Rattibha

Has Liberalism meant freedom? 🧵
You might have heard the usual narrative about liberalism, namely, that it was a struggle to get civil liberties, personal autonomy and equality before the law, under a govt to which the people have given their consent, right?
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The truth is ALL OF THIS IS JUST ONE BIG LIE.
There have been 4 liberal revolutions that happened in: Holland, Britain, America, and France.
In this thread let's take a look at the social and political reality of these countries during and after they become liberal.
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1. Holland
The first ever liberal revolution happened in Holland against the Spain monarchy, and right after that, Holland started its slavery and colonization enterprise. Under the monarchy, it did not because it could not.
It was the liberals who started colonization.
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"If in one respect Holland was synonymous with liberty at that time, in another, Holland synonymous with slavery - at a particularly brutal form of it."
The first country that embarked on the liberal road was the one that had tenacious attachment to...slavery."
Coincidence?
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The liberal revolution in Holland caused the destruction of an unprecedented level, a form of savagery that no monarchy had achieved, but it was eventually surpassed in terms of its brutality and savagery by other liberal countries (England, America, France).
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An interesting fact about the whole liberal struggle against the monarchy is that when the Church fathers were condemning slavery, liberal philosophers and statesmen (Calhoun, Fletcher, Canton etc) were defending it.
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When liberals would polemically argue about "freedom", the freedom that they were referring was limited to elite white men who were slave and plantation owners, not the blacks or Native Americans or the colonized people.
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Another interesting fact: Lincoln was able to abolish slavery not thanks to the great liberal self-government but by the iron fist of the Union army and the temporary military dictatorship imposed by it.
Lincoln imposed a dictatorship to end slavery.
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Also Abraham Lincoln wasn't against slavery because it was wrong. In fact, he wanted to abolish slavery so that he can deport all Blacks back to Africa.
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Consider this: Jean Bodin, a theologian who supported the monarchy wanted to abolish slavery, but liberal philosophers like Grotius, Locke and others wanted to justify and support it.
John Locke had shares in the Royal African Company, a slave trading company. (pic 2)
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True. Locke justified the genocide and ethnic cleansing of native Americans because according to his labour theory, only those people who can cultivate land have the right to ownership.
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In fact, there were more slaves in Liberal England than in Spain. England had the most no. of slaves in Europe. By the 1850s, there were 6 million slaves in the Americas.
"Hence, there is no doubt that absolutely preeminent in this field [of slavery] was a liberal country."
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2. England.
Let's take a look at how the lives of common people were affected after the Liberal revolution in England. Remember: this is the home of the founder of liberalism, Locke and countless other prominent names in the tradition of liberalism.
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In Liberal England, poor people were deliberately kept poor and uneducated so that they don't ask for rights.
"Everyone knows that the lower must be kept poor otherwise they won't become industrious," said Arthur Young.
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Mandeville, a staunch Liberal, was disgusted by the idea that wage labourers would get educated. He compared them to beasts and cart horses.
So much for civil liberties.
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Liberal philosophers like Burke, Mandeville, Locke and others had dehumanised wage-labourers and referred to them as "work machines", "bipedal tools", "human instruments of production", instruments of labour" etc.
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According to Locke, the wage labourer was a beast-like creature. For Adam Smith wage labourers were, "stupid", and "ignorant".
What exactly are the freedoms that the common were blessed with due to liberalism?
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In Liberal England, thousands of thieves & poor people who were forced to steal food were hanged.
Mandeville, Bentham supported the death penalty fr such criminals. Mandeville said that they should be killed on the basis of suspicions and urged the judges not to be merciful.
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The civil liberates were only limited to a class of rich aristocrats and landowners. The vast majority of the populace was deprived of the "civil liberties" we hear so much about.
@ammaralijan
@Taimur_Laal
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In fact, as millions of poor were getting starved to death, the elite class comprised of the Liberal philosophers were only concerned about controlling and regulating the poor people in minute details.
Poverty was so spread that children were forced to eat opium.
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Children of poor families were separated and sent to labour camps to work tirelessly.
Liberal philosophers (Burke & Bentham) were proud of the institution of Labour camps.
This kidnapping of kids was noted by Karl Marx, what he called "herold like kidnapping".
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Locke and Bentham justified forced labour & Labour camps. Poor ppl were forced to work
>Fleeing from camps was punishable by death
>3 Yr old forced to work
>11yr old kids were sent to the gallows
>500,000 detainees in Labour camps in Liberal England
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3. America
America is another example of how a liberal revolution caused havoc and an unprecedented level of destruction against the colonized native people.
>The Founding fathers were slave owners.
> Till 1790s only whites could become citizens of the US
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>the mass deportation of Indians by President Jackson, known as 'The Indian Removal Act' recounted the similarities with the concentration camps.
> black people were tortured, lynched, and burnt alive beaten to death, and much more in public.
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In fact, the "American legacy" behind nazism is something that has been rarely talked about. A lot of the things that the Nazis did to Jews in concentration camps were already done to a greater extent by Americans
Liberal America was THE prototype for Nazism and the holocaust
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>there were prisons in the South that were strikingly similar to the Nazi camps.
>Eugenics, which was born in Liberal England, died in Germany after WW2, but in the US, it continued as far as 1952, wherein about 30 states interracial marriages were still a crime.
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Before the Jewish Holocaust, there was the American Holocaust, Australian Holocaust, and African Holocaust, coupled with countless other genocides (Irish), persecution and so on.
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The Holocaust in the 1930s was not something that emerged out of nowhere, disrupting the happy, peaceful, rational Liberal world. In fact, the Jewish holocaust was preceded by a number of the previous holocausts against other non-whites whose perpetrators were Liberal powers
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"It is banally ideological to characterise the catastrophes of the 20th century as a kind of new barbarian invasion that unexpectedly attacked and overwhelmed a happy, healthy society." (p. 429)
—Liberalism: A counter History, ch 10"
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@SyedMuzammilOFL

@BheriaMS I hope you will like this thread.
The books I am taking as references were suggested by Brother Daniel. I am reading them right now. Says thanks to him from my side. I have benefitted enormously from him and the MuslimSkeptic channel.
jazakAllah :)

—Liberalism a counter history
—Liberalism and empire
—American Holocaust
—Islam in Liberalism
+ these 4 books in pics