• 🏴حمید پیام عباسی🏴@crazypeople.onlineOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    7 days ago

    The US nearly completely wiped out the indigenous people who lived there

    When European settlers arrived in the Americas, historians estimate there were over 10 million Native Americans living there. By 1900, their estimated population was under 300,000. Native Americans were subjected to many different forms of violence, all with the intention of destroying the community. In the late 1800s, blankets from smallpox patients were distributed to Native Americans in order to spread disease. There were several wars, and violence was encouraged; for example, European settlers were paid for each Penobscot person they killed. In the 19th century, 4,000 Cherokee people died on the Trail of Tears, a forced march from the southern U.S. to Oklahoma. In the 20th century, civil rights violations were common, and discrimination continues to this day.

    Multiple millions of people were captured in Africa and sold as slaves as well

    • Grapho@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      7 days ago

      They also partook in widespread ecocide to starve the natives. They deliberately killed every buffalo they could and let them out to rot.

    • Surely we’d attribute most of those murders to the British Empire and the other colonisers at the time, no? The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.

      Again, not disputing that all of this is fucking horrible, but it’s not somehow “worse” than the sum of crimes committed by Nazi Germany (as far as comparing atrocities goes that is, which feels like something one shouldn’t compare too much. Each one is one too many after all).

      • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.

        Germany didn’t write the holocaust out of their history like Americans did.

        To mock the line I keep seeing in this thread full of apologists: Nazi Germany wasn’t quite there yet. They would have been as bad as the US if they had time.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        7 days ago

        The vast majority of these people died before the US even conceptually existed.

        Disgusting take, acting as if genocide was not colonial policy. You desperately need to read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - an indigenous people’s history of the US.