
Idk we can start with the multi million death toll we’ve inflicted through imperialism across the world? Or not allowing other countries to have democracy? Or the fact that slavery is still legal? And we still have racial and economic underclasses? Our freedoms are stripped more and more everyday?
So let me get this straight. Most European countries should be dismantled simply bc they were founded by and for white Christians? Also, all land is stolen land. I don’t think the sins of our fathers means we should destroy our country today. Yeah and I asked for modern day specifics🤦♀️
Were most European countries founded on settler colonialism? No… so what are you talking about 😭 what is there to dismantle. They weren’t founded FOR those things, they’ve existed and evolved as the neighboring regions existed and evolved. All land is stolen? Wtf are you talking about, again
I believe that similarities are important to acknowledge, but that it is damagingly reductionist to reduce all nuance by saying they are “truly the same.” All four of these states have a history of expansionist ethnonationalism tied to genocide and ethnic cleansing. But they are different in fundamental ways. The United States (and if we are being honest Israel) were founded on (unequally applied) democratic principles which are fundamentally different from Nazi germany.
In the United States said democratic principles began to expand so much that it began to override the slave system which drove its economy, and this caused the civil war in which the confederacy was defeated (but white supremacy would later re-assert itself in the failure of reconstruction)
They are truly the same in all the ways that actually matter tho… like those are all very relevant details 😭 everything is connected and history repeats itself all the time And the US and Israel were absolutely NOT founded on democratic principles. They were founded on the protection of wealth and capitalism for a select few
Is it correct to criticize the U.S. government? Obviously. Is it important to compare manifest destiny to Lebensraum to Zionism? Also yes, I do that often. But the governments and ideologies of these states are more complex to be improperly portrayed as “the same.” The founding of American democracy was white supremacist and supremely flawed, but it did usher in the age of revolution and our modern era of Republican democracy.
And if I am to go on a bit of a nerd rant. I think Nazi Germany is an evocative comparison, particularly when comparing modern day right wing rhetoric towards immigrants. But I think if we are comparing the origins and policies of the USA and Israel then other settler colonial states like Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa are a more apt analogue.
That was democratic principles in those days. The origin of liberal democracy, generally speaking, was property and voting rights for the wealthy bourgeois. That was the case in revolutionary France, in Latin America, and was the origin point of the Haitian revolution too. These principles were later expanded to universal suffrage. But it’s undeniable that the age of revolution was a major historic shift away from monarchical governance and towards representative democracy.