5 ms·
If we look at history, do the oppressed always become oppressors?
by spacecadet 1y ago
If we look at history, do the oppressed always become oppressors?
- mikevm 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y agoNo racial flamewar on HN, please. I realize this topic is fraught with it but that's no reason to jump straight in—it's a reason to do the opposite: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 (April 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 (March 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 (March 2025) I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on. Edit: I did end up banning you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403629. We simply can't have people posting like that to HN.
- Dettorer 1y agoIs this a new karma system where for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does?
- dang 1y agoNo, this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade.
- Dettorer 1y agoWait, my message was obviously intended as a bit sarcastic (which isn't very smart, I'll admit). But are you actually saying that I'm now allowed two racist comments without risking a ban? (three, counting this guideline-abiding comment?)
- dang 1y agoI'm not saying that, no.
- Dettorer 1y agoThen I don't understand what you were saying by "this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade", wasn't that a response to my previous comment that said exactly that?
- dang 1y agoOh, I see. Let me try to be clearer. It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.) I meant that what I was doing in the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362) was standard practice. As you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20review%20guidelines&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it goes back a long time. We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
- tfrutuoso 1y agoWe appreciate your biased comment, aimed at portraying Palestinians as terrorists and non-indigenous to the area, cherry-picking history as it suits your narrative. We're not interested, though. Thank you.
- meindnoch 1y agoMostly, yes. Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world. Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia. Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves. Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
- orbital-decay 1y agoNot sure if I would lump all those up together, these examples are overly broad and have little in common. There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades, let alone European imperialism, especially if you take Ethiopian, Greek, Georgian, and Armenian Christians into account. Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between, and Mongol Empire was humongous to begin with, it wasn't about Rus' in particular. And communists that became ruthless oppressors were already radicalized during the persecution, it was literally the radical wing of a militant faction of a huge umbrella party that included people that would have felt right at home in modern EU (e.g. Kollontai and her early activism). The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.
- spacecadet 1y agoI wouldn't consider this "lumping the groups together", or that they must exist together in time... its likely a group may require many generations before they can "oppress" another group. My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.
- int_19h 1y ago> There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades You don't need to go that far forward, though. It took Christians <400 years to promulgate the Edict of Thessalonica that made Christianity (and of a very particular kind at that!) to be the only legal religion. And one can argue that it's no coincidence that it happened pretty much as soon as they have gained the political upper hand in the Roman Empire. > Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between Not really. Muscovy was still paying tribute to the Golden Horde and recognizing their supreme authority under Ivan III. His grandson Ivan IV ("the Terrible") conquered the Tatar state, making its lands such as Kazan part of his empire, and sent an expedition to start the conquest of Siberia. The inaccuracies here are not so much with timing, more so with lack of precision wrt the groups involved. In general, though, I think it's fair to say that, for most part of human history, the oppressed become the oppressors pretty much as soon as they are capable of it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- perlgeek 1y agoI'd say it's very hard for a powerful nation to not suppress somebody in the long run. Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
- spacecadet 1y agoAgreed. Its possible that the group survived their oppression and becomes powerful enough to oppress, they loose their identify, in the sense that their culture evolves, along the way. Resulting in oppression along some axis.
- locallost 1y agoI don't know if it's always the case, but it's true if given the opportunity. In the end all people are the same. Cultures may be different, but our lizard brains are the same. Us vs them, and dehumanizing others into something less than humans, whose suffering does not concern us.
- bombcar 1y agoNo. Many times the oppressed simply cease to exist (by assimilation, assassination, or other means). Neanderthals aren’t going to become oppressors.
- spacecadet 1y agoWell yeah, I meant if they go on to survive and become significant enough to be considered oppressive...
- int_19h 1y agoFor a more recent example of a group that was basically exterminated wholesale because they refused to fight back as a matter of principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]