Ask them if they’ve read about Dessalines, and ask their thoughts on them?
Whether it be the Github user who founded Lemmy, with his Anti-American and Marxist Leninist essays,
or
the Haitian general who fought against the French in the Haitian Revolution, and thus had a hand in wiping out many remnants of the white slave-owners… to create the first abolitionist country.
Just ask what they know and what they think of him?
Originally from https://hexbear.net/post/611602
Edit: just a little one…
I’m not particularly well-informed on Dessalines, but I wouldn’t call killing slave-owning settlers “genocide”
the Haitian general who fought against the French in the Haitian Revolution, and thus had a hand in genociding many remnants of the white slave-owners… to create the first abolitionist country.
I’ve had a socdem acquaintance literally imply that forbidding white people from owning property in Haiti was racist, and that it was a good thing the USA occupation (of which they’d had just learned about) changed that because it “recognised people’s human rights.” That might be too hard a test for some of them, considering most probably can’t even find Haiti in a map.
forbidding white people from owning property
should have just stopped after the word people.
It’s a myth that Dessalines was totally anti-white. He was anti-colonizer. He had no issue with the many Polish people who joined the Revolution.
It is being frankly hard for me to find information about Dessalines (the second one) from a left-wing perspective. Anywhere where one can begin?
Marxists.org has a small text extracted from a french book, that possibly has a translation somewhere.
It’s really hard to find good material on Haiti in English, and the host is quite a lib, but the Revolutions Podcast series on Haiti is so complete and thorough you can mostly come to your own conclusions. It’s principally based on the book “Avengers of the New World” by Dubois, which was alright as far as I got into it, but not explicitly leftist either.
I think haitiliberte.com might have something with a socialist lens on him, but I couldn’t find any.
