this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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I find that it is mostly Americans who do this sort of thing because of exaltation of free speech. I don't wish it would happen to the US, but it is primarily because they haven't had much experience with inciting hatred that led to genocide. Other parts of the world have had this experience so they have restrictions.
Don't get me wrong, I love free speech as much as the next guy, but as seeing how unbridled speech led to genocide in many cases, I used to be absolutist and now I am on the fence. I think free speech is something that will be perpetually debated. I was told the social contract could define what is acceptable speech and what isn't; but society at times is not a great arbiter of many things.
The indigenous peoples of North America might have something to say about that.
I am not saying hate speech hasn't had any role at all on what happened to Native Americans, but to my knowledge there wasn't a deliberate and systemic call to eradicate Native Americans unlike with the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. A lot of native people and colonisers have initially gotten along, but many colonial conflicts happened because of neither misunderstanding or some trumped up cassus belli orchestrated by local colonial officials, which the central government may not know due to poor communications over long distances at the time. Even the Spanish crown have gotten appalled after learning what Christopher Columbus did to indigenous population in Hispaniola, which took a long time for Spain to find out because of long distance.
Again, I am not trying to say hate speech hasn't had any role whatsoever on the genocide on Native Americans, but it is more complicated than that. Western colonisers still saw indigenous people as humans, but lesser if that makes sense. That's why even for the Western Allies, the systemic hate speech and call to rid the Jews had been a step too far, even though they themselves own colonies.
As an American, I can assure you, there absolutely was a deliberate and systemic call to eradicate Native Americans. They were (and often still are) completely dehumanized (there was a period of time in America where bounty hunters could be paid for "Genuine Indian Scalps". It's also still happening, it just seems like nobody cares anymore.
Take the border for example. It's the biggest thing that nobody will shut up about. The border. Border. Border. Border. But what do they fail to mention every single time? Who's home are they building that wall through? Who's land is that?
The Spanish were appalled by some of Columbus's actions, sure, but withing 50 years that cranked that dial up! Or did you think all of those missions and plantations built themselves