Fair, though I would argue that although most Amarrians would not make such public overtures as this, there is undoubtedly a deep seated belief they hold in the sub-human-ness of Mataris. This is reinforced regularly in my interactions with Amarrian nationals and expats alike.
Even my Amarrian friends can’t seem to hold their tongues at times so they might air their feelings of superiority…
A Child is a ward of the state, whichever that happens to be. Schooling or subliminal media suggestion are the implements that inculcate the narrative paradigm of the day.
As I am fortunate enough to associate with my latest generation of clone sisters and the Order that supports us I simply guide them to the times in our common history where the struggle to survive tyranny has been fruitful, if not always helpful.
And how about the rhetoric coming from the leaders and politicians of the Empire. Refusing to address the Republic as such, instead belittling them as ‘rebel provinces’… this being hesitant to wade any deeper into the ocean of despicable propaganda utilized by those despots.
It’s not far off the official, if unspoken, line though, is it, Aria? The entire ‘enslave them to Reclaim them’ is a punishment for people rejecting the Amarr god before the Amarr ever even reached Athra, and with the scriptures like…
and
I mean, that’s basically the same thing, just couched in more… politic… ways. No compassion or mercy, strike down with wrath, angels of vengeance, retribution incarnate…
That’s hate.
Then she sounds like a precocious young lass, I’m very silly indeed.
No citations. I made it up.
I would like to think that once the initial novelty of the first contact had worn off the people of the Federation began to realise that instead of the anachronistic curiosity that the Empire initially presented itself to be, it was actually the complete antithesis to the core values of the Federation and that it must be opposed wherever and whenever it could be. Even more so when the first escapees of Imperial Slavery crossed into Federal territory seeking asylum, as revelations of their institutional practices came to the forefront of public attention.
From my understanding of historical records in that time, negative public sentiment against the Empire reached epic proportions, with frequent calls made for the Federation to use its military forces to liberate the enslaved. Opening up a two-front war, as your daughter mentioned, would have put enormous strain on the Federation as despite the prowess in warfighting the FEDCAF developed over decades of warfare against the Caldari State and the enormous war machine backing it, the Imperial Navy was not a force to be trifled with lightly. It would have been a monumental mistake on their part to have done so whilst the war with the State was ongoing.
Perhaps it was the less bold approach, the more cowardly option to not commit to such an action that potentially the Federation could have prevailed in, but the Federation does not make a habit of failing to listen it’s people when such a momentous wave of popular demand captivates the public. Something had to be done for the principle that if the Federation could no longer consider itself the sole representative of humanity, it could surely become it’s premier and foremost guardian of human freedom and the fiercest defender of human dignity throughout New Eden.
That said, armaments, advisers, and funds can only drive a rebellion so far and it would be immensely disrespectful to the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of Minmatar that cast off their chains to take up arms against their oppressors alongside the rebel forces that never gave up their hope for a better tomorrow. Whilst the Federation’s intentions were noble and virtuous, it was a Minmatar victory and certainly not carried out with the single-minded approach of preventing an alliance with the Caldari State to encroach upon Federation territory.
That said, the intervention by the Federation with Operation Freedom’s Guile most likely served to preserve the Caldari State in the long-term as the Empire was sufficiently weakened through the loss at the Battle of Vak’Atioth and the broad success of the Minmatar Rebellion that it had to seek allies in the Caldari State. Whereas before, it likely would have seen the State as a prime target for the Reclaiming had it’s pride and military strength not been sapped by those two events.
Details of Operation Freedom’s Guile was initially a classified operation but most of the information surrounding the Federation’s intervention has been declassified over the years following Thirty Year Rule expiration periods, whilst most reputable GalNet records should have accounts of the prevailing public attitude at the time. Numerous scholars have also written on the subject, as well as a not insignificant amount of military fiction and non-fiction stories from that era of Federation and Republic history.
I don’t think it is, though. I mean, it’s war rhetoric (subtype: religious/flowery, in a resolute uplifted sword kind of way), sure. We’re all a little familiar with such things by now.
I … experimented with hate a few years back, letting myself experience it, be inspired and motivated by it. Elsebeth will remember if you don’t.
It was effective but … dirtying. Horribly staining, like a bottomless well of filth deployable as reactor fuel. It gave me energy, vigor, intensity, focus, but it polluted my mind, distorted my perspective. It made the other’s misery my primary concern.
Eventually I realized what was happening and turned away, but not before I stained my mind to a point that was difficult to cleanse (and might never really be cleansed). I’ve mostly stayed away from that warzone since; I don’t need those feelings stirred.
I get that same … feel, or taste … from Nauplius’s writings, the fouled energy of it. He says he hates the Matari, and I can feel it in my teeth, the depth and sincerity of his malice.
A generalized statement that boils down to “those who stand against us, we shall smite?” … no, that’s just a rallying cry.
To put it another way, one’s a corporate CEO denouncing Federal actions and rallying the State, resolute and proud.
The other’s Diana Kim.
(Not saying you have to go that far to get there, but, you know, elemental-form-of?)
Remember? I think I caused it, at least in part.
But… yeah, Aria, that rhetoric is the rhetoric of hate. You don’t condition a people to show no mercy, to exact ‘retribution incarnate’ upon people who’ve done them no wrong, upon children, without hate.
You see ‘hate’ and you think of the intensely personal form, of the burning rage and violent need to destroy those people. But that’s just one expression of hate. Implacable destruction, genocides, a willingness to see a people utterly destroyed for no reason other than ‘well, you’re those people’…
That’s hate, too. That’s systemic, anodized, generational hate. That’s a hate that hides itself behind ‘reason’ and ‘morality’ and ‘policies’… but it’s still hate.
It’s not ‘those who stand against us, we shall smite’. Those scriptures don’t require anyone to ‘stand against’ the Amarr. A simple ‘thanks, but no thanks’ is enough. And it doesn’t have to be you. It could’ve been your great-great-grandfather.
Hell, it could’ve been some random guy you’ve never met whose family is a dozen generations separate from you, but just happens to be on the same planet you’re on after he killed the wrong Ardishapur.
The willingness to obliterate entire worlds over a point of pride? That’s hate. The fact that systemic hate can wrap itself up in any number of obfuscations and excuses doesn’t change what it is. Use any word you like, it will still be hate.
Well, you’re not wrong that hate seems personal to me, though, as Nauplius does it, it does seem like you can apply it to a whole people. He certainly does.
To me, mass destruction doesn’t require any great depth of feeling-- maybe something a little more vicious than indifference, maybe just indifference itself. Putting people outside of your circle of concern means you can do just about anything. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like it when people try to say we’re not human anymore, or we’re sort of … human*.
It feels like inviting extermination.
So, sure, to me, sterilizing a world just requires indifference to another’s collective survival, plus some motive to make them not-survive. It’s not a very high bar. The impersonal quality of the mass killing even makes it easier.
Hate is more like, “I’m going to feed you a six-course meal made out of your children. There will be some element of at least one of your children in each and every dish, whether it be the roast, the soup base, or the fat the crispy bits in the salad were fried in. Dessert will be a sweetened, creamy custard made with their minced gray matter and served chilled in their severed heads, which will also serve as the reveal as to what we just ate. And I’m sure I’ll have something in place for the followthrough to keep you from just killing me on the spot, but actually I’m not going to care all that much because I will be able to die happy just having seen the look on your face.”
Personal, utterly, horribly personal, glorying in an individual’s misery. Even if you apply it to a whole lot of people.
Do you think my standard’s too high?
I think your standard misses out on a key element.
Apathy and indifference + a motive to make them not survive is, well, callousness and apathy, obviously. But in that case, the people you’re making not survive are just whoever is unfortunate enough to be under your guns in that situation, whoever is between you and what your objective is.
Hate is when you do it because it’s those people, and it wouldn’t matter if they just up and ran away. You’d find them… maybe you’d hunt them, maybe you wouldn’t. You don’t have to chase them down, after all, the cluster’s not that big a place. You’ll find that population, eventually.
And then you’ll kill them. For being them. Just for being those people. No anger, no rage, no viciousness needed. They exist, and they’re gonna not exist, and that’s just a statement of fact.
Hm. Interesting notion. I’ll think about that.
(And yes thinking back you were one of the people who brought me to that point, you and Mizhara. Poor Elsebeth was just the lightning rod. Something something cycle of something something.)
Yeah, I was in a pretty dark place at the time… lots of unintended consequences. But we’ve discussed that in the past, I think.
Hm. True.
Anyway, I’ve thought a little bit about it and there’s at least one possible (likely, even) reason to complete, or approach completing, a genocide aside from actual hate.
That would be, to break the cycle of retribution, or “escape justice” if you like. Weaken a targeted people enough, and you reduce the chance for the cycle of revenge to continue to action-holo scenarios. It’s a bit like the thing about ideas being less “bulletproof” for an adequately large supply of bullets (or plasma charges or rail flechettes or whathaveyou).
Sometimes all you need to snuff out a life (or many, many lives) is the sense that the other might have a reason to hate you.
An adequately strong wind, to extinguish every flame of hatred…
It’s not nice, but what else do we expect from this world?
No, sorry. That’s still an act of hate. You’re targeting those people because they are ‘those people’. Your motivation is still to destroy a wide class of people simply for who they are. It’s just that systemic hate, doing exactly what I said it does:
You don’t break the cycle of retribution through violence unless you’re willing to kill every single one, no matter how innocent, no matter how newborn. And that takes hate. Without hate, there are other ways… a myriad of other ways, including just leave them the hell alone. Admit the possibility of error, and your own side’s culpability for it’s part in that cycle.
Choose something that isn’t hateful.
Until you do, it’s just…
Mm. Either way it might be at the point where motive doesn’t matter anymore.
(… Is there a hard limit for that? … hm, no, don’t think so. On the one hand hardly anybody’s going to take their parent, child, or sibling being killed before their eyes as anything but personal; on the other, both you and I have both impersonally killed, or helped to kill, people on a scale of … cities, probably? … Maybe some colony worlds? So I guess it’s pretty subjective.)
Edit:
Anyway I feel like we’re sort of distracting from the topic. Maybe we should continue to discuss in Off-Topic, if we’re going to? It does feel like we’ve kind of reached a conclusion of sorts, though.
Current estimates range from 30-40 million to a smidge more than 1 billion, yeah.
(Honestly, if someone ever talks about moving their family to a Keepstar, just… just don’t. They’re all just deathtraps with the fuse already lit.)
Can we imply that the censorship of a publicly available census meets your censure?
This all Sounds quite Complicated and I have become Unsure of its Application to the original Question that my Daughter asked.
I think the lesson you can bring to your daughter from this exchange, is that it’s complicated. The Federation, due to the nature of its governmental strategy, is governed by a variety of voices, often standing in opposition to one another.
Perhaps one, or a few of the parties involved in making the decision to get involved was, as your daughter asked, specifically invested in preventing the Amarr from allying closely with the Caldari, creating an un-winnable 2-front war for the Federation. However, reducing the Gallente’s involvement in the Minmatar Rebellion to this motive alone, would likely be a stretching of the truth. Some might even call it propaganda.
Alas, it is wonderful that your daughter is inspired to ask such challenging questions, and I hope that you may help to show her that most answers are steeped in nuance.
Education is Important, and I have invested extensively in the School system on my home Planet.
I have Decided, in this specific Instance, to explain to my daughter that interstellar polities Frequently engage in Multifaceted Actions, and it is Uncommon for actions to have only One specific objective.
Also that politicians frequently make Decisions based on very incomplete information, which is why many Actions by interstellar polities have Unintended Consequences that may not show up for Many Years.