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Stop trying to make "The crusades is imperialism!" or "the crusades were settler colonies!" A thing. (hexbear.net)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.

These states were not imperialist and they weren't settler colonies. This framing doesn't make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying "lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!"

Seriously just stop. I don't know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably the early invasion and control of america was not settler colonialism as we define it today?

That's basically correct: it was a domineering and extractive colonialism that revolved around forced indigenous labor to produce raw resources (or whatever you want to call gold and silver) for export, rather than the systematic ethnic cleansing of a region* to provide settlers with land. The earliest colonies were basically just there to exert hegemony and facilitate resource extraction, and it's the subsequent British colonies along the east coast that began to follow the settler colony model.

* Note that they were still genocidal projects, it's just that was more about forced labor and establishing hegemony than the sort of land-clearing and replacement with settlers that settler colonialism calls for.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

that was more about forced labor and establishing hegemony than the sort of land-clearing and replacement

This whole thread is such dogshit lol, "ACTUALLY a caterpillar and a butterfly are totally different species, you need education to stop being so confused'

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

There is a pretty big difference between "a horribly destructive warlord sets up shop in a fortified port city and terrorizes the region for tribute while operating slave mines and plantations, and develops the concept of racism to excuse their behavior to the Pope" and "wave after wave of settlers land and systematically drive off or kill everyone in the region and then repeat this over and over until they've conquered and ethnically cleansed the entire continent explicitly in the name of racism," if only in understanding who was doing what and what the results were.

Like you can look at this happening right now: how different the conditions are between subjugated periphery states that are exploited for resources and brutally kept under the imperial hegemon's thumb, vs the active ethnic cleansing and landgrabs in occupied Palestine.