11 Comments

Excellent summary.

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Humankind originated in Africa. So all countries outside Africa are settler colonial states. All.

Most within it, as well. The Bantu speaking peoples of southern Africa displaced the indigenous Bushmen.

The Turks are the settler colonialists of Asia Minor, murdering and expelling millions (literally - ask what's left of the Armenians for more detail), the Arabs are settler colonialists of much of the Middle East and North Africa. In Egypt, the Copts are the descendants of the indigenous, the Arabs were a militarised occupying class. I don't see protests about that.

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The United States is the world's largest "colonial settler state". But it's not alone. There is Canada (the favorite fantasy country of American leftist loonies), Australia, New Zealand, and le's not forget Argentina, whose leaders exterminated the indigenous population in the so called "Conquest of the Desert" in the 1870s. Before we ask Israel to dismantle itself, shouldn't we go after the bigger fish first? Just asking.

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The US is not the largest "colonial settler state." Russia is. Before 1500, the state of Russia had maybe 1/6 (or less) of the land area we now know as Russia and formerly as the Soviet Union. Over a period of about 200 years, the Russians took over all the land east of old Russia. Before the Russian takeover, Siberia was thinly settled by a variety of indigenous peoples, mostly tribal societies (some of them related to the "Native American" tribes that had migrated to North America and settled there).

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Proud coloniser since 1965.

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Thank you, Danielle, for continuing to open our eyes and making the case that antisemitism is never right, whatever it’s form, and needs to be continually called out. Please keep up the good fight. You are making a difference.

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Colonialization is a net good.

"The rule of law and of order has succeeded to the rule of barbarous and bloody violence. Until the great civilized nations stepped in there was no chance for anything but such bloody violence." - Theodore Roosevelt, Expansion and Peace

"The result of the last Turko-Russian war was an immense and permanent increase of happiness for Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. These provinces became independent or passed under the dominion of Austria, and the advantage that accrued to them because of this expansion of the domain of civilization at the expense of barbarism has been simply incalculable. This expansion produced peace, and put a stop to the ceaseless, grinding, bloody tyranny that had desolated the Balkans for so many centuries." - Theodore Roosevelt, Expansion and Peace

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.[To Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati religious funeral practice of burning widows alive on her husband’s funeral pyre.]”

― Charles James Napier

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An apt reminder of how perspectives have changed.

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Any civilized person should honestly ask themselves what the possibility of living in peace is, with the kind of people in the picture.

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Excellent brief, though I'd add the Sentinelese and a handful of other groups to those we'd consider non-colonizers. ;)

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