Comment on Hit-run driver Jake Danby spared jail time by NT Supreme Court after describing victim as an 'oxygen thief'

• Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Fyi there is “attempt” at cultural genocide. Genocide is a crime in the act itself, regardless of the success of lack thereof in the outcome.

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  • Nath@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You aren’t wrong, but they didn’t think like that at the time. The racism was off the charts by today’s standards. It’s ghastly to look back on and the psychological damage this policy did is immeasurable and ongoing. But beyond all that, they truly were attempting to improve the lives of “the savages” as they saw it.

    “The Board may assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry it is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral and physical welfare of such child. The Board may thereupon remove such child to such control and care as it thinks best.”

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    • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh yeah I get it. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with what they did at the time. I was merely addressing one part of your own comment:

      which was effectively an attempt at cultural genocide

      There’s no such thing as “an attempt at…genocide”. If the act was carried out with the intent to eradicate (even if, as was the case in Australia, they believed the eradication was in the best interests of the individuals), then the action is genocide, whether or not the targeted group actually ceases to exist.

      If you think about it, that has to be the case. Otherwise we would say there has never been a genocide in history. The Nazis only attempted genocide against the Jews, Roma, gays, etc. But we don’t say that, we say what the Nazis did was genocide, even though Jews, Romani, and gay people still exist today. (And likewise, the genocide Israel is currently perpetuating against Palestinians is a genocide, not an “attempted” one, which is why the common genocide denialist’s attempt to point to numbers killed as a sign that it’s not genocide is irrelevant.)

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• manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The stolen generation continues under other names, Indigenous familes are still regularly torn apart in the name of child protection, Grand Mothers Against Removals is a group that works to keep children in community, you can read some more about them here

  www.foe.org.au/grandmothers_against_removals

  I’m not going to spend the time responding to every one of your points, but you might need to take a step back and think about you were so quick to ardently defend an imperialist settler colony

  p.s.

  something that is really irking me lately is the implication that the state banning racist hand gestures, and nazi flags is going to solve anything.

  Banning nazi symbols only means nazis now march under the australian flag, the australian flag was already a colonial symbol, it comes from a time when the state was explicitly white supremacist. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

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  • Nath@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I have absolutely no idea how you can read the words “scandalous” and “cultural genocide” and think I was defending anything. I was saying that comparing the worst of government policies to literally rounding up every man, woman and child and outright murdering them is damaging to your argument. They are terrible failures in policy, but they are not comparable to Nazi policies.

    the state banning racist hand gestures, and nazi flags is going to solve anything.

    What exactly do you propose the government do instead? We can’t lock people away for what they think. We can only prosecute them when they do something like hate speech, waving Nazi flags or doing Nazi salutes.

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    • stib@aus.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      @Nath
      Uhh, isn't "literally rounding up every man, woman and child" exactly what went on? What else would you call the hundreds of massacres that occurred up and down the continent? The colonisers lacked the twentieth century mechanised efficiency of the Nazis, but the intent was just as explicitly genocidal.
      @manuallybreathing

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      • Nath@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Does Mastodon give you the context of the thread or just that one comment? Because in context, I was saying in the past century. I absolutely agree that this was going on before that.

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