If I don’t clickbait the title people don’t click.
With the recent events happening in Gaza, I decided to first tackle this line of argument in my essay Zionism is antisemitism, and Palestine.
People were quick to say “yes Israel is bad, but Hamas…” (kidnapped 200 people, killed 1000, take your pick).
When you’re saying this, you’re actually saying that one israeli is worth 7 Palestinians. Read that again if you need to; it’s an ethnosupremacist position.
What is the logical conclusion of this argument? What is it supposed to achieve except convey empty platitudes and declaring to the world that you just don’t care enough to have any valuable input?
It’s fine not to care. I’m not your dad, I’m not going to try and change you.
But don’t declare it publicly. Don’t proudly say “well actually both sides are bad”. You don’t look smarter or wiser than anyone else who is taking a clear stance. You’re not taking the “middle ground”. Everyone who has taken sides and is trying to be productive about this (and not just the Gaza genocide, but really any situation where you can apply “both sides”) really doesn’t have time for this holier-than-thou bullshit.
Gaza “kidnapped” 200 settlers and that’s a war crime apparently. It’s not really, but whatever. Let’s say it is. Israel has killed 7000+ Palestinians in retaliation, now likely more than 10k as they cut off communications in Gaza last night.
Both sidesers: what’s your solution to this. If you say anything other than “I should not get involved” then you don’t actually believe both sides are bad and you are picking a side. It’s time you realize where you stand.
This kind of functional role of ‘bad settlers’ is well-documented in settler-colonialism, and there are even instances of leaders and government officials in the United States case admitting the necessity of ‘unofficial’ settler violence, from paramilitaries to illegal settlements and more.
Can any comrades with more recent contact with this material than I’ve had help me out with a citation on this, ideally ‘from the horse’s mouth’?
Yes this is largely correct after the US was born. It was fairly routine for the US to make a treaty and then for squatters to invade, putting pressure to make another treaty that would cede the land squatters occupy.
Militias were also very important and we’re often funded by state and federal backing. Various settler nightmares of slave revolt and Native resistance could move the frontier rabble to violence quickly. Native groups with season rounds would arrive at a seasonal ground to harvest food and find settlers were squatting. The militia would respond to “native invasion” with violence and the US could play dumb or incompetent.
There were occasions were it would not workout for settlers tho. They would be executed, or otherwise punished, by a Tribe for squatting. Some treaties allowed for this and the US could not legally retaliate. But this isn’t always the way it worked.
In fact, situations like this even lead to civil war among some nations, including the Creek Civil War which happens around the time of the war of 1812 and the death of Tecumseh.
Some factions of Native aristocracy adopted accommodationist approaches toward the US, utilizing chattle enslavement of African captives. Tecumseh came around to many tribes seeking to build a confederation to halt US expansion. Some of his relatives among the Creeks were sympathetic but others viewed the US as a necessary ally. Tecumseh was disappointed and promised to stamp the ground when he arrived back home in Shawnee territory and thus predicted the New Madrid faultline earthquake of 1811 which further radicalized many Creeks called the red stick Creeks. They decided to attack white settlement and killed several settlers, but some were caught and executed by the aristocratic council which sparked a Civil War. Andrew Jackson intervened in the war and won for the US, securing the treaty of fort Jackson which ceded large portions of so called Georgia and Alabama, despite the apparent loyalty of Creek aristocrats.
So the pressure of squatting settlers and their militias worked in numerous ways.
Thanks very much for fleshing out my half-thought and also for complicating the picture a bit. :)
I’m reading though Gerald Horne’s book on US settler colonialism soon, so hopefully that will help me internalize some of these details!