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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

And something the nations of the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and Belgium all engaged in.

Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it was reprehensible. No one is denying that. But let's not pretend that it was only the Southern states in the United States that engaged in it.

To assume that just because those states attempted secession over slavery that they'd also be sympathetic to the Axis powers is to deny them any sort of nuance. It also ignores that by that logic, all of the countries I mentioned earlier should also have been Axis powers.

So please, go argue semantics somewhere else.

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How did you jump to the conclusion that I wanted to blame only southern states? I made a remark on how "one immoral act" so egregiously downplays slavery.

> To assume that just because those states attempted secession over slavery that they'd also be sympathetic to the Axis powers is to deny them any sort of nuance. It also ignores that by that logic, all of the countries I mentioned earlier should also have been Axis powers.

Hitler admired America, the Reich took great inspiration from it. The British pioneered industrialized concentration camps. Belgium is on the hook for extraordinarily cruel amounts of genocide on top of slavery.

It makes you think that maybe history isn't the result of some Manichean battle of good and evil.

There should be a rule that anyone who says "by that logic" is about to put stupid words in your mouth.

throwaway123x2 speculated that the South would have joined the Axis.

I mentioned that that is not a guarantee. And that if his reasoning was the slave trade, then there are issues with that line of thought. Because there are.

I made a plea for empathy and suggested that just because a society has made mistakes doesn't make them "evil".

You decided to argue the semantics of me saying "one immoral act".

I was the one arguing for a view of history that isn't some "Manichean battle of good and evil". And I don't see how any of my posts do anything but that.

People who say "there should be a rule" don't really want to argue points. And maybe if you don't want stupid words in your mouth, don't say them.

No, my point was that if there was a state whose founding cause was white supremacy, they would be much more likely to align with Nazi Germany's idea of Aryan Supremacy.

And regardless of whether that is true or not, my even greater point is that the USA and CSA would likely have found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict and fought a war on the North American continent that would have not only caused much greater loss of life, but also prevented either state from helping an isolated Britain in Europe, greatly improving chances of a Nazi triumph there.

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