King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima were leaving the Slave Lodge building in central Cape Town when a small group of protesters representing South Africa’s First Nations groups – the earliest inhabitants of the region around Cape Town – surrounded the royal couple and shouted slogans about Dutch colonizers stealing land from their ancestors.
They were literally there to pay a visit to a museum about the atrocities of previous Dutch inhabitants in the land. I don’t know what harassing them was supposed to accomplish.
You don’t understand why South African people would want to protest the Dutch king and queen?
Sure, the brutal legacy of their genocide looms over the country to this day, but they went to a museum so we good now.
You don’t understand why South African people would want to protest the Dutch king and queen?
No, I don’t particularly understand why the current Dutch king and queen are being considered responsible for the actions of the Dutch 200 years ago.
Sure, the brutal legacy of their genocide looms over the country to this day, but they went to a museum so we good now.
“of their genocide”
In what way were they, the current Dutch king and queen, involved? If you have some historical tidbit I’m missing, by all means, inform me of the sins of Willem-Alexander.
Going to a museum to pay one’s respects, and accompanied by a representative of the people who suffered so, is a positive step, one that should be at least regarded neutrally, not attacked.
No, I don’t particularly understand why the current Dutch king and queen are being considered responsible for the actions of the Dutch 200 years ago.
We as a species have decided that generational debt and guilt is a good thing. Did your great great grandfather do something bad? This is means you are a bad person and should be punished for it because you benefited. This type of vindictive anti-justice is totally not sapping energy from productive activity and will create a world of cycles of revenge. Embrace it
Countries are responsible for their actions. That’s how that works.
You don’t get to rape and murder your way through a continent, continue to benefit from your genocide but escape any responsibility because lol that was the Netherlands but we’re the Netherlands, not our problem.
Countries are responsible for their actions. That’s how that works.
Okay, so far, we’re in agreement.
You don’t get to rape and murder your way through a continent, continue to benefit from your genocide but escape any responsibility because lol that was the Netherlands but we’re the Netherlands, not our problem.
How far back does your conception of collective and ancestral guilt go, here? Genuine question.
Better genuine question: how much in reparations do you think the dutch government is responsible for?
Just the $value of the goods and labour they stole through killing and violence? Extra to account for the wealth that could’ve been created by everything the dutch stole? Should they have to pay damages for the sheer brutality - the cutting off hands, the concentration camps, etc?
Better genuine question: how much in reparations do you think the dutch government is responsible for?
How could I answer that without knowing how far back their guilt is supposed to go?
You answer my question, and I’ll have the tools to answer your’s.
I’m not the person you’re replying to, but maybe as far back as we have receipts?
In this case, there’s no mystery about who did what to whom and what they took. The Dutch and English kept very good records. In fact, the whole colonial project was very well accounted for.
Ancestral guilty goes back exactly as far as you can trace your ancestory. Lucky for us, that’s literally all royalty is.
So if you don’t trace your ancestry at all, you have no guilt? Ignorance is innocence?
I am thinking it is like god. You have to believe in it first in which case evidence doesn’t matter.
In what way were they, the current Dutch king and queen, involved?
Their inheritance is comprised of stolen riches. Their whole socioeconomic status is a result of the crimes of their ancestors. They didnt commit the crime but they have kept the loot and are still profiting from it.
In this case lets talk about African based pirates and other groups enslaving millions of Europeans even before that and after that. Africans were slavers long before Duch arrived and they built riches on selling their own people to white man.
Why are the African people not being blamed for their ancesstral guilt?
Their whole socioeconomic status is a result of the crimes of their ancestors.
So, ancestral guilt.
Its not just “ancestral guilt”. Like I said : “they have kept the loot and are still profiting from it”, And by loot I dont mean only valuable goods but power too. They still benefit from the power imbalance between countries that was created during colonialism. Just look at the world economy and the dynamic between the “economic south” and “economic north”
They are not guilty of colonialism “per se” but they are guilty of perpetuating, and using, the inequality and oppression that colonialism was built on for their own benefit.
Right ancestral guilt. Sins of the grandparents visited onto the children. People punished for crimes they didn’t commit.
So, do you mind telling me whose socioeconomic status isn’t a result of the crimes of their ancestors?
Slaves, descendents of slaves, and the poor. You know, most people.
Every morning they wake up and live a life of luxury, directly benefiting from the atrocities of their ancestors.
An actual positive step would be giving the wealth back. A photo op at a museum before hopping on a plane back to their castle doesn’t help anyone.
Every morning they wake up and live a life of luxury, directly benefiting from the atrocities of their ancestors.
Man, every day we wake up and live a life of luxury, directly benefiting from the atrocities of our ancestors. The only difference here is the scale of that luxury.
I mean, yeah, and I wouldn’t blame the current victims of those atrocities for protesting.
Have you given the wealth back from the atrocities of your ancestors?
I get what you’re saying, but you have to understand the difference between a middle-class worker versus a literal king and queen. I’m very aware of the opportunities I’ve been given thanks to where and when I was born, but in terms of actual transferrable wealth, all I really have to give is a 20 year old Honda.
Did they renounce the inheritance built on human misery and a pile of 20,000 human hands? Or that parts inherited but the sins aren’t?
You keep repeating the severed hands bit but that was Belgium, not NL. Educate yourself before meming online.
As amusing as I’d find the Dutch royal family ceasing to exist over ancestral guilt, as an anti-monarchist, I don’t know how many degrees of separation you require before an inheritance is no longer considered blood-soaked. Is it infinite?
Why is it acceptable to you that the wealth is handed down but ludicrous that the blood is handed down with it?
If someone became an overnight billionaire for murdering your children, how many generations of their kids driving around in Bugattis would it take for you to consider that fortune washed of its sins?
Apparently demanding a wealthy person part with wealth is more upsetting to some people than cutting off people’s hands to acquire it.
So you argue that it is infinite, then?
If I can still see the wealth than I can still see the blood.
