Well, this post is just about the nations, groups and people which have put other in a diminished position, especially about those which have been oppressed before and then they become the oppressors. I don't know why in all these cases the group or the people oppressed wants something as a revenge and they usually avenge against other group, not their oppressors, but a completely different group of people.
I'm talking here about two groups which where oppressed in their times, and later they became the dominant group in other context and, in that position, they oppressed those which where under their control including ways to realize their oppression them in new ways.
The two groups are the Jews and the Afrikaner. The Jewish oppression is well know in the Nazi Germany and, a little less known, in the Soviet Union (1).
About the Afrikaner, the oppression made by the British is a lot less known. The, at that time Boers, fought two wars against the British and in the second they where keep prisoners in Concentration Camps in what is now South Africa. There where also critics in the UK because of the use of tactics such as scorched earth and other problems. And this war was not fought because of the liberation of the slaves, but because of gold, that beautiful metal which has moved the history of humanity for centuries (there was a problem with voting rights, but the main problem were the taxes on gold).
Then we advance in history and see how these two groups became oppressors themselves. The Jews became mainly military and plutocrats oppressors, confining the Palestinians into small portions of territory in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, mostly after the Six-Day War, but using them as labour force in those kind of works which the Israelis don't like (much like the present situation in Europe today with immigrants), but keeping strict border controls on the labour force. About the Afrikaners, they became oppressors in the 1940's after the National Party won the elections, enacting laws that established differences between the white people and the "other people", especially in personal relationships, placed to lives or works to perform. This system was legally and practically established, not as the Israeli one which is more practical and less legally (the "legal" part in the Israeli system is in the border control part).
But the fact is that both group of people where oppressed and when they got the power they became oppressors themselves. How can I explain this? I'm not a "guru" or any thing like that, but I think the problem is power, and that old quote from Lord Acton:
"All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
So when they got the power, those people which where oppressed, they got corrupted and start to, not avenge, as I said above, but to use their power in a corruptive manner.
(1) Probably the Doctor's Plot is the last of the Stalin policies against the Jews, but there where others, previous to this one, which where as harsh as this.
1 comment:
What you should find interesting is that Hitler based his model of concentration camps on that of the Anglo-Boer War (conceptualised by Lord Kitchener).
What is furthermore interesting, is that racial segregation (without any system of self-determination) in South Africa did not start with the Afrikaners. It actually started when SA was still a British colony, thus while still under British rule. (It is a general misconseption that Afrikaners created the system of minority rule. This misconception is due to the fact that they coined the term "apartheid", which actually ment self-rule for all nations in SA through segregation, as opposed to the English model of minority rule over segregated races - I know, it's very confusing) The Afrikaners tried to give autonomy (self-rule) to the blacks by creating "homelands" (countries where the different black tribes could rule themselves), but could unfortunately not complete their plans (due to a lot of significant factors, which is too much and too complex to discuss here).
From this brief history you can conclude that the Afrikaners actually "inherited" the system of racist minority rule from the English. Furthermore, they tried to shed this system by creating a system where each nation could, in the end, rule itself: Apartheid. This system never got to reach it's full potential though, and got buggered up along the way.
So, I hope this gives you a little more insight into how the "opressed" Afrikaners became the unwilling "opressors".
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