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gohuskies posted:Two problems - American involvement was ramping up even before then, and the US wouldn't have known in real time about the magnitude of death in the cultural revolution or the GLF. Yeah I wasn't arguing for the previous opinion, just pointing out that there were definitely qualifying events that fitted those criteria.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:14
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Deteriorata posted:Stalin's purges in the '30s would have been a bigger issue. They weren't covered much in the Western press, but those in power would have been aware of them. Sure, the term "Yellow Peril" is racist, but the fear it expresses of the teeming hordes of Asia overwhelming Western civilization is purely ideological because,
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Apr 6, 2016 19:17
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Jamwad Hilder posted:This is explicitly the reason that the Romans started conquering stuff. Military glory, slaves, and plunder were the main motivating factors. Securing the borders and potentially conquering new people to tax was just a side benefit. Yes, but why did they feel they were in the right to kill people to attain that loot is what I'm asking? To kill someone over any poo poo at all, you need to consider them less than yourself - this requires some sense of superiority above an beyond an instinct of survival, and this is some kind of discriminatory impulse - part of what we call racism today. Hogge Wild posted:When you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. It's kinda like the D&D Marxists who can't stop post about Marxism, Trump, and labor unions in the Ancient History thread. Some people just think that racism makes the world go round. Yeah, or perhaps D&D posters can also be spergy manbabies who dare not let reality get in the way of building conceptually pure nerd castles. You're not really contributing. Tias fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 19:21
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You are making some extremely large leaps in logic. For patrician Romans posted to the provinces as quaestors, it actually was literally about acquiring enough money to climb the cursus honorum and stand for Consul at some point. "Unknown parties" killed off a signficant Legionnary guard to steal about ten to fifteen thousand talents in Gaul, who were likely hired by Quintius Servilius Caepio, a proconsul. For proconsuls, it was probably about recouping the cost of the cursus honorum and the consulship, as well as funding the next generation of their family's climb.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:38
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Empress Theonora posted:Sure, the term "Yellow Peril" is racist, but the fear it expresses of the teeming hordes of Asia overwhelming Western civilization is purely ideological because, Because of their ideology. It was not that they were Chinese, it's that they were now Communists. This really isn't very complicated. I have no idea why you're having a hard time thinking that ideology mattered more than race.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:41
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Deteriorata posted:Because of their ideology. It was not that they were Chinese, it's that they were now Communists. I've never heard the Yellow Peril term used to describe communist China...?
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Apr 6, 2016 19:45
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Yellow Peril has mostly been used to describe the present variety of Asian immigrants entering the United States.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:48
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bewbies posted:I've never heard the Yellow Peril term used to describe communist China...? Never been downundah have you mate? 
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Apr 6, 2016 19:48
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bewbies posted:I've never heard the Yellow Peril term used to describe communist China...? I'm unaware of its usage prior to the '60s. Looking it up, I see it does have a rather nasty heritage. As a kid growing up in the '60s, it exclusively referred to Chinese Communists, led by Chairman Mao, quoting from their Little Red Books. It was entirely about fear of communism. Ed: Monty Python had the same idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGv2wqJJmbc
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Apr 6, 2016 19:50
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I'm pretty sure that it was actually still about nasty Asiatics, but with an additional dimension of fear of Communism. If it's really Communism, Red Hordes is way better.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:52
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Tias posted:Yes, but why did they feel they were in the right to kill people to attain that loot is what I'm asking? To kill someone over any poo poo at all, you need to consider them less than yourself - this requires some sense of superiority above an beyond an instinct of survival, and this is some kind of discriminatory impulse - part of what we call racism today. Feeling superior to another group and willing to commit violence against them because they are inferior to your group is a core part of what we consider modern racism, but it is not a concept that is exclusive to racism. An imperfect example: Sports fans, maybe soccer hooligans, might brawl and beat the poo poo out of each other despite belonging to the same culture (broadly speaking) due to nothing more than team allegiances. They feel justified because those people support the "wrong" team, but you wouldn't call that racism, would you? That being said, just like in modern times, I'm sure that people did discriminate against others on the basis of their skin color, it would be naive to assume the opposite. When we say that the Romans were not racist in the modern sense we mean that as a political entity, Rome never outright stated that certain peoples could not become citizens, or that certain people should be exterminated or enslaved because their skin color or ethnic group made them inferior. As I mentioned in my last post, originally being Roman means "being born in Rome" but they eventually extend that definition to include the peoples of Italy. As time goes on, other groups are given citizenship and considered Romans. Gauls, Britons, Greeks, Arabs, Germans, Africans, Jews, etc. There are emperors who were Syrian and Arab. What we do know is that modern racism - discrimination based primarily on the skin color or ethnic group of a person - is not something that would prevent anyone from becoming a Roman citizen. So I guess I would say that rather than being racist, the Romans had a highly developed sense of tribalism, or maybe even proto-nationalism. Romans are better than the people they ultimately conquer because of the fact that they are Romans. What constitutes "being a Roman" is something that constantly evolves throughout the history of the republic/empire.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:55
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Tias posted:Yes, but why did they feel they were in the right to kill people to attain that loot is what I'm asking? To kill someone over any poo poo at all, you need to consider them less than yourself - this requires some sense of superiority above an beyond an instinct of survival, and this is some kind of discriminatory impulse - part of what we call racism today. A tugboat and an Akula are both boats, so really when you think about it all boats are basically submarines.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:55
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Deteriorata posted:I'm unaware of its usage prior to the '60s. Looking it up, I see it does have a rather nasty heritage. http://kadist.tumblr.com/post/115677454746/yellow-peril-in-california-newspaper
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Apr 6, 2016 19:57
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Acebuckeye13 posted:this was beyond the pale. 
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Apr 6, 2016 20:01
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:If it's really Communism, Red Hordes is way better. ...and ChiCom is best. I dare you name better, chummer
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Apr 6, 2016 20:21
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The problem with arguing over whether policies were racist is that most people assume that a racist policy must be so because of malicious forethought on the part of the policy makers. That black panther quote is a great example. This is what makes these conversations devolve into people talking past each other. There is a difference between policies that are intended with racist goals from the beginning and those that disproportionately affect people of a specific race. Of course there were racist elements to Vietnam. Of course it played out in ugly ways that had a lot to do with your ethnicity. That doesn't make the decision to go to war racist or grounded in racist beliefs. There is a big difference between the decision to intervene in Vietnam and the intentionally racist policies of, for example, Soviet ethnic relocations or Souyh Africa's apartheid era domestic policies. If you want a racist American war you want the confederate half of the ACW or the Indian wars. This is why the criteria used in determining of policies run afoul of a to discrimination laws in the US is whether they disproportionately affect or privilege one group not what the intent of the law makers or those implementing them were. This is also why both sides talk past each other so much - effects are conflated with intents and everyone ends up arguing intent. This in turn is because of the moral tone implied when you say a thing is racist. You can see that I. This very thread.
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Apr 6, 2016 20:31
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Deteriorata posted:Stalin's purges in the '30s would have been a bigger issue. They weren't covered much in the Western press, but those in power would have been aware of them. I broadly agree but it's historically ironic because stalins big divergence from lemin was accepting that you could have "socialism in one country". Basically he was the one that insisted exporting revolution was a lovely foreign policy and it was ok to build the people's utopia at home. What changes everything is ww2. After that he saw a western buffer of client states as necessary for national survival. Poland Hungary etc weren't forced communist because of ideology as much as a desire that the summer of 41 never be repeated. Of course setting up a thousand miles of client states under communist governments looks an awful lot like spreading the revolution at the tip of a bayo so that leads to the Truman doctrine and both American and soviet foreign policies that created the proxy conflicts we all know and love. You know. Like Vietnam.
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Apr 6, 2016 20:40
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If you want to find racism in the Vietnam war it's easy as gently caress to find in the military, both in the attitudes of the rank and file and command level officers. There is a wonderful video of I think wrstmoreland saying Asians don't value life like we do so they are willing to engage in suicidal tactics. A lot of that stemmed from memory - both institutional and personal as a lot of 1960s generals and colonels were 1940s lieutenants - from ww2. The fact that they said and did racist poo poo doesn't make containment era foreign policy racist though.
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Apr 6, 2016 20:46
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Acebuckeye13 posted:To an extent I think people really undervalue the effect that China turning communist had on a lot of people. To the average American citizen in 1948, China was a longtime ally that we'd fought alongside during the War, and many servicemen had even been sent there as a part of the 14th Air Force flying against the Japanese, or had even joined the famous Flying Tigers before then. Then one day you open a newspaper and you read "HOLY poo poo CHINA'S GONE COMMUNIST" and the world's turned upside down-if a country like China could go communist, what did that mean for France? Britain? Us? Most people didn't really know or care about the context of the Civil War, or how the Nationalist Government was overwhelmingly corrupt and incompetent-all they knew was that it had happened there, and that meant it could happen here. It's a good point. When people started worry about the "Domino effect" and resisting communism everywhere, the fact that China flipped to communist was a major driving force behind that. In the minds of policy makers, Vietnam going communist was the next domino that ended with already socialist India going straight communist. Given how much of the world's population would be communist at that point, cold war policy makers worried this would be a huge ace of the sleeve of world communism. Now of course, you can argue about the realism of such a view in the Cold War thread but yeah. Paranoid ideology was the order of the day.
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Apr 6, 2016 20:56
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Deteriorata posted:*Yes, "Yellow Peril" is a racist reference to the Chinese, but it was more of a label than derogatory. China's population was about 500M in 1950, and the sheer size of it as a potential adversary was terrifying. HEY GAL posted:it's from the 19th century. kaiser wilhelm invented the phrase but the idea is older
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Apr 6, 2016 21:23
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Acebuckeye13 posted:To an extent I think people really undervalue the effect that China turning communist had on a lot of people. To the average American citizen in 1948, China was a longtime ally that we'd fought alongside during the War, and many servicemen had even been sent there as a part of the 14th Air Force flying against the Japanese, or had even joined the famous Flying Tigers before then. Then one day you open a newspaper and you read "HOLY poo poo CHINA'S GONE COMMUNIST" and the world's turned upside down-if a country like China could go communist, what did that mean for France? Britain? Us? Most people didn't really know or care about the context of the Civil War, or how the Nationalist Government was overwhelmingly corrupt and incompetent-all they knew was that it had happened there, and that meant it could happen here. That's a good point, considering the USSR was the only "big" communist nation up to that point.
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Apr 6, 2016 21:35
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Xander77 posted:Yes, but I'm sure that 19th / early 20th centuries Westerners weren't busy jacking off to the thought of wiping China out with biological warfare. This is splendidly racist.
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Apr 6, 2016 21:55
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:This is splendidly racist. I was expecting that Jack London story where we genocide/recolonize China with white people e: and that's what I got. Thrill to my use of short saxon words! Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 22:25
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Tias posted:Yes, but why did they feel they were in the right to kill people to attain that loot is what I'm asking? To kill someone over any poo poo at all, you need to consider them less than yourself - this requires some sense of superiority above an beyond an instinct of survival, and this is some kind of discriminatory impulse - part of what we call racism today. Didn't one of the Roman Historians say that Rome conquered the world in self-defence? I interpreted that as they always had a "proper" reason to invade neighbours, even if it was as simple as they disrespected an ambassador. Like during the Cold War, America never just up and invaded somewhere, they always had a Casus Belli.
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Apr 6, 2016 22:28
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Nebakenezzer posted:I was expecting that Jack London story where we genocide/recolonize China with white people Would Jack London be one of those singular individuals who made the world a better place by dying?
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Apr 6, 2016 22:35
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Hazzard posted:Didn't one of the Roman Historians say that Rome conquered the world in self-defence? I interpreted that as they always had a "proper" reason to invade neighbours, even if it was as simple as they disrespected an ambassador. Like during the Cold War, America never just up and invaded somewhere, they always had a Casus Belli. are you making GBS threads me
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Apr 6, 2016 22:40
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:are you making GBS threads me Klaus88 posted:Would Jack London be one of those singular individuals who made the world a better place by dying? Also, when a black man had the temerity of winning the US heavyweight boxing title, London organized a campaign to bring a former champion out of retirement to take the title back. Edit - The last part (though not the preceding sentences) was probably a factoid picked up at some university course, and may have no basis in actual fact. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 22:43
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Klaus88 posted:Would Jack London be one of those singular individuals who made the world a better place by dying? very few people are either conveniently All Good or All Bad, even when we don't take cultural or historical differences into account, so: probably not
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Apr 6, 2016 22:44
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If nothing else To Build A Fire was pretty good
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Apr 6, 2016 22:50
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:are you making GBS threads me
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Apr 6, 2016 23:14
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I mean, OK - the Romans liked to do things "legally" but it wasn't like their hands were forced at any point. Typically it was like "hey, let's send a Roman citizen in to an area with a bunch of bandits and then after he gets robbed let's loot and annex this entire polity so that I can throw super rad games as aedile next year and stand for consul." Or the entire Numidian question, a key Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Within a generation it's "Hey we've hosed up Numidian internal politics (by different important Romans taking tremendous bribes from the candidates for the throne) badly enough that we have no choice but to intervene!" *proceeds to keep bribes plus thousands of talents of looted Numidian gold*
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Apr 6, 2016 23:31
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Or the entire Numidian question, a key Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Within a generation it's "Hey we've hosed up Numidian internal politics (by different important Romans taking tremendous bribes from the candidates for the throne) badly enough that we have no choice but to intervene!" *proceeds to keep bribes plus thousands of talents of looted Numidian gold* That just crosses the line from imperialist fuckery to commendable audacity, sorry.
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Apr 6, 2016 23:34
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Tomorrow we shall make a dent in that backlog. 100-And-A-Bit Years Ago It's April 2nd. In Africa, General Smuts is feeling extremely cocky; he's writing to London for instructions on how to administer Tanzania once he conquers it from the Hun. Meanwhile, a captain in his infantry is writing home to prove that there are more nice South Africans than just Breyten Breytenbach (and he's emigreted to Peris). On the Somme, a German subaltern has noticed rather a lot of trains rumbling about the British rear, presumably bringing critical shipments of tea-urns; Grigoris Balakian encounters a hostile governor and some sarcastic villagers; the Sunny Subaltern survives a night on the Menin Road; Edward Mousley writes about High Spirits among three officers with nothing better to do than get pissed and wait for deliverance; Maximilian Mugge gets introduced to the three Bs of Army life (Blanco, Brasso, bullshit); and it now seems that Mugge might just beat Clifford Wells, the idiot son of a Montreal millionaire, to France. And, just for you fine people, here's another in the occasional series "The Full Mousley". quote:We tried some green weed or other the Sepoys gathered on the maidan. Boiled and eaten with a little salad oil that Tudway fished out from heaven knows where, it seemed quite palatable. After all, as he says, all we want is something of a gluey nature to keep our souls stuck on to us. No emotion please, we're English. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 23:41
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God, the Jugurthine wars were amazing. Here's a rough timeline: 1. An ambitious young Numidian chieftain, Masinissa, allies with Rome during the 2nd Punic war. As a result, the Romans make him a Friend and Ally of the Roman People, and give him the entire kingdom of Numidia to rule over. 2. Masinissa is a pretty decent ruler, actually. He passes on and leaves the kingdom to his son, Micipsa. Masinissa also has an illegitimate grandson, Jugurtha, who is very popular amongst the interior tribes (his mother's people). 3. Micipsa is consolidating power; he has two legitimate sons, and Jugurtha has a somewhat debatable claim to the throne, but the loyalty of key tribesmen. 4. Micipsa dies and leaves the throne to his two legitimate sons and Jugurtha in a triumvirate. (ALWAYS A HORRIBLE IDEA). Jugurtha accidentally-on-purpose kills one of the triumvirs. The other flees to Rome. 5. Adherbal (exiled guy) pleads his case in Rome. He bribes the right people, and the Romans send a mediator to decide the case. 6. Jugurtha bribes the mediator. The kingdom is split in two and Jugurtha gets all of the best parts (said the Romans afterwards - in reality he got the lovely parts, and I think Adherbal probably gave better bribes) 7. Obviously an untenable situation. Jugurtha bides his time, invades, and besieges Adherbal's capital. Adherbal squawks to Rome, and the Senate send another proconsular official to resolve. Jugurtha gives better bribes this time, the proconsul stands aside, and Jugurtha sacks Cirte, killing a shitload of Italian residents and also Adherbal. 8. Word gets back to Rome that a bunch of allied citizens (note that this is before Lex Julia so they aren't Romans, exactly) have been killed, and also noted Roman ally Adherbal has been killed. The Senate promptly delcares on Jugurtha (also a Roman ally). 9. A consul, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, lands in command of Rome's armies. He forces a very lenient peace with Jugurtha. Accusations of bribery fly thickly. Bestia probably took a large bribe, but he also probably realized that a war along the Atlas mountains against an erstwhile Roman ally was going to be exceedingly difficult, expensive, and not all that glorious, so it make sense he cut bait. 10. Jugurtha is summoned to Rome as part of a bribery investigation against Bestia once Bestia's term as consul expires. (this is my favorite part about the late Republic. They are like "hey we are trying to figure out if you bribed our officials that we sent, can you kindly present yourself at the Senate, please and thank you?" 11. Jugurtha is a sharp dude, served alongside Scipio and he knows Romans and Roman institutions well. He immediately bribes a couple tribunes of the plebes, who are responsible for questioning and bringing charges. He is not forced to testify. He also bribes a bunch of other people just in case. 12. Jugurtha tries to assassinate his cousin, who is chilling in Rome waiting for the dust to blow over so he can come in and rule Numidia. 13. This is a bridge too far - Jugurtha is declared persona non grata and kicked back to Numidia. The Senate declares war on him, again. 14. Rome sends an army under a praetor to Numidia. It is defeated, probably with bribes playing a role. Jugurtha demands recognition as the rightful king of Numidia, and reinstatement as a Friend and Ally of the Roman People. He probably sends a lot of bribes at this point, too. 15. Senate says no. They send another army, this time under a consul. 16. There's a lot of drama - basically at this point defeating Numidia is actually going to lead to serious name recognition, money and a guaranteed consulship, so there is a lot of political wrangling between Quintus Caecilius Metellus (consul, in command), his legate (Gaius Marius, an up-jumped nobody who got rich in Spain). Marius wants the consulship, and will certainly get it if he can stand because he can bribe the tribes. Metellus does not want him to stand for consulship, but lets him go, because Numidia is a jurisdiction of the Tribes and the (incoming) Consul cannot usurp his command as he will have proconsular authority after his term is over. 17. Marius stands, wins, bribes the tribes to pass a law declaring him in charge of the Jugurthan War. This is a pretty significant event in the long run since it pits the tribunes of the plebs against the Senate directly, and the Senate backs down. 18. Marius tries to defeat Jugurtha. Limited success. 19. His quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, manages to wrangle a deal with one of Jugurtha's Numidian allies. In return for substantial bribes, this ally betrays Jugurtha to the Romans. 20. Jugurtha is taken in chains to Rome, is imprisoned and starved to death. KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 23:58
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Klaus88 posted:Would Jack London be one of those singular individuals who made the world a better place by dying? He was a very good writer but racist as gently caress. A lot of it stems to his mom being a white socitey lady who had a bastard child who she had raised by a negro servant If it makes you feel any better his life fell apart and once he lost faith in socialism he killed himself via alcohol
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Apr 7, 2016 00:02
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:God, the Jugurthine wars were amazing. Here's a rough timeline:
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Apr 7, 2016 00:05
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Not to excuse racism in general but if you judge all of the racists in history harshly based solely on their beliefs about race you're going to rule out just about everybody.
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Apr 7, 2016 00:08
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:God, the Jugurthine wars were amazing. Here's a rough timeline:
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Apr 7, 2016 00:43
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My favorite Roman Republic story is "Claudius Pulcher and the Sacred Chickens" At this point, we are 15 long years into the first Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic. At Drepana, a Roman fleet of ~120 ships faces off against a Carthaginian fleet of similar size. Naturally you consult the omens before battle. The preferred method, in this case, was to throw grain on the deck of your flagship and see if some sacred chickens eat the grain. Chickens doing what chickens always do, and eating grain off of the ground, is a sign that the gods will grant you victory. However, on this day the chickens refused to eat - a horrific omen. Confronted with such an unexpected situation, Claudius Pulcher improvised and is alleged to have said "Let them drink, if they do not wish to eat" and threw the sacred chickens overboard. In the ensuing battle, thousands of Roman sailors perish and 3/4 of the Roman fleet is captured or sunk, with minimal losses for Carthage.
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Apr 7, 2016 00:49
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I'm quite partial to the "lost" gold of Tolosa.
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Apr 7, 2016 01:07
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