America is genocidal, sure, but so is every single other society in the history of civilization. America is exceptional because of the technology and the art it contributed to genocide, which is the goal of every civiliztion, remember. Pointing out the difference in scale of US atrocities just prevents us working together for greater justice.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/6343679 https://hexbear.net/comment/4329347
What the fuck are you talking about? The vast majority of modern states don’t even have the military capabilities of ‘making the mistakes’ the U.S. makes (here’s a thing, they aren’t mistakes), let alone at the scale they make them. Are you gonna claim like Uzbekistan is invading countries half-way across the globe or killed off 97% of it’s native population?
This is besides the fact that most of the time, genocide wasn’t economically on the table for most ancient empires, outside of re-settlement, and even then, that was pretty damn rare and thus was mentioned often when it did happen (Babylon, Persia etc.). Often rulers would brag of commiting genocide, but the historical (archeological) and genealogical record doesn’t agree with their proclamations. Actual genocide is usually fueled by a want for economic lesbarum or previous colonial economic divides and relationships.
For example, when ancient Pharaohs went south to ‘Subjugate Upper Egypt’ they surely fought battles (though again what battles they fought and how large they were are probably exaggerated) but Egyptian control of the area was always limited to a series of small forts that would mostly protect the gold mines and trade routes. It was not about population control. Imperialism? Sure. War Crimes? Sure. Settler-colonial genocide? No.
It’s all oppression down to the first turtle. I’m not sure that you are picking up on my position. I’m concede the US is the great satan. But what I’m not doing is allowing the oppressors to divide me from other human beings of good will in the hope that we are stronger United.
And if you think that the building of the pyramids did not involved slavery, oppression, and genocide, you’ll need to crack some books.
The building of the pyramids didn’t involve slavery they were built by paid laborers, maybe learn to actually read a book instead of just cracking it.
I can’t site any sources cuz this was a while ago, but I looked into it and apparently there is some debate over this among historians. It’s likely some slave labor was used building the pyramids but generally the guys doing most of the actual masonry work were paid freemen, cuz most slaves didn’t have the craft skills to do that kind of work.
And… it’s a controversial topic but yes, the ancient Egyptians used slaves. So… it does not absolve the US for a single second — what the US did was hideous and horrible.
Hardly however makes America mean murderer.