Should we celebrate genocide?

[Venant]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was appointed the emperor of Haiti after leading their army in a war of independence from France; after which he personally ordered and oversaw the killing of nearly every French man, woman, and child left in Haiti. The city council in Brooklyn have decided to honor Dessalines by naming a street after him. Is it right to celebrate the perpetrators of genocide so long as they killed the *right* people, or people who 'deserved' it? Can a group possess a collective guilt that is so extreme that it warrants their annihilation down to the very last man, woman and child?

https://www.city-journal.org/html/de...ard-16086.html

In New York City, street co-namings—in which a thoroughfare takes on an additional, ceremonial name in honor of a distinguished figure—rarely generate much fuss, and their approval is typically pro forma. But yesterday, a city council committee voted to co-name a street in Brooklyn after Jean-Jacques Dessalines, emperor of Haiti after the island won its independence from France in 1804.

The council’s designation of a two-mile stretch of Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn as Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard sparked some controversy because Dessalines was an enthusiastic advocate of racial murder. Following the defeat of Napoleon’s forces and their retreat from Hispaniola, Dessalines named himself Governor-General-for-Life and decided to wipe the slate clean. Heeding the words of his personal secretary Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre, framer of the Haitian Act of Independence, who declaimed, “we should use the skin of a white man as a parchment, his skull as an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen,” Dessalines ordered the murder of virtually every white man, followed soon afterward by all white women and children, in the new nation. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were butchered in a few months.

[Stelio Kontos]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was appointed the emperor of Haiti after leading their army in a war of independence from France; after which he personally ordered and oversaw the killing of nearly every French man, woman, and child left in Haiti. The city council in Brooklyn have decided to honor Dessalines by naming a street after him. Is it right to celebrate the perpetrators of genocide so long as they killed the *right* people, or people who 'deserved' it? Can a group possess a collective guilt that is so extreme that it warrants their annihilation down to the very last man, woman and child?

https://www.city-journal.org/html/de...ard-16086.html

Doesn't the US have a bunch of stuff named for men who committed genocide against the American Indians?

[metzger84]

No, it's insane.

[Very Tired]

Well that's a loaded thread title.

But, on the other hand, we do still have Columbus Day.

[Venant]

Doesn't the US have a bunch of stuff named for men who committed genocide against the American Indians?

Well that's a loaded thread title.

But, on the other hand, we do still have Columbus Day.

Exactly, which is why I expect many people to select the third option on the poll. I think many people will agree that genocide can be justified.

[Paetolus]

Probably not, but I feel like naming a street after someone is a far cry from celebrating them, was quite a dumb decision though.

[Calfredd]

I think many people will agree that genocide can be justified.

I can only hope you're wrong because that is a scary thought.

[Deleted]

Exactly, which is why I expect many people to select the third option on the poll. I think many people will agree that genocide can be justified.

Why would you even work with the word genocide? That's pure bait, if you want to talk about some historic event please differ.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Doesn't the US have a bunch of stuff named for men who committed genocide against the American Indians?

Yes, but that is being (slowly) changed.

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Probably not, but I feel like naming a street after someone is a far cry from celebrating them, was quite a dumb decision though.

Pretty directly a way to celebrate someone.

[s_bushido]

I can only hope you're wrong because that is a scary thought.

You should hear Christian apologists/theologians talk about the Canaanites sometime.

[Deleted]

Saint-Domingue by their French masters:

Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat excretement? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?"

[Stelio Kontos]

Exactly, which is why I expect many people to select the third option on the poll. I think many people will agree that genocide can be justified.

Yeah no, coming from an ethnicity that was the victim of genocide, I don't believe it's ever justified.

[Paetolus]

Yes, but that is being (slowly) changed.

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Pretty directly a way to celebrate someone.

Yeah, I just read the whole article, and I didn't realize the system by which they named the streets with, I figured there was a different reason then straight up honoring them.

[Venant]

Why would you even work with the word genocide? That's pure bait, if you want to talk about some historic event please differ.

So you are saying that killing all of the French people left in Haiti after the revolution wasn't a genocide?

[Stelio Kontos]

So you are saying that killing all of the French people left in Haiti after the revolution wasn't a genocide?

Genocide would be attempting to kill all French people period.

What you're describing is ethnic cleansing.

[Foosha]

Yeah no, coming from an ethnicity that was the victim of genocide, I don't believe it's ever justified.

I get it. You guys were completely wiped the fuck out, but that was the time back then. Genocide then is different then genocide now. For the U.S, it was the subjugation of the natives, the land, and the safe passages of their citizens to the west. Now, it's killing for the sake of killing/exterminating the race/heritage. Pretty much everyone's line has been a victim of genocide in the past. The natives, whites, muslims, christians, jews...everyone (except the reptillians )

[Venant]

Yeah, I just read the whole article, and I didn't realize the system by which they named the streets with, I figured there was a different reason then straight up honoring them.

Actually, most of the streets are named after local people who somehow contributed to the community. Another interesting quote from the article:

Rodneyse Bichotte, a Brooklyn member of the state assembly who claims direct descent from Dessalines, defended the excesses of the Haitian revolutionaries as a legitimate response to oppression, and said that Dessalines “sought to stop those who were evil.”

So a member on the council publicly supports what Dessalines did as 'stopping those who were evil'

[Stelio Kontos]

I get it. You guys were completely wiped the fuck out, but that was the time back then. Genocide then is different then genocide now. For the U.S, it was the subjugation of the natives, the land, and the safe passages of their citizens to the west. Now, it's killing for the sake of killing/exterminating the race/heritage. Pretty much everyone's line has been a victim of genocide in the past. The natives, whites, muslims, christians, jews...everyone (except the reptillians )

Not completely, since we're still here after all. And it oscillated between genocide and ethnic cleansing as time went on. But I don't think genocide is ever justified.

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Actually, most of the streets are named after local people who somehow contributed to the community. Another interesting quote from the article:


So a member on the council publicly supports what Dessalines did as 'stopping those who were evil'

A lot of countries clean house when they overthrow occupiers/conquerors, mine did the same when they overthrew their conquerors. That's not genocide per se. They ethnically cleansed the French off the island, they didn't then try to wipe the French out in France and their other holdings.

[Venant]

Genocide would be attempting to kill all French people period.

What you're describing is ethnic cleansing.

So by your definition the Holocaust wasn't a genocide

[Deleted]

Well that's a loaded thread title.

But, on the other hand, we do still have Columbus Day.

Pretty sure Columbus is celebrated for his exploration and finding of America, not genocide. There's a massive difference between celebrating something good a bad person did and explicitly celebrating genocide.

Genocide would be attempting to kill all French people period.

What you're describing is ethnic cleansing.

So does localized genocide get a pass? Pretty sure we'd end up in a situation where NO genocide ever occurred, it's prettymuch all been localized - unless you think Adolf Planned on invading the entire planet chasing after the Jews and starting an impossible war to invade America - which considering his inability to even get on British soil sounds insane even by his standards.