Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

South Africa, 1948-1991

Far more blacks died to state (or any other) violence during free democratic South Africa than during apartheid South Africa. It is simply dishonest to categorise apartheid South Africa with Nazi Germany.




It's not about who died it is about why people died.

Your argument is roughly analogous to people saying that Hitler had the trains running on time.

Sure under apartheid there was less overt violence and you could easily argue that South Africa was safer and altogether a better place to live back then than it is today. But that would be entirely missing the point of why Apartheid is wrong.


I wonder at what point would you say "Yup, that's been a failed experiment"?

Do your ideals have a metric by which they may be considered?

Do you believe the 'lesser of the two evils' to be a false dichotomy for this case?


You mean as in when the British were running India it was a better country?

Or when the Dutch traded the occasional slave but Surinam was an orderly place that it was ok?

I strongly believe that there are things that humanity should not engage in, slavery, human trafficking and Nazism are on that list.

There is no 'lesser of two evils' when those are involved.


It's not as if I believe in slavery or Fascism myself, however everything should be examined contextually.

The historical alternative to slavery was mass murder. Dan Carlin will tell you that.

> There is no 'lesser of two evils' when those are involved.

There kind of is. It takes no imagination on my part to come up with dozens of historical examples of Bad, Badder and Worse.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: