There Is No Excuse for Ethnic Cleansing
Zionists say to Americans, "You did it to the Indians, so when we do it to the Palestinians it's the same thing, right?" Yes it's the same thing. But Zionists won't like the moral conclusion!
The Zionists love to tell their American critics, “Well, you did it to the American Indians to create the United States of America so why can’t we do it to the Palestinians to create the Jewish state of Israel? It’s the same thing, right?” Let’s see how the Zionists do indeed have a point, one that destroys their claim to moral legitimacy.
Since the days of Christopher Columbus when Europeans first (not counting, perhaps, Leif Erikson earlier) discovered and began colonizing the North American continent, Europeans have been ethnic cleansing American Indians. The United States of America could not have come into existence otherwise.
What's the egalitarian take on this?
Firstly, there's the question of what, exactly, happened. Secondly, there's the question of what ought to have happened.
WHAT HAPPENED IN NORTH AMERICA?
The egalitarian take about what actually happened is different from the standard discourse. The difference stems from the fact that egalitarians look at what happened from the point of view of the have-nots, and not from the point of view of the haves.
When Europeans arrived on the shores of the North American continent, they arrived as a class society, with a few rich and powerful European haves (the ruling class) oppressing the great many European have-nots on the new American land. This point is hardly ever mentioned in the standard discourse, which speaks only of "the Europeans" as if there were no fundamental difference between the haves and have-nots. But there WAS a fundamental difference.
For one example of this factually wrong standard discourse, and my refutation of it, please see my article about the Mayflower Plymouth Colony here.
Likewise, the standard discourse about our Founding Fathers is a complete cover-up of the truth about how they were the haves oppressing the have-nots back then. Read about this here.
As the Europeans began settling in North America they of course encountered American Indians who lived there. What happened?
One thing that happened is that a substantial number of European have-nots opted to "go native." Ward Churchill wrote about this:
"Probably the earliest group of English to have simply melted into a native society were the inhabitants of Raleigh's 'lost colony' of Roanoak in 1590. A century later, there were literally thousands of 'white Indians'--mostly English and French, but Swedes, Scots, Irish, Dutch and others as well--who, displeased with aspects of their own cultures, had either married into, been adopted by, or petitioned for naturalization as member/citizens of indigenous nations. By then, the phenomenon had become pronounced enough that it had long-since precipitated a crisis among the Puritans of Plymouth Colony and figured in their waging of a war of extermination against the Pequots in 1637.
"The attraction of 'going native' remained so strong, and the willingness of indigenous peoples to accept Europeans into their societies so apparent, that it prevailed even among those captured in Indian/white warfare. During the 1770s, George Croghan and Guy Johnson, both acknowledged authorities on the native peoples of the mid-Atlantic region, estimated that the great bulk of the several hundred English prisoners of all ages and both genders taken by the Indians had been adopted by them rather than being put to death.
"The literature of the period is literally filled with observations. Virginia's Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier, for example, noted that whites 'recovered' from Indians had to be 'closely watched [lest] they will certainly return to the Barbarians.' Colonel Henry Bouquet, who headed a 1764 expedition to take charge of 'captives' returned under terms of a treaty with England by the Shawnees, Miamis and other peoples of the Ohio River Valley, issued orders that 'they are to be closely watched and well Secured [as] most of them, particularly those who have been a long time among the Indians, will take the first Opportunity to run away.' The Reverend William Smith, chaplain and chronicler of Bouquet's foray, noted that most younger whites seemed to view their 'liberators' as captors and 'parted from the savages with tears.'" [1]
One particularly good book about this is the exceedingly well- researched and well-written book, The Unredeemed Captive, by John Demos. This book describes how in 1704 Mohawks and French forces captured some English Puritans from Deerfield, MA. Over the years following this there were negotiations leading to the return of most of the prisoners. But Eunice, the daughter of a Puritan minister who had been captured and later released, refused to return, married a Mohawk man and made several trips from her Mohawk home in Canada to visit her Puritan relatives for weeks at at time in Deerfield. But Eunice always returned to her Mohawk society despite the strong efforts of her father to persuade her to stay. Read here about another similar story.
European colonist rulers, in contrast, viewed American Indians as sub-human (in regards to their rights if not their intelligence), and they waged an ethnic cleansing war against them, a war that entailed at times the goal of physically exterminating (killing) the Indians and at other times the goal of destroying their civilizations, either by destroying their farming civilizations or by destroying their nomadic civilizations based on hunting buffalo, and enclosing them in tiny reservations where they would no longer be an obstacle to European domination of North America "from sea to shining sea." A good book about the latter goal of ethnic cleansing focused on the Great Plains Comanche Indians is Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. The book tells the story of one of the Commanche great chiefs, Quanah Parker, the son of Cynthia Ann Parker who was a European captured by the Comanches as a nine year old girl assimilated into the tribe (who, when "rescued" kept trying to return to the Comanches).
It is important to know that the particular European colonists who initiated the ethnic cleansing of American Indians, who created the famous "Manifest Destiny" notion that exclusively European domination of North America from "sea to shining sea" was God's will, and who encouraged and when necessary ordered European have-nots to carry out the violent ethnic cleansing, were also the oppressors of ordinary European colonists and of course of black people; they were the slave-owners whom most Southern whites at the time of the Civil War (the period when the ethnic cleansing of the Great Plains Indians was in full swing) hated (yes, HATED!) as a class that oppressed them as well as the slaves, as one can read about in detail here.
European ethnic cleansing violence naturally elicited, in return, Indian violence against European settlers encroaching on their land. The violence on both sides was absolutely brutal: killing and raping and torturing and scalping and so on. It was violence designed to make the enemy leave.
Naturally, when European have-nots were attacked by Indians they tended to rally around their rulers in defense against the Indians. The European rulers gained the obedience of the European have-nots this way. For the European rulers, the Indians made a perfect bogeyman enemy with which to control the European have-nots. Because of this usefulness of the Indians as a bogeymen enemy, the European rulers had a strong motive NOT to allow peace to break out between Europeans and Indians because that would have rendered the bogeyman enemy no longer frightening enough to drive the European have-nots into obedience to their European rulers.
This is why the European rulers avoided creating peaceful and mutually respectful relations with the American Indians. It did not suit their oppressive (oppressive of the European have-nots, that is) purpose to do so. European rulers were an upper class that valued personal self-interest--greed--and that created a religion to justify not only oppressing European have-nots and African blacks but also stealing land and wealth from American Indians and killing them to get it.
That is what happened.
WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED?
What should have happened, morally speaking, is that the European have-nots should have defeated their European oppressive rulers and then made peace with the American Indians based on mutual respect, mutual agreements and mutual aid. Peace between European have-nots and American Indians on this basis would have enabled the American Indians to continue living as they wished.
Furthermore, such a peace would probably NOT have made it possible for so-called "Manifest Destiny" to have been fulfilled as it actually did. There would probably not have ever been a United States of America from "sea to shining sea." There would probably have been a number of mainly (though not exclusively) European/African-populated nations and some mainly (though not exclusively) American Indian-populated nations, existing in (relatively, at least[2]) peace and covering, between them, the land "from sea to shining sea." The millions of buffalo would probably have roamed as long as the Indians wanted them to roam. Very likely these nations covering North America would have all been essentially egalitarian societies. There would not ever have come into being the infamous military force flying the "stars and stripes" flag, using—with unbridled arrogance—weapons named to commemorate ethnic cleansing such as the Apache helicopter and the tomahawk cruise missile, and committing mass murder around the world. Good!
WHAT ABOUT THE PALESTINIANS AND JEWISH STATE OF ISRAEL?
The European Jews who initiated the modern Zionist movement to make most of Palestine be an exclusively Jewish state, based on ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from most of Palestine, were an initially wannabe oppressive ruling class and, after obtaining their Israel state, an actual oppressive ruling class, using the Palestinians as a bogeyman enemy with which to control their Israeli Jewish working class have-nots.
To read about how the early Zionist leaders were a wannabe oppressive ruling class, go here to see the sordid details.
To read about how the current Zionist (Israeli) rulers oppress the Israeli Jewish working class have-nots, go here.
To read about how the current Zionist (Israeli) rulers avoid peace with the Palestinians like the plague, and instead fund Hamas and work to keep it in power to make sure peace never breaks out, go here and also here.
To read why there should not be a Jewish state, go here.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
Ethnic cleansing has no moral justification. The justifications offered for it in the past, such as "Manifest Destiny" and "to create a Jewish state" don't merit our respect. These "justifications" are used by oppressive ruling classes to dominate and control ordinary people, both "their own" have-nots and native peoples
Our rulers try to confuse us about this by making it seem as if the morality of ethnic cleansing is "complex." No, it is not complex, just wrong. I discuss this "It's complicated" nonsense here:
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Ward Churchill, in Perversions of Justice: Indigenous Peoples and Angloamerican Law (one can google a text fragment to see it online)
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne describes the Comanche nation as one that became very war-like when the Spanish first introduced horses to North America. The Comanches, who became arguably the best mounted (on horses) warriors in the world, had been pretty much losers before the introduction of horses. Their culture was based exclusively on war and raiding (stealing) horses and taking captives for ransom. They were nomadic, and did not farm or weave baskets, etc. Young men only gained respect from being both good buffalo hunters and good warriors. The Comanches waged war against both the Spanish initially and then the United States settlers in Texas, as well as against the Apaches and other American Indian nations.
What would the Comanches have done in the alternative “should have happened” scenario? If the Europeans were no longer destroying the buffalo that the Comanches absolutely depended upon for survival, and were no longer grabbing the land on which the buffalo roamed and thereby making Comanche existence impossible, and if Comanche survival became possible without stealing other people’s horses and taking other people as captives for ransom (i.e., by peaceful trade, which the Comanches in real life did do a lot of anyway) then those Comanches who favored reducing or ending aggressive warfare that was not required for survival would probably have gained the upper hand in Comanche society.
Superb article. When the latest iteration of Palestinian ethnocide erupted my first thought was ‘the Indian wars’. As Twain said ‘history does not repeat itself but it rhymes.”