Thread by @EveKeneinan

Do you suspect bullshit, when you see a claim like this?

You should, because bullshit it is.

There’s no “universal” here, nor “rights,” nor “equality.”

Cyrus CONQUERED Babylon. That WAS the “freeing” of the Babylonians from the “yoke” — of their former rulers.

https://twitter.com/GodlessCranium/status/1402746725568331776

Only someone deeply, willful ignorant of history, not to mention the ancient world, could say something like this nonsense.

Cyrus did describe his CONQUEST of Babylon as its LIBERATION. Hitler did as much in the Anschluss and elsewhere.

Idiot Nazi-idolators thought THAT was “freeing the captives” too.

We have exactly ZERO reason to think Cyrus ever “freed the slaves” — except in the sense I noted: He “freed” the people of Babylon from their former ruler by means of his conquest of them.

We have abundant reason to think that slavery was a widespread practice in Persia.

We know from the Greek political thinkers that the Persian model was in fact UNIVERSAL SLAVERY — except for the Great King. One free man, all the rest slaves. The Greeks, loving freedom, view Persia with disgust.

The universality of SLAVERY in the Persian Empire may give the only justification for calling it a place of “equality.” Where all men are slaves, there is equality of a sort. Not one worth having, but of a sort.

Nor did the ancients (of course) have an idea of the modern concept of “race” or anything like it. So a claim about “racial equality” isn’t just stupidly wrong — it’s NOT EVEN wrong.

It’s an anachronism that isn’t even meaningful enough to be FALSE.

Although, again, the UNIVERSAL CONDITION OF SLAVERY is such that, in a sense, all peoples were “equal” under the Persian Empire’s yoke.

Universal slavery of all does, in a sense, equalize all peoples and all men. Not in a good way that merits praise for Persia — but in a sense.

So, from Cyrus describing his CONQUEST as a “liberation” of Babylon, GC has manufactured (or uncritically believed):

universal human rights
the abolition of slavery
racial equality
religious freedom
tolerance

AMAZING!

Well, he’s a New Atheist. This is expected.

And let’s not overlook the absurd racialist thinking that leads GC to opine that “Western civilization” is a “dogwhistle” for “white.”

It isn’t of course, Western civilization being rather older than any modern race concept.

Only racists think culture reduces to race.

“Western civilization” has varying borders at different times. It certainly included all of North Africa from the Roman Empire to the Muslim Conquests. It included Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty—and so Alexandria—until the Muslim Conquests.

NOTHING to do with race.

It is true that Western civilization has been European and European diaspora centered, but this is more or less an historical accident: Islam ATE all the non-European parts of Western civilization and ate a good way into Europe as well.

The answer to the question “Why is modern Western civilization largely white?” is “Islam devoured all the non-white parts of Western civilization” + “northwest Europe is largely white.”

That’s it. There’s nothing essentially “white” about Western civilization.