So, I’ve been reading “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World” by Mike Davis. And as he recounts famine after famine, each of which claimed millions of lives, I started thinking to myself: even granting the ludicrous assumptions of the anti-communists with the “Victims of Communism” webpage (and proposed memorial or something?), the victims of capitalism easily outnumber them. And I wasn’t alone. Here, the author recounts how British colonial policy was responsible for 100 million excess premature deaths in India alone, over the course of a half century.
#Capitalism #Colonialism #Communism #VictimsOfCommunism #VictimsOfCapitalism
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
#history
@SallyStrange@eldritch.cafe @bookstodon@a.gup.pe @histodons@a.gup.pe The British Empire repeatedly let its colonies starve simply because food could be sold for a profit somewhere else.
They’ve done that in so many places.
Sure, not each colony every single time, but that just makes it clear they always had a choice and chose to let people starve.
If you own 1/3 of the world, you really can’t convince me you don’t have the resources, anyway.
@SallyStrange@eldritch.cafe @bookstodon@a.gup.pe @histodons@a.gup.pe The Victims of Communisms Memorial Foundation? It’s established and funded by the US government, though nominally independent, the the express and entirely open purpose of telling the world how evil, violent and oppressive communists are. It’s a pure propaganda organisation, barely even pretends otherwise. And yes, it claims 100 million victims killed by communism - but that is mostly from counting deaths from every famine in a nominally communist country.
@SallyStrange@eldritch.cafe @bookstodon@a.gup.pe @histodons@a.gup.pe
Sadly, we Brits have a LOT to answer for historically! Our imperial use of systematic violence was no different from that used by our rivals. We were just better at hiding it. [see Elkins C., “Legacy of Violence: a history of the British Empire”]
Eg we pioneered concentration camps & mass starvation (Boer War); mass murder of civilians (India, Palestine, Ireland, Kenya); reprisal killings (Ireland); torture (Ireland, Kenya); rape, & castration (Kenya);
