BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

moralizing about individuals is also very important to my liberalism so i thank you

quote:

“On the West Coast the settler petit-bourgeoisie, primarily farming interests and small merchants, used settler chauvinism and the identification of the Japanese as members of a rival imperialist power to plunder and completely remove the Japanese population. Just as the Chinese had been robbed and driven out of mining, agriculture and industry in the 19th century West, so now Japanese would be driven out. As everyone knows, some 110,000 of us were forcibly ‘relocated’ into concentration camps by the US government in 1942.

“Settler rule had restricted and hemmed in Japanese labor into the national minority economy of specialized agriculture, wholesale and retail food distribution, and domestic labor (in 1940 these three categories accounted for 84% of all Japanese employment). But even this was too much for the settler petit-bourgeoisie on the West Coast.

“The Euro-Amerikans not only wanted the Japanese removed as competetors, but they wanted to take over and ‘annex’ the agricultural business so painstakingly built up by the Japanese farmers. The typical Japanese farm of the period was very small, averaging only 42 acres each (less than one-fifth the average size of Euro-Amerikan farms in California). But these intensively developed lands, in which comprised only 3.9% of California’s farmland, produced fully 42% of the State’s fresh fruits and vegetables. The settler farm lobby wanted our business, which was too valuable to be left to ‘Japs.’

“Austin E. Anson, representative of the Shipper-Grower Association of Salinas, told the public: ‘We’re charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs of selfish reason. We might as well be honest. We do.” Through their political influence, these interests got US Sen. Hiram Johnson to pull together the West Coast congressional delegation as a bloc and push through the concentration camp program.

“By military order, enforced by the US Army, the whole Japanese population was forced to leave or sell at give-away prices all we had- houses, land, businesses, cars, refrigerators, tools, furniture, etc. The Federal Reserve Bank loosely estimated the direct property loss alone at $400 million 1942 dollars. The real cost was in the many billions- and in lives. But it was no loss to settlers, who ended up with much of it. West Coast settlers had a festive time, celebrating the start of their war by greedily dividing up that 400 million in ‘Jap’ property. It was a gigantic garage sale held at gunpoint. This was just an early installment in settler prosperity from world war.

“For Hawaii, a US colony right in the middle of Asia, no such simple solution was possible. Early government discussions on removing and incarcerating the Japanese population quickly floundered. Over one-third of the working population there was Japanese, and without their labor the Islands’ economy might break down. The US Army said that: ‘…the labor shortage make it a matter of military necessity to keep the people of Japanese blood on the islands.’ Army and Navy officers proposed that the Japanese be kept at work there for the US Empire, but treated ‘as citizen of an occupied foreign country.’

“The patriotic Amerikan war spirit congealed itself into the usual racist forms. Chinese were encouraged to wear self-protective placards or buttons reading ‘I’m No Jap’ to avoid being lynched. The Koumintang-dominated Chinese communities were lauded by the settlers as now ‘good’ Asians. Life [Magazine] ran an article on ‘How To Tell Your Friends From The Japs’:…’the Chinese expression is likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese more positive, dogmatic, arrogant… Japanese walk stiffly erect…Chinese more relaxed, sometimes shuffle…’

“Of course, these imaginary difference only expressed the settler code wherein hostile or just victimized Asians were ‘bad,’ where as those they thought more submissive (who ‘shuffle’) were temporarily ‘good.” Every effort was made to whip up settler chauvinism and hatred (an easy task). The famous war indoctrination film ‘My Japan,’ produced by the Defense Department, opens to an actor portraying a Japanese soldier bayoneting a baby- with the commentary that all Japanese ‘like’ to kill babies. German fascist propaganda about the ‘racial crimes’ of the Jews was no more bizarre than Amerikan propaganda for its own war effort.” (Sakai 96)

Probably Magic posted:

This is a lot of anger at the Japanese for a dude with a Mega Man avatar.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

Weka posted:

Personally I think actively denying something like that which is widely known just makes you look like a fool.

"Amerika was "spacious" and "sparsely populated" only because the European invaders destroyed whole civilizations and killed off millions of Native Amerikans to get the land and profits they wanted. "

This is just not true.

Weka posted:

Personally I think actively denying something like that which is widely known just makes you look like a fool.

"Amerika was "spacious" and "sparsely populated" only because the European invaders destroyed whole civilizations and killed off millions of Native Amerikans to get the land and profits they wanted. "

This is just not true.

CaptainACAB posted:

unlike j sakai, who is a settler colonialist, i am actually consistent in my critiques of settler colonialism.

lmao j sakai goes to such lengths to avoid correctly identifying the japanese as settler colonialists that he is willing to attack the chinese to do it.

if he had any capacity for introspection or understanding of history he would realize how problematic this is but he does not and is just an ethnic nationalist masquerading as a leftist lmao.

also love his off handed defense of imperial japan, great, cool, awesome.

Kindest Forums User posted:

So are all american immigrants settler colonialists in the same way white settlers are/were?

Kindest Forums User posted:

Okay I guess everybody except native Americans going to devote a paragraph in their book about being a settler colonialist and that they're just as bad as the white man. The end

Kindest Forums User posted:

So are all american immigrants settler colonialists in the same way white settlers are/were?

AnimeIsTrash posted:

The real people colonized were the residents of hokkaido that the nippon colonized.

CaptainACAB posted:

Chinese who were being literally butchered with IJA issue katanas

Anime Bernie Bro posted:

wait for real they were using straight-up katanas?

CaptainACAB posted:

Sometimes yes. They weren't too picky as long as they were killing Chinese but there is at least one specific example of the IJA holding a contest to see who could take the most Chinese heads with their shin gunto, and paid the winner a cash prize.

He was photographed standing on a pile of Chinese corpses with a severed head in one hand, a katana in the other and a smile on his face, which was run in the front page of the army newspaper.

Which hmm yes Mr Sakai I wonder why the Chinese might be a little pissed off.

Anime Bernie Bro posted:

i don't have anything to say about this that isn't bannable so i'm just going to say that's a horrible war crime that makes me very sad

Anime Bernie Bro posted:

wait for real they were using straight-up katanas?

Tempora Mutantur posted:

...so wait, what's the lesson Settlers aims to impart that isn't better stated in A People's History or How The Irish Became White or other takes that break down things using a materialist lens instead of "MAN gently caress WHITE PEOPLE, AMIRITE?"

unwantedplatypus posted:

I wonder how first world leftists are supposed to gain power while promising to decrease peoples’ living standards.

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

revolutions don't occur because someone campaigned on a platform

unwantedplatypus posted:

How are you supposed to convince people to die for your cause if your success will make their lives worse?

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

its the age old question isnt it, how do you convince someone to believe something when their paycheck depends on not believing it

Weka posted:

Personally I think actively denying something like that which is widely known just makes you look like a fool.

"Amerika was "spacious" and "sparsely populated" only because the European invaders destroyed whole civilizations and killed off millions of Native Amerikans to get the land and profits they wanted. "

This is just not true.

Gazpacho posted:

it is true, european settlers in the US did not simply wait for disease to do the dirty work

MLSM posted:

And here is why Settlers is a trash book

PawParole posted:

Id love to read it, but the shipping time from Langley to my house is outrageous.

I’ll probably read some other CIA psyop that’s ahistorical and race-essentialist, like any good Anglo “””socialist””” I want an excuse as to why It’s Good Not to Achieve Anything.

PawParole posted:

Id love to read it, but the shipping time from Langley to my house is outrageous.

I’ll probably read some other CIA psyop that’s ahistorical and race-essentialist, like any good Anglo “””socialist””” I want an excuse as to why It’s Good Not to Achieve Anything.

Tempora Mutantur posted:

...so wait, what's the lesson Settlers aims to impart that isn't better stated in A People's History or How The Irish Became White or other takes that break down things using a materialist lens instead of "MAN gently caress WHITE PEOPLE, AMIRITE?"