The relevance of European and American conceptions of history

Quid est Veritas? said:

This is drivel. Please provide your sources. Churchill called for restraint against the Mau Mau, that suspects should be tried by due process of law. He did post the Mau Mau oath in parliament though, and was appalled by their violence - such as burying the elderly alive, raping and torturing children in front of their parents, burning settlers alive, etc. The Mau Mau were utterly barbaric, that even the Kenyan government has called them worse than dogs in modern times. That the British response was quite harsh is to be expected, but this was certainly not 'orchestrated' by Churchill.

Look up his record: In South Africa he defended the black population, the Cape franchise, the Indian minority (a debt acknowledged by Gandhi) and is known to have scoffed at people that wanted to change swathes of Africa into "white man' s country". He opposed the excesses in Natal in 1906. Churchill was no saint, but he was liberal on race relations within the Empire throughout his career. He was born in Victorian times and liked using terms like Blackamoors, and enjoyed the shocking quip (which is so often used against him today), but at heart, he was substantially decent - as good as one could expect of an Aristocratic Victorian. You are applying anachronistic standards at best.

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Tom 1 said:

People do realise that, there is nothing new about this idea. Thinking about it there may be something particular about the US that leads to this kind of sorting famous people into good guys/ bad guys, perhaps, the sort of thing exemplified in Hollywood movies etc. As far as I can make out that sort of thinking is less widespread in Europe, I think we are a little more pragmatic. Churchill was a key figure in the defeat of Hitler. Defeating Hitler meant lots of death and suffering and misery all round. That is what war is. People who fight in wars are ordinary people, they get trained to kill people and they go and do it. Bullets and shells fly around. Soldiers and civilians are maimed and killed. Often shortages of food and the destruction of infrastructure leads to further death and suffering through disease, starvation, and the breakdown of law. That is what happens - the only questions worth asking are who won, and was it worth it? There is no such thing as a civilisation that doesn't have a lot of skeletons in its foundations - that has no more to do with Churchill than it has to do with you or me - if you really thought differently, you wouldn't be living in the US, as the only way to actually make your points justifiable would be to create your own civilisation without it ever posing a threat to or causing harm to any person. Then you would have an alternative model from which to make your argument. Theorising within a civilisation wherein you enjoy all of the benefits of how the world actually works is an exercise in meaninglessness, as there is no way yet to be seen on earth of having those kind of benefits without someone somewhere (or rather lots of someones) having to pay a price. Vilifying someone like Churchill for operating in the real world is just plain immature. It is only possible to maintain that kind of opinion when you (or anyone) don't have to deal with the same kinds of things.

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Radagast said:

I'm guessing the vandalism with BLM slogans is due to BLM, unless I have evidence to the contrary.

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Tom 1 said:

That depends how you define national security. Comparisons between WWII and the Vietnam war are sketchy at best, but even so the horrendous and illegal actions of the US in SE Asia, and in Latin America, may have ultimately prevented the Cold War being lost by the West. How convincingly that could be argued for one way or the other is still an open question, I think, but I’d be interested in hearing what your arguments are. War is horrible isn’t really an argument, unless it’s an argument against the existence of humans. There is no difference between the questions ‘should the US have targeted civilians as part of a drive to eliminate communism in SE Asia’ and ‘should the Hebrews have attempted to wipe out other nations in order to maintain their own cultural integrity’? The answers might be different, but the questions are basically the same.

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agapelove said:

There was no threat to national security unless you consider a blow to your ego a matter of national security.

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agapelove said:

Well for starters here’s two random girls spray painting BLM on a Starbucks.

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Radagast said:

I don't think you quite understand the Cold War. If country A points nuclear weapons at country B, that's a threat against national security. Especially if the weapons are on a small offshore island.

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agapelove said:

In case you forgot we threatened them with nuclear weapons first.

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Tom 1 said:

No, but the whole revisionist way of thinking is often immature and superficial, based on a very basic grasp of a few salient points, poorly understood, and a rather smug perspective that imagines itself to be better at managing the kind of situation the person imagining has never faced. For a beginning point, why would you think it is necessary to point out that a person has flaws? Do you imagine that people think Churchill didn't have flaws? Which people think that? Who are these people who see him as a saint, as you say? The idea that Churchill (or any other person) has flaws is hardly a novel or useful observation. From there it just goes downhill into a flood of immature notions about how a person at some point in history should have been like this or that - well, nobody is without flaws, certainly not the people making those criticisms. With a starting point like that, with pointless and self-righteous assertions as the foundation, any argument built on it will be silly and puerile. Not meaning you as such, but that kind of thinking in general. Give it some thought -

Churchill had flaws - um, yes.
He said some dubious things - so has everyone else who can speak
He could have handled some situations better - yes, again, so has everyone else, and what (exactly) would you have done?

The list goes on - and only by questioning your own questions can you arrive at anything useful.

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Radagast said:

In case you didn't notice, I called the two countries "A" and "B."

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agapelove said:

The view that the Mau Mau were irrational barbarians was called into question when memoirs of former members portrayed the rebellion as an essential, if radical, component of African nationalism.

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Tom 1 said:

Yes, you've posted one half of an argument - not a great way to make an argument. Perhaps you could explain what you would have done, in which situations, how your thinking would have determined the best course of action etc had you been alive at the time? What, in your upbringing in the late 1800s and early 1900s, would have given you a different perspective? Which of the scenarios faced would you have dealt with differently, and how exactly, taking all factors into account? Unless you can answer those questions convincingly, your criticism of how someone else did it is nothing more than a fatuous talking point. You could however make it a useful talking point by presenting more than the things that support your point of view.

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Radagast said:

The Mau Mau committed horrific atrocities (such as the Lari massacre), and committed them largely against other black Kenyans (they killed around 4,000 black Kenyans, many by torture, but only 32 white people).

It's just ludicrous to consider that as "essential nationalism." Indeed, the Kenyan government itself banned the Mau Mau as an organisation from independence until 2003.

If you're supporting the Mau Mau, then you have no moral credibility left in my eyes at all.

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agapelove said:

I’m sorry but are you going to substantiate any of your claims? Like the fact that the Mau Mau were primordial savages? I know that’s what the successful propaganda campaign led against them said. From what I’ve read the British colonizers are the ones who did most of the raping and pillaging.

The Mau Mau Case The Mau Mau case represented the first time in British history that victims of colonialism were given the right to claim compensation from the British government for the abuse and suffering they had endured. The claims arose from the appalling and systematic abuse and torture inflicted on the Kenyan people by British colonial officials and Kenyan “home guards” under British command. The abuse included the use of castration, systematic beatings, rape and sexual assault with bottles ; all of which – as the case revealed – were known about and sanctioned at the top levels of the British government. Less than 10 years after the end of the Second World War, the British government were rounding up thousands of civilians into mass detention camps all across Kenya and subjecting them to terrible mistreatment, culminating in the Hola Massacre in 1959.

A more extensive source if you would like to read in excruciating detail: The Prosecution of Warcrimes, Kenya 1952-60

The view that the Mau Mau were irrational barbarians was called into question when memoirs of former members portrayed the rebellion as an essential, if radical, component of African nationalism. The movement was analyzed was academic studies who later deemed it a modern response to oppression by colonial dominion.

The British sought to quell the Mau Mau uprising by instituting mass detention camps, “Britain’s gulag.” There is no official number of detainees recorded but it is estimated to have been up to 300,000 with tens of thousands dead. In these camps the Kikuyu suffered forced labour, disease, starvation, torture, rape and murder. Churchill goes on record to say these camps produced “minimum suffering”.

The Mau Mau were far from the first or only to rebel. When Kenya was first forcibly opened up for British settlement, there was plenty of conflict and British troops carried out atrocities against the native population. Churchill’s main concern was how this would look if word got out.Here is a good article that describes how the British parliament has kept a lot of this under wraps: Uncovering the brutal truth about the British empire | Marc Parry

Britain's presence in Kenya was always marked by dispossession and violence. Either Winston was utterly unaware or totally antipathetic. If Churchill was really all that decent he would have just left them alone but nonetheless he was a man of his time, who deemed violent colonization the only way towards progress.

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agapelove said:

The Mau Mau killed other Kenyans who were siding with British rule. Colonial occupation basically triggered a civil war dividing the nation in half so the Mau Mau were Kenya’s only form of a national militia. I’m not supporting the Mau Mau but I do see them as victims trying to fight back.

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