It should, because the collective wealth of most of Europe and the United States is built upon slavery.

Any time people profit from infrastructure and education, which isn't available in the previously enslaved countries, they are benefiting from the fruits of slavery to this day.

I'm guessing afraid to contradict the US probably fits in there, too.

No because they would be agreeing to having to pay reparations.

Slavery has existed in many different cultures, and Africa has had slave trade after it was abolished in Europe and North America, but I think it's fair to say that the transatlantic slave trade was the most cruel and inhuman form of slavery. The only form of slavery that may have been worse was the one Leopold II imposed on Congo.

It's racism that made those forms of slavery even worse. I think racism makes everything worse.

I think the biggest contender for worst crime against humanity was the Native American genocide. That was also driven by racism. So was the Holocaust.

canada, australia and new zealand also abstained

Yeah, I get they have done some awful things. I think Spain, with the conquering of the Caribbean and Mexico, did kill quite a few people. While some will call it genocide others will argue it was disease that did most of the work.

Personally, I view it as a genocide because their intentions to kill and subvert the natives was clear and just because their diseases got them first doesn't suddenly absolve their intentions. They came to conquer and tens of millions of people died as a result.

A more recent example is the UK with India. Estimates are pretty wild here. It depends on if you attribute mismanagement and the resulting famines to the UK which, honestly, I think is fair. This could be one of the greatest losses of life ever with estimates from 55-100 million.

There is a debate here and that is do we count unintentional deaths or only deaths that are directly attribute to a malicious action. This becomes a gray area for some people. I personally don't like to pull punches just because a country rolled a snowball that lead to an avalanche.

Leaded gas for example, which was invented in the US, has killed around 1-5 million people a year for a very long time (almost a hundred years of widespread use) While not all lead poisoning deaths are from gas, the majority is. We are looking at a half a billion people on the high end and people are still dying in the millions to this day.

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the US poisoning the world with chemicals. While you can say the blame is shared by all countries that participated, there is no denying the US invented and proliferated them to begin with.

We still don't understand the implications of things like forever chemicals and micro plastic which have invaded the body of every single human alive. People don't realize how bad it really is or perhaps they just accept reality for what it is without thinking critically about the situation.

Nay sayers can of course say there wasn't intent and it is just the byproduct of technology development. While this is a compelling argument for some when you research it you find out the scientists at the time did have misgivings where they knew of problems to begin with or shortly after proliferation.

A great example of this is global warming. The US petroleum scientists knew about this back in the 1950's. 70 years later we are still denying the reality that global warming will displace billions of people in the coming century. This will become the greatest loss of life from any single event ever.

There is a huge debate around responsibility that will always rage on from people who don't want to claim responsibility for economic reasons. Look at the most recent vote of no by the US at the last UN meeting where they attempted to recognize slavery as one of the greatest human rights abuses that needs reparations.

Intention is important and that is where the US shines above all in the modern era. The two largest human executions in a single event in history was the fire bombings of Tokyo and the dropping of the Atomic bombs. These were intentional and done to a civilian population.

The US related military actions have killed more than any other country in modern times. Being the number one producer of arms the US has brought destruction on a scale that no civilization could even imagine previously.

The world crafting the US engaged in is truly epic and started on their back porch with the Native Americans. What made the US so great is extermination. Imagine any single European country having access to the fertile landmass that is the current US. This is why American Exceptionalism is such a joke.

Only it wasn't their land. It had millions of people on it. Unlike the rest of Europe (besides the UK) the US had no intentions of sharing the land or respecting treaties. Even tribes that assimilated like the Cherokee were eventually forced from their lands. It was a purposeful genocide because the reality was such an abundance of land was easily shareable.

The US greatness was built on an unholy combination of genocide, slavery, and thievery on a scale that had never been seen before save maybe from the Mongols or Rome.

Only they were ancient history, we have already been enlightened by this time. We understood natives needed be protected not exploited. This intention despite the knowledge of its wrongness is really the heart of the matter and what some would call truly evil.

Our world crafting didn't just stop with sea to shinning sea native genocide. No other country has come close to orchestrating the number of regime changes like the US in the last 70 years. In particular waging a subversive war against perceived leftists was particularly egregious causing millions of deaths over supposed ideological differences.

All this wasn't possible without the industrial military complex. The greats like Henry Ford perfected the assembly line laying the groundwork for the industrial military complex as we know it today. An industry built on the death on suffering of humanity. Please don't take this as hyperbole though.

Henry Ford was fond of the Nazi party. He donated to them much like many other wealthy US industrialists. Hitler looked up to the US and modeled his genocide of the Jews after the Native American genocide.

Initially Hitler wanted to expel the Jews. He sent envoys to many other countries asking to take the Jews in. This did not sit well with the wealthy industrialists like Ford. They lobbied hard and successfully ensured that the US did not take in the Jews. What is worse is they also lobbied the rest of Europe stoking ant-jewish sentiment to not take the Jews in.

This lead to the final solution, but the logistical calculations were beyond the Nazi Empire. That is when US companies like IBM stepped up to the plate to help with the census. Yes, the numbers tattooed on the Jews wete developed by IBM processing power. IBM then helped to figure out how many Jews could be shipped to their death daily so as not to backup the death camps.

This is a common theme throughout history with the US having their fingers in so many atrocities, not just with other countries but their own citizens as well.

I totally get that the US came from Europe but it has taken their imperalism and turned it into an art form of destruction. The US is responsible for the most deaths and suffering in history and they are still going strong with no signs of remorse or faltering.

Americans fought a war over slavery, so obviously they very much weren't all ok with it. Also, look at stats of where most slaves went. Brasil had the most, USA wasn't in the top 5. Any number of slaves is too much though.

oh a lot of americans on lemmy are already very upset lmao

Valid.

I'm not going to argue which is worse, slavery or watching centuries of your entire culture destroyed in a day, along with every person in your life, before dying yourself. There are no winners in that argument.

Not the whole country, just a handful of MPs. But they were senior MPs and well-respected. These guys were genuinely worried about this.

And it was because they thought they'd be on the hook financially for reparations, which Ghana can't afford. Especially for the groups who were coastal and "let" the Europeans get a foothold there. Basically a financial penalty for not themselves dying to prevent the Portuguese lamdbin Elmina (In before the Brits).

Also, they worried, IMO rightfully, about the Western propensity towards making blanket decisions that affect the developing world and not caring. UN level reparations policy might very well penalize source countries in some zero-nuance fuck up. Look at us. We are a zero nuance fuck up place right now.