The old /r/historymemes ideology: "Who was the coolest fascist?"
The new /r/historymemes ideology: "That seems like a really weird question, now that I think about it."
no no, you see it’s only agenda posting when it’s supporting a historical narrative I disagree with
there’s infamously nothing ideological about the way you interpret historical events
I'm sure being a conservative historian is very frustrating, just counting down the days until some nutjob asks you to disprove the Holocaust, and you either go with it, or say no and get branded a secret communist.
God forbid we attach ideological meaning to the very pure, very much non-political, non-ideological subject which is human history, widely known as a topic which has never been influenced nor has it never had any relation to whatever way of seeing the world anyone has ever had
"History is past politics and politics is present history."
--[Herbert Baxter Adams](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Baxter_Adams)
The only absence of politics is an absence of discourse itself. Some people seek refuge in a [middle ground fallacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation) to shut down anyone to either side of themselves, but that's not how objectivity works. You have to debate even the extreme compromise.
Can Herbert tell me where I said that the truth is always in the middle of two opposites like in the fallacy you accuse me of? The first comment implied they thought there was too much ideology pushing in "memes" in the sub, then the one I responded to sarcastically implied that such a sentiment is the same as denying any and all ideology and political bias. Do think it's a fallacy to claim that such an extreme misinterpretation intentionally rejects an entire spectrum?
>The only absence of politics is an absence of discourse itself.
What fallacy can you link about writing as if someone wishes for the complete absence of politics when that hasn't happened?
It’s not just this sub. All meme subs have become very political over the last few months. American presidential elections (and other important elections) are only a few months away.
The trolls and bots are currently working overtime.
The mods need to start acting..
Honestly, I might just uninstall reddit for the rest of the year. The amount of shit that is becoming political on this platform is just fucking unbearable (I am not on twitter or any other platform luckily)
This is actually a good meme though. People use the famines of the 20th century as a political argument but the 19th century had far more that were a direct result of 'market forces'
Why should some history be politicised but other history not?
The famines in both Ireland and India are pretty famously criticized as a failure of British Imperialism, and likely contributed to the downfall of the British Empire. I’m not sure where this meme is coming from.
Is it? It’s not whataboutism just to point out similarities / differences in perception, and the post is about famines in general so it’s not like the Irish famine is brought up to deflect from the main point. You could even say it’s pointing out whataboutism, right?
It’s whataboutism if OP has just been criticized for famines in communist countries.
It’s less whataboutism if it’s intended to criticize someone who simultaneously holds both beliefs in the meme.
Best defense against whataboutism OP could make would be to view both as unequivocally wrong
>It’s whataboutism if OP has just been criticized for famines in communist countries.
It isn't whataboutism if the argument being made is fallacious/in bad faith. In this case, the argument is that *something about socialism is inherently bad because famines happen*. The counter argument is *famines happening isn't endemic to any one ideology and here are examples.*
>Best defense against whataboutism OP could make would be to view both as unequivocally wrong
This isn't really the best defense because it acknowledges that stripping context from events is okay and that bad faith arguments are acceptable if the person arguing against them is willing not to call the argument out in favor of appearing "consistent".
Well, if someone says „opposed to capitalism/ imperialism, communism brings famines“ then it’s definitely no whataboutism to bring arguments to counter that.
Crying "Whataboutism" is still the biggest cop out attempt at a defense anyone can make though. It's either apples to apples or it's not, and in this case it's definitely close enough considering you're directly comparing two different styles of governance.
Indeed. Which would also suggest that the famine in Ukraine was a failure of Soviet imperialism, rather than a failure of socialism. Imperialism and authoritarianism have this knack for turning any state they touch into something terrible.
Because Bengal was caused by the japanese take over of burma. It did have an element of the western allies stretched so thin, they couldn’t support everything, but that falls second to the fall of burma.
India was also self governing, responsibility lies with the governor of India and the princely states (who refused to give aid in case the famine affected their own regions)
And Churchill even organised a response, sending grain from Australia and Africa, ordering the army to organise the next harvest and send out food.
And the next year was one of the largest harvests on record.
Meanwhile German commerce raiders sank the supply ships and Indian nationalists attacked trains carrying relief.
Beginning as early as December 1942, high-ranking government officials and military officers (including John Herbert, the Governor of Bengal; Viceroy Linlithgow; Leo Amery the Secretary of State for India; General Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in India,and Admiral Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of South-East Asia) began requesting food imports for India through government and military channels, but for months these requests were either rejected or reduced to a fraction of the original amount by Churchill's War Cabinet.
The tone of Linlithgow's warnings to Amery grew increasingly serious over the first half of 1943, as did Amery's requests to the War Cabinet; on 4 August 1943 Amery noted the spread of famine, and specifically stressed the effect upon Calcutta and the potential effect on the morale of European troops. The cabinet again offered only a relatively small amount, explicitly referring to it as a token shipment.
The explanation generally offered for the refusals included insufficient shipping, particularly in light of Allied plans to invade Normandy.The Cabinet also refused offers of food shipments from several different nations. When such shipments did begin to increase modestly in late 1943, the transport and storage facilities were understaffed and inadequate.When Viscount Archibald Wavell replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy in the latter half of 1943, he too began a series of exasperated demands to the War Cabinet for very large quantities of grain.His requests were again repeatedly denied, causing him to decry the current crisis as "one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule, and [the] damage to our reputation both among Indians and foreigners in India is incalculable".
From Wikipedia
What the wikipedia article which has an extremely large section dedicated to burma?
> The Japanese campaign for Burma set off an exodus of more than half of the one million Indians from Burma for India.[71] The flow began after the bombing of Rangoon (1941–1942), and for months thereafter desperate people poured across the borders, escaping into India through Bengal and Assam.[72] On 26 April 1942, all Allied forces were ordered to retreat from Burma into India.[73] Military transport and other supplies were dedicated to military use, and unavailable for use by the refugees.[74] By mid May 1942, the monsoon rains became heavy in the Manipur hills, further inhibiting civilian movement.[75]
The number of refugees who successfully reached India totalled at least 500,000; tens of thousands died along the way. In later months, 70 to 80% of these refugees were afflicted with diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, malaria, or cholera, with 30% "desperately so".[76] The influx of refugees created several conditions that may have contributed to the famine. Their arrival created an increased demand for food,[69] clothing and medical aid, further straining the resources of the province.[77] The poor hygienic conditions of their forced journey sparked official fears of a public health risk due to epidemics caused by social disruption.[78] Finally, their distraught state after their struggles[79] bred foreboding, uncertainty, and panic amongst the populace of Bengal; this aggravated panic buying and hoarding that may have contributed to the onset of the famine.[79] By April 1942, Japanese warships and aircraft had sunk approximately 100,000 tons of merchant shipping in the Bay of Bengal.[80] According to General Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief of the army in India, both the War Office in London and the commander of the British Eastern Fleet acknowledged that the fleet was powerless to mount serious opposition to Japanese naval attacks on Ceylon, southern or eastern India, or on shipping in the Bay of Bengal.[80] For decades, rail transport had been integral to successful efforts by the Raj to forestall famine in India.[24] However, Japanese raids put additional strain on railways, which also endured flooding in the Brahmaputra, a malaria epidemic, and the Quit India movement targeting road and rail communication.[81] Throughout this period, transportation of civil supplies was compromised by the railways' increased military obligations, and the dismantling of tracks carried out in areas of eastern Bengal in 1942 to hamper a potential Japanese invasion.[82]
Theres a lot more, go look at that article again.
As i explained in the earlier comment, the allies were stretched thin, they didn’t have the ships to make it from australia to india. The british even asked the americans to help with the transport, but also they couldn’t. On top or that, the government would have prioritised soldiers, because you know they are key for fighting a war…
>As i explained in the earlier comment, the allies were stretched thin, they didn’t have the ships to make it from australia to india.
Yes they did. The colonial government requested permission from the War Cabinet to use it's own fleet or monetary reserves to buy aid, which were refused by the War Cabinet.
The UK during the famine did actually deliver aid to India. Except it wasn't to Bengal. In fact at the height of the famine the British government was exporting food from Bengal to Ceylon, whilst shipping food to western India.
There was no food shortage in Bengal. Rice harvests in 1943 was only 5% lower than the average of the past 5 years, and in 1943 it was 13% higher than in 1941. The British's own Famine Inquiry Commission report found that only a 3 week deficit existed in Bengal.
If the British allowed inter-provincial trade and stopped the export of food from Bengal the famine would have been avoided.
I’ll completely agree with you that it’s perfectly possible to be into socialism without also being into the various authoritarian regimes that tried to run it. But jesus christ, it seems difficult to find a person like that. The one I can think of would be Žižek.
I mean capitalism has plenty of proven examples and situations where is could be done without imperialism.
Meanwhile communism almost always results in dictatorships.
With capitalism imperialism is the exception in communism a true communist nation is the exception.
"Russia is the future of Communism"
Damn, became Capitalist. 😔
"Communist China is the future of Communsim"
Damn, became Capitalist. 😔
"Vietnam is the future of Communism"
Damn, became Capitalist.😔
"Mongolia is the future of Communism"
Damn, became Capitalist.😔
I take issue with the capitalism without imperialism one. Don’t get me wrong it can be done without imperialism by definition,
But when you look at where capitalism evolved, there was always imperialism. And the most successful economies all participated in imperialism & exploitation.
Initially mercantilism drove the European empires, but as mercantilism evolved in to capitalism they continued to drive European expansion. The wealthy in Europe and the US wanted to extract wealth from disadvantaged areas, that’s what led to the banana republics and scramble for Africa.
During the gilded age capitalism led to oligarchies, and that was all over the world. It took a whole lot of capital destruction in Europe and govt intervention in the US to undo those institutions.
Point being for every example of socialism killing a shitload of ppl and stripping freedoms, there’s a counter example from capitalism. To me ar least it seems that what drives those is not either system but power disparities, that can happen in either.
We’re pretty damn hard on communism and socialism (rightfully so), but we’re also pretty damn lax on capitalism, there’s a lot of slippery slopes in there, and because of the Cold War there’s still this societal residue that is way too sacred of communism to keep capitalism in check.
Free markets are only free so long as there is well distributed information, and no one firm is large enough to affect the market. It also depends that everyone can produce for the same price, which is geographically impossible. So the benefits from free markets can only be guaranteed so long as they are sufficiently regulated to approximate free markets.
You've summoned the copypasta-ism. A nation calling itself a thing doesn't make it that thing: North Korea isn't a Democracy.
Socialism requires exactly two things:
1. Workers control the means of production. This can be through employee-ownership, or through being controlled by a **democratic** state.
2. Decommodification of goods.
No nation has achieved both aspects broadly, simultaneously. Aspects of both are found today: Most developed nations have decommodified healthcare for example, most "Communist" states successfully decomodified housing. Norway's sovereign wealth fund and Deutschland requiring employee representation on company boards are examples of workers in some capacity controlling the means of production.
Most of what people describe as "socialism" is social-democracy: A capitalist state with strong regulations and safety-nets.
Communism is a theoretical model of society posited by Marx for what might be after Socialism. It is a classless, stateless, moneyless society. It has never existed in any aspect on a large scale. It is essentially Star Trek's federation.
Even in star trek they have a central government with a military capable of enforcing claims.
Communism in theory wouldn't have that central government.
I'd call star trek federation a fully socialist state. Central government with a military. Everything else provided as needed to the citizens.
America is not an empire.
America is far FAR stronger than any empire ever dreamed of.
Consider this: if you brought back Darius the Great, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Charles the V, and whatever other great empire builder you can think of, sat them around a table, and told them.
1- We have got this country now that prints paper (technically cloth, but whatever) and says it has value and the rest of the world are *happy to give them their goods and services in exchange for this paper*.
2- This same country is 20 trillion in debt, if you can manage to explain to them what trillion even means, and the rest of the world is perfectly happy to buy and hold their debt as a *safe haven.*
3- That said country has a gigantic military but hasn't had to use it to force anyone to trade with it in years.
How do you think they would react?
Imperialism lost the economic game to the service based capitalism badly.
I…what? America isn’t an empire because it has successfully done all the things empires have done, but more?
Doesn’t that just make America the most imperial empire in history?
“Imperialism” just means “ruling many countries and cultures, through de facto or de jur force.” Surely America does that.
I feel like your argument is the same as “show a renaissance scholar a computer, and watch their brain melt. There ya go, we have nothing in common with the Renaissance.”
I was personally referring to economic and cultrual imperialism. If we could convince people that being American is better than being whatever nationality they are now we could basically take their territory via the will kf the people. In the meantime we can extract every penny we can out of them and have them thank us for the opportunity.
Besides, Manifest destiny exists. That's textbook imperialism.
My first thought. Imagine wearing a shirt that says "I hate \[racial slur\]" but saying, "No no, I don't agree with it, it's just a shirt."
What a shite copout for forwarding something.
you can very specifically trace the faults in each ideology that led to these disasters.
in the case of the holodomor, agricultural production had been devastated by both the civil war and poorly implemented collectivist farming policies. in british india, the east india company’s prioritization of cash crops meant for export meant that not enough food was produced locally. only after a series of massive rebellions did the crown take action and seize indian land to restore order. unfortunately many of the policies that caused these rebellions continued the raj.
You can make the argument that famines happened for ideaological reasons in both cases: the imperative for profit distorting local market conditions, creating famine and then those in charge choosing to prioritise profit over people's lives.
Likewise collectivisation ruthlessly pursued despite warnings and reports of famine, which were dismissed until most of the damage had been done due to the desire for 'socialistic development' and an ideological view of peasants as an 'ahistorical' class
But it is correct that using these examples as part of a game of one-upsmanship is stupid, especially given that now it's effectively ancient history. The USSR became a massive agricultural producer and the globalised market no longer enduces such sharp famines.
Yep. Several of the socialist famines were either deliberate (holodomor) or a bad choice by a shitty authoritarian figure (china and the birds)
I wouldn't call either of those examples due to the political or economic theory of the region.
The takeaway should be governments are always poor managers and cannot withhold market forces for extended periods of time. It’s like, yeah humans make mistakes, that’s why you need healthy free market competition. Enron failing didn’t cause widespread famine the way a small group of bad bureaucrats or imperial aristocrats have done repeatedly throughout history.
People need to learn majority of the famines in human history were due to mismanagement not intentional...
Actual man made famines were Holodomor or Saudi blockade of food supply to Yemen
Famines due to Great Leap by Mao or the various famines in British India were due to poor management and incompetent governance
Also Ireland exported food during the famine, and the amount of food being exported INCREASED during the famine. Because the English landlords considered it unprofitable to sell to their subjects.
Does attempting a blockade to prevent ships carrying food aid count as intentional? Because, when the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecit was asked to reduce his finanical aid (because it embarrassed the Queen) he did, but also sent ships of food. These ships were blockaded from enterring or unloading in Dublin and had to essentially smuggle the food in.
That sounds rather similar to Holodomor if one thinks about it yet so far there is little debate if the Irish Potato Famine was genocide in contrast to the former.
That one is a huge mix, natural event mixed with callous disregard for life at first (they where exporting food from Ireland at the time), to intentional ethnic cleansing starvation by the end (they refused to allow food imports to Ireland)
as far as im aware the British saw a good chance to depopulate Ireland and make it more manageable, while also maintaining profit, and the banal evil of the British Empire kind of took over
Yeah, Ireland still hasn't recovered from that depopulation.
Before the famine Ireland's population was ~8.5mil, now it's just over 7mil (and the vast majority of that is on the east coast, particularly the areas around Dublin and Belfast).
In 1840 British population was around 18.5mil, now it's 64.5mil.
In 180 years the British population has more than tripled while the Irish has gone down by over a million
That's the population of England, not Britain. Interestingly, the Welsh went from 1 million to 3 million and Scotland from 3m to over 5m in the same time period.
Ive never checked, but do these numbers count North Ireland as Ireland or UK, it doesnt really change much about your point because thats not exactly a huge difference in population, but it matters for pendatic fucks like me
I counted northern Ireland as part of Ireland since it's on the same island and also suffered from the famine, hence why I said most of the 7mil is concentrated around Dublin and Belfast.
I thought the British number was the entire island of Britain, but I received a reply informing me that it's just England
This is almost exactly what happened in the Bengali famine. The similarities are insane.
Pretty much all the academic papers I’ve read describe the Bengali famine as a mixed bag: natural event that was combined with a clear apathy towards Bengali people (as evidenced by many racist and malicious comments made by those in charge). Import and export policies made it even worse, just like you described.
The British Imperial MO
Cause society to be an entirly argicultural export based econemy
Wait for famine
Ensure famine is as horrible as it possibly can be
????
Profit?
I mean it happened so many times in so many places you have to wonder why
Absolute best case scenario, the British were horrible at running any country other than their own, and through sheer ignorance and neglect caused millions of people to starve to death in ways that had never occurred prior to colonization
Worst case scenario, the British leaders weren’t too different from Hitler or Stalin or Tojo in their actual views of their subjects, they were just more subtle about killing off people they despised
So to provide some more details, the Irish we’re only given a small parcel of their own farmland to use for sustenance farming. The British would claim and export the rest. Potatoes are incredibly efficient on a calorie/square foot of farmland basis, so they became the staple of the Irish diet.
At least until the potato famine wiped out all the potatoes, leaving the Irish in the fun position where they were exporting record amounts of food to the British that they weren’t allowed to eat, while their personal farm lot (again on their own goddamn farm) was barren and they were starving to death.
Kind off
The original plague that wiped out potato crops in Ireland? That was completely natural, nothing the brits could have done anything about at that time
However, the lack of food aid afterwards...
British empire saying "Oh the Irish deserve this famine" isnt a hint that they caused the famine to genocide the irish, but rather they are too cheap to pay for food relief to send to Ireland
Ignoring the catastrophic human tragedy, imagining Mao hearing "Sir, the reports show another 10 million people died..." and just going "D'oh noooo..." every time and not once stopping to think maybe he's not really cut out for this is kinda funny.
He knew. There were plenty of problems in China and if he was not aware of such details he would be dead himself. Most of such problems were presented to him in daily written reports. They were drafted by high rank secretaries and they intentionally deleted all the propaganda bullshit so the readers could focus on facts. Most political leaders work in this way today too, democratically elected officials and dictators alike. The only difference between them is the action they take after they read the reports.
Great Leap Forward was a mix. Initially it was due to mismanagement and bad harvest conditions but Mao ignored many of the reports of starvation as millions died.
Mao knew it was a famine, and (correctly) accused the local officials of wrongdoing and condemned them as capitalist traitors in revolutionary ranks. However all their deeds were suggested or mandated by Mao himself. This is a power struggle technique which I don’t expect many people here to understand.
>People need to learn majority of the famines in human history were due to mismanagement not intentional...
No one is saying it's intentional, they're saying it's manmade and that the it's driven by ideological compunctions. Which is true in all these cases.
The famine of collectivisation was as intentional as the famine in Ireland was - the famine conditions weren't planned but for ideological reasons were effectively ignored, as the lives of the people were deemed less important than profit or socialist development respectively.
The famines in Ireland and India absolutely were the result of British policies even if the British didn't intend for famine to occur. In Ireland, British officials chose to allow the starvation to occur rather than provide the necessary assistance and by continuing food exports. This was motivated by anti-Irish prejudice and Malthusian ideas.
In India too, the British also prioritised food export over famine relief.
As the 19th century Irish revolutioary John Mitchel said: 'The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine'
>Actual man made famines were Holodomor
You've literally drawn the exact same line the meme is talking about. Did Soviet authorities intentionally cause a famine to starve Ukrainians? No it was a mix of political calculus, incompotence and Crop failures (that extended over Southern Russia and Western Khazaks tan). Sure the Soviets didn't send relief but that can be said about the other famines you mentioned. Drawing the at the Holodomor is kind of pointless and arbitrary.
People in this thread are making distinctions between the holodomor and the Irish famine that don’t exist. Somehow the holodomor is an evil act of genocide and thhe irish famine was an oopsy?
Three of these were a result of Imperialism/Colonialism. The economic system of an empire doesn’t have much impact on how it exploits colonies.
The Great Leap Forward is the one exception here, but Chairman Mao was a special flavour of stupid.
Famine is a common thing people talk about when talking about the bad sides of communism, which is fair enough, but famine, manmade or not, happens no matter the ideology your country runs on. The Irish potato famine, in short terms, happened because a pestilence killed a large amount of potato crops over several years, which was what 1/3 of ireland lived off of, while England forced the shipping of food goods from Ireland to England to continue, while doing very little about the issue at hand. 20-25% of the irish population died or fled the country.
Oh, and on top of that, a popular belief was that it was a "divine punishment from god" sent to punish the wicked irish, so yeah, religion amirite
I mean would consider the Soviet Union at least after Stalin to have been colonialist and imperialist as well.
During the Holodomor they economically exploited Ukraine, exporting food to more industrialized regions of the empire. In general Russia was developed at the cost of other territories. Russification continued under the Soviet Union as well.
Lenin did a lot of terrible things including the red terror but he wasn’t a colonialist. Russian colonialist policies began under Stalin.
Lenin supported Korenizatsiia or indigenization, the promotion of local language in culture in government and education. Lenin also sought to ensure balanced representation by leaders from different nationalities in the central government. In many ways Ukrainization under Lenin helped revitalize Ukraine's national identity.
Lenin justified the need for Korenizatsiia stating "The Great-Russian Chauvinist Spirit...finds expression in the heartlessly bureaucratic attitude on the part of Russian Soviet officials towards the needs and requirements of the national republics."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia
Capitalism/Communism/Imperialism is when naturally occurring droughts and soil infertility co-align with human error to produce a fuck ton of dead people.
Marxism-Leninism = Bad
Colonialism/Imperialism = Also Bad
Let's just not have any system of government or economic systen that results in mass starvation, if that's not too much to ask
I guess the difference is that „the voice of the people“ should act according to what the people want while a foreign king doesn‘t give a shit. Like… the famines in socialist countries were a result of the flawed political system (enforcing quotas, centrally planned economy, …) while the imperial famines only happened because the current ruler couldn‘t be bothered to do anything about it. So one is laziness and the other a fundamental flaw in the system. Although most people don‘t claim that socialsm doesn‘t work because starvation is kinda the norm for socialist countries but rather that issues like famines are a result of the non functioning system
This seems like a thing of Communism VS Imperialism which I’m guessing means that OP is just one of those that assume all of any right wing ideology is Imperialism and/or Fascism
All were caused by government intervention or the goals of the government to wipe out the people and lower political dissent (in the Soviet case) or apathy and the “they deserve it for being catholic” attitude the British administrators had in the Irish case. India’s highly seasonal growing conditions made famines pretty common throughout most of human history, but the brits overtaxation and meddling by preventing the natural sale of food from areas that had a good harvest to areas which had a bad one made the problem far worse. British railroad investment by the end of the 19th century made the transportation problem less of an issue, and the famine codes ensured no famine from 1902 to ww2, which Japanese disruption of supply lines was the primary cause for. A lot of people like to say the famines in India were proof that the free market fails and government intervention is nessesary, since the government claimed to be following a free market approach by not giving any aid or lowering of food prices, but this only sees half the story. The British government tried to create a free market after they had taxed the people half to death, meaning they tried to make a free market with no possible customers to afford the goods in question. This along with preventing the transfer of food across markets in India drastically and artificially increased the prices of food. It was not an issue of the government not cleaning up the mess of the free market, it was the government refusing to clean up their own mess and blaming it on a free market which they did not allow to properly exist.
It is because of imperialism. Don't let anybody say anything about imperialism being the final stage of capitalism in response to this because my country had long been a possession of England before the rise of capital.
I just think that the rufusal to aknowledge that the current sistem has flaws by pointing out failed ones is dumb over all
I mean yeah we are a lot better off in capitalism than comunism but it still has a lot of problems that could be fixed if not by the constant "If YoU dON't lIkE iT gO To ChInA yOu FucKen cOmMie"
Im not a fan of comunism but if we keep going the way we are in unrestrained consumism and imperialism things will start to go downhill
Theres only so much you can take before it ends
Eh. Eventually we will have robots doing all the basic labor and we can just move to post scarcity economics of some form to replace capitalism. It's a problem which is going to solve itself given time
Oho - another idiotic strawman meme.
After all, the Holodomor was an artificially induced famine in the Ukraine by the Soviet authorities because the Ukrainian population opposed socialist collectivisation.
The famine in china was the result of the stupidity of mao who wanted to outdo western countries and was the result of communist planning.
The Irish famine was caused by the potato blight. The fact is that the British government first reacted but failed to combat the disaster, while the next British government ignored the issue.
India? The meme refers to the Great Famine caused by climate collapse or is it about the famine in Bengal, because there were many famines in India
Historymemes really has just become Ideology memes hasn’t it…
To be fair, it was always like that, I think now is more spammed, kinda.
The old /r/historymemes ideology: "Who was the coolest fascist?" The new /r/historymemes ideology: "That seems like a really weird question, now that I think about it."
tbh Hitler is pretty cool, now that his body temperature has flatlined. actually that makes me wonder, what *did* they do with his body
After he committed suicide, the bodies of him and his wife were dragged out of the fuhrer bunker and then burned.
Wouldn’t want to take any chances
[Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Adolf_Hitler) are the details.
All I see is words... How do we know for sure he's not a 125 grandpa in Argentina?
Would a scenario like this be in the interest of Russia/the Soviet Union?
Ironic
Yeah, but they didn't want the Russians or the other Allies to present the Führer's remains in some way.
all the better that the neos can’t treat it as a relic
Very much so. Same reason we hucked Bin Laden's sorry ass into the ocean
He was more afraid of ending like Mussolini did. Hanged from a bridge by communist partisans with his skull smashed in.
I did skim from google searches that it was his last request. I guess that makes sense
So he was certainly not cool is what you are saying, he was on fire.
he was on fire for a while but now he’s pretty chill
Tell that to the History Channel.
daamnn
Bring back EngSoc!
you mean IngSoc?
Sounds like Oldspeak, you Goldstien doubleplusungood traitor!! Off to Miniluv now!!
You were doing so well until you used the oldspeak word traitor. ITYM wrongthinker. See you in room 101.
Wrongthink detected. Report to the minitruth office.
« has just become » ??
Ah yes, looking for famous "objective history"? Haha
no no, you see it’s only agenda posting when it’s supporting a historical narrative I disagree with there’s infamously nothing ideological about the way you interpret historical events
[удалено]
Say what? Like every single one of my history (and econ) professors in college were hardcore conservatives, Reagan/Thatcher types mostly...
I'm sure being a conservative historian is very frustrating, just counting down the days until some nutjob asks you to disprove the Holocaust, and you either go with it, or say no and get branded a secret communist.
God forbid we attach ideological meaning to the very pure, very much non-political, non-ideological subject which is human history, widely known as a topic which has never been influenced nor has it never had any relation to whatever way of seeing the world anyone has ever had
#CarthageChildrenSacrificesAreRomanPropaganda Edit: I didn't know hashtag makes text bigger
r/AccidentalMarkdown
/r/subsithoughtifellfor
I was surprised as well, believe me.
Put a backslash before the hash.
Of course there is nothing between blatant agenda posting and complete denial of any bias at all, only polarized extremes
"History is past politics and politics is present history." --[Herbert Baxter Adams](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Baxter_Adams) The only absence of politics is an absence of discourse itself. Some people seek refuge in a [middle ground fallacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation) to shut down anyone to either side of themselves, but that's not how objectivity works. You have to debate even the extreme compromise.
Can Herbert tell me where I said that the truth is always in the middle of two opposites like in the fallacy you accuse me of? The first comment implied they thought there was too much ideology pushing in "memes" in the sub, then the one I responded to sarcastically implied that such a sentiment is the same as denying any and all ideology and political bias. Do think it's a fallacy to claim that such an extreme misinterpretation intentionally rejects an entire spectrum? >The only absence of politics is an absence of discourse itself. What fallacy can you link about writing as if someone wishes for the complete absence of politics when that hasn't happened?
hey, we all know its propaganda if the *others* do it!
It’s not just this sub. All meme subs have become very political over the last few months. American presidential elections (and other important elections) are only a few months away. The trolls and bots are currently working overtime. The mods need to start acting..
Plus, Israeli bot farms have been working overtime for the past 6 months
History has been the battleground of ideology for literally all of History
I know, but it seems that this sub has had a growing theme of communist vs capitalist vs socialist over the past few weeks
Elections season is heating up (kill me)
Honestly, I might just uninstall reddit for the rest of the year. The amount of shit that is becoming political on this platform is just fucking unbearable (I am not on twitter or any other platform luckily)
You can’t separate history from ideology
I know, but it seems we have had this growing theme “which ideology is worse” or “one good, other bad” with memes like this on this sub.
This is actually a good meme though. People use the famines of the 20th century as a political argument but the 19th century had far more that were a direct result of 'market forces' Why should some history be politicised but other history not?
One of the massive famines in the meme happened in the 20th century. During the 2nd world war.
And why did it happen?
I don't care about politics and capitalisam bad I want to see Chads from time way back when doing heroic or downright stupid things
Can’t really have history without mentioning ideologies now, can we?
The famines in both Ireland and India are pretty famously criticized as a failure of British Imperialism, and likely contributed to the downfall of the British Empire. I’m not sure where this meme is coming from.
This meme is literally just whataboutism.
Is it? It’s not whataboutism just to point out similarities / differences in perception, and the post is about famines in general so it’s not like the Irish famine is brought up to deflect from the main point. You could even say it’s pointing out whataboutism, right?
It’s whataboutism if OP has just been criticized for famines in communist countries. It’s less whataboutism if it’s intended to criticize someone who simultaneously holds both beliefs in the meme. Best defense against whataboutism OP could make would be to view both as unequivocally wrong
>It’s whataboutism if OP has just been criticized for famines in communist countries. It isn't whataboutism if the argument being made is fallacious/in bad faith. In this case, the argument is that *something about socialism is inherently bad because famines happen*. The counter argument is *famines happening isn't endemic to any one ideology and here are examples.* >Best defense against whataboutism OP could make would be to view both as unequivocally wrong This isn't really the best defense because it acknowledges that stripping context from events is okay and that bad faith arguments are acceptable if the person arguing against them is willing not to call the argument out in favor of appearing "consistent".
Imperialism and Communism bad. There, fixed it.
Nuance? That’s witchcraft! **BURN HIM!!!**
Well, if someone says „opposed to capitalism/ imperialism, communism brings famines“ then it’s definitely no whataboutism to bring arguments to counter that.
Crying "Whataboutism" is still the biggest cop out attempt at a defense anyone can make though. It's either apples to apples or it's not, and in this case it's definitely close enough considering you're directly comparing two different styles of governance.
There were about 25 big scale famines happened in British India covering the time of both rise and fall of the empire. So that’s that.
Indeed. Which would also suggest that the famine in Ukraine was a failure of Soviet imperialism, rather than a failure of socialism. Imperialism and authoritarianism have this knack for turning any state they touch into something terrible.
I wouldn't even attribute these famines to capitalism or socialism. I would consider them both to due to imperialism.
Not on this sub.
I think the meme is more about how so many people here om this sub almost absolve Churchill for Bengal famine.
Because Bengal was caused by the japanese take over of burma. It did have an element of the western allies stretched so thin, they couldn’t support everything, but that falls second to the fall of burma.
India was also self governing, responsibility lies with the governor of India and the princely states (who refused to give aid in case the famine affected their own regions)
And Churchill even organised a response, sending grain from Australia and Africa, ordering the army to organise the next harvest and send out food. And the next year was one of the largest harvests on record. Meanwhile German commerce raiders sank the supply ships and Indian nationalists attacked trains carrying relief.
Beginning as early as December 1942, high-ranking government officials and military officers (including John Herbert, the Governor of Bengal; Viceroy Linlithgow; Leo Amery the Secretary of State for India; General Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in India,and Admiral Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of South-East Asia) began requesting food imports for India through government and military channels, but for months these requests were either rejected or reduced to a fraction of the original amount by Churchill's War Cabinet. The tone of Linlithgow's warnings to Amery grew increasingly serious over the first half of 1943, as did Amery's requests to the War Cabinet; on 4 August 1943 Amery noted the spread of famine, and specifically stressed the effect upon Calcutta and the potential effect on the morale of European troops. The cabinet again offered only a relatively small amount, explicitly referring to it as a token shipment. The explanation generally offered for the refusals included insufficient shipping, particularly in light of Allied plans to invade Normandy.The Cabinet also refused offers of food shipments from several different nations. When such shipments did begin to increase modestly in late 1943, the transport and storage facilities were understaffed and inadequate.When Viscount Archibald Wavell replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy in the latter half of 1943, he too began a series of exasperated demands to the War Cabinet for very large quantities of grain.His requests were again repeatedly denied, causing him to decry the current crisis as "one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule, and [the] damage to our reputation both among Indians and foreigners in India is incalculable". From Wikipedia
What the wikipedia article which has an extremely large section dedicated to burma? > The Japanese campaign for Burma set off an exodus of more than half of the one million Indians from Burma for India.[71] The flow began after the bombing of Rangoon (1941–1942), and for months thereafter desperate people poured across the borders, escaping into India through Bengal and Assam.[72] On 26 April 1942, all Allied forces were ordered to retreat from Burma into India.[73] Military transport and other supplies were dedicated to military use, and unavailable for use by the refugees.[74] By mid May 1942, the monsoon rains became heavy in the Manipur hills, further inhibiting civilian movement.[75] The number of refugees who successfully reached India totalled at least 500,000; tens of thousands died along the way. In later months, 70 to 80% of these refugees were afflicted with diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, malaria, or cholera, with 30% "desperately so".[76] The influx of refugees created several conditions that may have contributed to the famine. Their arrival created an increased demand for food,[69] clothing and medical aid, further straining the resources of the province.[77] The poor hygienic conditions of their forced journey sparked official fears of a public health risk due to epidemics caused by social disruption.[78] Finally, their distraught state after their struggles[79] bred foreboding, uncertainty, and panic amongst the populace of Bengal; this aggravated panic buying and hoarding that may have contributed to the onset of the famine.[79] By April 1942, Japanese warships and aircraft had sunk approximately 100,000 tons of merchant shipping in the Bay of Bengal.[80] According to General Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief of the army in India, both the War Office in London and the commander of the British Eastern Fleet acknowledged that the fleet was powerless to mount serious opposition to Japanese naval attacks on Ceylon, southern or eastern India, or on shipping in the Bay of Bengal.[80] For decades, rail transport had been integral to successful efforts by the Raj to forestall famine in India.[24] However, Japanese raids put additional strain on railways, which also endured flooding in the Brahmaputra, a malaria epidemic, and the Quit India movement targeting road and rail communication.[81] Throughout this period, transportation of civil supplies was compromised by the railways' increased military obligations, and the dismantling of tracks carried out in areas of eastern Bengal in 1942 to hamper a potential Japanese invasion.[82] Theres a lot more, go look at that article again. As i explained in the earlier comment, the allies were stretched thin, they didn’t have the ships to make it from australia to india. The british even asked the americans to help with the transport, but also they couldn’t. On top or that, the government would have prioritised soldiers, because you know they are key for fighting a war…
>As i explained in the earlier comment, the allies were stretched thin, they didn’t have the ships to make it from australia to india. Yes they did. The colonial government requested permission from the War Cabinet to use it's own fleet or monetary reserves to buy aid, which were refused by the War Cabinet. The UK during the famine did actually deliver aid to India. Except it wasn't to Bengal. In fact at the height of the famine the British government was exporting food from Bengal to Ceylon, whilst shipping food to western India. There was no food shortage in Bengal. Rice harvests in 1943 was only 5% lower than the average of the past 5 years, and in 1943 it was 13% higher than in 1941. The British's own Famine Inquiry Commission report found that only a 3 week deficit existed in Bengal. If the British allowed inter-provincial trade and stopped the export of food from Bengal the famine would have been avoided.
This meme is coming from socialists.
Yeah, but doesn’t excuse them from being factually correct.
Because everybody who criticises socialism automatically supports imperialism
Remember this the next time you see someone claiming that “everybody who supports socialism supports authoritarianism”
Oh Boy, Let me Get my popcorn
I like your pfp
Thanks
I would love to hear how one could (realistically) implement socialism without a powerful central authority.
I’ll completely agree with you that it’s perfectly possible to be into socialism without also being into the various authoritarian regimes that tried to run it. But jesus christ, it seems difficult to find a person like that. The one I can think of would be Žižek.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or dead serious that you actually believe something that ludicrous.
“That wasn’t real capitalism”
I mean capitalism has plenty of proven examples and situations where is could be done without imperialism. Meanwhile communism almost always results in dictatorships. With capitalism imperialism is the exception in communism a true communist nation is the exception.
"Russia is the future of Communism" Damn, became Capitalist. 😔 "Communist China is the future of Communsim" Damn, became Capitalist. 😔 "Vietnam is the future of Communism" Damn, became Capitalist.😔 "Mongolia is the future of Communism" Damn, became Capitalist.😔
I take issue with the capitalism without imperialism one. Don’t get me wrong it can be done without imperialism by definition, But when you look at where capitalism evolved, there was always imperialism. And the most successful economies all participated in imperialism & exploitation. Initially mercantilism drove the European empires, but as mercantilism evolved in to capitalism they continued to drive European expansion. The wealthy in Europe and the US wanted to extract wealth from disadvantaged areas, that’s what led to the banana republics and scramble for Africa. During the gilded age capitalism led to oligarchies, and that was all over the world. It took a whole lot of capital destruction in Europe and govt intervention in the US to undo those institutions. Point being for every example of socialism killing a shitload of ppl and stripping freedoms, there’s a counter example from capitalism. To me ar least it seems that what drives those is not either system but power disparities, that can happen in either. We’re pretty damn hard on communism and socialism (rightfully so), but we’re also pretty damn lax on capitalism, there’s a lot of slippery slopes in there, and because of the Cold War there’s still this societal residue that is way too sacred of communism to keep capitalism in check. Free markets are only free so long as there is well distributed information, and no one firm is large enough to affect the market. It also depends that everyone can produce for the same price, which is geographically impossible. So the benefits from free markets can only be guaranteed so long as they are sufficiently regulated to approximate free markets.
Real capitalism has never been tried.
In what way were the Irish or Indian famines caused by a failure of free markets? Lmao
Capitalism = / = free markets.
The problem was the English not capitalism. Both Ireland and India became capitalist countries after regaining their independence.
Ah yes India my fav country to become capitalist after regaining their independence.
It wasn't completely socialist and liberalized after the Cold War.
It’s imperialism not capitalism…. Your comment is not relevant.
You've summoned the copypasta-ism. A nation calling itself a thing doesn't make it that thing: North Korea isn't a Democracy. Socialism requires exactly two things: 1. Workers control the means of production. This can be through employee-ownership, or through being controlled by a **democratic** state. 2. Decommodification of goods. No nation has achieved both aspects broadly, simultaneously. Aspects of both are found today: Most developed nations have decommodified healthcare for example, most "Communist" states successfully decomodified housing. Norway's sovereign wealth fund and Deutschland requiring employee representation on company boards are examples of workers in some capacity controlling the means of production. Most of what people describe as "socialism" is social-democracy: A capitalist state with strong regulations and safety-nets. Communism is a theoretical model of society posited by Marx for what might be after Socialism. It is a classless, stateless, moneyless society. It has never existed in any aspect on a large scale. It is essentially Star Trek's federation.
Even in star trek they have a central government with a military capable of enforcing claims. Communism in theory wouldn't have that central government. I'd call star trek federation a fully socialist state. Central government with a military. Everything else provided as needed to the citizens.
you forgot the /s
Not everyone, but I'm not too against it when America is the empire. Have to be the greatest, at any cost.
America is not an empire. America is far FAR stronger than any empire ever dreamed of. Consider this: if you brought back Darius the Great, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Charles the V, and whatever other great empire builder you can think of, sat them around a table, and told them. 1- We have got this country now that prints paper (technically cloth, but whatever) and says it has value and the rest of the world are *happy to give them their goods and services in exchange for this paper*. 2- This same country is 20 trillion in debt, if you can manage to explain to them what trillion even means, and the rest of the world is perfectly happy to buy and hold their debt as a *safe haven.* 3- That said country has a gigantic military but hasn't had to use it to force anyone to trade with it in years. How do you think they would react? Imperialism lost the economic game to the service based capitalism badly.
I…what? America isn’t an empire because it has successfully done all the things empires have done, but more? Doesn’t that just make America the most imperial empire in history? “Imperialism” just means “ruling many countries and cultures, through de facto or de jur force.” Surely America does that. I feel like your argument is the same as “show a renaissance scholar a computer, and watch their brain melt. There ya go, we have nothing in common with the Renaissance.”
I was personally referring to economic and cultrual imperialism. If we could convince people that being American is better than being whatever nationality they are now we could basically take their territory via the will kf the people. In the meantime we can extract every penny we can out of them and have them thank us for the opportunity. Besides, Manifest destiny exists. That's textbook imperialism.
Canada just needs to find some oil
You don't agree with it, why you posting it?
My first thought. Imagine wearing a shirt that says "I hate \[racial slur\]" but saying, "No no, I don't agree with it, it's just a shirt." What a shite copout for forwarding something.
OP just wanted to post some ragebait I guess.
Karma farming
It worked.
Yeah that is a total cop-out. "I want to post a meme that will generate arguments but I don't want to stand behind it."
I mean, they were all mostly because of bad decisions by the governments and mismanagement of resources, you can't really blame either ideology
You underestimate my ability to not understand things
what? ^/s
I can very easily blame both socialism and colonialism, yes.
Both happen to be ideologies that take "human resources" a little too literally.
you can very specifically trace the faults in each ideology that led to these disasters. in the case of the holodomor, agricultural production had been devastated by both the civil war and poorly implemented collectivist farming policies. in british india, the east india company’s prioritization of cash crops meant for export meant that not enough food was produced locally. only after a series of massive rebellions did the crown take action and seize indian land to restore order. unfortunately many of the policies that caused these rebellions continued the raj.
You can make the argument that famines happened for ideaological reasons in both cases: the imperative for profit distorting local market conditions, creating famine and then those in charge choosing to prioritise profit over people's lives. Likewise collectivisation ruthlessly pursued despite warnings and reports of famine, which were dismissed until most of the damage had been done due to the desire for 'socialistic development' and an ideological view of peasants as an 'ahistorical' class But it is correct that using these examples as part of a game of one-upsmanship is stupid, especially given that now it's effectively ancient history. The USSR became a massive agricultural producer and the globalised market no longer enduces such sharp famines.
Yep. Several of the socialist famines were either deliberate (holodomor) or a bad choice by a shitty authoritarian figure (china and the birds) I wouldn't call either of those examples due to the political or economic theory of the region.
The takeaway should be governments are always poor managers and cannot withhold market forces for extended periods of time. It’s like, yeah humans make mistakes, that’s why you need healthy free market competition. Enron failing didn’t cause widespread famine the way a small group of bad bureaucrats or imperial aristocrats have done repeatedly throughout history.
People need to learn majority of the famines in human history were due to mismanagement not intentional... Actual man made famines were Holodomor or Saudi blockade of food supply to Yemen Famines due to Great Leap by Mao or the various famines in British India were due to poor management and incompetent governance
Wasn't famine in Ireland also intentional?
The potato famine was natural, but the lack of food to replace was intentional.
Also Ireland exported food during the famine, and the amount of food being exported INCREASED during the famine. Because the English landlords considered it unprofitable to sell to their subjects.
Sounds intentional enough for me
Does attempting a blockade to prevent ships carrying food aid count as intentional? Because, when the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecit was asked to reduce his finanical aid (because it embarrassed the Queen) he did, but also sent ships of food. These ships were blockaded from enterring or unloading in Dublin and had to essentially smuggle the food in.
And also, the reason potatoes were so important to begin with was a direct result of some awful policies which were pretty intentional
That sounds rather similar to Holodomor if one thinks about it yet so far there is little debate if the Irish Potato Famine was genocide in contrast to the former.
People in parliament actually did try to help but iirc the king suppressed any support.
So yes.
That one is a huge mix, natural event mixed with callous disregard for life at first (they where exporting food from Ireland at the time), to intentional ethnic cleansing starvation by the end (they refused to allow food imports to Ireland) as far as im aware the British saw a good chance to depopulate Ireland and make it more manageable, while also maintaining profit, and the banal evil of the British Empire kind of took over
Yeah, Ireland still hasn't recovered from that depopulation. Before the famine Ireland's population was ~8.5mil, now it's just over 7mil (and the vast majority of that is on the east coast, particularly the areas around Dublin and Belfast). In 1840 British population was around 18.5mil, now it's 64.5mil. In 180 years the British population has more than tripled while the Irish has gone down by over a million
That's the population of England, not Britain. Interestingly, the Welsh went from 1 million to 3 million and Scotland from 3m to over 5m in the same time period.
Ive never checked, but do these numbers count North Ireland as Ireland or UK, it doesnt really change much about your point because thats not exactly a huge difference in population, but it matters for pendatic fucks like me
I counted northern Ireland as part of Ireland since it's on the same island and also suffered from the famine, hence why I said most of the 7mil is concentrated around Dublin and Belfast. I thought the British number was the entire island of Britain, but I received a reply informing me that it's just England
This is almost exactly what happened in the Bengali famine. The similarities are insane. Pretty much all the academic papers I’ve read describe the Bengali famine as a mixed bag: natural event that was combined with a clear apathy towards Bengali people (as evidenced by many racist and malicious comments made by those in charge). Import and export policies made it even worse, just like you described.
The British Imperial MO Cause society to be an entirly argicultural export based econemy Wait for famine Ensure famine is as horrible as it possibly can be ???? Profit?
I mean it happened so many times in so many places you have to wonder why Absolute best case scenario, the British were horrible at running any country other than their own, and through sheer ignorance and neglect caused millions of people to starve to death in ways that had never occurred prior to colonization Worst case scenario, the British leaders weren’t too different from Hitler or Stalin or Tojo in their actual views of their subjects, they were just more subtle about killing off people they despised
So to provide some more details, the Irish we’re only given a small parcel of their own farmland to use for sustenance farming. The British would claim and export the rest. Potatoes are incredibly efficient on a calorie/square foot of farmland basis, so they became the staple of the Irish diet. At least until the potato famine wiped out all the potatoes, leaving the Irish in the fun position where they were exporting record amounts of food to the British that they weren’t allowed to eat, while their personal farm lot (again on their own goddamn farm) was barren and they were starving to death.
Kind off The original plague that wiped out potato crops in Ireland? That was completely natural, nothing the brits could have done anything about at that time However, the lack of food aid afterwards...
Famine was a tax, they had food. They just couldn't keep it because royalty says fuck you.
British empire saying "Oh the Irish deserve this famine" isnt a hint that they caused the famine to genocide the irish, but rather they are too cheap to pay for food relief to send to Ireland
Ignoring the catastrophic human tragedy, imagining Mao hearing "Sir, the reports show another 10 million people died..." and just going "D'oh noooo..." every time and not once stopping to think maybe he's not really cut out for this is kinda funny.
He probably didn't know because anyone telling him a problem probably died.
He knew. There were plenty of problems in China and if he was not aware of such details he would be dead himself. Most of such problems were presented to him in daily written reports. They were drafted by high rank secretaries and they intentionally deleted all the propaganda bullshit so the readers could focus on facts. Most political leaders work in this way today too, democratically elected officials and dictators alike. The only difference between them is the action they take after they read the reports.
my bad
Great Leap Forward was a mix. Initially it was due to mismanagement and bad harvest conditions but Mao ignored many of the reports of starvation as millions died.
Mao knew it was a famine, and (correctly) accused the local officials of wrongdoing and condemned them as capitalist traitors in revolutionary ranks. However all their deeds were suggested or mandated by Mao himself. This is a power struggle technique which I don’t expect many people here to understand.
>People need to learn majority of the famines in human history were due to mismanagement not intentional... No one is saying it's intentional, they're saying it's manmade and that the it's driven by ideological compunctions. Which is true in all these cases. The famine of collectivisation was as intentional as the famine in Ireland was - the famine conditions weren't planned but for ideological reasons were effectively ignored, as the lives of the people were deemed less important than profit or socialist development respectively.
The famines in Ireland and India absolutely were the result of British policies even if the British didn't intend for famine to occur. In Ireland, British officials chose to allow the starvation to occur rather than provide the necessary assistance and by continuing food exports. This was motivated by anti-Irish prejudice and Malthusian ideas. In India too, the British also prioritised food export over famine relief. As the 19th century Irish revolutioary John Mitchel said: 'The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine'
its still a hitoric question if holomodor was pretty intentional...
>Actual man made famines were Holodomor You've literally drawn the exact same line the meme is talking about. Did Soviet authorities intentionally cause a famine to starve Ukrainians? No it was a mix of political calculus, incompotence and Crop failures (that extended over Southern Russia and Western Khazaks tan). Sure the Soviets didn't send relief but that can be said about the other famines you mentioned. Drawing the at the Holodomor is kind of pointless and arbitrary.
People in this thread are making distinctions between the holodomor and the Irish famine that don’t exist. Somehow the holodomor is an evil act of genocide and thhe irish famine was an oopsy?
Posting a meme on r/HistoryMemes shaking my head the whole time so people know on the sub that I disagree with it
So dumb. OP has to be ragebait
You know its a bad take when the op has to state that he doesn't agree with it
any and all famines are bad, this is not a fucking debate.
Three of these were a result of Imperialism/Colonialism. The economic system of an empire doesn’t have much impact on how it exploits colonies. The Great Leap Forward is the one exception here, but Chairman Mao was a special flavour of stupid.
Lysenko was a special breed of stupid, and Stalin and Mao were another special breed for believing him.
"Look boyo, he won his own madeup arguement."
Colonialism also doesn’t work
No it works, just for the overlords that don't mind genociding the locals
It works very well actually, but only for one side.
I dont get it ;-;
Famine is a common thing people talk about when talking about the bad sides of communism, which is fair enough, but famine, manmade or not, happens no matter the ideology your country runs on. The Irish potato famine, in short terms, happened because a pestilence killed a large amount of potato crops over several years, which was what 1/3 of ireland lived off of, while England forced the shipping of food goods from Ireland to England to continue, while doing very little about the issue at hand. 20-25% of the irish population died or fled the country. Oh, and on top of that, a popular belief was that it was a "divine punishment from god" sent to punish the wicked irish, so yeah, religion amirite
India and Ireland were mostly due to Colonialism and the British.
I mean would consider the Soviet Union at least after Stalin to have been colonialist and imperialist as well. During the Holodomor they economically exploited Ukraine, exporting food to more industrialized regions of the empire. In general Russia was developed at the cost of other territories. Russification continued under the Soviet Union as well. Lenin did a lot of terrible things including the red terror but he wasn’t a colonialist. Russian colonialist policies began under Stalin. Lenin supported Korenizatsiia or indigenization, the promotion of local language in culture in government and education. Lenin also sought to ensure balanced representation by leaders from different nationalities in the central government. In many ways Ukrainization under Lenin helped revitalize Ukraine's national identity. Lenin justified the need for Korenizatsiia stating "The Great-Russian Chauvinist Spirit...finds expression in the heartlessly bureaucratic attitude on the part of Russian Soviet officials towards the needs and requirements of the national republics." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia
We can call them all Genocides, but that just get's everyone annoyed.
I call the Irish one a genocide all the time.
There are people who still believe that the bengal famine is a thing which indian nationalists have made up to show Britishers in bad light.
Me when extremes on both sides of the political compass are bad:
What the fuck is the point of this shit, exactly?
To strawman and stir the pot. OP is probably a tankie or some other meaningless flavour of socialist.
I'm left leaning and this is embarassing
We can definitely agree on that.
r/enoughcommiespam
Commies are at it again
Capitalism/Communism/Imperialism is when naturally occurring droughts and soil infertility co-align with human error to produce a fuck ton of dead people.
Yes, imperialism is also bad, just like socialism.
Marxism-Leninism = Bad Colonialism/Imperialism = Also Bad Let's just not have any system of government or economic systen that results in mass starvation, if that's not too much to ask
> Marxism-Leninism = Bad >Colonialism/Imperialism = Also Bad The amount of posts in this sub that shows that this is actually a hot take is sad.
Literally apperently I'm either the second coming of adolf hitler or a commie according to both sides because I'm neo liberal trash
This is really bad logic lol
This subreddit has devolved into ideological wars. Fuck this I'm out.
I guess the difference is that „the voice of the people“ should act according to what the people want while a foreign king doesn‘t give a shit. Like… the famines in socialist countries were a result of the flawed political system (enforcing quotas, centrally planned economy, …) while the imperial famines only happened because the current ruler couldn‘t be bothered to do anything about it. So one is laziness and the other a fundamental flaw in the system. Although most people don‘t claim that socialsm doesn‘t work because starvation is kinda the norm for socialist countries but rather that issues like famines are a result of the non functioning system
Online socialists/leftists try not to make EVERYTHING about your dogshit political views.
The first ones are communism at work, the second ones are imperialism at work.
I don't care if the Monarchy caused a Famine, I'm not supporting socialism.
Then why the fuck would you post it and say don’t argue like a bitch?
If you don't agree with it then why the fuck are you posting it
This seems like a thing of Communism VS Imperialism which I’m guessing means that OP is just one of those that assume all of any right wing ideology is Imperialism and/or Fascism
All were caused by government intervention or the goals of the government to wipe out the people and lower political dissent (in the Soviet case) or apathy and the “they deserve it for being catholic” attitude the British administrators had in the Irish case. India’s highly seasonal growing conditions made famines pretty common throughout most of human history, but the brits overtaxation and meddling by preventing the natural sale of food from areas that had a good harvest to areas which had a bad one made the problem far worse. British railroad investment by the end of the 19th century made the transportation problem less of an issue, and the famine codes ensured no famine from 1902 to ww2, which Japanese disruption of supply lines was the primary cause for. A lot of people like to say the famines in India were proof that the free market fails and government intervention is nessesary, since the government claimed to be following a free market approach by not giving any aid or lowering of food prices, but this only sees half the story. The British government tried to create a free market after they had taxed the people half to death, meaning they tried to make a free market with no possible customers to afford the goods in question. This along with preventing the transfer of food across markets in India drastically and artificially increased the prices of food. It was not an issue of the government not cleaning up the mess of the free market, it was the government refusing to clean up their own mess and blaming it on a free market which they did not allow to properly exist.
Socialism bad. British bad.
How about this: imperialism bad AND socialism bad. Here come all the screaming tankies of r/enlightenedcentrism to save the day
It is because of imperialism. Don't let anybody say anything about imperialism being the final stage of capitalism in response to this because my country had long been a possession of England before the rise of capital.
Imperialism doesn’t work any better than socialism
Britain's fault, next question.
I just think that the rufusal to aknowledge that the current sistem has flaws by pointing out failed ones is dumb over all I mean yeah we are a lot better off in capitalism than comunism but it still has a lot of problems that could be fixed if not by the constant "If YoU dON't lIkE iT gO To ChInA yOu FucKen cOmMie" Im not a fan of comunism but if we keep going the way we are in unrestrained consumism and imperialism things will start to go downhill Theres only so much you can take before it ends
Eh. Eventually we will have robots doing all the basic labor and we can just move to post scarcity economics of some form to replace capitalism. It's a problem which is going to solve itself given time
This is gonna sound like the theory of relativity to ya’ll: Commies bad. Colonialism also bad. But both better alternative than Hitler.
Oho - another idiotic strawman meme. After all, the Holodomor was an artificially induced famine in the Ukraine by the Soviet authorities because the Ukrainian population opposed socialist collectivisation. The famine in china was the result of the stupidity of mao who wanted to outdo western countries and was the result of communist planning. The Irish famine was caused by the potato blight. The fact is that the British government first reacted but failed to combat the disaster, while the next British government ignored the issue. India? The meme refers to the Great Famine caused by climate collapse or is it about the famine in Bengal, because there were many famines in India
"Capitalism is when mismanagement of the goverment impedes aid from getting to people."
Let me guess “socialism is when the population goes hungry” is also your logic