Michael Medved on slavery (AKA historical revisionism)

[hongi]

Oh dear. Oh dear.

Six inconvenient truths about the U.S. and slavery

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.

2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

I think this is the worst one:

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

I guess by that logic, the Jewish people are better off for the Holocaust...

Read some criticisms (in the comments section) here. David Duke would be proud.

[K. A. Pital]

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

You mean the British fucking Empire didn't beat the United States to abolishing slavery?

Wow, racists and slavery lovers are still going strong in the US. That's surprising, albeit not entirely out of the blue. God.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

He's correct on some points, but the conclusion is rather a "so what?"

For instance, slavery was ancient and universal, not invented by Americans. So what? Who says Americans invented it? It seems he's attacking a straw man.

Even if we assume that modern African Americans are better off than if their ancestors had remained in Africa, it doesn't imply slavery was the right choice. It's not either or, nor does it mean slavery is "ok."

Of course most slave owners didn't kill their slaves on purpose, and sometimes they did lose money when they did it. They did it anyway. When slavery moved to home-grown instead of importation formats, the mentality of slave owners changed somewhat, though. Slave masters would frequently beat their slaves or mutilate them, but keep them able to work.

Many were still killed though to make examples for other slaves.

Many of the most prosperous states were those that freed slaves, because slavery ultimately is a shitty system and the other economies were far more diversified. It made the planters a shit tonne of money, though.

[K. A. Pital]

That's like taking a club, beating a person to bloody pulp and then saying... "Well, you're better off than if you were DEAD! Say thank you, bitch".

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I know, really. It's bizarre. Even if you assumed the modern descendants are better off, that doesn't justify the means to get there for all those who suffered. The ends don't justify the means because the means inform the nature of the end.

[K. A. Pital]

Modern descendants are better off because slavery ended, not because it existed, so the claims really are ridiculous in their own right.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

This reminds me of another revisionist book they are selling at the history section of the Barnes & Nobel. It's call "Right History" or something where they essentially take everything in a real textbook and turn it on its head.

A Patriot's History does the same thing.

[Civil War Man]

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.

Mostly true, except IIRC it wasn't practiced as widely in areas where the predominant religions still practiced human sacrifice.

2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.

Incorrect. Slavery was practiced in a full half of the states at the time, as well as several of the territories. It did involve a limited percentage of the ancestors of today's Americans, due mostly to slave owning being limited to the wealthy aristocrats as well as several large influxes of immigrants following the Civil War.

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.

It is true that slaves were more valuable not dead...

...unless, of course, they didn't follow orders. For the masters, it was better to have one dead slave than 10 rebellious ones.

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.

Of course, that was because those states became industrialized and it was much cheaper to pay a desperate immigrant and sub-subsistence wage than it was to actually invest in slaves.

But then of course it wasn't like those New England textile factories needed anything from the South. Definitely not a white fluffy cash crop grown primarily on slave populated plantations.

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

Yeah, we all know those British held onto their slaves until the Americans showed them the light.

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

Yeah, particularly since we made sure to fuck up Africa even more.

[Elfdart]

This isn't Medved's first stroll down the boulevards of "revisionism". He also claims that there was no genocide against American Indians, and that there were very few atrocities against Vietnamese civilians by the Americans. Which leads to two obvious questions:

1) So where did all those pesky redskins go?

2) Were Vietnamese civilians dropping napalm and clusterbombs on themselves?

The answer? Michael Medved is a racist and an aficionado for slavery, war crimes and genocide. He's also a torture enthusiast. The other day on his radio show he was whining that John McCain was "wrong on torture" when McCain called out Mitt Romney on the subject. If Anne Frank were still alive, Medved would probably say she was "wrong on concentration camps".

[Flagg]

Didn't he write this awhile ago?

[K. A. Pital]

He also claims that there was no genocide against American Indians, and that there were very few atrocities against Vietnamese civilians by the Americans

Really? I guess the American Indians killed themselves in a massive suicide, and the Vietnamese bombed themselves into the stone age.

In Russia, we have a black-humour anecdote about Stierlitz:

Stierlitz walked downtown Berlin and saw a machine-gunned Jew body.
- What a gruesome suicide! - thought Stierlitz.

All those people were just killing themselves. And the Africans gladly went into slavery for a better life... nevermind those shackles worn to keep them from escaping the glorious Anglo-American wooden ships. They were just a cosmetic attribute. Yeah.

[lord Martiya]

Exactly, how that idiot managed to not laugh while saying this shit? Does he come from the same actor school of the German politicians that say 'Roma is a living condition, not a culture or a people' or what?

[Bounty]

WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

Where does this argument come from? The US was one of the last supposedly "civilized" countries to abolish slavery, nearly fifty years after the Brits started actively fighting the practice. The only countries who did worse are imperial China and shitholes like Ehtiopia.

In fact, there's a gap of over a century between abolition in Russia and in the US. Is 130 years "rapid" in this guy's eyes?

[K. A. Pital]

Is 130 years "rapid" in this guy's eyes?

He just tries to get credit for AMERICA! where it deserves none. Don't be too hard on the poor chap, American nationalism is hard-pressed to find reasons for assholery these days.

[Lusankya]

So what kind of credit does Australia deserve for not having slavery in the first place? Or do we miss out, because you only get to go to the Success Room if you're usually naughty, but then spend a little while being a good student?

[speaker-to-trolls]

Your credit for not having slavery is minimal due to the fact that there was no real use for it in Australia (no big plantations) and what you do have is cancelled out because of the situation with the aboriginals.

Sorry, nil points.

[Xon]

So what kind of credit does Australia deserve for not having slavery in the first place? Or do we miss out, because you only get to go to the Success Room if you're usually naughty, but then spend a little while being a good student?

Because the initial slave labour Australia was built on was convicted "criminals" (which could be anything as simple as stealing a loaf of bread at the time to something serious), and even then they were released once they payed thier debt(probably cheaper to pay them as unskilled labours than as convicts )

[Elfdart]

He also claims that there was no genocide against American Indians, and that there were very few atrocities against Vietnamese civilians by the Americans

Really? I guess the American Indians killed themselves in a massive suicide, and the Vietnamese bombed themselves into the stone age.

Medved probably thinks they're sunning themselves on the beach in Australia, which is where Mel "Splatter of the Christ" Gibson's dad thinks European Jewry went rather than Auschwitz. In the priceless words of Scottie's obnoxious little brother in Eurotrip:

What a fucking loser!

[The Guid]

What kind of bullshit do people have to be on to believe that people are better off because of the intervention in Africa? The European Empires, which recieved a lot of funding from selling of slaves to the Americas went in a fucked Africa (and not just Africa) sideways, wiping out vast swathes of populations, completely stamping on native art, culture and social structure leaving behind a real horrible mess.

[Gil Hamilton]

Just 80 some years after the nation was founded and the bloodiest conflict in American history per capita later... the US sure abolished slavery quickly! I wonder out of curiosity what he thinks the Civil War was about, anyway. Problem thinks it was the Federalists trampling State's Rights and it had nothing, whatsoever, to do with slavery.

[Darth Wong]

I guess all of those Underground Railroad slave refugees who fled the US South and came to Canada in the 19th century were fleeing from ... FREEDOM!!

[Darth Wong]

He's correct on some points, but the conclusion is rather a "so what?"

For instance, slavery was ancient and universal, not invented by Americans. So what? Who says Americans invented it? It seems he's attacking a straw man.

He's also pretending that all forms of slavery are identical. While slavery is bad in all its forms, slaves were historically often simply victims of military conquest. The American black slavery machine was based on the notion that an entire race of people was intended by God to be slaves. The Texas State Declaration of Secession said as much.

[Pelranius]

It looks like Medved wants to take this year's Ku Klux Klan "Aryan Jew" award away from Michael Savage.

Is Mr. Medved still reviewing movies?

[Flagg]

He's correct on some points, but the conclusion is rather a "so what?"

For instance, slavery was ancient and universal, not invented by Americans. So what? Who says Americans invented it? It seems he's attacking a straw man.

He's also pretending that all forms of slavery are identical. While slavery is bad in all its forms, slaves were historically often simply victims of military conquest. The American black slavery machine was based on the notion that an entire race of people was intended by God to be slaves. The Texas State Declaration of Secession said as much.

Not only that, but it didn't matter if one or more of your anscestors was white. You could be only 1/8 black, but as long as it was easy to tell, then you were just another slave. Even the fucking Nazis had a cutoff point.

[Phantasee]

He's correct on some points, but the conclusion is rather a "so what?"

For instance, slavery was ancient and universal, not invented by Americans. So what? Who says Americans invented it? It seems he's attacking a straw man.

He's also pretending that all forms of slavery are identical. While slavery is bad in all its forms, slaves were historically often simply victims of military conquest. The American black slavery machine was based on the notion that an entire race of people was intended by God to be slaves. The Texas State Declaration of Secession said as much.

Not only that, but it didn't matter if one or more of your anscestors was white. You could be only 1/8 black, but as long as it was easy to tell, then you were just another slave. Even the fucking Nazis had a cutoff point.

What was their cutoff point?