alt Hacker News> From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was
I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you. Just because one group was economically and societally OK with it, doesn’t make it morally OK.
> but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
Again, I doubt the slaves would agree with you.
> Consider yourself lucky.
That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean?
> First of all, that isn't true.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
Seems pretty clear to me.
> You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché.
Of course I’m not, I barely use the word. Pay attention to the person you’re replying to. What you’re doing is putting me in a box of other people you’ve seen online and making a bunch of wrong assumptions. You’re not engaging with the arguments, you’re fighting against a straw man in your imagination.
Replies
> I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you.
I sincerely doubt a vegan would agree that eating meat is OK, but as a society, we agree that eating meat is OK. It might not be OK tomorrow, it might not be OK by some moral standard, but that's besides my point.
> That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean?
It means fighting for abolition then was a much tougher fight than the fight you have today.
> Of course I’m not, I barely use the word.
I may have misinterpreted your position to the effect of "look in the textbook, Trump is a fascist by definition". Indeed, I have seen "other people online" argue to that effect, and they weren't made of straw. If that's not the case, I apologize, but the point stands even if you're not the kind of person it should be aimed at.
> I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you. Just because one group was economically and societally OK with it, doesn’t make it morally OK.
That is wrong, slaves were happy to be alive instead of killed in most societies. It wasn't "slavery or freedom" it was "slavery or death" in most cases. America is an exception there, but in most areas with slavery it was done to criminals that otherwise would have gotten the death penalty.
Christianity forbade enslaving Christians, so we just killed our criminals for the past thousand years, but before Christianity we practiced slavery as punishment of crime everywhere as people thought that was better than killing them.