This remains relevant as Ukraine has never apologized for these atrocities, continues to reject that these attacks constituted "genocide," and has criticized Poland for establishing July 11 as a day for commemorating the victims. And of course, it still uses the same slogans ("Slava Ukraini"), the same symbols (such as the red and black flag), and reveres Stepan Bandera (who was the head of the OUN, which in turn founded the UPA which carried out these attacks).

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5524375

Context 1 2

Many abolitionists have complained to me that, as a traveling performer, I have not spoken to my audiences on the issue of slavery. I have received many angry letters attacking me based on assumptions about what my silence means.

Allow me to make my position clear: I oppose the institution of slavery. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, I believe it is a "moral depravity." I feel that way about other things as well.

After the raid on Harper's Ferry, the mood among Southern leaders was an existential panic and unstoppable lust for revenge. It reminded me of the Alamo. There was no reasoning with those leaders, nor could action be taken by congress. It would have required replacing most of congress and overturning decades of bipartisan negotiation and compromises. Even in the best case, it would have taken years.

But even worse, the abolitionist, pro-Negro movement quickly decided that their primary goal was not merely opposition to the reprisals or specifically cruel owners, but opposition to the entire institution of slavery, that is, opposition to the entire way of life of Southern plantation owners. And here they decided to draw the line between decent people and oppressive tyrants, which had the following consequences:

It shrunk the coalition. Most southerners support slavery. Anyone who supports the solution of having slave states and free states supports slavery.

It was politically infeasible. What is the pathway that takes us from the present situation to the abolition of slavery as an institution? I do not see how it could happen without a total collapse of the union. As usual, these Jacobins have championed a doomed cause.

The abolitionists have been distributing hundreds of pamphlets about the horrid conditions of slaves. The main effect of this has been to create a population of people in a constant state of bloodboiling rage with no consequential political outlet.

I fear this may be worse than useless. Yes, there are disingenuous proponents of slavery dismissing and censoring all criticism of slavery on the pretext of "states' rights." But there's also valid fear of historical government overreach and that fear gives power to pro-slavery leaders who say that only they can protect Southern culture.

Does this mean slavery should not be criticized? Absolutely not. But it's something I do not wish to contribute to unless if not outweighed by tangible benefits.

Many abolitionists have been single-mindedly focused on slavery, and the willingness of the Republicans to compromise on the issue, and that focus has had the following effects:

Not a single slave was freed by their efforts. Not one fewer lash was delivered by the owners.

It may have slightly contributed to the election of James Buchanan, ensuring that nothing can be done to stop the expansion of slavery into new states. Buchanan also does not support giving women like me the right to vote. A perfectly enlightened being would feel no bitterness about this, but I do.

None of this is the fault of slaves, of course, who are overwhelmingly the victims here.

But if women like me are ever going to get anywhere in this country, we need a broad movement that stands up for the rights of ALL women, REGARDLESS of their views on slavery.

Context

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says he has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who immigration officials say was deported by error, in El Salvador on Thursday.

The senator shared a photo with Abrego Garcia at what appears to be a restaurant.

"I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar," Sen. Van Hollen said. "Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return."

https://lemmy.ml/post/28111691/17749466

This is actually insane. Another user was criticizing the New Deal era and brought up a bunch of points, I commented refuting a bunch of their points but describing two of of them, Japanese Internment and the Red Scare, simply as "legitimate criticism."

@[email protected] responded "No they’re not. Those two things were caused by far greater international factors. Like, you know, the 2nd World War."

I cited a commission that found that internment was not caused by a legitimate threat posed by the Japanese but was rather caused by racism and hysteria, and that even Reagan agreed with that conclusion and signed a bill paying reparations to the victims.

Well then the mod responded that I was jumping to "inflammatory conclusions" and "personal attacks" because I assumed that when they said that criticism of internment is not legitimate it meant that they were defending internment. They continued to refuse to explain how else I was possibly supposed to interpret such a claim. I still have no idea. Apparently their stance is, "It's not legitimate to criticize the thing I oppose." If anyone can make sense of that, please enlighten me.

Since they refused to explain, I took a guess that maybe the misunderstanding was that they were interpreting "legitimate criticism" as "damning criticism," like that because a bad thing happened during that era, nothing good came of it at all. I made it clear that this was speculation and that any criticism of interpreting it that way only applied if that's what was happening.

The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don't show in the modlog, and adding this:

Edit: the other commenter essentially proved that they were just baiting people into inflammatory discussion. They kept resorting to personal attacks and flip-flopped on their position solely to continue arguing. This behavior is not tolerated here. Please report such trolls in the future.

At literally no point did I "flip-flop" my position of "internment was bad, actually." Nor did I "bait" them, unless "criticizing internment is legitimate," is somehow "baiting" someone into saying "no it isn't." By far the most "inflammatory" thing that was said was when they said that criticism of internment was "not legitimate." The "personal attacks" I made were stating the fact that the position they had expressed was to the right of Reagan on the issue, and also making a quip about a .world mod defending the Red scare and Joseph McCarthy.

This seems to be a case of a clear case of PTB, the mod apparently misspoke but because they're a mod they can just ban people for calling them out instead of owning up to it.

Edit: My comments are still visible on kbin.earth (thank you @[email protected]) so I can provide screenshots:

:::spoiler screenshots

context

:::spoiler spoiler

Context:

This comes from a game called "Queen's Wish: The Conqueror," a retro indie RPG. In the game, you play as the third child of the queen of Haven, a large and powerful nation, but up until now you've lived an idle live with little power and few responsibilities. The queen decides to send you off to reestablish control of lost vassals in a remote continent which were abandoned following a major magical disaster.

There are three vassal states and each has two factions who you can choose to support into power, usually one side being more aristocratic and the other being poorer. You also have the choice of how much you actually follow through with your assignment, you can just run around doing your own thing regardless of what the queen wants. But you can navigate a route where you side with the poor while still negotiating agreements as expected of you and feel like it's a "good guy" route. Although the queen would rather you work with the aristocrats, she's satisfied as long as you get either side to win and cooperate, just so long as somebody's keeping the spice flowing, so to speak.

This conversation occurs with a sage/scholar working in one of your forts in that region, who refers to "The Theory of Inevitable Decay." It's missable, but it's a crucial line of dialogue that recontextualizes everything that you're doing. From the beginning, you see a lot of the mess that was left behind and the power vacuum from when the kingdom pulled out before, but then, it sorta seems like you're fixing things, getting rid of bandits and warlords and establishing order, traditional fantasy hero stuff, and with a kinder, gentler hand, even. But even if you as an individual have the best intentions, you're still kind of setting things up in a way that's dependent on a great power a long way away. Haven has its own stuff going on and it probably isn't going to be knowledgeable about the region, interested in it's long-term well-being, or accountable to the people who live there. Sooner or later, it'll get a ruler who doesn't give a shit about a given vassal, and the vassal will fall to ruin - or so the sage suggests.

Anyway sorry I posted this in the wrong comm, this is just an interesting bit of dialogue from a video game with absolutely no relevance to modern day politics 😇