The obsession of trying to pin guilt on one historic area or another is ridiculous. Last time I checked nobody has gotten a mea culpa from the mongols.
Centuries of colonial exploitation and violence have made the indigenous peoples of both Americas disproportionately vulnerable to current epidemics.
What current is epidemics is this person fabulating about? COVID ?
Hmmm ... I wonder ... what could it be ...
And i mean, admit the article is not just about Aztecks, but also about groups dominated by them.
Our technology and knowledge today allows for better empires though, so we should demand better behaviour today.
Western history, especially the US in US public education, often glosses over past atrocities committed. Maybe western civilizations aren't inherently more evil than others in some cases, but we also aren't inherently much less evil or were driven under some pure altruism as some may think.
Ok people did bad things 400 years ago. So what? Don’t repeat history that’s is the only long term lesson to be learned.
> Ok people did bad things 400 years ago. So what?
Make it right! Any stakeholder still enjoying the fruits of these events, make it right. Try to make it right at least and remember the events.
If another country chooses to paint western civilization or the US negatively while ignoring their own baggage, then that’s their own ignorance. The same can be said about our civilizations painting others negatively awhile igoring our own past and engaging in hypocrisy.
I believe education is the best path to progress forward and peaceful diplomacy, for everyone. Angry populations fed lies, foaming at the mouth for blood just doesn't seem like a good path forward and never has been.
You are building a strawman here. Nobody is saying all western history is bad ( as if there is such a thing really - there isn't ), but the west has been the source of most evil in the past few hundred years.
> human empires behave exactly the same no matter origin or creed is dishonest at best and malicious at worst.
No they have not. The greeks, japanese, romans, mongols, etc never had racial extermination campaigns like the british empire, the us empire, nazi germany, etc. That is a fairly new and uniquely western "ideal". That entire races had to be exterminated because they were native, aborigine, jewish, etc is something new.
Sure cities were destroyed, people were persecuted, enslaved, etc in the past but you won't find many empires in the past that committed the atrocities that britain, nazis and we have. And the most evil singular acts in human history is easily hiroshima and nagasaki. And who committed those evil acts?
You can argue that others would have been just as evil as the west if they had the power and I'd probably agree with that. But that isn't history, it's conjecture. And even if it was true, then it just shows we are no better than everyone else. Which runs counter to the dominant narrative that the west is "all good, perfect, civilized, etc".
The narrative that the west is evil is needed because it's fundamentally true and we need to counter the dominant false narrative that the west is all good. How many millions have we butchered in iraq, vietnam, syria, central/south america, africa, etc all in the name of "western good"?
Your sentiments are correct but you are misguided in your anger. You shouldn't be mad at the "west is evil" narrative. You should really be angry at the dominant "west is good" narrative.
> Epidemics are not genocide by any measure of definition
I suppose, but conquistadors liked their slaves, they used torture freely on anyone they felt like, they compared tenochtitlan to venice IIRC - and then set about destroying it. The native mexicans were subhumans to them (because they weren't christians I think was the main reason) and they treated them with incredible brutality. You whitewash the conquistadors by calling them "opportunistic adventure[r]s".
I wanted to say that the conquistadors probably behaved on par with their contemporaries in the Holy Roman Empire or elsewhere.
Whitewash: "to gloss over or cover up (something, such as a record of criminal behavior)" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash) I'm unaware of any religious aspect to the term.
> and shows a clear unwillingness to accept...
... to accept your point of view, yes, correct. Provide facts and then we can talk.