23 November 2020

SLAVERY ... Queries

(1) ... I put this forward ... no agenda ... just out of curiosity ... Which Saints do we know to have been slave-owners? Saint Philemon, I seem to recall, is on the Byzantine Calendar. And I have one or two other totally tentative enquiries:

(2) Why is there no splendid, eye-catching, monument to those coastal inhabitants of South-West England, whose villages were raided by Algerian Corsairs and who were kidnapped and sold into slavery? (I would nominate Carn Brae, the First and Last Hill, overlooking Land's End; it would be a help to the flagging Cornish tourist industry. It could sell cheap replica Arab currency from the Slavery period, together with other tawdry trinkets of the sort that the lower orders rather enjoy. 'Escape from Your Arab Slaver' games based loosely on the Monopoly principle would be a big hit. Children could be given 'Arab slave manacle' sets to play with. 'Slaver Whips' might interest those with exotic tastes. Wealthier and transpontine tourists would willingly purchase models of Arab slaving ships. Internet games enabling one to target and sink incoming corsairs ... etc. etc..)

(3) Is there a monument near Lepanto commemorating the glorious liberation of the Christian (and other) galley slaves exploited by the Turks? Where could I find video-clips of Mr Erdogan apologising for the galley-slave system? (What a shame Papa Montini, such a silly man, gave those Lepanto banners back to Brother Turk: they could have featured in a Lepanto Liberation Shrine.)

(4) I feel pretty sure the Incas and the Aztecs will have had slaves. Did slaves number among those who were flayed alive and viventes had their hearts cut out? What monuments exist commemorating the admirable elimination by Catholic Spain of these horrible indigenous cultures, resulting in the liberation of their slaves?

(5) What massive international studies are on hand into the African chieftains who enslaved members of 'lesser' tribes, and sold them on to the dealers, who then disposed of them to European slave traders? What are the Slavery connections of the Benin Bronzes culture? When will the bronzes be melted down and the bronze used for a great Monument erected to British sailors who lost their lives in putting down the slave trade?

(6) What stage has been reached in the campaign to have Washington (and Washington) renamed? Are there any countries so politically incorrect as to have portraits of Slaver Washington on their wretched currencies? Could we have him postumously tried for treason, and his remains hung up at Tyburn? Why don't we have annual celebrations of this infamous man's demise, centred on bonfires made up of cherry trees and with Washington effigies on top ... processions ... street parties ... on the day of his death?

15 comments:

Matthew F Kluk said...

Papa Mobtini was very silly giving away those banners. Along with other parts of the real Patrimony.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. Thomas Sowell has, many times, pointed out that North Africa had more white slaves (Thanks Mahometans) than America ever had black slaves and it does a body well to remember the root of slave refers to Slav.

Back in the day, kid nabbers (source of the word kidnap) used to meet daily in Saint Pauls' to plan how they were going to snatch kids and sell them into slavery outside of England - America and Barbados (Barbadosed refers to the Irish who were captured by the Brits and sold into slavery)

White Cargo
They were white and they were slaves

Those two books, and others are capable of being purchased for those interested in facts but the Good Whites do not want to tell the bad whites (and you whites know which kind you are) about the facts because facts eviscerate all of their white guilt / white privilege progressive propaganda.

Pelerin said...

Where does Benjamin Franklin stand? He campaigned against slavery and yet he at one time owned a couple of slaves. A difficult decision!

Hannes said...

Your observations 2) and 3) seem to be one of the favourite arguments used by the critics of the "woke" movement, but I believe that they miss an important point. There is currently no social tension between the descendants of white slaves and slave holders in Muslim countries. There is no predominantly poor "white" group in North Africa or Turkey which has to fight with racism (I believe it's different with the descendants of black slaves in north Africa). The ancestors of the often persecuted Christian minorities in Muslim countries have never been slaves. Slaves and slave holders have been melted into a racially, culturally, and socially homogeneous group - that was certainly a very cruel process, but its purely history now and has not left any traces in today's societies. The history of black slavery in America, on the other hand, is still far away from that peaceful ending point.

commenter said...

I think this is what is known as "whataboutery", albeit of a well-read kind.

I am not sure it is very edifying. Sorry I do this seems po-faced.

OreamnosAmericanus said...

We Americans have been stuck with a nasty multiracial situation since our beginnings. And, of course, since the 1965 immigration act, have allowed our nation to be invaded with floods of Third Worlders, legal and illegal, who will give the abortion-worshipping and White-hating Democrats a permanent hold on our goverment. Whites in America will be a minority in our own land in 25 years. All this, by the way, with cheerleading from the treasonous US Catholic Church and the dangerous clown sitting now on St Peter's throne.

But you in Europe, having watched our miserable and insoluble plight, foolishly went ahead and allowed your own countries to be invaded by Africans, Indians, Muslims, etc., agreed to the gross fiction that they can ever be "British" and now find yourselves the victims of their bottomless resentment. You will increasingly find yourselves as well, strangers in your own house.

The combination of arrogance, groundless guilt and stupidity that has created this catastrophe-in-the-making has made my head ache with rage and tears more than once.

Cus said...

And the East European slaves exported by the Turks ruling that part of the world for at least 150 years!

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

In Europe. white enslavemnt bore with it a hereditary taint, as when The Vikings considered Scandanavians Thralls whose slavery was "justified" owing to that taint.

In England the daughter of a villien could not be married without purchasing her way out of villeinage and In Medieval England she was a slave unless she let her Lord have sex with her - ransom of blood for merchet .

A major reason why blacks in America continue to bitch about racism?

Ya got me. There is no- none - systemic racism and those who claim it exists can not point to one- not one- law that treats blacks worse than whites.

There is institutional racism practiced against whites - All "affirmative action" governmental programs and "Quotas" are official anti white male programs but one is evil is he notices the pattern and says anything about it and so that gigantic truth is ignored because "racism."

Now one could continue to live in the past and endlessly invoke racism this, racism that and slavery the other thing but the sad truth is that, as the black professor Walter Williams teaches, Blacks in America have had it much better than their blacks counterparts in Africa.

The average white person in America, during his life time, will be taxed to pay for programs that are directly solely at blacks and it will cost him over $300 K as an individual. Taking $350K from a productive white man and transferring that to one black man is justified how?

This sort of robbery can only be maintained by continued reference to racism and slavery and as the Woke liberals continue to champion identetarian politics, they wil soon find that those they are awakening are white men.

One have thought one civil war was enough but over 750,000 men dying to settle whether or not blacks should be free are just not lives spent and so now the govt will take you money to give to a black man.

Sound fair to you?

Grant Milburn said...

I read through the first two volumes of Richard Burton's translation of the 1001 Nights until I got bogged down in a lengthy Muslim sermon. (The work is not nearly as racy as you might think.) But speaking of race, I noticed from the book that the Muslims were not bigoted: they enslaved Black and White equally. I know the Alf Laylah wa Laylah is fiction not history, but I suspect this part of it is accurate. From the Middle East, the Islamic world stretched out its right hand North-West into Europe to capture Whites, and its left hand South-West into Africa to capture Blacks. This meant that any Sultan's palace worth its magic carpets and tame tigers had a full complement of White and Black slaves.There is a reason while many Catholic priests were employed full-time ransoming slaves (such as Cervantes) from their Muslim captors.

Galley slaves: in fairness, didn't Europeans have galleys too? According to Wikipedia, John Knox did a stretch in a French galley (serve him right- oh come now, that's not ecumenical…)

Morning Glory said...

Oh! What a perfect world it would be if only....... Let’s hold on tightly to all injustice. Let’s burn, rant, destroy, scream, curse and demand. It will change nothing except to create more ulcers to pick on. The infection created will last for generations to come. Let’s embrace our indignation regardless of our various attributes while we build our dystopian dream! To simply stop will never do.....keep it going never letting go? Cancel it all! Destroy everything. Enslave the next generations with ignorance

Dale Crakes said...

I'll not dispute the veracity of your past examples but do they somehow justify the remnants of jim crow practices in the US or any place? You get an F if your trying to apply this to moral theology. Screwtape's minions remain busy.

commenter said...

Sorry if ... not "Sorry I do ..."

Terry said...

And we should not forget the slavery endured by Irish girls and women who were incarcerated, sometimes for life, in the 'Magdalene Laundries' run by Catholic nuns. It is quite correct to refer to these unfortunate people as slaves. They were forced to work unpaid, they were given no freedom to leave the premises and punished brutally for (alleged) misdemeanours. Of course such institutions did not just exist in Ireland, and were not just run by the Catholic Church, but this abusive system did last longer in Ireland than anywhere else, I believe. The last one was closed only in 1996. The Magdalene Laundries are just one example of the suffering caused to so many people by the collusive relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish state, stemming from De Valera's 1937 constitution and his need to keep the Church 'on board'. Ireland is such a better place, so much more humane now since the Church lost its behavioural stranglehold on the country, following the various sexual scandals that have emerged in recent years.

Terry Loane

Victor said...

@Dale I don't think you are doing justice to our esteemed host. Rather than excusing Jim Crow laws and practices, he is pointing out the self-righteousness of some who are shouting on the marketplaces these days.
"Whataboutism", in my eyes, is just a cheap excuse for not wanting to engage in an argument.

Colin Spinks said...

Is not a great deal of Christ's teaching "whataboutism?" eg. "This woman was caught in the act of adultery. She should be stoned". "But *what about* your sins?" I agree with Victor that the charge of "whataboutism" is an attempt to discredit the perfectly valid "Ad hominem" technique, which, Fr Hunwicke reminds us, properly defined, means "to press a man with the consequences of his own opinions"