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Comment by timthelion | Hacker News Reader

But the US has a history of racism, slavery (even today, in the prisons), genocide angainst the natives, Christian supremasism leading the military to torture people without cause [1], mass internment of native Americans, Japanees, and Irish. In US history, Americans have already killed more inocent civilian Native Americans and blacks than the germans killed Jews, Polls and Gypsies. Unlike the Germans, Americans still deny their own hollocaust of the Natives. Claiming that it was smallpox, which echos the hollocaust deniers claims of typhus quite clearly. And in the past 30-40 years, Americans have been quiet about this. This has become taboo. But many people, even in the US government, such as Jeff Sessions, and Donald Trump are rooted to the history of racism and genocide. They are alive today, and they are ruling the country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...

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The US obviously isn't perfect. It has a very sordid past. It's just that it's sordid past isn't any worse than others (this is a human problem) and at its best it does stand for something - continual progress.

You are also absolutely incorrect on numbers of Native Americans or blacks killed vs the Nazi actions. The Nazis killed tens of millions systematically, not even counting incidental casualties.

The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out. The vast majority died prior to contact with Europeans due to simple disease. There's really no contesting this, all you can do is contest the numbers. Something like 50+% (conservative numbers) of the NA population pre-contact was killed by disease.

Many Native American tribes experienced great depopulation, averaging 25–50 percent of the tribes members lost to disease. Additionally, smaller tribes neared extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.[2] The significant toll that this took is expounded upon in the article Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. A specific example was Cortes' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. This shows the main effect of the arrival of Europeans in the new world. With no natural immunity against these pathogens, Native Americans died in huge numbers. The eminent Yale historian David Brion Davis describes this as "the greatest genocide in the history of man. Yet it's increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs."[9] By 1700, less than five thousand Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region.[4] In Florida alone, there were seven hundred thousand Native Americans in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2000.[4]

That of course does not deny the past. The US mistreated natives and exploited them, there is no doubting this.

Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide. The gap between reactionary politics and genocide is vast. Has Trump at age 70 ever even killed a man? Where does this idea that he's going to become genocidal comes from? How can you equate his actions (no deaths) to something which killed tens of millions?

I'll start with the following quote:

""" Himmler - "Reduce Deaths at all Costs"

Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Concentration Camps issued orders on December 28, 1942, that "The death rate in the concentration camps must be reduced at all costs" (Reitlinger, "The Final Solution"). The camps had been hit with a deadly typhus epidemic that spread by fleas and body lice. Stomach pain, high fever, emaciation and death can quickly follow. All of the camps were factories and the loss of workers was hurting war production. Inspector of the camps, Richard Glucks responded to Himmler's order on January 20, 1943, "Every means will be used to lower the death rates" (Nuremberg Tribunal Document No. 1523). """ Quote from a holocaust denial website [1]

> The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out.

""" From the earliest years of colonialism, conquistadores like Vasco Núñez de Balboa would brazenly advocate genocide against the native population.[50] In the 1700s, British militia like William Trent and Simeon Ecuyer gave Smallpox-exposed blankets to Native American emissaries as gifts at Fort Pitt, "to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians", in one of the most famously documented cases of germ warfare. While it is uncertain how successful such attempts were against the target population,[51] historians have noted that, "history records numerous instances of the French, the Spanish, the English, and later on the American, using smallpox as an ignoble means to an end. For smallpox was more feared by the Indian than the bullet: he could be exterminated and subjugated more easily and quickly by the death-bringing virus than by the weapons of the white man."[52] The British High Commander Jeffery Amherst authorized the intentional use of disease as a biological weapon against indigenous populations during the Pontiac's Rebellion, saying, "You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race", and instructing his subordinates, "I need only Add, I Wish to Hear of no prisoners should any of the villains be met with arms." """ Quote from wikipedia article on extermination of native Americans [2]

If you read the literature from that time period, Darwin, the various western diaries, ect. You will find that the desire to kill Indians, and the vision of Indians as undermench was universal. This impression of Indians continued up until very recently, when US children, when given squirt guns, would run around playing "shoot the Indian". An endeering game in which American childern would simulate the systematic extermination of the natives 50-100 years earlier.

> You are also absolutely incorrect on numbers of Native Americans or blacks killed vs the Nazi actions. The Nazis killed tens of millions systematically, not even counting incidental casualties.

I was refering to the Holocaust, the systematic cilling of civilians. There were some ten-elleven million killed in the Holocaust[3]. There were some nine or ten million killed in the slave trade [4]. And millions of natives killed by european settlers (the exact number is really hard to place). Since ten million + some unknown number of millions is greater than ten million alone, I stand by my claims.

> Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide.

Did Hitler ever do so? The Jews didn't know that they were going to be exterminated. Otherwise, they wouldn't have packed their things and gotten on the trains to the concentration camps. They were under the impression that they were merely being deported. And Trump certainly talks about deportation [5].

Indeed, when you read what Hitler wrote, it was pretty tame compared to what Trump has said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWejiXvd-P8

Can you get more genocidal than that? Can you find a Hitler quote, from before the start of WWII that comes close to that?

[1] https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/wasthere.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history#Americas [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust [4] http://orb.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg449/AtlanticSlaveTradeDeaths.htm [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0mOA1KAZME

What's he point of Himmler's quote? He wanted to reduce deaths in a system in which the end goal was extermination?

I agree with you that there are instances where Europeans wiped out natives and even where that was the mindset. The fact remains that the majority of Native Americans did not die due to systematic extermination. It is indisputable.

The US had done bad things, but every single culture in the world has done evil things. That is human nature. Many native tribes engaged in torture and regular warfare of their own. The only thing we can do is learn from it and the only way to do it is being objective about history, not engaging in exaggeration.

Can you get more genocidal than that? Can you find a Hitler quote, from before the start of WWII that comes close to that?

Mein Kampf?

Hopefully when Trump does not become Hitler 2.0 you will admit you were wrong.

> What's he point of Himmler's quote? He wanted to reduce deaths in a system in which the end goal was extermination?

My point is that you are denying the systematic genocide of the Native Americans. Just as the Nazis denied the systematic genocide of the Jews. Using exactly the same arguments.

> The fact remains that the majority of Native Americans did not die due to systematic extermination. It is indisputable.

It is also true that most Jews survived the Holocaust. Your point?

I have not read the entire book, as it is very long, but as far as I know Mein Kampf does not actually talk about genocide at all. It was not untill 1941, after the war had started, that Hitler first publicly mentioned the idea http://ww2history.com/key_moments/Holocaust/Hitler_talks_of_... He was hateful. Yes. But Donald Trump is hateful too.

> Hopefully when Trump does not become Hitler 2.0 you will admit you were wrong.

I don't think that Trump will become Hitler 2.0. But his supporters may well commit a genocide and cause either totaltarianism or mayhem. If they do not, I will not be wrong, just as I would not be wrong, if I were to say that cancer can kill a patient who subsiquently survives.

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