• barsoap
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    1 year ago

    Like sure conditions for serfs weren’t great,

    They were abhorrent. You’re really playing semantics here, conditions were essentially slave-like just as, say, Cuba under Batista.

    built the wealth of europe

    No. Water power did, Europe has an absurd number of suitable streams for grain mills which allowed the creation of extensive trade, merchant, and scholar classes – as they could be fed. Which led to technological superiority which led to the capacity to roll over other nations (and the presumption that it was the right thing to do). Without that pre-existing wealth all that colonising would not have been possible.

    Where’s the lie? You guys think that’s a good thing.

    You’re accusing me of condoning or advocating genocide?

    • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      No. Water power did, Europe has an absurd number of suitable streams for grain mills allowing less the creation of extensive trade, merchant, and scholar classes. Which led to technological superiority which led to the capacity to roll over other nations (and the presumption that it was the right thing to do). Without that pre-existing wealth all that colonising would not have been possible.

      It was definitely the slavery

      • barsoap
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        1 year ago

        If it was slavery then why didn’t Africa develop that quickly? They’re the ones who sold the slaves!

        • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Because they weren’t the ones working the slaves to death in Caribbean plantations. Have you read any history?

          Also there were plenty of indigenous slaves taken, whole generations worked to death in mines to send silver back to europe

          • barsoap
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            1 year ago

            No they did it in Africa.

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                1 year ago

                …for centuries if not millennia at quite low ROI and then Europeans came along with fancy ships and the capacity to conquer more fertile places earning quite a bit more dough per slave.

                As said: The primary cause of Europe’s wealth is early technological development, at scale, and in breadth, enabled because lots of food could be produced with comparatively small workforce.

                  • barsoap
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                    1 year ago

                    Where, precisely, did I excuse that behaviour?

                    Really the reading comprehension among hexbears is at disappointing levels. Too much circle-jerking in isolation, I guess, rots the brain.

                • Yes, the europeans showed up to profit-maximize the slavery process. That was the technological innovation, the boats helped, but the main part of the equation was translating huge amounts of human suffering into money, and then re-investing it. You’re hyping up Europeans technology up a little too much, chauvinists tend to. Europe was a plague-ridden backwater for centuries before they opted to sacrifice endless humans to Moloch. They “invented” all sorts of science to tell themselves it was the ‘natural order’.

                  Based on how you’re responding you do think this is a good thing though and are giving it positive spin.

                  • barsoap
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                    1 year ago

                    I’m merely saying how things are, why Europe was in the position it was, why it has the edge it has. You know, material realism.

    • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      You’re accusing me of condoning or advocating genocide?

      You already told me to fuck off for pointing out that parts of Ukraine have been getting shelled by its own government for over 8 years, considering that response, yes that was my conclusion.

      • barsoap
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        1 year ago

        You already told me to fuck off for pointing out that parts of Ukraine have been getting shelled by its own government for over 8 years,

        No. I told you to fuck off for this:

        The Ukrainian state has been killing civilians indiscriminately in its two breakaway regions

        Yes, Ukraine has been shelling Russian positions in those regions for quite a while now.

        • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Donetsk city has been routinely getting hit for years, it’s why the SMO started

          and again here you are cheerleading for indiscriminately killing civilians

          Yes, Ukraine has been shelling Russian positions in those regions for quite a while now.

          hitler-detector

          • barsoap
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            1 year ago

            it’s why the SMO started

            A resounding no. The worst collateral damage happened under Poroshenko, one of the reasons why he lost against Zelenskyy.

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                1 year ago

                coup in 2014

                Ватник отъебись сказал мне не слушаешь урод

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                    1 year ago

                    A special electoral operation. Yanukovich reneged on election promises, people didn’t like that and protested, he tried to turn Ukraine into a dictatorship, people liked that even less and protested even more, NATO sent… politicians, to negotiate compromises, protesters wanted to hear nothing about that, Yanukovich fled to his masters in Russia, got removed from office because AWOL, brief interim government, promptly followed by new elections which is how those kinds of iffy situations get solved in democracies.

                    You used the OSCE as a source previously, pray tell me what does the OSCE say about the following elections?

    • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      They were abhorrent. You’re really playing semantics here, conditions were essentially slave-like just as, say, Cuba under Batista.

      Yes it was bad, still not as bad as chattel slavery, but pretty bad, that’s why it was completely deserved when they had a revolution. Not sure why you keep bringing up the colonization of siberia like it’s relevant to what’s going on now though. Comparing the amount of human life lost in that to the conquest of Americas though is just silly- there’s no comparison and the same American government is still around since then!

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        1 year ago

        This isn’t a “did the UK or Russia kill more natives” kind of discussion. This is a “Russia is a colonial empire” kind of discussion.

        And yes of course fewer natives died in Siberia, it’s fucking cold there there were never many in the first place.

        • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          They have had several government changes since then. The US has the same constitution since it was doing its shit, the one with slavery in it. (they only do it to prisoners now though, don’t ask too many questions about why they have the highest prison population in the world)

          Calling them a ‘colonial empire’ especially from the seat of the worlds largest and most brutal historical colonial empires is laughable. (1/3 of Africa has had a monetary policy run out of Paris to this day, I wonder why they’re kicking them out)