Posted by
Akagi on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 2:00:00 AM
Last week Curtal Friar (CF) made the claim that East Asia outside of Africa was the most brutal area on the planet. I strongly disagree. I pointed out correctly that unlike the US much of East Asia is quite safe today. I myself have walked the streets of Kaohsiung, Tainan, and Taipei at all hours of the day and night and not once did I ever feel unsafe. The same can be said for other cities as well—Tokyo, Osaka, etc. This doesn’t hold true for many US cities, many places in these are as unsafe as you’d find in I don’t know—Baghdad with areas that are so bad it is not even safe to venture out in broad daylight. Few countries on earth can match the US in gun violence and outside of Iran, China and Saudi Arabia in executions. One could also add it is not Taiwan, Japan or China dropping bombs on Iraq or did so in Kosovo. Yes, China is again doing bad things in Tibet, but the US did much of the same things to its native population and was not any less brutal in its war to keep “its territory” intact. Like a recount of what was done at New Manchester, Georgia for example?
CF pointed out the actions of Mao in China or Japan during World War II, I suppose he could add the sacking of Kaifeng by the Nuzhen in 1127 or the Mongols later in the 13th century or go back to Qin Shi Huang or I don’t know Peking Man. Yes Many Chinese died under Mao’s rule—estimates of 500,000 during the Wen Hua Da Ge Ming (Cultural Revolution), but most that died during Mao’s tenure was during the Great leap Forward (Da Yue Jin) and much of these were not due to the regime trying to kill masses of people on purpose but simply idiotic government economic policies and other polices such as the Four Pests. These polices coupled with a series of natural disasters (which is why the great famine from 1958 until 1961 in the PRC it is called the San Nian Zi Ran Zai Hai” which means the “Three Years of Natural Disasters,” not the term used elsewhere “San Nian Da Jih Huang,” meaning the “Great Three Year Famine”) lead to millions simply starving to death. This was not an intentional famine like Stalin’s actions in the Ukraine in the 1930s, but simply stupidity. Japan’s actions in China and elsewhere during the Second Sino-Japanese War and later in the Pacific War can be seen is nothing less than brutal, but the Europeans and Americans were hardly better in terms of their history.
CF makes an interesting claim in his replies to me elsewhere pointing to Christian values and its value for human life but that wasn’t always the case as “Christians” had no trouble slaughtering people in the Middle East during the Crusades or the native populations in what is today Latin America or the Spanish Inquisition. The European and American wholesale genocide of the native populations in Latin America, what is now the United States and Canada make Hitler look like an amateur. Then of course the European activities in Africa from slavery to colonialism—especially the actions by Belgium in the Congo. Then we have the wholesale slaughter of the native populations in Australia as well as a system of what can be seen as cultural genocide, which was a process that happened in the United States as well. There was of course the actions of the US in the Philippines from 1898 to 1904 or so what some have termed the Philippine-American War where perhaps as many as 1.5 million were killed. A war that often took on elements of a war of extermination and a body count that reached perhaps as high as those killed by the slaughter at Nanjing by the Japanese in 1937. Then of course there is Hitler and Stalin who killed millions between them. Also one could also add the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the list.
I am not ready to crown a “most brutal of them all,” since I’d argue that all peoples of all places at one time or the other have been as brutal as anyone else, but if I were to, the Europeans and their American offspring would win hands down. If you want to find the most brutal, whose brutality has touched every continent on earth except perhaps Antarctica, it is these. East Asians are in the minor league compared to these experts.