Herero latest

[Monte Davis]

"False equivalence"? I don't question for one second -- and venture that I
could cite a lot more evidence than you could for -- the overwhelming edge
in power and organized aggression of the European expansion over nearly all
the indigenous people it encountered in Africa, Asia, and the New World.

But I don't agree that it "rubs salt in the wounds of the victims" to
acknowledge that there *were* many indigenous, warlike, expansionist,
slave-taking empires -- Chinese, Indian, Mongol, Central and West African,
Mexica (Aztec), Inca, Five Nations -- before the Europeans arrived. Or that
their interactions with Europeans got complicated:

- the Huron and Mohicans playing English and French for guns in their own
immemorial war, while the English and French were playing them
- Indian rajahs and sultans doing the same against each other with -- and
typically marching with -- troops of the British East India Company,
French, and Portuguese
- Cortes taking Tenochtitlan with 750 Spaniards -- and 80,000 or more
Tlaxcalan and other allies he'd recruited, who cheerfully slaughtered their
erstwhile Mexica overlords

You call these "unique"; I call them ubiquitous. It's the Herero "war," the
Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, that are more nearly unique precisely
because they were so one-sided; the victims had *no* state, allies or
organized military power of their own. That doesn't mean everything that
happened from 1450 to 1950 was the same story writ large.

Nor does it mean that other, less helplessly "pure" victims, deserved or
asked for what imperialism/colonialism did to them. It doesn't exculpate
Europeans from any of their bloody 500-year spree. It just means that *all*
humans are liable to eat the apple (drink the Kool-aid?) of power and
domination when they can.

Pynchon spends a lot of time exploring the specifically European and USAn
expressions of that, and it leaves a mark -- as it should. But he also dips
via Calvinism to Adam's fall and other mythologies, visits ancient ruins
and legends, zooms out to millennia rather than centuries -- and those are
reminders (I think deliberate) that it's not *all* about us.



On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 9:55 AM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I think it is pretty clear, and that bringing up the divisions,
> infighting and betrayal among the Herero amounts to a false
> equivalence.
>
> I'm not insinuating that you endorse or excuse the genocide in any
> way, but each of those examples you listed are unique. Lumping them
> together rubs salt in the wounds of the victims.
>
> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 7:29 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Gotcha. All clear now.
> >
> > On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 8:42 PM, jody boy <jodys.gone2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> This is an example of white European Christians travelling thousands
> >> of miles to the homeland of native Africans, colonizing it, and then
> >> rounding up the natives and systematically exterminating them. The
> >> only complexity about this is the twisted, convoluted arguments about
> >> why they did it, and why they should not be held accountable.
> >>
> >> "Oh, but it's more complicated than that..."  I'm reminded of
> >> Archduke Ferdinand playing the dozens. Oh, and his trophy's- if he
> >> even bothered to have the carcasses stuffed- littering the plains. Or,
> >> those brave "souls" riding along
> >> on the first transcontinental railroad shooting the buffalo until
> >> their fingers got tired.
> >>
> >> Let's get real here, and not obfuscate like the ink of a white octopus.
> >>
> >> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 9:55 AM, e tb <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Salt in old wounds: What Germany owes Namibia | The Economist
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/
> 21721918-saying-sorry-atrocities-century-ago-has-so-
> far-made-matters-worse-what
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >
> >
>
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