The bigger problem that I have with the idea that misinformation kills democracy is that it seems to suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon or that the average person has been well informed throughout the history of western democracy.ĭemocracy thrived before the printing press. The Boers were religious hyper-conservatives who believed God had given them a right to Black slaves, whereas the British had banned slavery throughout the Empire and were going to some expense to enforce this. It shouldn't be left out that the British had a decent case for moral high ground in that war. Arguably we still have them today, under the new name "refugee camp". Granted people did die in concentration camps, but the deaths were of things like cholera - the same diseases that would run through army camps.
It wasn't until the Nazi extermination camps of WW2 that the phrase "concentration camp" took on such negative valences. I hear they borrowed the idea from the Spanish in Cuba.Ĭompared to alternatives, it was supposed to be more humane: "Get the civilians out of harm's way (and keep them from aiding the guerillas without killing them)". Compare and contrast to the Harrying of the North. That is indeed how you fight an insurgency.
If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war.
0 kommentar(er)
