[HN Gopher] Turn On, Tune In, Fight Back
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Turn On, Tune In, Fight Back
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 14 points
Date : 2021-10-02 03:29 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| verytrivial wrote:
| Curiously absent in this story is the role radio played in the
| Rwanda massacre.
| kragen wrote:
| How is the Rwandan genocide relevant?
|
| Rwanda is 1000 km away from the area this book is about,
| populated by unrelated ethnicities, speaking unrelated
| languages, and was colonized by different European powers, and
| (except for the Apartheid struggle) the independence struggles
| the book is about culminated in 01975, 19 years before the
| Rwandan genocide.
|
| This is like complaining that the role of cannon in Guatemalan
| independence from the Federal Republic of Central America is
| "curiously absent" from a book about the role of cannon in the
| US Civil War, which similarly happened 1000 km away and 19
| years later. There's nothing curious about it!
|
| (Yes, Virginia is a lot more than 1000 km away from Guatemala.
| And Cape Town is even further from Rwanda. 1000 km is roughly
| the _shortest_ distance between the regions in question, to be
| maximally charitable to your thesis.)
|
| I think the main thing these different events have in common is
| that you know almost nothing about them.
| sparky_z wrote:
| I think because the tone of the article and headline portrays
| radio technology as some sort of moral force for good, when
| really it's just a tool that increases human capability and
| can be used for good or evil (or neutral!) ends.
|
| I think the relevant comparison would be an article about how
| the cannon was "a force for ending slavery and liberating
| oppressed groups" and then only talked about how the Union
| Army in the Civil War used cannons, while ignoring any other
| ways they've been used over the years.
| kragen wrote:
| Sure, but anyone who's ever listened to talk radio knows
| that radio can be used for evil ends. Why _Rwanda_? What
| about Hitler 's propaganda broadcasts in World War II? Or
| Stalin? Or walkie-talkies used to coordinate war-crime
| operations by whichever armies you're willing to condemn
| the war crimes of?
|
| I think the more likely explanation is that the commenter
| didn't know the difference between Rwanda and Southern
| Africa. I mean, I guess Zimbabwe is also mostly Bantu-
| speaking? But Guatemala and Virginia are both mostly
| Christian and also both largely speak Indo-European
| languages.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| You seem to make assumptions that aren't charitable and
| come off as overly defense.
|
| It doesn't matter "why", His point still stands.
| kragen wrote:
| What do you think I'm defending? Rwanda? Radio?
| Guatemala? Hitler?
|
| I'm not defending any of those. I'm not even defending
| the book, which I haven't read. I'm attacking baseless
| whataboutism that seems, on the face of it, and possibly
| incorrectly, to express an "all look same" attitude about
| Africa, treating its enormous diversity of peoples with
| histories going back millions of years as if they were a
| single village. (Though, as I said, there's a lot of
| Bantu languages spoken in Southern Africa; it's not
| _totally_ unconnected from Rwanda. But then both
| Guatemala and a substantial part of Confederacy territory
| used to be part of Mexico.)
|
| I'd welcome _either_ alternative explanations _or_ a mea
| culpa. (I 'm guessing verytrivial has gone to bed,
| though; I think they posted that in the wee hours of the
| morning.)
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(page generated 2021-10-02 23:01 UTC)