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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36584 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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You might as well say that a conquered state is "mentally" enslaved.

They are. A conquered state is mentally enslaved, else they cannot be conquered. To crack open one of my favorite passages of Herodotus for the second time this week, Herodotus's account of the Xanthians:

The Pedasian stronghold being at length taken, and Harpagus having led his army into the plain of Xanthus, the Lycians came out to meet him, and did valorous deeds in their battle against odds; but being worsted and driven into the city they gathered into the citadel their wives and children and goods and servants, and then set the whole citadel on fire. Then they swore each other great oaths, and sallying out they fell fighting, all the men of Xanthus. Of the Xanthians who claim now to be Lycians the greater number — all saving eighty households — are liars.

Or ask Hasdrubal's wife at the fall of Carthage what slavery means.

Or ask Gandhi when consulted on what the Brits and the Jews should do about the Nazis:

"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."

“Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

There are alternatives to victory or accepting defeat and slavery.

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