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Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by p-e-w on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:09AM (#36706285)
It's relevant because if 99.99% of British people had nothing to do with the famine, saying that "the British" were a "pathogen" is somewhere between weapons grade bullshit and outright hate speech.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by ggm on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:26AM (#36706368)
Ireland continued to to export food to the rest of the UK throughout the famine. Arguably all British peoples who had cheap Irish imports benefited.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by p-e-w on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:15AM (#36706665)
Who benefited (indirectly) says nothing about who is responsible.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by coryrc on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:21AM (#36706703)
The original reply started:

> 99.99% of British did not benefit from

which is wrong.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by mtlmtlmtlmtl on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:32AM (#36706394)
That relies on an uncharitable reading of the OP.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by saagarjha on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:28AM (#36706376)
99.99% of Americans had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib either.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by p-e-w on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:58AM (#36706546)
And I would object to the claim that "Americans are responsible for Abu Ghraib" for the same reason.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by coryrc on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:23AM (#36706719)
First off, we are responsible.

Second, we did not benefit from what happened there. We did not have lower food prices.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by ImHereToVote on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:21AM (#36706700)
Depends on if the US is a democracy or not.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by p-e-w on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:46AM (#36706854)
Democracy is a scale, not a binary state. The actually relevant question is "could the average American have prevented Abu Ghraib?"

And I believe the answer to be No, so 'Americans' cannot possibly be responsible under any reasonable definition of responsibility.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by saagarjha on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:54AM (#36706896)
Well you can also have average Americans who think they have no business taking responsibility after it happens, since it wasn't something that concerned them, and nothing ends up done in response to it happening. Or you can note that some people did horrible things under the banner of your country and accept it as such, vowing to never let it happen again and holding those directly involved in the decision to account for what they did. Being upset that someone said "Americans committed war crimes in Iraq and calling it hate speech" is definitely not that.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by p-e-w on Thursday July 13, 2023 @07:43AM (#36707700)
> Or you can note that some people did horrible things under the banner of your country and accept it as such, vowing to never let it happen again

That requires having the power to keep it from happening again. Without that, such "vows" are meaningless moral posturing.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by saagarjha on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:48AM (#36736148)
Sounds more reasonable than calling it hate speech ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by ImHereToVote on Thursday July 13, 2023 @09:33AM (#36708876)
> those directly involved in the decision to account for what they did

We don't do that here.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by mellosouls on Thursday July 13, 2023 @07:30AM (#36707579)
As pointed out, only a small minority of Brits had the vote back then, so not the same at all.
Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by angryzor on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:42AM (#36706455)
It was a low effort joke and not meant to be taken seriously, certainly not as hate speech. I also didn't expect it to get this many upvotes. I regret posting it, but I cannot delete it anymore as people have already responded.

That being said, most often when someone refers to "the <population name>", it refers to the country itself / its government, not every single citizen in that country, and that's how it was intended here.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by EdwardDiego on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:16AM (#36706670)
Haha okay. Who was working for the British landlords in Ireland? Solely the Anglo-Irish? No-one from Britain?

Who voted for governments that enforced the Corn Law?

Drawing ahead in Irish history by 60 - 70 years, who made up the bulk of the Black and Tans?

But sure, can't blame the British for what their aristocracy and elected government did in Ireland, for... ...reasons?

Feel like you need a satirical hashtag, like #notallabsenteelandlords or something.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by p-e-w on Thursday July 13, 2023 @05:26AM (#36706743)
> Who voted for governments that enforced the Corn Law?

Not "the British people", if that's what you are implying.

Until the Reform Act of 1867, only a tiny fraction of British adult men (and none of British women) had the right to vote.

The average Briton during the Great Irish Famine had as much influence on the British government as the average Irish person did. Which is to say, none at all.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by EdwardDiego on Thursday July 13, 2023 @06:03AM (#36706950)
Tiny fraction?

> Before the Act, only one million of the seven million adult men in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number.

1/7th isn't that tiny. 1/14th is a fair tiny fraction if we're including disenfranchised women.

Being fair, the Corn Law wasn't intended to hurt the Irish, it was meant to protect British farmers against the cheap grain of the traitor colonies in North America.

But it was British/Anglo-Irish civil servants who enforced it in the face of obvious famine.

And it was a British government that refused to revoke it in the face of obvious famine.

Shit, ol Robert Peel, the creator of the 5-0 in Britain, the origin of two slang words for the Police (bobbies, peelers) had to vote against his own party to repeal the Corn Law.

Anyway, point is, the British government, the government that claimed to represent all the peoples of the United Kingdoms, their policies caused this famine, whether by explicit action, or failure to act.

You can't really #notallbritish this.

It's not like the British government of the 1800s was a police state cracking down on dissenters like it's Saudi Arabia and you're a dominant noble family aligned with the Wahabbi.

And, as I asked earlier, when the great majority of the Black and Tans were British, is it still a tiny fraction of Britain that was keeping Ireland down?

> The average Briton during the Great Irish Famine had as much influence on the British government as the average Irish person did.

They had far more influence than the average Irish person. For starters, they weren't Irish.

Re:After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved by mellosouls on Thursday July 13, 2023 @07:39AM (#36707658)
You can't really #notallbritish this.

You really can. The working class Brits have probably been more screwed over than anybody else in the world by the British ruling classes.

In times when they had no or little electoral input into the policies enacted by their oppressors elsewhere it's perfectly reasonable to call out the flaws in generalisations.