Gilles Tran <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote:
> The problem being that in countries where such debates are common, this is 
> not just the average opinion of people but part of the political platform 
> for the extreme or no so extreme conservative/right-wing parties

  No members of other parties have this kind of attitude?

> that 
> eventually shape actual policies: taking all the credit for the good things 
> and "Who, me?" denial for the unsavory stuff

  The credit may be unjustified, but is denial of the negative things wrong?
From a purely logical point of view it's true: Modern people are *not*
responsible of what their ancestors did 200 years ago. Thus how can it be
wrong to deny any responsibility?

  Sure, it may be hypocritical to take credit for the good things, but
that's not really my point.

> The denial can go even further: in France, the ruling 
> conservative party just tried to push the idea that colonization was a jolly 
> good thing after all, too bad the uppity natives didn't like it so we had to 
> kill thousands of them.

  There are two sides to every coin. Claiming that eg. African colonization
did not bring *any* good to Africa would be simply false.

  I think Zimbabwe is a good example of this. Have negative things happened
in Zimbabwe because of colonization? Sure. However, have *good* things
happened there because of colonization? I think that the answer can be
seen indirectly when the expelled all the white farmers.

  Exactly like white power activists only see the positive side of things
and deny the negative things, multiculturalists do the exact opposite: They
only want to see the negative things and ignore the positive ones.

> You can somehow see that in sport supporters. When their team wins it's 
> "their" win and "their" victory - even though they're just a bunch of couch 
> potatoes - but when it looses it's everybody else's fault but theirs.

  But "right extremists" and "white power activists" are not the only
ones who do this. Selective view of history is common to all political
orientations.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message