• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Where do you rank the Confederacy, in terms of evil, in comparison to regimes from history?

Status
Not open for further replies.
TerminusFox

TerminusFox

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,851
I've always wondered Era's thoughts on this, would you rank the Confederate States of America on your personal list of which are the most brutal and downright evil regimes in history? For me, being a black man, they rank just below the Nazis and the Fascist Dictatorships of Europe during the 20th century. Lincoln's reconstruction was a failure in large part because he let them off the hook way WAY too easily and we're still paying for it a century and a half later.

What do you think?
 
Quixzlizx

Quixzlizx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,591
He let them off the hook by being assassinated?

Edit: For context, Lee surrendered on April 9th, and Lincoln was shot on April 14th, so I don't see how you could blame the success or failure of Reconstruction on him.
 
louisacommie

louisacommie

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,571
New Jersey
Ranking this is weird

Since theirs a big disconnect with nations and empires that existed more then a few hundred years ago, stuff that's ancient histroy.

On a diffrent note

Evils of the confederate go beyond it with the kkk and the like that evolved out of it
 
iksenpets

iksenpets

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,490
Dallas, TX
They're pretty top tier. Other than Nazi eugenics, there hasn't been a foundational ideology for a state much worse than the American slavery system. Really, the CSA and 20th century fascism are the only regimes I would really consider evil. Everything prior to that could be brutal in its struggle for power, or could kill through incompetence, or through the whims of an individual evil leader, but only those really systematized the most evil aspects of it all.
 
House_Of_Lightning

House_Of_Lightning

Self-requested ban
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
5,048
I mean... I wouldn't make excuses for the Confederacy in general but compared to Stalinism and Nazism...

The Confederacy was the last gasp of a world order retreating into the dustbin of history. Stalin and Hitler had the benefits of industrialization and political ideology at their disposal.
 
tsampikos

tsampikos

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,613
better than where we are now

our current government (modern US in general) has a bigger body count and the only reason why people give a fuck now is because Trump is actually affecting white people negatively too for once
 
Dyle

Dyle

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
29,938
Nowhere near the worst. Personally I would put those who are systemically eliminated their undesirable enemies on a whole different level beyond those who mainly wanted to suck whatever money and power they can out of them. Frankly what the USA did outside of the civil war was more complete, prolonged, and deadly, both for Native Americans and black people than anything the CSA did.
 
brochiller

brochiller

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,191
tsampikos said:
better than where we are now

our current government (modern US in general) has a bigger body count and the only reason why people give a fuck now is because Trump is actually affecting white people negatively too for once
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You think the systematic enslavement of black people was better than where we are now?
 
TheCthultist

TheCthultist

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,450
New York
iksenpets said:
They're pretty top tier. Other than Nazi eugenics, there hasn't been a foundational ideology for a state much worse than the American slavery system. Really, the CSA and 20th century fascism are the only regimes I would really consider evil. Everything prior to that could be brutal in its struggle for power, or could kill through incompetence, or through the whims of an individual evil leader, but only those really systematized the most evil aspects of it all.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Dyle said:
Nowhere near the worst. Personally I would put those who are systemically eliminated their undesirable enemies on a whole different level beyond those who mainly wanted to suck whatever money and power they can out of them. Frankly what the USA did outside of the civil war was more complete, prolonged, and deadly, both for Native Americans and black people than anything the CSA did.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yup, that seems like Resetera in a nutshell.
That said, as a history major, I'm staying the hell out of this. Way more curious to see how other people decide ranking stuff like this works than trying to impose my own explanation of it.
 
cirr

cirr

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,247
Northern VA
there have been so many absolutely evil regimes in history that listing them in any numerical order is rather pointless and tbh i find it rather tastless.
the bureaucratic machines and their leaders that instituted things like the Great Leap Forward, the holodomor, the holocaust, khmer rouge purges, east and west indian companies, genocide and cultural destruction of the american indian, and on and on.
i'm certainly not suggesting that the systematic dehumanization enforced by the confederacy (then the continued evolution of jim crow and its legacy following 1865 to present day) doesn't belong in this long list of human atrocities.
each of the items in this supposed list would have a single number - 1, followed by 1, followed by 1

TheCthultist said:
Yup, that seems like Resetera in a nutshell.
That said, as a history major, I'm staying the hell out of this. Way more curious to see how other people decide ranking stuff like this works than trying to impose my own explanation of it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

hey a fellow history major!
there are dozens of us
 
Last edited:
Takyon

Takyon

Member
Nov 8, 2017
3,707
definitely one of the most morally bankrupt in regards to day-to-day life of the common people.
 
danm999

danm999

Member
Oct 29, 2017
17,128
Sydney
They're pretty bad. The ideology they used was particularly nasty and racially stratified in a distilled way you don't often see. A lot of really awful large empires like the Romans had to be a bit looser with their racial and ethnic discrimination simply to let the Empire run day to day.

They maybe don't have as many bodies under them as Genghis Khan or Hitler though.
 
sphagnum

sphagnum

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
16,058
It's hard to rank something like this when the vast majority of states throughout history have utilized slave labor in some form or another. What makes the Confederacy unique I suppose is that it was ideologically committed to slavery rather than just existing in a world where slavery was A Thing that nobody thought twice about.
 
Mortemis

Mortemis

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
7,416
The confederacy didn't exist for long. Or are we giving them credit for the Atlantic slave trade? Or the genocide of native Americans?
 
haxan

haxan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,432
Can anything good, or any meaningful discussion, come from this thread? These aren't superhero movies to rank.
 
SolVanderlyn

SolVanderlyn

I love pineapple on pizza!
Member
Oct 28, 2017
13,507
Earth, 21st Century
The funniest part of the Confederacy is when the Union bolstered their forces by allowing black men to enlist, and the Confederacy was just SOL in doing anything to counter that because they couldn't do the same without losing face. womp womp
 
MisterSnrub

MisterSnrub

Member
Mar 10, 2018
5,904
Someplace Far Away
It's hard to objectively rank these things. Better to just look at it as one of the more recent examples of our species' capacity for unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity, examples of which are replete throughout history.
 

Stardestroyer

Member
Oct 31, 2017
1,819
I agree with the others. The US government is far worse than the Confederate. The US government wiped out millions of natives, nuke the Japanese just to show off, destroyed the lives of blacks and still do, kill millions of muslims and destabilized the middle east, imprisoned the Japanese during ww2, destroyed Vietnam and korea.

Confederates only wish they were as evil as the US government.
 
Enzom21

Enzom21

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,989
I expect this thread to have a few people (all non-black) trying minimize how bad the confederacy was/is because mostly black people were its victims.
 
pigeon

pigeon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,447
Mortemis said:
The confederacy didn't exist for long. Or are we giving them credit for the Atlantic slave trade? Or the genocide of native Americans?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A reasonable analysis of the Confederacy's origins and results probably has to start with the slave states joining the Union and continue at least until today.
 

Deleted member 2226

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,846
It's nowhere up there, either in general abhorrence to modern sensibilities or body count. All other factors discarded, it simply wasn't around long enough.
TerminusFox said:
I've always wondered Era's thoughts on this, would you rank the Confederate States of America on your personal list of which are the most brutal and downright evil regimes in history? For me, being a black man, they rank just below the Nazis and the Fascist Dictatorships of Europe during the 20th century. Lincoln's reconstruction was a failure in large part because he let them off the hook way WAY too easily and we're still paying for it a century and a half later.

What do you think?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean, it wasn't really Lincoln's Reconstruction. He and Johnson both were moderates compared to the radicals in congress, just on opposite ends of the spectrum.
 
GameAddict411

GameAddict411

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,518
The Nazi regime probably ranks as the most evil. They committed genocide, but not only that, they wanted to enslave all non-whites.
 
Artdayne

Artdayne

Banned
Nov 7, 2017
5,015
Idk, tough to say really. It's definitely up there, hard to know how to compare it to something like the British Empire or the Roman Empire. Nazi Germany and the Japanese empire might be at the top but both were short lived in comparison.
 
Mortemis

Mortemis

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
7,416
pigeon said:
A reasonable analysis of the Confederacy's origins and results probably has to start with the slave states joining the Union and continue at least until today.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's true. Just don't think that we should simplify all the atrocities of the slave trade to just the south. It's fair, but doesn't feel correct.
 
Ogodei

Ogodei

One Winged Slayer
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,256
Coruscant
It's hard to say. They certainly set out to sustain one of modern history's greatest evils, but they didn't succeed and it's not like they weren't doing anything that had the full sanction of the U.S.A. only years before. It's hard to say they are more evil than American history as a whole.

While the Confederacy's cause was definitely to fight for slavery (as the articles of secession of various states clearly delineate), the only reason the Union fought back was to keep control. Abolition took over the cause in the course of the war and had the South stayed in the union they could have slow-walked abolition until the dawn of the 20th century.
 
GaimeGuy

GaimeGuy

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,092
sphagnum said:
It's hard to rank something like this when the vast majority of states throughout history have utilized slave labor in some form or another. What makes the Confederacy unique I suppose is that it was ideologically committed to slavery rather than just existing in a world where slavery was A Thing that nobody thought twice about.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The confederacy was formed for the defense of slavery and white supremacy, it died fighting for those causes, and its entire short existence was in a state of war fighting for these causes.

Most other regimes have the time to find an identity other that the atrocity that defines them. Or at the very least, the time to do anything else.
 
pigeon

pigeon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,447
sphagnum said:
It's hard to rank something like this when the vast majority of states throughout history have utilized slave labor in some form or another. What makes the Confederacy unique I suppose is that it was ideologically committed to slavery rather than just existing in a world where slavery was A Thing that nobody thought twice about.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Lots of states used slave labor, but few were dedicated to racially specific, permanent, generational chattel slavery, and very few literally put slavery in the justification for their existence as a state.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.