Yes, it’s not that genocide has never happened in democracies. But in the US, democratic institutions were not the driving factors behind the genocide: you did not have actors locked in to their genocidal actions due to the democratic institutions. Democracy and genocide in America were two largely separate things.
My idea here is that while the genocides on Native Americans were genocides in a democracy, Israel’s genocide can be categorized as a genocide by democracy. It is made possible, or at the very least worse, by democratic institutions (however flawed).
It’s just a shower thought really, I might obviously be wrong. But I have a fairly good overview of the history of genocide and I am fairly certain this one is unique in this regard.
Yeah I think you’re wrong. Many politicians in the US won their votes on the idea of being tougher on the native population. (I think of Andrew Jackson in particular.) Similarly to how many politicians in the South won on upholding slavery before the civil war and Jim Crow laws after it.
Conservatism itself is basically the belief that there should be, is by nature, or exists a certain hierarchy in society and that it can be reinforced with violence if necessary in order to “protect it” from egalitarianism.
But in the US the genocide was largely carried out by random people shooting folks for fun from their train wagons, in Israel it’s carried out by the professionally organized army of an allegedly democratic nation. Very different.
Even when the US army was directly involved (no small degree, especially if you don’t accept Native American warriors as military targets), its actions were not driven by Democratic institutions. Sure, people voted for leaders who supported genocide, but the genocide was not the direct result of democratic institutions malfunctioning. In Israel it is.
Natives were excluded from the political system, just like they are in Israel.
Natives were seen as savage threats to colonists. In Israel, Palestinians are seen as terroristic threats to settlers.
They’re very similar and the main differences are eras, technology, and geography.
America is a lot larger and at the time the surveillance and military technology didn’t exist to round every native up and put them in an open air prison. Where there were large communities of native Americans living in organized settlements, the government ran largely the same playbook Israel does today: move them from preferred areas to areas nobody wanted, put them in camps when camps existed, go to war with them directly, etc.
The US did a genocide on the Native Americans, even after being a democracy.
Yes, it’s not that genocide has never happened in democracies. But in the US, democratic institutions were not the driving factors behind the genocide: you did not have actors locked in to their genocidal actions due to the democratic institutions. Democracy and genocide in America were two largely separate things.
My idea here is that while the genocides on Native Americans were genocides in a democracy, Israel’s genocide can be categorized as a genocide by democracy. It is made possible, or at the very least worse, by democratic institutions (however flawed).
It’s just a shower thought really, I might obviously be wrong. But I have a fairly good overview of the history of genocide and I am fairly certain this one is unique in this regard.
Yeah I think you’re wrong. Many politicians in the US won their votes on the idea of being tougher on the native population. (I think of Andrew Jackson in particular.) Similarly to how many politicians in the South won on upholding slavery before the civil war and Jim Crow laws after it.
Conservatism itself is basically the belief that there should be, is by nature, or exists a certain hierarchy in society and that it can be reinforced with violence if necessary in order to “protect it” from egalitarianism.
But in the US the genocide was largely carried out by random people shooting folks for fun from their train wagons, in Israel it’s carried out by the professionally organized army of an allegedly democratic nation. Very different.
Even when the US army was directly involved (no small degree, especially if you don’t accept Native American warriors as military targets), its actions were not driven by Democratic institutions. Sure, people voted for leaders who supported genocide, but the genocide was not the direct result of democratic institutions malfunctioning. In Israel it is.
Natives were excluded from the political system, just like they are in Israel.
Natives were seen as savage threats to colonists. In Israel, Palestinians are seen as terroristic threats to settlers.
They’re very similar and the main differences are eras, technology, and geography.
America is a lot larger and at the time the surveillance and military technology didn’t exist to round every native up and put them in an open air prison. Where there were large communities of native Americans living in organized settlements, the government ran largely the same playbook Israel does today: move them from preferred areas to areas nobody wanted, put them in camps when camps existed, go to war with them directly, etc.