I have just returned from a holiday in Switzerland, where I often go to do deplorable things. While visiting a country, I try to keep an eye on which news stories are trending there. The almighty algorithm has observed my interest in things Swiss and even after my return keeps sending stories from the “swissinfo.ch” website my way. I am sure you can guess what it was about the following story that struck me as odd:
Swiss colonial exploitation highlighted by National Museum
Switzerland’s colonial history is the focus of an exhibition at the National Museum in Zurich. Based on new research, it looks at the country’s role in colonialism and slavery, and considers its legacy today.
If it were not for the way that every museum in the Western world has scrubbed out and re-written the labels on its displays to be “anti-colonialist”, I might consider this exhibition to be a welcome corrective. The Swiss are an admirable people, but they do have a slight tendency to think that their neutrality and their benign absence from the indexes of history books are entirely the results of virtue rather than geography. As the exhibition points out, many Swiss were happy to profit from slavery. Then I read further:
It [the exhibition] tells the story of businessmen who took part in the transatlantic slave trade or made their fortunes trading in colonial commodities and exploiting enslaved populations. In particular, the exhibition presents the whips and handcuffs used on slaves on coffee and cocoa plantations in Ghana, which enabled Swiss businessmen to make their fortunes.
It also tells the story of people who traveled the globe as missionaries or left Switzerland to found settlements and exploit territories considered uninhabited.
Why are traders in colonial commodities, missionaries and migrants lumped in with slavers, as if trading with other peoples, trying to persuade them to believe in the same things you do, or moving to a place you thought was uninhabited were evils in themselves?
It looks to me as if this exhibition is less about telling the stories of the forgotten victims of Swiss oppressors than about classifying the Swiss as an oppressor people, or, to be more exact, about making sure the Swiss know that little things like never having had any colonies are not enough to acquit them of being members of a colonialist race.
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Related post: “N star star star star, not N star star star star star”.
Or perhaps some grifter is struggling hard to make a career out of thin opportunities?
DiscoveredJoys – “a man is seldom so innocently engaged as when he is after money” Dr Johnson.
Sure some grifter may be making money from this – but that it is NOT what is driving it. The Herbert Marcuse style Marxist agenda of the “evil” West” and how it must be destroyed, is very much the driving force in Switzerland as it is in most other Western countries.
This form of Marxism (which substitutes racial and sexual groups, for the “Working Class” – but carries on with the exploitation and oppression narrative and has the same objective of the destruction of “capitalist” society) carries on because no one, with power, really pushes back against it.
If President Trump does not win in November, America is gone – just as Britain is already going (with people sent to prison for wrong-think and so on). The First Amendment will be “interpreted” out of existence by Harris appointed members of the Supreme Court – any dissent will be “Hate Speech” and will be punished.
As for Switzerland – it already has government officials forcibly taking children away from parents so that the children may be subjected to the “Trans” cult.
There are no limits, none, on what the Cultural Marxists (and anyone who says that term is “antisemitic” is an idiot) will do.
The tactics of the Marxists may have changed – but their objective, the destruction of “capitalist” society, remains the same.
They will not rest till Western civilisation is exterminated – and, tragically, just about every Western institution, public and private (including the vast corporations) has been perverted by their ideas.
The Swiss made watches and clocks. Slavers used watches and clocks, therefore the Swiss are complicit in slavery.
The waters of the Rhine flow from Switzerland and irrigated Nazi farmland, the Swiss supported Nazi mass murder!!!111!!””2
I think that the problem, as usual, is the Jews.
Ever since WW2 we have been able to criticise the Swiss for not letting enough Jews claim asylum. Now it’s far from clear that the world would have been a better place if they had let more Jews in. Think how much trouble all those escaping Jews have caused since then.
So we need to pivot, and find something else to criticise the Swiss for. Slavery will do fine.
So, western civ conquers the world, feeds humanity, reaches the stars, and then falls to . . . feelings of guilt.
The inability, that most of the politically active groups have, to see beyond the perfect to the good, hinders, maybe fatally, the projection of our civilization into the future. This civilization, which has enabled human flourishing, far beyond any other civilisation in known history, would not have happened without British colonialism. The derision and disbelief, which this concept will engender in the aforementioned groups, must be overcome, if a return, to the normal short and brutish life for most of humanity, is to be avoided. Only when it is fully understood how the human species arrived at its current state, is there any hope of preventing a regression to our norm.
“Why are traders in colonial commodities….” Because they were white and presumably well off. Those are the only determinants of guilt for the evil progtard mindset.
Aristotle described the ideal polity as free family farmers and craftsmen coming together to govern themselves with a common culture.
That sounds very much like Appenzell Innerrhoden now (it still exists there – even now) and other traditional Swiss Cantons in the past – traditional gathering, with swords and rifles, to vote (and all that).
This is what the left (for want of a better word) hate – hate more than anything else in the world.
Their (the left) system of government is endless rules and regulations – which the people did not make, and can not get rid of.
And their (the left) system of economy is not independent family farmers and craftsmen – it is everyone dependent on the state and partner corporations.
I wonder how many museums in West Africa have exhibits lamenting the terrible crimes of the Africans who participated so readily in capturing slaves and shipping them off to the colonies. Or how many Arab museums have a self flagellating displays of the Arabs’ horrible participation in the slave trade going back a thousand years before a single slave left for the Caribbean?