Thread by @spiantado

This article by @JeffFynnPaul has been going around. He argues that it’s a “myth” that Europeans took land from Native Americans. @cakrolik and I read it and it’s one of the worst argued pieces we’ve ever seen. Here is our thread.
spectator.co.uk/article/the-my…

The overall claim of his article is that liberals have perpetuated a “Myth of the Stolen Country” that the US “was founded by a monumental act of genocide, accompanied by larceny on the grandest scale.”

He compares the popularity of this “myth” in the US to ideology in Nazi Germany (Godwin’s law?) and communism.

Since he’s not going to cite sources, Fynn-Paul is sure to remind us up front that he’s a "professional historian." Without his stand against “groupthink," we will lose our edge. Fynn-Paul is the cure for impotence.

His real argument begins by saying that the spread of disease from Europe to the Americas was probably unavoidable. He then admits that there *were* efforts to spread smallpox, and cites no sources for his claim about the relative importance of the two.

He asks us to acknowledge how “warlike” indigenous people were, but cites no evidence. Even if true, the claim is makes no sense here: why does the purported tendencies of people matter to whether or not Europeans were justified in taking their land, forcing them into slavery?

(Don’t forget the Europeans had guns. No amount of fighting against guns would be enough. Does @JeffFynnPaul think that if we saw two indigenous groups fighting today, that would justify using our war technology to take the land they’re on?)

Fynn-Paul then argues that because land didn't belong to a single group for more than 50 or 100 years, who could be blamed?

But the issue isn’t whether Native Americans shared European notions of ownership, it’s whether Europeans used THEIR OWN notions in a way that harmed others.

His argument is like saying that if me and my neighbor share a lawn mower (or even fight over it), it's not stealing for someone to run up and take it because, quoting roughly here, "precisely to whom the lawn mower belonged in any given moment was anyone's guess."

We can tell you who the land definitely *didn’t* belong to...

The next step is to hope readers haven't heard of the trail of tears? Indian Removal Act? Potawatomi trail of death? Long walk of the Navajo? California Genocide?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "Where then was the crime?" @JeffFynnPaul asks.

That phrase “a few” leads readers to count up how many cases they can think of, instead of considering the overall effect: decimation of Native American civilizations across an entire continent. Who cares how many, if "a few" can be so destructive?

And what exactly were all the wars fought over if the local chief so often assented and "liked the price"?

Anyway, he argues, if the English or Spanish had not colonized, someone else would have. This is the same argument that is used by oil companies and tobacco companies to explain away their own moral obligations, so Fynn-Paul has company, at least.

What's wrong with this argument is that it really *can't* be a guide to moral behavior--much less diagnostic of theft or genocide--because it corrals everyone into an ethical tragedy of the commons.

That is, any unethical action can be justified by Fynn-Paul’s logic by pointing out that someone else unethical could have done it instead. Judge, my client is innocent -- if my client hadn’t committed the murder, someone else equally depraved could have done so.

His thinking also combines revisionist history with a game of “what if.” Asking “what if” is not doing history. There is no what-ifing our way out of the fact that actual Europeans exploited, killed, and enslaved the indigenous populations.

But, don't worry, we know that Europeans weren't "of a genocidal mindset" because they didn't commit genocide in India.

Judge, my client is innocent--look at all the people in “India, Asia, or even Africa” that he didn’t kill!

Fynn-Paul’s bar for ethics is stunningly low.

Probably not wise to emphasize how much population growth and flow from old to new world there was, when arguing that Europeans didn't take land.

Plus, there’s no real argument made here: difference in population density made it “likely” the population would move. Yes, if you talk about “population” abstractly, it’s easier to forget that the population contains (and is guided by) actual people making decisions.

And people are only "likely" to take land if they have certain specific attitudes to the people already living on it.

Fynn-Paul then implies that Europeans didn’t “destroy” Native culture -- Native Americans just adopted a "good idea."

Integration, rather than destruction, would predict that many people with Native American ancestry would occupy key roles in congress, government, perhaps even US presidents. They’d own some of the continent's largest companies and live in wealthy communities.

Fynn-Paul’s framing also assumes that European culture is superior to Native culture; that European culture is of a “higher living standard” than Native culture; that European culture would always have won out in the end.

But European culture was not given as an option -- it was forced on Native populations as their own was destroyed before their eyes. Fynn-Paul suggests this was analogous to China giving spaghetti to Italy.

There’s one key way to tell that it’s not a coherent analogy: China didn’t destroy Italy. Italians are still in Europe, pretty much in the same place. Even after spaghetti.

Which brings us to the claim that historians just can’t find anything that bad about Columbus.

Fynn-Paul is abusing language and pragmatics here to the point of dishonesty. Why is whether Columbus had any “particular ill-will” (or was “genocidal”) relevant to whether Europeans “stole” anything? Those aren't necessary criteria for theft in any legal system.

Anyway, Fynn-Paul is careful not to give you any of Columbus’ own words or actions. Here are some:

Quotes from Laurence Bergreen’s book on Columbus:

More

Columbus again

Here is one of Columbus’ friends, Michele da Cuneo (TW):

Here is Fynn-Paul’s gloss of Columbus’ journals -- curiosity and wonder...

More from Columbus:

Here is Bartolome de las Casas.

Las Casas doesn’t count, Fynn-Paul suggests, because he only wrote this because people would be sympathetic… therefore Europeans aren’t bad…? We should just ignore that Las Casas was writing about what Europeans did?

As we said, this is the worst argued piece of writing we’ve ever seen.

Anyway, for Fynn-Paul, Columbus was just a product of his time. No blame. Why then were Columbus’ actions judged unethical by the very Queen who funded him? Here’s just Wikipedia:

Fynn-Paul also claims Europeans were generous in sharing technology -- like the guns Europeans traded. Shouldn’t Europeans giving weapons only in exchange for goods Europeans consider more valuable count as "guarding their technological superiority"?

Fynn-Paul then revels in a Disney retelling of Pocahontas, children’s cartwheels around Jamestown fort, etc. An instance of cooperation in the 1500s should negate what happened for 500 years after

Unabashed racism. Gross and horrible. Tropes of “wild” are long-standing in white supremacist narratives.

Native schools -- in the US and Canada -- violently pulled indigenous children from their homes, claiming that their parents couldn’t care for them properly, and put them in these schools where they were mistreated and abused.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_…

At this point, you might be wondering who in their right mind would write this kind of garbage. It’s actually a well-attested pattern, also found in evolutionary psychology.

https://twitter.com/jw_lockhart/status/1310584271363547136

The basic tack is: write something controversial with bad or no evidence, claim the victim when others point out what’s wrong. Use the controversy to make a career as a heterodox, persecuted, public academic. Don’t publish in a peer-reviewed, reputable history journal.

Unfortunately, some like @sapinker seem to consistently go for the bait, as though contrary voices, no matter how data-free and poorly argued, have merit solely because they are contrary.

https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1310956304299634688?s=20

An irony is that public intellectuals like @sapinker claim to oppose ideological alliances. Fynn-Paul brings no empirical data and not one coherently formulated point, so what could be the appeal other than its ideological stance?

Now we can start the countdown timer for when Fynn-Paul uses mere online criticism to claim he’s being censored, cancel-culture, etc.

If you want the one-emoji summary, this from @mishaewen was pretty spot on:

https://twitter.com/mishaewen/status/1310143621342081024?s=20

Fynn-Paul’s predictable response was to call for “all sides” to be seen.

https://twitter.com/JeffFynnPaul/status/1310166137645207559?s=20

Hooray for all sides!

We look forward to reading more of “all sides” in @spectator -- theories on Columbus being an alien, speculation that John Smith invented the moonwalk, and the theory that the new world actually was India after all.

Fynn-Paul is on the right track for one issue though: it's become common to acknowledge that the land is unceded territory. This is not unique to @UConn students (though they on a particularly complicated swath of Indiginous territory).
nativegov.org/a-guide-to-ind…

It is important to #HonorNativeLand because it “Counter[s] the ‘doctrine of discovery’ with the true story of the people who were already here” as per the US Department of Art & Culture @usartsdept usdac.us/nativeland/

The most we can hope for is that Fynn-Paul’s article, like many lazy, irredeemable rants, will in the end raise awareness, and have the opposite of its intended effect.
whose.land/en/