cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3460175
Damn, that sucks. The French should have taken up Louverture on his offer instead of backstabbing him, then.
As it turns out, the Wikipedia page is shockingly wrong/misleading. The new Haitian government specifically carried out a vengeful campaign against the French whites including the poor “Petit-Blancs” who didn’t own slaves but largely supported slavery and white supremacy throughout the colony’s history, at some points even more fanatically than their rich counterparts (there was genuine threat of a mass revolt from them when the colonial government wanted to grant more rights to free mixed-race Haitians). Polish soldiers who assisted the revolution and German farmers on the island were spared, as well as non-French nationals (a common if unverified story is a white Frenchman who survived by pretending to be American).
This isn’t to say genocide under any circumstance is “okay” but I’m don’t think anyone is under any position to lecture people who were put under the sheer inhumanity of Caribbean sugar cane plantation system in particular or Transatlantic slavery in general. To say nothing of the depraved lengths the French, slave-owning or not, went to to preserve slavery in the revolutionary war (such as, as some in the comments point out, reprisal massacres, mass rapes, feeding prisoners to dogs, etc). It’s also inaccurate to say this was done only out of revenge when the fear of white French petitionining to have France reinvade was very real (as had happened). Even then, Dessalines’ mandate was far from uncontroversial or even universally-enforced. As with other things, this falls solely on France which has not even pretended to pay back the damage it has done to Haiti before, during and after the revolution.
Also, though rightoids and fashies like this guy are expected, it’s funny to see more liberal whites pearl-clutch over the 1804 massacres but somehow handwave the rest of the period as “simply another time”. You’re sure to find them under any post about the Haitian revolution bringing it up but if you bring up the fact that the American Founding Fathers were slave-owning, genocidal hypocrites on any post commemorating the 4th of July, you’re suddenly a party-pooper who doesn’t understand history.
Wikipedia puts Dessalines and Stalin in the “genocide perpetrators” category but not Washington, and Andrew Jackson is only there if you look through four levels of subcategories.
Look at the differences between how they treat Stalin and Christopher Columbus in terms of Genocide.
Stalin: “Stalin was a accused of genocide, but it’s hard to pin a number in him because he didn’t kill them directly.”
Columbus: “Yeah, he’s been accused of genocide, but there are also many historians who disagree with this assessment.”
Classic natopedia.