"." >Aztecs You wiped them out. They're the quintessential example of the oppressive and destructive nature of colonialism, with its effect on their society impossible to ascertain because that society collapsed when the genocide happened. However, if you consider Mexico a successor state, then yeah, the Spanish imported a race- and skin color-based caste system that replicated white/Western supremacy by putting full-blooded indigenous people on the bottom.
    - rbecker 6y ago
      > You wiped them out. Sorry, "we" didn't have time to get any colonies - go find a Spaniard to blame. We were too busy getting raided by Ottomans, having our children kidnapped, trained as slave soldiers, and then used for more raids against us. Or sold into harems. But I won't hold my breath waiting on any sympathy or condemnation of that. And elevating the expansionist, slave-owning, human-sacrificing-on-unprecedented-scale Aztec empire to some pedestal of egalitarian virtue, just because they were later destroyed by the Spanish, could not be more ridiculous. How do you imagine China reached its size before it stopped being expansionist? What do you think "subdue" means in the following passage? Though the unified reign of the First Qin Emperor lasted only 12 years, he managed to subdue great parts of what constitutes the core of the Han Chinese homeland [1] But I want to draw specific attention to your comments about India, since it's a very common type of argument. From that same wikipedia page: History: Vedic period (1500–1000 BCE): The dasas were frequent allies of the Aryan tribes, and they were probably assimilated into the Aryan society, giving rise to a class distinction. Many dasas were however in a servile position, giving rise to the eventual meaning of dasa as servant or slave. Already they had a class system and oppression, yet the British Raj was still three thousand years away. But you are correct, contact with the British did change them. Contact of any two civilizations ends up changing them. So everything bad that is to follow, we can blame on the British. Just like everything bad the Spanish did, we can blame on the Moors that invaded them. I'm sure if we dig further, we'll find someone that attacked the Moors, so they aren't at fault either. We just have to follow this chain of aggression, until one day, we'll find the civilization that first attacked another, that first oppressed a class of people, and we can blame everything bad on them. Or do you only apply this logic to Europe, and hold everyone else blameless? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China#Imperial_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China#Imperial_Chin...
      - bsanr2 6y ago
        Is European global dominance and accident of timing and history? I'd like to think so, but there are plenty of people who would argue quite vehemently in the negative on that point. Alright, so let's go down the rabbit hole, and be very clear about why the 19th and 20th centuries played out as they did. I apply this logic singularly to Europe because the colonial history of Europe is singular in its direct influence on states it came into contact with. You cannot talk about modern China's global ambitions without speaking about the humiliating and existentially-dire experiences they had at the hands of the British and Japanese, especially since so much of their contemporary rhetoric specifically mentions these injuries in championing a proud "China of the future." You cannot talk about the perpetuation of caste-based oppression (expanding in particularly European ways) in India, even after the introduction of Enlightenment ideals, without talking about how Western ideas about race and hierarchy (not simply role) helped to justify that perpetuation. And you really, really shouldn't be conjuring the ur-racist canard of Aztec "human sacrifice on an 'unprecedented scale'" without acknowledging the massive (dwarfing) death toll of the Mexican conquest - let alone those associated with witch hunts, inquisitions, and crusades (i.e., similarly religiously-driven mass homicide), or with the other abominations akin to mass human sacrifice cause primarily caused by European hubris (several genocides, including the one in the Congo, as well as both world wars). The reductive nature of your "it's answered aggressions all the way down" approach belies the agency nations and states and rulers and philosophers have in structuring their doctrine and action. However, if you see any truth in it, you must then acknowledge the inevitable influence a de facto vassal state must receive from its oppressor. Combining the two, you're left with either a chronicle of amoral coinflips, or what's more realistic to me: a few thousand years of power dictating as it will, and often to devastating and immoral ends. Maybe the world would suck less if colonial Europe hadn't been such a d••k. Do you disagree with that? >Sorry, "we" didn't have time to get any colonies - go find a Spaniard to blame. We were too busy getting raided by Ottomans, having our children kidnapped, trained as slave soldiers, and then used for more raids against us. Or sold into harems. But I won't hold my breath waiting on any sympathy or condemnation of that. You came out swinging for European innocence, so kindly enjoy your culpability.

bsanr2 6y ago

This is one of the things that is so insidious about the colonial culture of Western powers during the latter half of the last millennium: how easily it reproduces in subjugated lands. See also: Japan in the run-up to WWII. They just took the oppressive status quo that they'd learned from the US and replicated it, with the "white/colored" dichotomy replaced with a regional variant.

rbecker 6y ago
So, for example, before exposure to the West, Japan was mostly egalitarian? Or China? Or India? Or the Aztecs? No significant oppression was going on there?
- bsanr2 6y ago
  Before exposure to colonial Europe, >Japan, China They weren't expansionist. It should be noted that these tendencies were predicated on the West's unwillingness to perceive them as equals, with full respect for their sovereignty. >India From the Wikipedia article on the caste system (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India): "Although the varnas and jatis have pre-modern origins, the caste system as it exists today is the result of developments during the post-Mughal period and the British colonial regime, which made caste organisation a central mechanism of administration." "The British colonial era census caste tables, states Susan Bayly, "ranked, standardised and cross-referenced jati listings for Indians on principles similar to zoology and botanical classifications, aiming to establish who was superior to whom by virtue of their supposed purity, occupational origins and collective moral worth"." >Aztecs You wiped them out. They're the quintessential example of the oppressive and destructive nature of colonialism, with its effect on their society impossible to ascertain because that society collapsed when the genocide happened. However, if you consider Mexico a successor state, then yeah, the Spanish imported a race- and skin color-based caste system that replicated white/Western supremacy by putting full-blooded indigenous people on the bottom.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    > You wiped them out. Sorry, "we" didn't have time to get any colonies - go find a Spaniard to blame. We were too busy getting raided by Ottomans, having our children kidnapped, trained as slave soldiers, and then used for more raids against us. Or sold into harems. But I won't hold my breath waiting on any sympathy or condemnation of that. And elevating the expansionist, slave-owning, human-sacrificing-on-unprecedented-scale Aztec empire to some pedestal of egalitarian virtue, just because they were later destroyed by the Spanish, could not be more ridiculous. How do you imagine China reached its size before it stopped being expansionist? What do you think "subdue" means in the following passage? Though the unified reign of the First Qin Emperor lasted only 12 years, he managed to subdue great parts of what constitutes the core of the Han Chinese homeland [1] But I want to draw specific attention to your comments about India, since it's a very common type of argument. From that same wikipedia page: History: Vedic period (1500–1000 BCE): The dasas were frequent allies of the Aryan tribes, and they were probably assimilated into the Aryan society, giving rise to a class distinction. Many dasas were however in a servile position, giving rise to the eventual meaning of dasa as servant or slave. Already they had a class system and oppression, yet the British Raj was still three thousand years away. But you are correct, contact with the British did change them. Contact of any two civilizations ends up changing them. So everything bad that is to follow, we can blame on the British. Just like everything bad the Spanish did, we can blame on the Moors that invaded them. I'm sure if we dig further, we'll find someone that attacked the Moors, so they aren't at fault either. We just have to follow this chain of aggression, until one day, we'll find the civilization that first attacked another, that first oppressed a class of people, and we can blame everything bad on them. Or do you only apply this logic to Europe, and hold everyone else blameless? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China#Imperial_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China#Imperial_Chin...
    - bsanr2 6y ago
      Is European global dominance and accident of timing and history? I'd like to think so, but there are plenty of people who would argue quite vehemently in the negative on that point. Alright, so let's go down the rabbit hole, and be very clear about why the 19th and 20th centuries played out as they did. I apply this logic singularly to Europe because the colonial history of Europe is singular in its direct influence on states it came into contact with. You cannot talk about modern China's global ambitions without speaking about the humiliating and existentially-dire experiences they had at the hands of the British and Japanese, especially since so much of their contemporary rhetoric specifically mentions these injuries in championing a proud "China of the future." You cannot talk about the perpetuation of caste-based oppression (expanding in particularly European ways) in India, even after the introduction of Enlightenment ideals, without talking about how Western ideas about race and hierarchy (not simply role) helped to justify that perpetuation. And you really, really shouldn't be conjuring the ur-racist canard of Aztec "human sacrifice on an 'unprecedented scale'" without acknowledging the massive (dwarfing) death toll of the Mexican conquest - let alone those associated with witch hunts, inquisitions, and crusades (i.e., similarly religiously-driven mass homicide), or with the other abominations akin to mass human sacrifice cause primarily caused by European hubris (several genocides, including the one in the Congo, as well as both world wars). The reductive nature of your "it's answered aggressions all the way down" approach belies the agency nations and states and rulers and philosophers have in structuring their doctrine and action. However, if you see any truth in it, you must then acknowledge the inevitable influence a de facto vassal state must receive from its oppressor. Combining the two, you're left with either a chronicle of amoral coinflips, or what's more realistic to me: a few thousand years of power dictating as it will, and often to devastating and immoral ends. Maybe the world would suck less if colonial Europe hadn't been such a d••k. Do you disagree with that? >Sorry, "we" didn't have time to get any colonies - go find a Spaniard to blame. We were too busy getting raided by Ottomans, having our children kidnapped, trained as slave soldiers, and then used for more raids against us. Or sold into harems. But I won't hold my breath waiting on any sympathy or condemnation of that. You came out swinging for European innocence, so kindly enjoy your culpability.