HERE:
Europe at that time was no more or less savage than the savages they encountered they just wore knee britches & silks rather than feathers & animal skins.This is pure postmodern rubbish.
Yes the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, as opposed to the various European empires that just warred on endlessly over land over succession over religion, burning heretics and witches.
Remember later Isabel & Ferdinand would force the Jews and Moors of Spain to convert, leave or die.
This is not propaganda this is history.
Here are the facts:
INQUISITION:
Henningsen-Contreras statistics for the period 1540-1700IN SUMMARY: OVER 160 YEARS, THE AWFUL HORRIBLE HORRIFYING SPANISH INQUISITION KILLED... ABOUT 1110 PEOPLE.
Tribunal
Number of preserved relaciones de causas from the period 1540-1700[79]
Number of trials in causa fidei reported in the preserved relaciones de causas[80]
Estimated number of all cases in the period 1540-1700[81]
Executions in persona reported in the preserved relaciones de causas[82]
The actual number of executions in persona in the period 1540-1700[83]
Total
1531
44674
~87000
826
At least 1080
THAT'S ABOUT... HMMMM 7/YEAR.
THE AZTECS WOULD RIP THE HEARTS OUT OF 50,000 PEOPLE IN ONE DAY. ON AVERAGE, MAYBE 250,000 A YEAR.
SO DON'T TELL ME THAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION OR EUROPEAN COLONIAL POWERS WERE JUST AS BAD AS THE AZTECS.Estimates of the scope of the sacrifices
For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, though there were probably far fewer sacrifices. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.[32] The higher estimate would average 14 sacrifices per minute during the four-day consecration. As a comparison, the Auschwitz concentration camp, working 24 hours a day with modern technology, approached but did not equal this pace: it executed about 19,200 a day at its peak. (Note: the limiting factor for the Nazis was not killing people, but efficient disposal (cremation) of the bodies.[33] Four tables were arranged at the top so that the victims could be jettisoned down the sides of the temple.[34] Nonetheless, according to Codex Telleriano-Remensis, old Aztecs who talked with the missionaries told about a much lower figure for the reconsecration of the temple, approximately 4,000 victims in total.
Michael Harner, in his 1977 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, estimated that one in five children of the Mexica subjects was killed annually. Victor Davis Hanson argues that a claim by Don Carlos Zumárraga of 20,000 per annum is "more plausible."[35]
THAT'S POMO RUBBISH.
IT'S PROPAGANDA, NOT HISTORY. HEH.
AND ANOTHER THING:
- THE FOLKS WHO MAKE THIS ANTI-WEST/CULTURAL RELATIVIST ARGUMENT ALWAYS BLAME US, THE WEST, AMERICA, ANDJUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.
- IT THE BLAME AMERICA FIRST CROWD. THE POSTMODERN LEFT.
- THIS IS THE SAME CROWD WHO STATES THAT IRAQIS WERE BETTER OFF UNDER SADDAM.
SADDAM KILLED ON AVERAGE 80,000 IRAQIS A YEAR. FOR A FEW DECADES.
(LINKS HERE AND HERE.)
According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".[7] Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war vary from 500,000[8] to 1.5 million.[9] Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.[10]WELL, ER UM... FROM 1865 TO 1965, THE KKK LYNCHED AND MURDERED 7900 BLACKS - A HORRIBLE AMOUNT, BUT NOT 1% OF WHAT SADDAM DID IN ONE TENTH THE TIME.
I AM NOT DEFENDING EITHER THE HORRIBLE INQUISITION OR THE EVIL KKK.
I AM ATTACKING THOSE WHO WOULD DEFEND AZTECS BY EQUATING THEM WITH THE INQUISITION, WHO ATTACK THE EUROPEAN COLONIAL POWERS AS BEING WORSE THAN THE INDIGENOUS EMPIRES, AND THOSE WHO WOULD RIGHTFULLY ATTACK THE KKK, BUT THEN EXCUSE SADDAM.
WHO DOES THIS ALL THE TIME?
THE POSTMODERN LEFT.
THEY ARE UNPRINCIPLED AND/OR MISINFORMED.
Or as Reagan said; it's not that they don't know anything; it's that everything they know is wrong.
11 comments:
Yes I agree it is stupid to compare the Aztecs to the Inquisition, if we count organised death and sacrifices.
The real topic is context and there is no context or comparison. The culture and religion of sacrifice was something of that epoc and history and it is difficult to compare to - well almost anything.
But, having said that, what context and what is the message? Are we countring deaths? The Inquisition was not a massacre excercise but a control and domination one. It, along with the power of the Catholic theocrats over Kingdoms and people's minds is more the issue. It tolerated nothing that apposed anything that it did not like. It not only forced the hands of monarchs but it turned South America from a colonialization excercise to a theocratic domination excercise and if there were massacres, it was there and what is the price/cost of destroying another's cultures?
The cost of the Inquisition cannot be counted in how many died, and we must also consider that the records themselves were controlled by that very same power. How many died but on the books as basic criminals or enemies of the state, but inspired or ordered by theocrats or others with a theocrat standing behind them? The other cost of the Inquisition was that after the fall of Al Andalous was ensuring that for the next three centuries that Jews were more safer in the hands of Muslims States and not Christian ones. In most cases, Jews were in fact safer under Al Andalous and the invasion of Catholic Castillians into southern Iberia confirmed that. Andalusis, both Muslim and Jewish simply left together and very united, moving that civilization into the Medinas of Fez, Rabat, Meknes and Marrakech.
History, when put into full context tells us a great many things and any historian will tell you that if yous want to say one thing, you must say it all to be considered of value and not selective. It is difficult, in a polarized 21st century present to do so. Such arguments, for example of comparing the Inquisition with such things as the death-culture-religion of the Aztecs does not work, they are like cheese and chalk. Just as much it is impossible to compare the Inquisition to the Holocaust because of its religios one-sided-ness makes it thus.
The only thing we have learnt was that be it whatever group, faith or tribe we are, the very ugly base human nature is still based on power and control - be it thousands of years ago or now.
Donny,
Are you saying there was not an issue of power involved in the Aztec sacrifices? The people didn't fear their leaders?
C'mon. Get real.
True, Western Civilization is more organized and widespread, so our "control and domination" is more widespread, but the Aztecs were far more prolific in both murder and "control and domination" across a much smaller population. In other words, they controlled and dominated and murdered a higher percentage of the people available to them.
No I am not saying that, there is only so much one can write in these threads, it certainly had everything to do with power and control - my last line said it clear enough I thought.
If anything, I would argue that the Aztects did what they did simply because they could get away with it (ie enough power to do so) just like the Pol Pot regime could, though again on very different circumstances. For me, it is both as simple as that and as complicated as it can get.
The idea that the Jews were safer in the Muslim world, in Muslim Spain in particular, than in Christendom is a pernicious falsehood.
The massacres along the Rhineland as the mobs accompanying the First Crusade in 1096 made their way towards Jerusalem, are usually highlighted as an example of the pitiable tortures and sufferings endured by the Western European Jews, and are in fact enshrined in Ashkenazic Jewish literature in a series of lamentations.
The death toll of Sephardic Jews in a single anti-Jewish massacre in the city of Granada in 1066 however exceeded the total Jewish death toll from the Rhineland massacres.
The idea that Muslim Spain was a paradise for anybody derives from ignorance and deliberate obfuscation of the historical record.
Maimonides fled Muslims in Spain, not Christians.
And another thing.
There is no sound reason to impeach the reliability of the records of the Inquisition. The Inquisitors didn't think they had anything to hide, they did not think that their work was anything but honorable, and there was no reason for them to conceal their actions under any other guise.
Even the National Socialists in Germany kept accurate records of those they murdered. Even though they knew that what they were doing would be regarded as criminal by the rest of the world.
And if there is a lack of similar records from Stalin's Russia, it is because the powers that control that country still wish to conceal their deeds from the wider world, and because of a relative sloppiness in general bureaucratic efficiencies.
Perhaps the vision of what happened to Jews over the centuries "as a total" has been skewered by both media and more recent politics. Chosing singular events never makes a whole nor does it justify much at all except historically speaking - that singular event itself. Most certainly the First Crusade of Pope Urban II resulted in the first year the seeking and slaughter of Jews and most certainly the massacres of Granada happened, but then so did the holocaust of this last century, and massacres before and during those events.
As a whole, from the period of Al Andalous and up to the century before the holocaust, the lives of Jews were never very good at all and considering that they were constantly "picked on" the basis of my and most historian's views is that in comparison to being in under Muslim dominance or Christian dominance, they were less "picked-on" amonst the Muslims than the others. It would be very said to pick and chose only certain events or to judge that history based on post 18th century politics.
The exodus of Andalusis to what is now Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and to a degree Turkey was a direct result of the Catholic purge of "infedels" - which was a Christian term translated from Latin meaning those showing now fidelity to the Catholic Kingdom and they used that term since those Crusades. Both Muslims, Jews, Samaratans and others were simply told to leave, convert or die. That exodus resulted in the eight-fold increase of Jews to the Maghreb and the Mellahs (Jewish quarters) in many Mahgrebi Medinas swelled to a point of bursting, but most interesting and obviously forgetten under modern propoganda, were welcomed and become an integral part of these countries, particularly Morocco. The clearly documented history of the Jews, mostly Sephardic, is well known and though again, certainly treated differently, is an equally proud part of that Kingdom's history. Even in more modern and overly politicized history that is often and deliberatly forgotten elsewhere, the Jews of Morocco were much better off than many places.
King Mohammed V of Morocco is inscribed into the wall of heroes in Tel Aviv because he ordered that all Jews be given fake identity cards to save them from deportation. Though most Jews chose to migrate to the new Jewish State, their numbers were less in the Maghreb by percentage than others and most kept strong contact back to that region. Recently, Israelis of Moroccan decent have started a return migration - simply because of their heritage and to be honest it is safer and less political over there than back in Israel. There are three large Jewish pilgrimages and festivals in Morocco and Jewish poets and musicians both historically and even present-day are well respected and known by all, be they the Jews themselves, Berbers and the majority Arab Muslims population.
Though that is but examples, it still comes down to historical facts. The acceptance, involvement, commerce and current existance of well-to-do Jewish communities in Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey are evidence that flies in the face of modern-day-inspired propoganda.
continued....
.... continued...
There is also historical propoganda. The expansion of the Spanish Kingdom into southern Iberia included a well orchestrated and long-term attempt to change history, both managed and staged by both the new rulers of that region the Spanish Monarchy and by the Vatican. It attempted to barbarize Muslim history - 800 years of it as well as to simply wipe many events al together. It was not until 1978 that the Spanish Government admitted those past efforts and many school text books started to accurately reflect the true histories and events that historians new all the time. Now, modern day Spain proudly enjoys its full history and heritage, admitting to the good, the bad and the ugly as simply what it is - history. That for the majority of its 800 years, the Muslim ruled south was the intellectual and civilized heart of Europe as well as much of the Muslim world in total. That during this time, though of course targetted often because of it being neither Christian nor Muslim, the Jews of Al Andalous were not only better of than in most of Europe - but included teachers, philosophers and even twice Grand Viziers (Prime Ministers).
I watched an interesting program on France 2 about a month ago, talking about the Jews of Istanbul, that when Constantinople was finally conquered by Sultan Mehmet, he ordered all the Churches except for two to be destroyed and then told his army that anyone who damages those two and any Jewish Temple - will suffer the worst of punishments. Then his first administrative order was to seek out the Jewish merchants and educators of the city to help him "take stock of the city's situation" (an audit) and then was dismayed that unlike most great cities in the Muslim world, most Jews were forbidden from education and "dealing with finances other then their own personal wealth". That the Jewish temples were all in a deplorable state that he found shocking and he financed their renovation and invited Jews from as far as Baghdad, Cairo and Shiraz in Persia to re-populate and improve the city.
History has no bias nor does it take sides - it just tells what happened. Try again.
DONNY - YOU SEEM LIKE A REALL BRIGHT PERSON.
I'D RECOMMEND YOU STOP READING THE STANDARD POMO LEFT CREAP AND READ REAL HISTORY.
START WITH
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-History-Literary-Theorists-Murdering/dp/1893554120/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272400540&sr=1-2
DONNY,
DO U THINK THAT HITLER N MUSSOLINI WERE RIGHT-WINGERS?
I suggest not writing in ALL-CAPS, it is not internet standard and is considered bad-blogging.
As for real history, I have and if anything, what was spouted above is not only rubbish rumour mongering and has a political agenda but is not recognized by historians as anything but trash. I support academic standards and not right-wing authors like Keith Windschuttle whom was identified by Quadrant and others as politically motivated (and likes selling books). His obvious links to the ultra-conservative movement that is still trying to deny history - like the White Australia Policy is well known. He is an author, not a historian and that is the point.
Second point, though ultra-right try as hard as they like to distance themselves, Facsism is text book Right-Wing, as is it part of any academic program in any University.
I am from the centre-right, I have been involved in politics in my country and have even had two years in local Council. I support basic conservatism but I abhore extremism, the extremism of the right equates eventually to fascism.
Do none of your history books contain real facts?
Spanish Inquistion death toll= 32,000 directly 125,000 more died in prison awaiting trial ... look it up!
Let's move this over to the USA ... 6000 native women and children stripped of their clothing in the dead of the winter ... all died horrible gruesome deaths ... look it up!
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