Valuing Genocide

[Lemur]

This is the same genocide of Indians, which you're trying to list as several examples. Besides, this exception was caused by an advantage in firepower so extreme that it is unparallelled in the entire history. The same goes for your other examples. These are exceptions, caused by extraordinary circumstances. Then again, did King Leopold perform well in Africa in the long run?

The extermination of indigenous people happened on multiple continents, in multiple centuries. Sorry if listing a few examples seems like inflation to you. Africa alone can offer many, many examples of genocide, both pre- and post-colonial.

Why is disparity in military technology an "unparalleled" situation? How do you think tribes who used spears fared when they were overrun by tribes who used chariots?

King Leopold did just fine in the Congo, brought a lot of money back to Belgium. He acquired sole rights to it in 1885, and it didn't gain independence until 1960. Seventy-five years is a long wait for payback, especially when millions have died.

You can take or leave the potato famine; it's just one example among many.

Maybe you should read the Oddysey then, in which the entire Greek army is lost in the retreat.

And the Greek city-states did just fine for centuries after the sacking and killing of Troy. Your point?

Well the Carthaginians had little justification to be angry with the romans over their sack of Carthage, after looking at what Carthage did in Iberia.

So the sacking, salting and extermination of Carthage was just a karmic payback? For which the Romans didn't have to pay for centuries? I'm not at all clear on where you're going with this ...

My thesis is that it is often forgotten how severe political, military and economical problems for the guilty of genocides are very strongly connected to their prior acts of genocide.

So your thesis is that payback for genocide is severe? And that people forget about the backlash? I don't know, really. There are just too many examples of societies that thrived for centuries after wiping out another people. It's facile to say, "Look, the Romans fell, so clearly they were paying for their genocides," 'cause the Roman empire lasted for centuries. That's some slow karma, there.