One of the main conclusions of the Zinn reading that was surprising, and made me uncomfortable, was the argument that the bloodshed and genocide committed in the Americas might be necessary for the drive to civilization. What particularly made me uncomfortable was the comparisons first to the Soviet use of peasant camps and then to the fire bombings of Germany and Japan during World War 2. The problem is all of these are completely different situations.<\/p>\n
For example, the genocide and enslavement of native Americans in the Americas by Europe wasn\u2019t done with the goal of civilizing or bettering the Americas. It was done with the goal of enriching Europe with the resources and wealth found in said new territories. Then there\u2019s the Soviet work camps and the killing of peasants. The problem is neither the work camps nor the killing of peasants was done to industrialize the Soviet Union. Rather, they were punishment to help Stalin solidify control of his regime. And then the fire bombings of Germany and Japan just fall off the wagon entirely. These were tactics of war by a foreign power in order to win, not to bring civilization or industrialization. These examples used by the writer are odd, and do little if anything to prove their point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the main conclusions of the Zinn reading that was surprising, and made me uncomfortable, was the argument that the bloodshed and genocide committed in the Americas might be necessary for the drive to civilization. What particularly made me uncomfortable was the comparisons first to the Soviet use of peasant camps and then to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4687,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}