this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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The issue, which is obvious to most people that aren't Euro-American, is that if you view generations of colonial violence as a normal baseline, then calling for "both sides" to "stop fighting" whenever colonial subjects resist isn't actually calling for peace. It's calling for the colonized to submit and go back to being quietly exterminated in an orderly fashion so you can go back to not thinking about it.
Is conquest exclusive to euro-american history?
No, but modern settler colonialism is largely limited to the Euro-American present. White Euro-Americans built the empire they now live in on a centuries long campaign of ongoing brutal extraction against the rest of the world, then turned around and said “This is just the way god made the world. Why would anyone want to disrupt this natural state of peace?”
Peace for a slaver is not peace for a slave.
Brutal extraction isn't unique to colonialism either. Colonialism is just ancient imperialism with boats.
That said, imperialism has never been moral and we shouldn't excuse contemporary imperialists, just like we'd probably be appalled at the exploits of Julius Caesar during the Gallic Wars if we weren't so far removed from them.