freediver wrote on Nov 28
th, 2017 at 6:36pm:
If the Arabs made the contact between the old and the new world inevitable by cutting Europe off from the rest of civilisation, do they bear any responsibility for the introduction of diseases?
Great argument FD - its not the people who raped and pillaged who are to blame for the consequences of that rape and pillage - no, we have to blame the people who may or may not have determined the course of said rape and pillage because of the completely unrelated things they did hundreds of years earlier. FD logic at its finest. But at least do me one thing for me FD. Please don't ever again accuse others of going to the most absurd lengths to spinelessly apologise for atrocities committed.
Quote:Why does the blame hinge on intentions that had nothing at all to do with disease?
I'll once again explain my exceedingly simple analogy - as I can't believe you are having this much trouble understanding it...
1. A man rapes a woman
2. You can even think of him as a black man if you like - I have a funny feeling the idea of blaming a black man for rape is a little more palatable to you than thinking of him as a white man.
3. the (black) man just happens to have HIV - but he doesn't know that
4. victim of rape contracts HIV as a result
Now after you've had enough time to absorb the above scenario, consider this questions:
Do you blame the man for infecting the woman with HIV?
Do you blame him -
even though his assault hinged on intentions that had nothing to do with the disease - or in other words, in raping the woman, he didn't do it in order to give the woman a terrible disease?The answer of course is a no-brainer. We don't absurdly say a man who raped a woman and infected her with HIV is not to blame for infecting her based on the logic that he had no intention of infecting her - do we?? Of course not. In exactly the same way, only the most spineless of spineless apologists would even consider employing the excuse that the European rape and pillagers who invaded the new world and decimated entire populations with their diseases - shouldn't be blamed for infecting the people.
But I guess it is difficult to bring yourself to attribute blame for the effects of rape and pillage, if you are unwilling to acknowledge the rape and pillage in the first place - right FD? I mean, lets be fair, you have spent this entire discussion thinking up every strategy imaginable to obfuscate, apologise for, and flat out ignore the greatest period of rape, pillage and slaughter known to man to that time. What happened in the Congo again? Oh thats right, nothing but a bit of bad weather and arab diseases - and naturally the Belgians came in to help out.
Quote:OK, let's try again then. If a black man rapes a mexiwoman on a beach in Florida and she contracts AIDS, do you blame the black man for her disease, or white people for bringing the disease to the country?
What a strange analogy for you to make FD considering the absurd logic you keep applying. Naturally I blame the man, black, white or yellow or pink. And yet, if you applied your logic consistently, you would blame someone else other than the (black) man - so long as he didn't know he had AIDS. Right? Or.... are you now revising your logic - are you now saying that a group of people (lets call them "Europeans") who invade, rape and pillage an inhabited place, and in the process inadvertantly infect these people with terrible diseases - they actually *ARE* to blame for the transmission of those diseases - just like the black man who raped the mexiwoman? Sorry FD, to understand this logic, you actually have to first acknowledge the Europeans raped and pillaged. Sorry, thats going to be quite traumatic for you, I know.
Because you have spent the entire thread blaming white people for diseases, even if non-white people were obviously involved in the spread of the disease and regardless of the intentions of the white people.
Quote:If a white supremacist started saying European instead of white, would you defend him against charges of racism? Or can only Muslims do this trick?
Generally I take the radical view that charges of racism should involve actual racism.
If a white supremacist started blaming Europeans for spreading diseases in the new world because of their rape and pillage expeditions - I'm fairly confident I would defend him against charges of racism, cause you know, it wouldn't be racist. I wouldn't be petulant like you and insist that regardless of what he actually says, everything he says must be racist - just because he is a white supremacist. Even if he's talking about christmas pudding, presumably you would stand their yelling "RACIST! RACIST! RACIST!" - if your childish views of muslim attitudes are anything to go by