Comment by kapitza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kapitza | Hacker News Reader

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Wow. To paraphrase Walter Sobchak: say what you want about Marxism. But at least it's an ethos.

I don't know this, but let's suppose that by your use of this term "exercise of economic power", you imply some moral sense in which the action is unrighteous or unjust. Right? (Bear in mind that, of course, from the opposite perspective, it sounds a lot like "blaming the victim.")

Consider a not hugely dissimilar migration that happened around the same time: the migration of French Algerians to metropolitan France. Here's a short Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oran_massacre_of_1962

Totally serious, non-rhetorical question: would you categorize this historical event as "exercise of economic power" or as "ethnic cleansing?"

Also, is there any generalization that can be drawn across the political systems in which these two events happened (decline of Detroit, independence of Algeria)? Or is it just a coincidence that they both go down in the '60s?

People weren't forced out, many of those that had resources chose to leave. That's not a cleansing.

I'm not sure what to make of you comparing several hundred thousand people moving to a new location to a mass murder.

Do you somehow think that deaths from murder were a major contributor to the changing demographics of Detroit?

Uh, no, if several hundred thousand people were murdered, that would be a massacre.

If they left because they were afraid of being murdered (or otherwise violated in their physical safety), that would be ethnic cleansing.

Do you not believe this applies to those who left Detroit, or Algeria? Really? Is it not the case that every country and major city outside East Asia contains areas where residing would endanger you? Including... most of Detroit? Could you seriously be this good and innocent a person?

Note also that it takes a lot less physical menace to drive out Ward and June Cleaver, than Dylan "YOLO" Hipster. Of course, Ward and June were privileged...

That isn't the definition of ethnic cleansing.

(usually involves force and systematic exercise of that force)

Crime isn't force? Withholding protection from crime isn't systematic?

When Milosevic went to cleanse Kosovo, he didn't send the Yugoslav Army to put people in cattle cars. He just let Arkan's Tigers do whatever. Arkan got the message and so did the Albanians:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkan

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