@schratze reconsider

@schratze sources: https://www.historyonthenet.com/aztec-culture-how-many-were-killed-as-human-sacrifices and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture

@schratze now imagine what they would have done with tech levels of 1930s germany

Horrifying

@niplav hopefully they would have kicked white people out of the Americas forever

@schratze
Maybe!

I should clarify that I'm not saying that the conquistadors did a good thing by conquering the Americas, it was probably even worse

@niplav it definitely was worse. They killed millions upon millions of Nahua alone, and many other native peoples as well. And the rest has been tortured, raped, enslaved, impoverished and forced into serfdom up until this very day

@schratze
Poke me if you want me to reply to this and I haven't replied until tomorrow

@niplav eh, I feel this is a discussion with lots of potential loss and little potential gain, so,

@schratze
I would mostly zero in on "if you believed the empirical assertions stated about the numbers about Aztec sacrifice, what would your ethical evaluation be", some questions about universality of morality (what do we want to accept in other cultures before condemning) and me wondering what kinds of people were sacrificed under the aztecs (AFAIK mostly pows, but I could look it up), and then asking questions about whether that matters

@schratze I think I share your ambivalence 🤔

@niplav but in all seriousness now, you absolutely cannot compare the two. Reports of human sacrifice and other acts of violence have been greatly exaggerated by the Spanish conquistadors due to sensationalism and to justify the genocide they committed. Those narratives have never been corrected in mainstream white media. There is also evidence that warfare was heavily ritualized and more of a life and death game than a war for conquest. The warriors knew what they were getting themselves into. It may also have arisen out of a material need for population control. I'm not saying sacrifice didn't happen, but I'm certain that their methodology and scale have been maliciously exaggerated.