He called me a setter and a nazi out of the blue, and I asked him if he slanders everyone or if he has a reason for saying that about me, then he replies with this legendary quote:
If you’re Amerikan, then you live in the bowels of the single most brutal settler-colonial entity to exist in the modern era. “Settling” is not a once-and-done action; it is a constant state as long as you are on settled land.
It might surprise you that the prisoners weren’t the ones in charge of any so-called prison colonies.
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I don’t know enough about the history of Australian colonization to speak authoritatively about it. If I had to guess I’d say that those who found themselves on the wrong side of the British empire’s laws were given some kind of choice and found the option of being sent to settle Australia preferable to whatever alternative was presented. In that sense they could be considered settlers, but it could possibly have been a choice made under duress.
That being said it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to hear that they were similarly brutal towards the aborigines as settlers in America were towards the native Americans. History is complicated and there is no black and white, but there are rights and wrongs and it’s important to recognize that while genocide can be explained, it cannot be excused.
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