"Reducing race-based hereditary slavery (unique in world history) to a just another form of forced labour is a neo-Nazi narrative, other forms have been hereditary and durante vita, it's the racialised element (& its legal architecture) that has no parallel."-- Liam Hogan
“This is what underpins the far-right's endless whataboutery and tendency to equate slavery in different contexts across different millenia. The goal is to empty the history of the transatlantic slave trade of its unique racial element and thus remove its legacy as a determinant." -- Liam Hogan
Reviewing the fallout from an influential but fatally flawed work of popular history about “white slaves”
"To put it mildly these are simplistic, decontextualised and historically problematic assertions. Despite the author’s haphazard disclaimers to the contrary, their argument unavoidably draws a false equivalence between colonial slavery and colonial servitude. The book’s sensationalist and oversimplified approach to this complex topic means that this attempt at a relative comparison becomes an absolute equivalence in a general discussion. Since its publication ten years ago White Cargo has helped popularise the reductive fallacy that “slavery was slavery” in the history of British America. It has thus aided the growth of a deep misunderstanding and confusion about this history in wider society and has been seized upon at the fringes by White Nationalists and Neo-Confederates as “evidence” in their attempts to legitimate their racist worldview."
Read more: https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/reviewing-the-fallout-from-an-influential-but-fatally-flawed-work-of-popular-history-about-white-be6cfc37069b
