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feedmegin posted:I've noted before that civil wars are often more... civil because both sides tend to share the same nationality, language and (broadly) religion. Guess which is the part of the Civil War where this isn't true? How bad was Cromwell inside of Britain? I know that he did a lot of horrible things in Ireland, but that's less there being a civil war and more just being an Englishman. A lot of the stuff I've heard about what a tyrant he was in England sounds either made up or really petty.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:06
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Epicurius posted:The New Model Army was pretty brutal in Ireland, sure, but were they unusually brutal? The war in Ireland was pretty nasty by the standards of the English Civil War, but about 13 years before Drogheda was taken, Imperial and Catholic League forces under Pappenheim and Tilly pretty much destroyed Magdeberg. I know that Hey Guns knows more than me about this, but over the course of the of the war, didn't Bohemia lose about 2/3 of its population, Wurtemburg like 3/4, and Brandenburg about half. To single Cromwell out as some singular monster when on the continent at the same time worse stuff was happening seems unusual.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:47
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SeanBeansShako posted:I could yell west out my window to hear what Rabh has to say too on the matter.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:48
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feedmegin posted:I've noted before that civil wars are often more... civil because both sides tend to share the same nationality, language and (broadly) religion. Guess which is the part of the Civil War where this isn't true? i kind of want to push against that. this narrative sounds xenophobic to me, as though you can't be a douchebag to people who aren't like you genetically. consider rwanda. or the russian civil war
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Aug 24, 2018 15:51
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https://twitter.com/PaulTOwen/status/1032973949699809280quote:In order to smooth the transition to democracy after Franco’s death, all parties agreed to a “pact of silence”, leaving the crimes of the civil war and its aftermath as unfinished business. Good lord.
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Aug 24, 2018 15:53
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There's a solid argument that civil wars can be worse than international war because many things like the Geneva Convention do not directly apply, and the international community are generally unwilling to intervene. EDIT: Historically civil wars are also more of a winner-takes-all type of conflict, which can lead to heavy atrocities because neither side has anything to lose. Fangz fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 16:32
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HEY GUNS posted:i kind of want to push against that. this narrative sounds xenophobic to me, as though you can't be a douchebag to people who aren't like you genetically. consider rwanda. or the russian civil war Yeah I always thought of civil wars as being at least as brutal on average. The Spanish Civil war was also pretty bad with Red and White terror. So was Vietnam. In a regular war at least one side has the ability to just leave if things get too bad. In a civil war both sides have nowhere to go. And once it's over the winning side isn't going to want the losers hanging around stirring up trouble so they wind up getting purged. It's really almost a miracle the US Civil War was such a relatively clean fight.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:33
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are postindustrial civil wars less civil than their predecessors?
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Aug 24, 2018 16:41
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:are postindustrial civil wars less civil than their predecessors? Not particularly.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:44
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Let's crowdfund a spring loaded statue of carrero blanco's limo
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Aug 24, 2018 16:47
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:Let's crowdfund a spring loaded statue of carrero blanco's limo Goes off every day at 3 like Old Faithful
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Aug 24, 2018 16:49
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:Let's crowdfund a spring loaded statue of carrero blanco's limo Glorifying terrorism. Have a 12 month prison sentence.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:52
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Cessna posted:Carl Vinson wasn't commissioned until 1982, post- Vietnam. That’s the one I was thinking of. Thanks.
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Aug 24, 2018 16:57
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When was the last time USN sailors rioted on a ship, and does that qualify as mutiny?
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Aug 24, 2018 16:58
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HEY GUNS posted:i kind of want to push against that. this narrative sounds xenophobic to me, as though you can't be a douchebag to people who aren't like you genetically. consider rwanda. Rwanda seems a particularly poor example given the Hutu/Tutsi thing behind that, don't you think. Not that that's literally genetics, per se, but then neither was anti-Irish prejudice in England; I was talking more about perceived ethnicity. With the Russian Civil War you've got the class aspect and religious differences going on, too. I mean you're not wrong, It is certainly possible to be a douchebag to people who are like you. It's just it mitigates things a bit. Sometimes. Especially when you've eg got families sending their sons to fight on both sides to be sure at least one of them is on the winning side when the dust settles. (Not that this necessarily works great given Parliament won for a decade+ then the King came back, but hey). I'm not sure that's a xenophobic statement, so much as that a lot of people are xenophobes, whether we like it or not.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:10
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Why did some cultures develop back banners instead of, idk, just having a banner bearer?
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Aug 24, 2018 17:14
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TropicalCoke posted:That French policy may not have applied in the 1960s. But they were absolutely using minorities in French colonial forces as early as post WW1. IIRC the druze revolt was put down largely by Armenian, Kurdish, and Alawite colonial troops in addition to French troops. I dont have my sources readily available but divide and conquer was absolutely a real strategy. Oh yeah the French definitely did get up to lots of shenanigans, its just that this doesn't explain demographics of the Syrian armed forces following independence, or even before really. During and immediately after French rule, practically all officers came from the rich mercantile Sunni families of Damascus and Aleppo. However generally the army was not seen as a desirable profession and had trouble recruiting in the cities. Therefore a disproportionate fraction of recruits came from poorer rural regions with large Alawite populations who had fewer other options for economic advancement. Even so Alawites remained mostly lower ranking and enlisted personnel, and were denied higher level promotions. That starts to change however after 1949, when Syria politics descended into vicious bouts of praetorian infighting, with successive coups purging the ranks of high level leadership. As Alawites were disempowered minorities, they were sheltered from the chaos by their political irrelevance. With the population of new recruits biased towards Alawites, and Sunni leaders disproportionately likely to be removed from the ranks, the forces demographics under went a rapid shift over the 1950s to 1960s. These kinds of weird filtering processes are why it pays to be credulous of any claims about an institution changing people's opinion. It's often more likely that its the people who are being replaced, rather than their beliefs. However, several authors have written about how following this processes, the Syrian officer corp began to develop a sense of collective identity based in part around their shared religion, or at least heavily influenced by it. So of course it is complicated.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:14
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JcDent posted:Why did some cultures develop back banners instead of, idk, just having a banner bearer? Back banners bore banners better.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:18
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feedmegin posted:Rwanda seems a particularly poor example given the Hutu/Tutsi thing behind that, don't you think. Not that that's literally genetics, per se, but then neither was anti-Irish prejudice in England; I was talking more about perceived ethnicity. With the Russian Civil War you've got the class aspect and religious differences going on, too. I'd say the rwandan argument is that ethnic differences can easily be created when convenient to justify divide and conquer strategies. Instead of looking at ethnicity and nationality driving conflict, you can also see conflict creating the ideas of nationality and ethnicity. I just don't think the argument that civil wars are more civil is true. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:19
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feedmegin posted:Rwanda seems a particularly poor example given the Hutu/Tutsi thing behind that, don't you think. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:20
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Fangz posted:I'd say the rwandan argument is that ethnic differences can easily be created when convenient to justify divide and conquer strategies. Instead of looking at ethnicity and nationality driving conflict, you can also see conflict creating the ideas of nationality and ethnicity. edit: in some cases the conflict can also create philosophical or religious differences. an intellectual disagreement may crystallize thanks to the emotional hostility HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:20
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Also, like, if you look at middle ages europe, the ruling classes of the different countries are a lot more similar and indeed often related to each other, than they were to their own lower classes. Heck pretty often they spoke a different language!
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Aug 24, 2018 17:23
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Fangz posted:I just don't think the argument that civil wars are more civil is true. 
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Aug 24, 2018 17:26
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Isn't it sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Like if two groups of people are real dicks to eachother, even for incredibly minor differences, that eventually turns into a cultural divide, and then you can work the numbers and data to reveal, oh no, they were entirely separate all along, regardless of how close they were. I think in the case of the American Civil War, the war was pretty fast, and neither party was really interested in the cultural divide after that. The north made a pretty big effort to reintegrate the south, and the south was more interested in investing into the cultural divide between whites and the now-free blacks than they were in continuing the geographic divide in earnest. And maybe the 20 million or so immigrants in the next hundred years helped to dilute the regional differences. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:30
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HEY GUNS posted:I chose that example specifically because that distinction was largely otiose until the Belgians codified it into law. Only after that did they become "ethnic" groups. This is something that barely existed a short time ago and then it becomes something that people feel strongly enough about in order to kill over. I agree, yes, it is objectively an artificial distinction. That doesn't matter if the 18 year old Hutu guy with a machete believes in it, though, does it? England didn't have the equivalent in its Civil War, America didn't in its either, thus, (slightly) less war crimes.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:31
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zoux posted:When was the last time USN sailors rioted on a ship, and does that qualify as mutiny? The Navy gets really, really nitpicky about what counts as a mutiny and what doesn't, so they can say "nope, no mutinies!" In 1842 the USS Somers - a small brig - got close. The captain learned that some of the crew was planning on taking over the ship and going pirate (arr!). The captain had three crewmen hanged for this. He went back home, demanded a court-martial, and was found to have acted properly under the circumstances. The Navy says this doesn't count because no, it wasn't a successful mutiny... In WWII the African American sailors of Port Chicago had a "mutiny" in which they refused to load ammunition onto a ship after having just witnessed a similar ship explode from faulty ammo-handling procedures. They were court-martialed, but their prison terms were commuted after the war. The Navy says this doesn't count because no, they weren't at sea. For more recent things - well, things got weird in the Vietnam era. In 1965 the captain of the USS Vance (Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter) lost his poo poo. Here's the New York Times writeup: Link. Tl;dr - Making one of the officers dress up like a cheerleader was one of the less strange things that happened, for that look to the wacky mandatory weird religious services and etiquette lectures. Oh, and stealing ship funds to buy a speedboat that he had painted with shark's teeth to try to provoke the Vietnamese into shooting first. He accused his crew of mutiny when they called in higher-ups to have him relieved, but the charges didn't stick. The Navy says this doesn't count, because the guy was batshit-nuts anyway. In 1970 a group of sailors tried to seize the ship Columbia Eagle to keep it from delivering a cargo of napalm to Vietnam. The steamed for Cambodia when, whoops, there was a coup. One sailor escaped back to the States and was court-martialed, the rest were never heard from again. The Navy says this doesn't count because no, it wasn't a US Navy ship, just a civilian ship with Navy crewmen. As has been pointed out, USS Kitty Hawk had a near-mutiny in 1972. The USS Constellation also had one at around the same time. The Navy says this doesn't count because no, it wasn't a successful mutiny.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:39
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feedmegin posted:I agree, yes, it is objectively an artificial distinction. That doesn't matter if the 18 year old Hutu guy with a machete believes in it, though, does it? England didn't have the equivalent in its Civil War, America didn't in its either, thus, (slightly) less war crimes. Well, the point is that the statement is less 'atrocities arise from ethnic differences' and more 'dehumanisation is bad'. Having differently coloured skin could be one route to dehumanising people, but so could say, failing to agree enough with the Leader. England committed plenty of atrocities in the Catholic-Anglican conflict over the years, and let's not forget the roots of that conflict was Henry VIII not wanting to keep it in his pants.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:41
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Cessna posted:In 1965 the captain of the USS Vance (Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter) lost his poo poo. Here's the New York Times writeup: Link. Tl;dr - Making one of the officers dress up like a cheerleader was one of the less strange things that happened, for that look to the wacky mandatory weird religious services and etiquette lectures. Oh, and stealing ship funds to buy a speedboat that he had painted with shark's teeth to try to provoke the Vietnamese into shooting first. He accused his crew of mutiny when they called in higher-ups to have him relieved, but the charges didn't stick. The Navy says this doesn't count, because the guy was batshit-nuts anyway.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:42
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Fangz posted:Well, the point is that the statement is less 'atrocities arise from ethnic differences' and more 'dehumanisation is bad'. Having differently coloured skin could be one route to dehumanising people, but so could say, failing to agree enough with the Leader. England committed plenty of atrocities in the Catholic-Anglican conflict over the years, and let's not forget the roots of that conflict was Henry VIII not wanting to keep it in his pants.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:43
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Also I think the Thirty Years War is a pretty good example here, but I don't know enough to say too much.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:44
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Fangz posted:Well, the point is that the statement is less 'atrocities arise from ethnic differences' and more 'dehumanisation is bad'. Having differently coloured skin could be one route to dehumanising people, but so could say, failing to agree enough with the Leader. England committed plenty of atrocities in the Catholic-Anglican conflict over the years, and let's not forget the roots of that conflict was Henry VIII not wanting to keep it in his pants. Did it, within England? I can think of a few people being burned at the stake but that's about it, for all the Protestant side bigged Catholic atrocities up. Nothing huge by the standards of the time. Meanwhile the Civil War itself was, religiously speaking, between Presbyterian and Independent Protestants versus Episcopalian Protestants. Dehumanisation is bad. One historically really good way to dehumanise people is to talk of them as e.g. 'the barbarous Hun' or whatever, i.e. foreigners. It can happen within a country too, but while it can happen relatively quickly, it isn't instant. If you didn't previously think of Bob down the street as 'other' in some way you won't, generally, instantly do so the instant a civil war breaks out, which (for most people, and to some extent) moderates your likelihood of going hog wild chopping his limbs off or whatever. Edit: re French people and Catholics versus not, I did specifically note that the Irish there were mostly Catholic, the English there weren't, and it is my thesis that that is one reason you got more atrocities! feedmegin fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:47
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Very proud of our mutinyless naval tradition.Cessna posted:
Was this guy inordinately concerned about strawberries Also you name a guy Marcus Aurelius what do you think's gonna happen zoux fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:53
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HEY GUNS posted:holy gently caress Neil Sheehan - the guy who wrote Bright and Shining Lie - wrote his first book about Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter's career (The Arnheiter Affair) and the subsequent Navy cover-up. Arnheiter sued ("Libel! Slander!") and the book was taken out of print, but copies are still easy to track down. It's a good read.
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Aug 24, 2018 17:56
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zoux posted:Very proud of our mutinyless naval tradition. The comparison was made at the time. One other incident (one of many): quote:After dragging three crewmen behind the Vance in the speedboat at 15 knots--very nearly drowning all three--Arnheiter leaves them in the Gulf of Siam to surveil a Vietnamese junk he suspects is spotting for a Chinese submarine reported to be in the area. Set adrift, the men try to raise the Vance on the radio; but Arnheiter has sailed out of range. Suddenly they spot a plane, an American plane. It drops down for a look at the junk and finds also a 16-foot speedboat with shark's teeth painted on the bow. The pilot turns and starts in for a strafing run, averted only by the frantic waving of the three by five foot American flag Arnheiter had placed aboard the speedboat to help ensnare communists. Other incidents include shooting up Buddhist temples ashore, then forging logs/records to recommend himself for medals for valor for the action. And, again, this sort of thing was routine for Arnheiter, it's just one that I happen to remember offhand. It's well worth finding a copy of the book. Edit: A brief article, link. Another: Link. Cessna fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 17:59
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Fangz posted:Also I think the Thirty Years War is a pretty good example here, but I don't know enough to say too much. In the first place, German-speakers at the time are more likely to blame Croats, people from the PLC, or Finns for atrocities. On the one hand, these people are less likely to speak German: if you don't know enough of someone's language to ask them for something or buy it from them, you're more likely to go straight to threats or torture. But it's also possible that German-speakers are already bigoted against these people, and will blame them for anything bad that happens. In the second place, 19th century nationalistic literature fixated on the fact that the 30 Years' War involved people from many places and with many ethnicities because it was a symbol for the weakness and division that they saw in 17th century Germany.
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Aug 24, 2018 18:01
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feedmegin posted:Did it, within England? I can think of a few people being burned at the stake but that's about it, for all the Protestant side bigged Catholic atrocities up. Nothing huge by the standards of the time. Meanwhile the Civil War itself was, religiously speaking, between Presbyterian and Independent Protestants versus Episcopalian Protestants. People being burned at the stake is the tip of the iceberg. Henry VIII killed tens of thousands of people to make the reformation happen. And the whole Catholicism thing was a key factor in triggering the civil war anyway. The existence of Catholic Ireland was essentially a consequence of Henry's limited authority as King of Ireland, and the relative lack of profitability in going after major church institutions.
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Aug 24, 2018 18:11
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think in the case of the American Civil War, the war was pretty fast, and neither party was really interested in the cultural divide after that. The north made a pretty big effort to reintegrate the south, and the south was more interested in investing into the cultural divide between whites and the now-free blacks than they were in continuing the geographic divide in earnest. The ACW didn't really feature much of a cultural divide...the south especially loved (and...loves) to play up the "culture and heritage" thing, but in reality both sides were very homogenous WASPs, especially early on the war. This changed a bit as more immigrants and blacks fought for the north, but it was never a sectarian divide. Nearly all of their disagreements were purely political in nature. That, plus the fact the war was fought in that strange era between HEY GALs mercenary-filled clusterfucks of wars and full-on 20th century industrial warfare, are what led to so few war crimes/atrocities/misbehaviors/civilian deaths. There really was a commitment to honorable behavior, by both sides, which I'm not sure there is a good comparison to outside of 18th-19th centuries.
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Aug 24, 2018 18:36
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HEY GUNS posted:most of the dead people died as a result of displacement and starvation. Lots of this wasn't deliberate, but all this disruption destroyed Central Europe's ability to feed itself and armies spread contagion All that sickness would be exacerbated by the famine too wouldn't it. Seems like it might compromise your immune system to have literally no resources to ward it off. Fangz posted:EDIT: Historically civil wars are also more of a winner-takes-all type of conflict, which can lead to heavy atrocities because neither side has anything to lose. Or because both sides have everything to lose (is what I think you were hinting at?)
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Aug 24, 2018 19:11
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Milo and POTUS posted:All that sickness would be exacerbated by the famine too wouldn't it. Seems like it might compromise your immune system to have literally no resources to ward it off
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Aug 24, 2018 19:13
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Finnish civil war was brutal, the Reds especially were dehumanized by White propaganda and executed en masse for a while. The biggest cause of deaths though was poor conditions in the post war prison camps. Finns have not been good at interning a large number of POWs, the same issue came up in 1941.
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Aug 24, 2018 19:25
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