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I worry about responses like yours because they are based on an impressionistic and ultimately incorrect understanding of western history. This way of approachi
by solidsnack9000 6y ago
I worry about responses like yours because they are based on an impressionistic and ultimately incorrect understanding of western history. This way of approaching our history is frequently used in what is effectively woke propaganda, as well as propaganda in support of Chinese authoritarian style government.
Regarding your claims specifically:
Americans did not hang witches "all the time". Prosecutions for sorcery and witchcraft occurred in the USA in the late 1600s, that's true -- but they all occurred all over Europe into the late 1600s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Netherland... (ended trials exceptionally early)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Finland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Denmark
In England, the last person prosecuted for witchcraft (thankfully not executed) was Helen Duncan in 1944:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan
Most European kingdoms did not have slavery in Europe; it's in the colonies where all of them established slavery. The US was such a colony. It's perhaps unusual in being a place where slavery was abolished as a result of a war between the ruling inhabitants, as opposed to a slave revolt or something like that. The British followed a more orderly process, though, abolishing slavery in the colonies and then compensating the slave owners out of the treasury.
Slavery was abolished in the English colonies in 1833. That's 32 years before it's abolition in the United States. That might not be the "much longer" that you had in mind.
- Technically 6y agoEuropeans didn't generally call their methods of coerced labor "slavery". European aristocrats made bank off slave labor outside their state borders and still do to this day. If it weren't for Marx's letter writing campaign causing a large anti-slavery hubbub during the civil war, England's ruling class was favoring recognizing the sovereignty of the confederacy. Slavery was wildly unpopular domestically (you can see "woke" products at the time labeled their products as made by paid labor), but the source of cheap cotton powering England's massive mill industry was well understood and appreciated by people with significant capital. I don't really appreciate the insinuation that the parent commenters implications are unsupported by western historical discourse and are a product of chinese propaganda. You're ignoring a vast swathe of western culture by doing so, notably the 19th century discussions about authority and oppression between the anarchists and, loosely, the socialists (who had not yet coalesced around Marx to the extent you see now). Meanwhile it's not clear "big government" is even a meaningful term outside american partisan bickering.