We may never know because it might be that almost all our historical primary sources are cherry-picked stories from one or the other side in the conflict, so we will never know what represents the typical experience. If the slaves narratives had been recorded in the 1880s when those who experienced slavery during its peak were still alive, maybe we would actually be able to know for sure. But unfortunately the narratives weren’t recorded until the 1930s when only people who were children during war-time slavery could be interviewed.

Absolutely astounding that you could be aware of all this and not ever think to ask yourself the question, “gee I wonder why we don’t have many slave narratives that get written before the 1930s and whether that says anything about the conditions those people were in”.

Also, we have quite a few slave narratives from before the 30s, and they’re all pretty horrifying! How many does this dope need to see before he’s willing to acknowledge that maybe what we have is a pretty representative sample?

The other side being that what happened in the South in the late 1860s was a preview of what happened to the American cities like Detroit and St. Louis in the 1960s and 1970s. (See books like Devil’s Night or Detroit: An American Autopsy ). Immediately after the war when the government was in the hands of Northern “carpetbaggers” the South experienced rampant corruption, a break down in any capabilities of government, massive increase in crime (and in particular, black crime and rape), lots of people getting off with little punishment for crimes because the government was in the hands of people who hated the Southern whites. But instead of the 1970s where the whites simply fled to the suburbs, in the South in the 1870s the whites formed paramilitary groups to retake the government.

Again I’m not sure how much I agree with this other side – but overall the post-war era seems much more like a tragedy with terrible mistakes and bad deeds by both sides, rather than a morality play of Southern whites being the pure villains and blacks being the entirely innocent victims. But again, you cannot say this in the current year.

That’s an argument victim blaming black southerners and white unionists for the Ku Klux Klan.

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When they compare slavery to the industrial conditions at the time, they have a point, but it’s not that slavery is good, it’s that the industrial conditions were really really bad.

This is literally the quality of the racism and slavery discourse that used to be in the comments of literally neo-Nazi blog The Right Stuff, before it was just the site for their podcast The Daily Shoah.

(They also used to produce a gossip site, The Right Drama, which took the piss out of Michael Anissimov. Just to be super on-topic.)

Isn’t this exactly the kind of sickening bullshit that Reddit isn’t supposed to allow on the platform?

I mean what is the fucking point of this beyond sheer contrarianism

It certainly has fuck all to do with the most basic level of research you could possibly imagine somebody doing in the name of being “rational”

I learned about the horrors - and I mean specific, well documented events - of chattel slavery in secondary school that this shithead is just now finding out about, and I’m not even fucking American

But they just double-down anyway

Christ these people make me so fucking angry I get sick of SneerClub sometimes, if I didn’t have fuck all else to do I’d suggest to /u/completely-ineffable to just shut the sub down because as the years have gone by they get so much worse it isn’t even fun anymore

It is literally willed fucking ignorance permitted and in fact encouraged by a parliament of idiots sucking each other off over their ridiculous egos: and I say that as a man who likes sucking dick

Literally the same arguments as George Fitzhugh and other slavery apologists of the day. If you’re gonna go caliper, go all the way I guess.

Wow it is Tuesday already?

E: iirc the last time there were also hints being made to the lost cause thing.

Ooh, I can’t wait to meet this mysterious “HBD”

Leaving aside the ethics and racism; slavery apologia always has the same issues as pro-feudal neoreactionaries: everyone imagines that they’ll end up on top. But the reality is that most positions in the societies they’re imagining sucked.

Sure, if you were a large plantation owner, slavery was great. Even small hold slave owners had it pretty good, comparatively. But none of these people ever imagine themselves being in the class of undifferentiated labor that got squeezed out economically thanks to the free labor provided by slaves. Oh, and they never imagine themselves as being enslaved either, go figure.

It’s the same issue with the NRX crowd. Being pro-monarchy if you’re a duke or knight makes sense. But they never seem to imagine themselves as being serfs, which is what actually would happen statistically. Monarchy might seem kind of cool when you look at all the propaganda produced by monarchies, but they actually suck if you look at the experience of a typical person living under them.