.@RichLowry 's odious book peddles indigenous genocide denial, full stop. The fact that literate adult professionals can indignantly claim this is something other than what it transparently is speaks volumes about what it means to be a "conservative intellectual" in today's USA.
@RichLowry I am not being hyperbolic. Passages 1 and 2 are from @RichLowry new book. Passages 3 and 4 are from Walter Hixson's survey history, American Settler Colonialism (Palgrave, 2013). This is beyond grotesque. 
@RichLowry .@RichLowry names his next section "We Treated the Indians Brutally." But even this is reprehensible. Note the insidious work of complicity and erasure being done by "us" here. And, note, too, how precisely Lowry's arguments mirror those of 18th-19th century genocidaires.
@RichLowry IE: it was precisely by characterizing indigenous peoples' practices of land use as "wasteful," their civilizations as primitive and backward, and their populations (ravaged by disease!) as sparse and small that American settlers justified ruthlessly exterminating them.
@RichLowry And the fundamental throughline of @RichLowry's argument - that indigenous lifeways were inferior to and existentially incompatible with supposedly superior and more advanced settler ones - is thoroughly racist, pathetically unoriginal, and drenched in blood.
@RichLowry Jefferson himself ordered troops committ ethnic cleansing in the Ohio Valley in 1780 as follows: "... the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes or Illinois river. The same world will scarcely do for them and us." founders.archives.gov/documents/Jeff…
@RichLowry It should be scandalous that a literate adult should write what Lowry has in 2019. It should be scandalous that no one in the editorial process apparently flagged or challenged any of this. But I guess the scandal is that people dared hurt his feelings by calling him what he is.
@RichLowry Would it surprise you to know that none of these people - none of them - have actually responded to any of this, and that instead they just keep whining about Jamelle, about their feelings, and about the failure of discourse? It's a grift, and it's all they have.
While you're here, and if you'd like to learn more about any of this, please let me recommend three actually good books. Hixson's survey, cited above, is great. Benjamin Madley's An American Genocide, about California, is devastating and must-read. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030018…
Likewise, I encourage you to check out @nick_w_estes's brilliant "Our History is the Future," which is about indigenous resistance and settler erasure past and present, resource protection, land use, and much, much more. versobooks.com/books/2953-our…
@nick_w_estes Here's a fantastic interview @DanielDenvir of @thedigradio did with @nick_w_estes. It's great stuff, do give it a listen (and also consider supporting The Dig!). thedigradio.com/podcast/our-hi…
