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Long-run effects of religious persecution: evidence from the Spanish Inquisition
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- breakyerself 5y agoWithout conscious policy the inequality resulting from racial persecution is probably going to go the same way in the US. In 2019 the median white household held $188,200 in wealth—7.8 times that of the typical Black household $24,100.
- gmmeyer 5y agoThis article makes me think about the internet conspiracy that the spanish inquisition invented Rome, which did not exist
- square_usual 5y agoWhoa, I've never heard of that one before. Any off the wall homepage with mid-2000's aesthetics that lays it out for me?
- jollybean 5y agoThere are TikTokers with a lot of influence promulgating it from their basements. The vast number of commentators seem to be taking the insanity at face value. A lot of comments like 'Wow, that's an interesting perspective' of 'I've never heard that, they don't teach us everything in school'. While I'm not worried about that meme, it's just shocking to see how easy it is to delude people. Combined with the Pew polling showing young people don't really get their news from normative sources, it's a bit worrying. Cable news is all Senior Citizens while Gen Z is off on Twitch and TikTok.
- jacquesm 5y ago> While I'm not worried about that meme, it's just shocking to see how easy it is to delude people. You can see evidence of that sort of thing in every online community, even right here on Hacker News. No community is immune from being weaponized to spread outright nonsense. The question is what you can do about it.
- atdrummond 5y ago1. The creator pushing this is Momlennial (Donna). She’s almost certainly not meaning for her content to be taken seriously. 2. Even if she was serious, the reaction amongst most users has been extremely incredulous and negative. Her follower count has stalled/slipped and the various anthropology/history/other social science creators have had a great time debunking her. 3. If you’re not seeing the negative assessments of her content in her interactions, it’s due to how she handles contradicting comments and duets/stitches.
- ConceptJunkie 5y ago> Cable news is all Senior Citizens while Gen Z is off on Twitch and TikTok Both of those are garbage sources. It's a lateral move, in my opinion.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoYes, but TikTok is even more fragmented than cable news, with far more varieties of insane nonsense.
- jollybean 5y agoCable news reports on the news of the day and generally doesn't lie, rather, they misrepresent. TikTok, Reddit etc. is mostly just fantasy, opinion. Older people are much better informed about current issues.
- tsol 5y agoCable news has at least some standards they're forced to adhere to. There are some strange, worrying, and literally insane subreddits out there. TikTok is it's own minefield as well
- jollybean 5y agoTotally agree, but the net misrepresentation, or strong editorialization from Cable News may actually be more damaging that the perverse stuff on Reddit. Watching the Kyle Rittenhouse coverage, pre-trial, from Fox and MSNBC was like watching the Soviets and Americans combat each other with propaganda. Actually watching the trial and the information as it came out felt truly enlightening. My view is that the press 'narratives', even if they technically 'do not lie' (i.e. standards) are more damaging than for example, QAnon or Flat Earth. We are being told what to believe and I think this has a much stronger effect than we realize, because it even works on people who are pretty smart. Self Awareness takes effort to accept that there is bias, to really open one's mind, to search for uncomfortable facts, to accept them at face value, and then to think about it outside the concept of some accepted ideology or worldview, and the social/group pressures that apply. It's just too easy to be influenced by talking heads.
- sAbakumoff 5y agoIf(when) right-wing extremists in the USA take power in their hands and eliminate all the opportunities for other political parties, we might see religious persecution of abortion rights, LGBT communities, freedom of speech, and common sense.
- tpoacher 5y ago"Using data on the Spanish Inquisition, we show that in municipalities where the Spanish Inquisition persecuted more citizens, incomes are lower, trust is lower, and education is markedly lower than in other comparable towns and cities." In other words, defund the Spanish Inquisition?
- coolgeek 5y ago> Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition to still matter today, but it does. Touche
- square_usual 5y agoI get the feeling they wrote this paper just to make this joke, lol.
- roca 5y agoSeems difficult to thoroughly eliminate confounding factors. Maybe the CCP can do a randomized controlled trial.
- ggm 5y agoOr the Indian Territory management boards
- teleforce 5y agoApparently, there are many other major religious persecutions that are not well-known today. These include the Nguyen Lords persecutions and ethnic cleansing of Chams people that used to live and control more than half of modern Vietnam, for more than a thousand years [1],[2]. Interestingly, both of the Catholic Church of Spain and Nguyens Lords of Vietnam regimes employed Pig or Pork Policy as a control measures to forcefully integrate the remaining Muslims community that were not migrated away but chosen to stay behind [3],[4]. [1] Nguyễn lords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_lords [2] History of the Cham–Vietnamese wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Cham%E2%80%93Vietnamese_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Cham%E2%80%93Vi... [3] Pork politics and the Spanish Inquisition: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/06/pork-politics-and-the-spanish-inquisition https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/06/pork-politics-... [4] Spain decides to make up for its persecution of Jews — but won't do the same for Muslims: https://theweek.com/articles/445777/spain-decides-make-persecution-jews--but-wont-same-muslims https://theweek.com/articles/445777/spain-decides-make-perse...
- noduerme 5y agoFunny, but the first thing that came to my mind reading the study abstract was ham in Spain - particularly its ubiquity in Andalusia, where I lived for a few years. There are only two kinds of restaurants in Granada - those that serve ham, and those that are Halal. I developed a theory that it had to do with forcing pork onto Muslim and Jewish populations during the Reconquista. It still serves as a form of self-segregation today (although you could argue that the actual self-segregation is by practitioners of Halal and Kashrut diets - and I say this as a Jamon-loving Jew who feels sorry for my people who can't enjoy a bit of pig). Interesting to learn there's some truth behind my suspicion.
- sofixa 5y agoOh yes, it was used as test and for persecution. To circumvent that, Andalusian cuisine even had fake pork meals, to keep suspicion low. (Can't find the source now, but it IIRC it was an article about a book on Andalusian cuisine in general, and it was mentioned in passing).
- new_realist 5y agoThe persecution of religious minorities in Europe resulted in a very secular Europe—-because many of them fled—-and a very religious America, because that’s where they all went.
- ggm 5y agoThe enlightenment exploded after the Lisbon earthquake. Atheism took off. I don't think it was religious persecution as much as the emergence of secular philosophy and science.
- jganetsk 5y agoNo. The persecution of religious minorities in Europe culminated in the Holocaust, which led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Don't blame the minorities who have suffered and continue to suffer.
- ciberado 5y agoMaybe I'm wrong, but I have always thought this was an ethnic/cultural/social persecution, not mainly religious-based.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoBoth/and, I think. If you don't like "them", and they're religiously different too, then religion becomes one more avenue for you to attack them. On the other hand, if it starts with you not liking their religion, then you can wind up not liking their ethnicity too.
- tsol 5y agoWhy not both? Romani are an example of ethnic persecution alone, but Jews have to deal with an added layer of religious persecution as well
- nradov 5y agoOnly a small fraction of American settlers / colonists were fleeing religious persecution, and those mostly came from a few countries in western and northern Europe. There weren't many religious fanatics emigrating in the 1600's from Greece or Poland.
- jrochkind1 5y agoDid they really just put "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…" into the abstract? I am not going to believe that was accidental.
- efitz 5y agoThat was classic. If you don’t understand the meme, it’s an old Monty Python skit[1]. [1] https://youtu.be/Cj8n4MfhjUc https://youtu.be/Cj8n4MfhjUc
- kromem 5y agoI saw that and busted up laughing. Smoothly done, but obvious to anyone that knows the reference.
- elnatro 5y agoIs inserting a joke in a scientific paper common?
- jollybean 5y agoWhat does this have to do with religion? Secular ideologies killed about a two hundred million people in last century alone and nearly destroyed all of civilization. Secular Totalitarians were putting people in gas chambers and gulags by the 10s of millions 'In The Name Of Whatever' (and of course, about 1/2 of those secular ideologies were specifically anti-religious). If you look at a map of Europe, you can see the 'near term effects' of living under Soviet Authoritarianism quite obviously. That said, I doubt very much that 'The Spanish Inquisition' has strongly material effects today, rather, those groups who were 'On The Side of Power' were more likely to prosper, than those on 'Other Sides', in all eras, in all cases. Vienna 'prospered' as the HQ of Hapsburg 'Empire', some other places, would have not been so well off, obviously. I downloaded the data set but was unable to parse, if anyone has any suggestions please share.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoI think the finding of this study is suggesting religious persecution is bad for for a community, not religion itself. It would likely see all the persecution you mention as harmful, just not part of this study.
- jollybean 5y agoI think the study is erroneously attributing the term 'religion' especially in the context of the Spanish inquisition. If the study was titled 'Long-Term Effects of the Spanish Inquisition' - that would be fine, but they are more broadly applying their conclusions without evidence.
- bobthechef 5y agoI can't read the article, but the Spanish Inquisition is generally misunderstood in the historical context and innumerable myths have been spun about the affair through later Protestant leaflets and the like (outrageous claims of the genocide of millions, for example, compared to the actual 3,000-5,000 executed over the course of close to four centuries; compare this to the 150,000 secular witch burnings during the same period elsewhere in Europe). Most people don't even know what it was about, its historical character, or the historical antecedents that led to it in the end. Typically, it is used as a rhetorical device to halt discussion through whataboutism, like calling someone a racist without merit ("What about the SPANISH INQUISITION? You know, that horrible SPANISH INQUISITION? Oh, yes, the SPANISH INQUISITION was bad."). How many people understand the converso crisis and its antecedents that threatened the very existence of Spain? The widespread social unrest that resulted that the Inquisition was brought in the resolve? Or that the judicial standards of the Inquisition were ahead of their time? Persecution and forced conversion were not the objective, and indeed, the very notion of forced conversion is understood as not only evil by Catholics since it violates the conscience of the unbeliever, but it is an impossible feat because conversion can only be done freely. Rather, it was the widespread fear of feigned conversions, to obtain high offices, among the general populace that led to widespread unrest (many conversos had attained high ranking positions in the Spanish government). Whether there was any truth to these fears is another story, but the unrest was such a threat to the stability of Spain, that the Spanish Inquisition was called to resolve this crisis by subjecting the matter to an orderly judicial process. Some may argue that the later ultimatum of conversion or expulsion is a kind of de facto coerced conversion, but that's debatable, especially given the number of Jews who left for places like Poland. We can criticize the affair (which, despite the investigation of claims of heresy, was actually of a secular character), but the attention it has received though the "Black Legend" as some egregious orgy of evil (committed by the Protestant's favorite punching bag, the Church) out of step with even the common practices of the day is simply wrong. Sadly, these sorts of things can seep into historical accounts and curricula, especially when they agree with prejudices. So I wonder about the substance of an article that uses this episode as a basis for investigating this question.
- jsmith99 5y agoIs 'widespread social unrest' an euphemism for the pogroms and riots such as the 1391 massacre of Spanish Jews, culminating in (a century later) all Jews being thrown out of Spain with little more than the shirts on their backs?
- bedobi 5y agoTo what degree did they control for the regions in question being already less educated, trusting etc, and that leading to more people being persecuted there?
- asimjalis 5y agoThe causality might go the opposite way. Maybe areas with poorer economies were more prone to persecuting minorities. So it’s not the persecution that led to the poor economy, but the poor economy that led to the persecution. Or maybe a third factor drove both of these things.
- sofixa 5y agoThe Spanish Inquisition was centrally ordered and to an extent managed, not spontaneous local events. Unless they specifically targeted poorer areas, which isn't impossible but is unlikely ( if they killed or expelled infidels, guess who got to keep the gold/money/property?), causality seems more probable to be in the way Spanish Inquisition -> poverty.
- dash2 5y agoTypically papers like this find some instrument. The fact they don't have one might explain why they went for PNAS and not an economics journal, which are usually more rigorous (or more anal?) That said, their results on trust fit their mechanism pretty well. The big possible confounder might be that the inquisition correlates with Muslim ("morisco") or Jewish presence. There's a big literature arguing that ethnic heterogeneity weakens trust, and that might persist over time even when the ethnic heterogeneity has vanished. But: "adding a control for pre-expulsion morisco population has little impact on the results."
- watwut 5y ago> Unless they specifically targeted poorer areas, which isn't impossible but is unlikely ( if they killed or expelled infidels, guess who got to keep the gold/money/property?) Being rich tends to coincide with having some kind of power. The poor people are more likely to be targeted by oppressive campaigns of any sort, because rich people use their power to protect themselves. There would be nothing exceptional about targeting poor rather then rich and powerful.
- dave4420 5y agoWell maybe, but the abstract says they controlled for this.
- JavaBatman 5y agoMakes sense at face value. Generally speaking, religious minorities tend to perform better economically than the majority religious group(s) since they have to work harder to overcome institutional and historical hurdles placed in their way. So when they are persecuted, their economic productivity is reduced. Quite simply, they are either killed, flee, or are reduced to poverty. All of these affect economic performance. We see this today with the Christian minorities in the Middle East and Near East (Copts in Egypt, Syriacs in Syria, Assyrians in Iraq and Turkey, Armenians in Turkey, etc.).
- watwut 5y ago> religious minorities tend to perform better economically than the majority religious group(s) since they have to work harder to overcome institutional and historical hurdles placed in their way They dont? Religious minorities tend to worst then majority. They do sometimes get accused to be too rich by propaganda. Jew in Europe nor in Germany specifically before WWII were not actually richer, statistically. They were on average lower middle class. Many of them were poor and refugees from eastern europe. Where individuals have been more successful, majority resented that and wanted to punish all Jews for it. Yazidi are not richer then average in Iraque. Kurds are not richer then majority.
- Animats 5y agoWe're still struggling with the fallout from Pope Urban II starting the Crusades in 1095.
- linksnapzz 5y agoI'd say, still struggling with the fallout of the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb circa 700AD.
- gragragraaputin 5y agoAs with many other maps of Spain (or Italy for that matter) it would be interesting to see also "correlation with kms away from the center of Europe". (The white bit doesn't really count because afaik is empty anyway)
- dash2 5y agoUngated version: https://repec.cepr.org/repec/cpr/ceprdp/DP16030.pdf https://repec.cepr.org/repec/cpr/ceprdp/DP16030.pdf
- pr_nik2 5y agoLegacy papers are very popular these days in econ, history, and political science. I don't have the time to dive deep into this one, but spatial identification of long-term causal effects is prone to errors. Specifically, the error terms in regression specifications capture unexplained variance that can be very persistent over long periods of time. These errors can also be spatially correlated across treated observations: https://voxeu.org/article/standard-errors-persistence https://voxeu.org/article/standard-errors-persistence
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway599281 5y agoGetting rid of the remnants of two foreign peoples who had not sort of familiarity or loyalty with the natives, and their faiths was the best thing that happened in Iberia. When were the Portuguese and Spanish Golden Ages, again?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- exabrial 5y agoWell, that was unexpected.
- codephined 5y agono one mentioning that civil criminals would blaspheme just to have their cases moved to and heard in the much more fair inquisition courts, eh? okay. 700 years of muslim conquest in Spain, led and facilitated by jewish communities literally opening the gates to cities like Toledo and encouraging the murder of christians. but hey let's keep up the Anglo protestant and secular myths