this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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UK Politics
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"I hate indians, they're a beastly people with a beastly religion"
-Winston Churchill
"Madam I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and in the morning I shall be sober."
~ Winston Churchill
Perhaps I should have included a disclaimer, I'm certainly not quoting Churchill because I like him. As your quote demonstrates, he's a fucking racist asshole (among many other flaws) but gifted at the ol' soundbite.
Don't worry about it, I just like pointing it out
My 'favourite' of those kinds of quotes is"I do not admit ... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place".
Not only is that full-on "racial hierarchy as justification for genocide" but it was in a speech arguing in favor of allowing the creation of the state of Isreal even though those pesky Palestinians were living in the proposed terrority. Thanks for your statesmanship Winny, that worked out great for everyone...
"Sir, if you were my husband I'd poison your tea"
"Madam, if you were my wife I would drink it"
~~-Winston Churchill~~
Well sure. Thats colonization. Which is the basis for the existence of most countries. If you believe the U.S., Canada, Australia (and lots of others) have a right to exist, then you agree with Churchill.
Can you articulate what you mean by a state having "a right to exist"?
A moral rational to not be dissolved.
The countries you mentioned were all built on a genocide of their indigenous inhabitants to establish an ethnostate. They each, however, have since at least acknowledged that ethnostates are bad and have structured their charters/constitutions on the principle of strict equality for its citizens.
Israel, on the other hand, is currently in the process of establishing a Jewish ethnostate with an outspoken intention of creating at best an apartheid state, if not a completely ethnically cleansed state.
I see a clear difference in ongoing behaviour, and I don't think the ideas are as conjoined as you present them.
This is a false equivalence.
Well, first, I'm not sure that they do have a right to exist, and certainly not without some serious steps in acknowledging the issue and making meaningful reparations.
But more specifically, Churchill is saying that he doesn't even see that a "great wrong has been done" in the first place. Whether the benefits outweigh the harms or whether it's too late to fix historic wrongs are very different debates from "do you think it is wrong to genocide a people to colonise their land?".
And the reason it's important to acknowledge that historic wrongs were wrong, even if you can't do anything to change them, is because you are less likely to argue in favor of repeating the exact wrong again, as Big C is doing in that speech.
You do know that women were the biggest demanders of that ? Just like the witch burnings in the West. But hey what do I know. I'm just a gal trying to demonize churchill for genociding Indians via starvation.
Why are you trying to cancel an old dude who died 60 years ago
And learn what a genocide is ffs
@Flax_vert @biotin7
Because a lot of people still think he was a great man.
He was. He greatly helped destroy fascism in Europe.