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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating. Did some extra reading from Buganda wikipedia page. Like most (all?) cultures/civilizations, the circle of empathy excluded humans on the periphery:

Before the arrival of Europeans in the region, Buganda was an expanding, "embryonic empire".[12] It built fleets of war canoes from the 1840s to take control of Lake Victoria and the surrounding regions and subjugated several weaker peoples. These subject peoples were then exploited for cheap labor.[12] The first Europeans to enter the Kingdom of Buganda were British explorers John Hanning Speke and Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton while searching for the headwaters of the Nile in 1862. They found a highly organized political system which was marred, however, by the ongoing practice of mass human sacrifice estimated at 800 persons annually.

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So, just like any empire at the time.

Pretty much, except for the frivolous human sacrifice aspect.

Yes, the random genocides in the name of progress or capital gain are totally different. I'm sure that the starving irish, native americans, and asians who were caught in the opium wars died with grateful appreciation that there were no priests around to oversight their expeditious sending to the afterlife.

I don’t know why you are being downvoted. Whether it is ritualistic human sacrifice or pushing native Americans onto reservations, it is all versions of trading human lives for our own benefit. This takes many forms from the person who uses another person’s body for their own sexual gratification to wage theft to murdering people in a ritualistic setting to curry a God’s favor. It is all about how can I use others (other’s time, bodies, possessions, lives, etc.) to get gain for myself.

The reason is mostly the tone I think. Too sharp and makes statements that are both uncomfortable and hard to argue against. A counter argument could be constructed, but it would be difficult and backlashing is easier.

You just self-congratulated your own argument. You’re getting downvoted because you’re not contributing anything meaningful to the discussion. Whataboutism does not justify criticism of a practice.

This answered directly to a comment attempting to differentiate religious from other imperialist practices. I can only see "aboutism" in this, but no "whataboutism" – that is, maybe in those arguing it may be just like any other argument they do not appreciate.

Read the whole thread. The human sacrifice was being criticized. OP did a knee jerk “like all the empires” and got a reply pointing out that many had banned human sacrifice hundreds of years before that.

OP then changed gears to include completely different reasons for death to make it seem like that made human sacrifice no different. Textbook whataboutism.

> I don’t know why you are being downvoted.

This argument is generally used by people to defend bad institutions. I've heard Confederate apologists makes the exact same argument you have here ("Look at the Union treatment of Native Americans. All sides in the Civil War were immoral.").

There are gradations of bad behavior. Treating bad behavior as if it's all the same just encourages a race to the bottom.

Look up king Leopold of Belgium if you're looking for a less "frivolous human sacrifice" aspect during that time period.

Humans have a strange thirst for blood, whether its for religion or money.

China banned human sacrifice in -384 (Duke Xian of Qin). Rome banned it in -97, which was inherited by the Christian and Islamic traditions. The Northern Crusades around +1000 eradicated it in the Scandinavian / Baltic region; the Spaniards banned it in the Americas in the 1500s. Buddhism (ca. -500) and Jainism (ca. -3000 or earlier) prohibited it among their followers, which gradually spread to most of India (ahimsa), though reports of cult sacrifices (Shaktiism) persist until the early colonial period.

So I wouldn't say it was particularly common in the 19th century.

At the same time, making sure that those with the wrong religion and/or skin tone would die rather easily was still accepted practice of the time. I my other comment I gave a few examples how mass casualty policies were introduced with the more or less implicit understanding that people will die in the millions. This is like the difference between white-collar crimes and those of the poor - the punishment matches how graphic it is, not its overall effect because the causality chain obviously washes out the responsibility.

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