thirsty is finally downloading an ebook from a website that's all in German after 5 attempts, because you need the colonialism tea that bad & the anglophone world doesn't always provide the full course

https://elibrary.steiner-verlag.de/book/99.105010/9783515121323

reading it like

This book btw is a comprehensive review of all the times in US history that poor whites said "hey how 'bout some free land?" and the rich ones said "lol no, how would we charge you money for it if we just gave it away"

literally one of the main worries was giving away free land would make all the other land worth less & we couldn't have that

the only times the federal gov't made exceptions were when they needed poor whites to act as a buffer btwn the rich ones & someone else's armed forces

e.g. the first time free homesteads were actually done was 1842, in Florida, and via a law called the "Armed Occupation Act"

bc they needed people to soak up attacks from the Spanish/Seminoles/pirates

the classic 1862 Homestead Act had a lot to do with the fact that all the high-quality land in places with lots of rainfall, that could be farmed cheaply & effectively using European methods, was already taken

the remaining lands were kind of worth nothing, hence being free

Anyway if you want to know more about how the US was built by rich whites keeping the poor ones poor on purpose so they'd do the dirty work of genocide, like a fire hose with really good water pressure, this book is for you!

America's founding fathers were literally land speculators who committed treason so they could start a real estate Ponzi scheme with its own government

pass it on

"we genocided people off of this land but you can't live there either bc that would be bad for property values" was really the governing principle of westward expansion

and people wonder why we have so much homelessness and vacant housing units at the same time

Next chapter! The first one was about how the first wave of "we're white & poor, give us land so we can be cool like you uwu" failed (1790s-1820s)

because the point of westward expansion was real estate speculation, and that only works when you can price-gouge people on land.

The NEXT wave of pitches (1830s-1840s) was

"Give us free land so we can fight the Indians, we'll be cheaper than the Army!"

This pitch rests on virulent racism. The fact that it also mostly failed to shake free land out of the Colonialism Machine illustrates a lot about how America really works.

To be clear, anti-Indigenous racism was not invented in 1830

the Declaration of Independence name-drops "merciless Indian s*vages" as a reason that the colonies had to arm up, for instance.

But when poor whites, & the rich ones who had taken it upon themselves to be their Benevolent Sponsors

realized that stereotypes of bloodthirsty, implacable enemies might get them free land, they kicked it up to a whole nother level.

However, the racist appeals for giving out free land to poor whites also failed in this era!

That's bc from Congress's perspective,

"This enemy is so scary, our best chance to defeat them is TOTAL AMATEURS" was just not very convincing. Go figure lol

Which brings it to the most bitterly funny part of this chapter: quotes from Army officers involved in settler/Indigenous skirmishes at the edges of US territory.

They boil down to "the frontier settlers said WhAT about the local Indians? lmao they're full of shit"

Testimony from military officials stationed at the Oklahoma/Arkansas border in the 1830s was clear: Indigenous neighbors in Oklahoma were NOT interested in throwing raids, and any fighting was 100% settlers starting shit.

Here it is, in extremely 19th century Army bro language.

This is all couched in v colonial ideas about what constitutes "civilized," etc. And in the course of US history, the Army ain't exactly known for its rigorous regard for Indigenous land rights.

Which makes it ALL THE MORE WILD that the Army is the voice of reason here.

tl;dr white settlers on the western borders were picking so many fights with Indigenous neighbors on purpose that the US Army was like "yeah fuck these guys"

Update from "Settlers as Conquerors": the penny drops

Anyone else get a "good cop/bad cop" vibe from the settler/Army relationship during the land theft days? (see upthread)

Not an accident, that was literally the strategy.

Aggressive, DIY militants were a key part of US military strategy.

They allowed law enforcement & military forces to swoop in as the good guy & ~save the day~

in a way that always just happened to push marginalized people out of the way to make room for those militants.

wow thank god that's all in the past https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/1347565725863596032

A quick break to talk about "Ohhh these white militants weren't bad people, they were just products of their time!"

If they were "just products of their time" then how tf was this guy giving straight talk on how slurs are used to dehumanize people & justify genocide

in 1853

The Cayuse War & other massacres in OR territory weren't even for stealing land- the settlers already had it.

They were slaughter campaigns conducted on spec during slow seasons, in the hopes of billing the federal gov't later to bring in extra cash.

So…"economic anxiety" huh

"Things were just different back then" doesn't fly.

A lot of the white folks in OR (who to be clear, were still squatting on Native land) were outraged by neighbors' killing sprees. They made sure everyone back east, including Congress, knew exactly what was going on.

Including, I can't emphasize this enough, members of the military for whom killing people was literally their day job.

The folks running America's killing fields didn't live in a magical, innocent time when that sort of thing was normal.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

And so did the other white folks around them.

Totally incidental side note. If we want different results with today's militants, we need to NOT give them the impunity treatment that these early ones got. Strongly worded letters to the editor aren't the endgame.

Peopled don't become extremists "to be heard," they do it for personal empire-building.

So prosecution & all the things that come w it for serious crimes- freezing accounts, seizing assets, etc- are key. They didn't come for "justice," so "healing the country" won't stop them.

Speaking of personal empire-building: again, settlers who ran massacres in Oregon weren't doing it to get land, bc they already had it.

They did it to build street cred within white society, so they'd be respectable & be given *more* stuff later.

They were showboating.

My fave line from that last screenshot:

"Settlers continuously sought to mimic the government's commitment to colonization & Indian removal, supposing that these labels would make lawmakers more inclined to listen to their pleas."

LOL

In the end, poor white settlers got very little out of all that willingness to take one for the team.

In one settlement campaign after another, spanning centuries of US history, poor whites voluntarily committed atrocities, suffered, starved, & died in the name of America.

Then most of the land wound up being owned by rich whites anyway.

The end.

That's why folks are apt to point out that today's militants, the insurrection on DC, are so thoroughly saturated with rich whites.

If the rich wanna storm DC & get arrested, that's on them! And less-off folks who joined in, signed up to be played for fools.

We should say it.

https://twitter.com/Karnythia/status/1347924978252079106