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American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the stage for the modern era of international law. It began with the United States, along with the allied natio

American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the stage for the modern era of international law. It began with the United States, along with the allied nations, constructing a post-facto legal definition of crime against humanity that somehow included the Holocaust but excluded both the American campaign in Japan and various Russian war crimes on the Western Front. It’s not cynicism to point out the clear hypocrisy.

embedding-shape 11mo ago
Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against humanity". The winners truly do control the history.
- vlovich123 11mo ago
  Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on extermination? It was state level discrimination that Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their “Jewish problem”. By 1939 you had formal government-enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction. Don’t get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was state level after effects of the civil war and failure to establish absolute dominance over the southern states in reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war over and we’re still dealing with today. But one difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is subjugation not extermination
  - embedding-shape 11mo ago
    Subjugation or extermination, if it wasn't for the addition of "as part of a war of aggression" to the "Crimes against Humanity", the US would have been considered as participating in crimes against humanity at the same time they were partcipating in the Nuremberg trials. It's thanks to the US, that crimes against humanity is only considered when there is an active war of aggression, precisely because Jim Crow was a current thing at that time.
IAmBroom 11mo ago
I was unaware that the US did anything similar to the Holocaust in Japan. As are the Japanese.
- embedding-shape 11mo ago
  I don't think there are many Japanese alive today not aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true they didn't place Japanese in internment cam.. no wait, they did do that. While it's true they didn't straight up execute Japanese folks on the street, they did effectively erase two cities from the world map, how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity", I don't know why we even have the label. So yeah, the US didn't spend years doing horrible stuff to humans like the Nazis did, the US wasn't exactly an angel in that conflict, by a long shot. But neither was pretty much any nation, I guess it kind comes with the whole "world war" thing.
  - TimorousBestie 11mo ago
    The firebombing of Tokyo and civilian residential districts in many other cities was what I had in mind, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo 100k dead, 1M homeless, mostly civilian.
    - vlovich123 11mo ago
      All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a pass from the wave of destruction is naive. However, one main difference people in this thread seem to forget is that America’s civilian kills were about dealing damage to an enemy country within enemy territory. It’s horrific but the main difference was that Germany mass executed and actively tortured civilians within its own territory. America never did that and as horrific and regrettable Japanese internment camps were, and full of racism and prejudice, and failing to even uphold the Constitution and just being abject failures in treating people humanely, comparing them to Nazi concentration camps indicates a complete and utter failure in understanding how different the situation was; America was not trying to actively exterminate Japanese citizens within its borders as a matter of policy. The closest American came to Nazi Germany was the persecution of black people within its borders but even while Nazi germany was inspired by Jim Crow in terms of how to treat Jews, it’s a failure to recognize that Nazi Germany ran off with the idea when they started setting up death camps. The closest American came to that was lynchings which never reached the scale or official government sanction that concentration camps did. The closest American could be said to have done that was the Trail of Tears and their treatment of Native Americans; American has always struggled to contain the racist instincts of a significant part of their population but it is not unique in this challenge.

embedding-shape 11mo ago

Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against humanity". The winners truly do control the history.

vlovich123 11mo ago
Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on extermination? It was state level discrimination that Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their “Jewish problem”. By 1939 you had formal government-enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction. Don’t get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was state level after effects of the civil war and failure to establish absolute dominance over the southern states in reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war over and we’re still dealing with today. But one difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is subjugation not extermination
- embedding-shape 11mo ago
  Subjugation or extermination, if it wasn't for the addition of "as part of a war of aggression" to the "Crimes against Humanity", the US would have been considered as participating in crimes against humanity at the same time they were partcipating in the Nuremberg trials. It's thanks to the US, that crimes against humanity is only considered when there is an active war of aggression, precisely because Jim Crow was a current thing at that time.

IAmBroom 11mo ago

I was unaware that the US did anything similar to the Holocaust in Japan. As are the Japanese.

embedding-shape 11mo ago
I don't think there are many Japanese alive today not aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true they didn't place Japanese in internment cam.. no wait, they did do that. While it's true they didn't straight up execute Japanese folks on the street, they did effectively erase two cities from the world map, how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity", I don't know why we even have the label. So yeah, the US didn't spend years doing horrible stuff to humans like the Nazis did, the US wasn't exactly an angel in that conflict, by a long shot. But neither was pretty much any nation, I guess it kind comes with the whole "world war" thing.
- TimorousBestie 11mo ago
  The firebombing of Tokyo and civilian residential districts in many other cities was what I had in mind, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo 100k dead, 1M homeless, mostly civilian.
  - vlovich123 11mo ago
    All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a pass from the wave of destruction is naive. However, one main difference people in this thread seem to forget is that America’s civilian kills were about dealing damage to an enemy country within enemy territory. It’s horrific but the main difference was that Germany mass executed and actively tortured civilians within its own territory. America never did that and as horrific and regrettable Japanese internment camps were, and full of racism and prejudice, and failing to even uphold the Constitution and just being abject failures in treating people humanely, comparing them to Nazi concentration camps indicates a complete and utter failure in understanding how different the situation was; America was not trying to actively exterminate Japanese citizens within its borders as a matter of policy. The closest American came to Nazi Germany was the persecution of black people within its borders but even while Nazi germany was inspired by Jim Crow in terms of how to treat Jews, it’s a failure to recognize that Nazi Germany ran off with the idea when they started setting up death camps. The closest American came to that was lynchings which never reached the scale or official government sanction that concentration camps did. The closest American could be said to have done that was the Trail of Tears and their treatment of Native Americans; American has always struggled to contain the racist instincts of a significant part of their population but it is not unique in this challenge.