sigh... anyone want to help me combat a crazy reich winger about native

[NoodleBoy]

american history?

here's the thread: http://p208.ezboard.com/ftalkinghistoryfrm1.showMessage?topicID=474.topic

he posts as temperflash, and nearly everything he posts has some underlying right-wing connection. problem is, most people who post on that forum are in the UK, so they don't realize the underlying bias right away.

[Lefty48197]

1. The native American's had weak immune systems?

Where the heck did he get that? And why did they survive just fine for 10,000 years, if they had weak immune systems? I think it would have been better for him to say that they did not have immunities to the diseases brought by the Europeans, but to suggest that their immune systems were deficient would be wrong.

[NoodleBoy]

2. in other places, he pretty much says native american oppression is a

liberal lie, along with blaming 'liberals' for other things and saying how 'liberals' only like indians who agree with them.

[ProgressiveConn]

10. Bet hes a holocaust denier too. nt

[jmm]

3. And what did the Europeans have to thank for their immunities?

Part of the reason was that so many of them lived in close quarters with bad sanitation and they had more domesticated animals which they lived closer too. So yeah, that's gonna lead to better immunities against the diseases that killed so many Native Americans but I wouln't consider those immunities anything for that guy to brag about.

[Zuni]

6. that is exactly right

many of our diseases are carried by livestock which did not exist in the Americas---since Europeans had handled livestock for ages, they had developed tolerances to illnesses spread by sheep, cattle, pigs.

Theynessecarily also developed tolerance to the myraid of bacteria that filled their homes, streets and water supplies in their cities

[Yupster]

8. The Europeans were devastated too

but it happened hundreds of years earlier when traders and invaders from the east brought with them diseases the Europeans had no or little immunity to.

By the time of the Pilgrims, the Europeans had suffered many waves of plague from the east. By then they had built up at least some immunities to many of them.

Howeverm, they still didn't have immunity from diseases in Africa, and it was very dangerous for a European to go trudging around Africa for long without catching a "tropical" disease.

The Native American problem was they were isolated and therefore not exposed to the diseases that were more common in Europe and Asia. Naturally without the built up immunity, they were hit very hard.

[Zuni]

5. Their immune systems couldn't handle diseases not native to the Americas

such as smallpox, measles etc. Smallpox turned out to be the greatest plague in world history, killing as many as 92% of the North American natives

[HawkerHurricane]

9. see Guns, Germs and Steel

Their immune systems hadn't developed the defenses that Europeans did in the vast plagues that hammered Europe in the middle ages.

Remember the Black Death, that whiped out 1/3 of Europe? Well, 200 odd years later, it did the same thing to North America... only in N. America, it was immediately followed up by a invasion.

[RoyGBiv]

4. Don't Bother

He said _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_ sounds "familiar" and that he may have read it at one time, but it left no impression.

In other words, he's never read it.

Anyone who *has* read it cannot help but be left with an impression, good, bad, or otherwise.

It is not possible to educate the willfully ignorant.

But, if you must, ask him to give his thoughts on works by Angie Debo and Ward Churchill, two historians of Native American history separated by generations, but approaching the subject from the same basic angle.

You then might ask him for his thoughts on the characterizations of Native Americans in works by Annie Abel, a British historian who is notable for her studies of Native Americans in the American Civil War. (Her books were first printed in the 1910's and 20's.) FWIW, she is quite the racist and refers to Natives as "red savages," so it might be fun to bait him with this one.

The goal is not to argue any point in particular, but to have him expose his ignorance. If he doesn't know who these people are, or at least cannot speak intelligently about their work, you can underline the fact that these are noted scholars. For him to declare it all rubbish without knowing anything about them is idiotic.

[mandyky]

7. If he can't read have him watch 500 Nations

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee took me a good month to read, because I felt physically ill at our govt's treatment, read that mistreatment, of Native people so I could only read parts of chapters at sittings. Also, I learned "some Indian tribes" were shipped off to the Carribean as slaves, before we started trading African slaves.