Would whites re-institute slavery today if they could?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Would whites re-institute slavery today if they could?

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

The answer to the original question is probably "no," but only in the most evasive way. "Slavery" has the same sort of status as "racism," it's a cartoonized pejorative that people view as something only practiced by moustache-twirling incarnations of pure evil that lived in the past and that everyone is now past it, so they'll happily just say it doesn't apply to them without digging down and analyzing what it actually is, how it was appealing, and how it was justified.

The result is basically the same too: Most of what people hated about slavery is persisting in other forms: One class of people thrives on the labor of another class that they only have to compensate with basic survival necessities, both pass their role in that relationship down to their children, and it's enforced by the state.

Also, as much as that's practiced domestically, it's practiced much more obnoxiously overseas, with things like the mass-ownership of farm land, mines, and other natural resources by huge European/American companies.

New Division posted:

I'm not entirely surprised that there's some of that going on in Florida. It's a shame that labor laws are so often gleefully flouted in this country and no one does anything.

IIRC, it's not so much labor laws as immigration laws. It's basically all off-the-books immigrant workers that their "employers" blackmail by threatening to report them to the authorities.

E-Tank posted:

Did he report it to the police? 'cause...that sounds like a slave run labor camp.

See above. Report it = Get deported.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2014 23:19

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 02:37

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

E-Tank posted:

Chains holding them to tables means that they're being treated as slaves. Reporting it and getting them deported seems to be the nicer thing to do simply because then they won't be loving *slaves*.

Nevermind, read into it and it looks like that's an entirely different thing, but there is overlap between the two scenarios. Threatening to break up someone's family can be just as powerful as threatening them with violence, and there are slave-labor operations that use that threat to cement it.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 00:16

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Sucrose posted:

Are people seriously wondering if the present status quo is better than literal chattel slavery?

Pretty sure zero people have said that, more like the status quo is really terrible and has persisted a lot of its problems.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 05:53

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Ogmius815 posted:

Yeah if only there were some white democratic presidents to form a basis for comparison...

Our last president was a white dude from Texas that was accused of orchestrating 9/11 and the biggest election fraud in history. It's not like Newt Gingrich in 1994 happened out of thin air either.

There are definitely racist elements to it (i.e. the whole birther/"foodstamp president" things), but most of it is just run-of-the-mill partisan willingness to believe anything.

gradenko_2000 posted:

IIRC militia groups actually went down during the Clinton years as a result of a backlash from the Oklahoma bombing.

Think you've got it backwards, the militia movements were largely backlash from Ruby Ridge and Waco (and some other things like the Brady Law), Oklahoma City was done by a militia sympathizer who explicitly did it as a sort of "payback" for those.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2014 14:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Would whites re-institute slavery today if they could?