*crackles knuckles*

A promise is a promise. /1
Opening with an attack on land acknowledgement. Also, notice how he does not name the alleged app. So, you have to take his word for it that it uses language such as "stolen". /2
There is a lot to unpack here so we will take each "point" on its own. First, notice how the app that is indoctrinating these students has still not been named. /3
"[A] monumental act of genocide"

This is why I urge historians to make genocide plural in the American colonial context. Otherwise, it allows denialists to poke holes in it and knock over strawmen. /4
The colonists were motivated by racism and civilization supremacy, But "they enslaved everyone" is sarcastic absolutism that could easily be negated by a historically literature understanding of American colonialism. Where he saw a monolith of Indians, 500+ nations exist. /5
This goes without mentioning that the American colonial experience involved the Spanish, French, British, Portuguese, United States, Mexico, Canada, and Russia - not to mention immigrant groups amid those nations. One nation didn't commit all the crimes; genocide or otherwise. /6
There was no united "native question", yes. But, I do not believe I have ever encountered that term in my research and studies. It is an unquestionable truth that this nation is build on the land of Indigenous people as well as the bodies of said people, enslaved Blacks, etc. /7
The irony of writing an article like this and then calling out "smug, feelgood" history.

Also, where do you think the roots of 20th century civilizational supremacy can be found? /8
Wrong.

Children in Toronto allegedly hear an apology every morning on behalf of their government. Indigenous children across North and South America read a history they are erased from, about land lost, and cultures destroyed. These aren't even comparable. /9
1. Did he outsource 1/2 of this paragraph to the Game of Thrones showrunners?

2. Our democracy is at stake, Antifa is burning cities, and dictators are on the march because...students at a college learn about the Indigenous people of their local history.

/10
In short, this is all nonsense. No one in France or South Korea or anywhere else in the world is going to second guess democracy because American textbooks started to rightfully call Wounded Knee a massacre or make a note that the Lenape once lived throughout the Northeast. /11
Really? So why this was this published in The Spectator without a single citation or a wink of peer review rather than putting it up that scrutiny yourself? /12
Nope. Not a single historian says that. None. I am not going to insult your intelligence by breaking it down. /13
Special scrutiny? No, dude. You are interested in Ameri-Canadian cases but I want to settle these issues globally: Ainu in Japan, Yanomami in Brazil, the Khoisans in Southern Africa, etc. All of it. /14
[Pause]

I cannot finish it right now but I will continue as soon as possible
Still can't get into just yet but to spite the author, use this website to see the Indigenous people who inhabited the land on which you live. https://native-land.ca/ 
I will finish this tomorrow but here is the Toronto land agknowment that the author melted over. https://twitter.com/PalaSand50/status/1310043693513150464?s=19
I am going to finish this in a few hours when I handled some family stuff but I wanted to amend Tweet 13 - particularly the "martyrs" bit. He claims the Nations are martyred which is nonsense but I am not against any martyr language that Indigenous people may apply to those /15
who fought and died in any resistance/warfare capacity. I was responding to his hyperbolic, sarcastic slander of the educators who want to recognize truth. I will continue to do so in a few hours. Promise. /16
On its surface, this is an interesting question. It's the question of my whole field. It is why I separate the Conestogas from the Yuki; the Seminoles from the Inuit and so on when we talk about degradation and destruction. /17
It is why the timeline/individual nations (both Indigenous and Colonial) as well as the actors therein matter. In short, context. The context matters. Manhattan was allegedly sold. We can get into the weeds with that but the island wasn't massacred There is a difference. /18
Yeah, that's nature. That's the Columbian Exchange. People died. It destabilized the continents. It caused an Incan civil war. But it was Francisco Pizarro who drove the dagger into the empire's heart. See the difference? /19
This is all true here but he brings up population like it mattered. The Americas could have had twice Europe's population and it wouldn't have mattered to the diseases. It seems to be a sly gotcha about how their societies were inferior to Europe's but we'll see. /20
Translation: "What's a little biochemical warfare when there were only a few cases? It is not like everyone did it."

Imagine if someone said the Imperial Japanese weren't genocidal because Unit 731 only unleashed so many chemicals on the Chinese rather than the whole army? /21
He is arguing genocide by disease. This paragraph is Dinesh D'Souza's argument given trappings by someone who can fake it better. No one changes the Columbian Exchange as genocide in and of itself. You can't. /22
Throwing out the gotcha of: "Hey, smallpox blankets killed less people than the reaction of half the planet having no immunity to foreign pathogens so checkmate libs" just reveals that the author started with his conclusion. Clearly but more evidence for the pile. /24
The next bit his just a bunch of nonsense negating indigenous settlements and claiming all where nomads. That amalgamates all the native nations into one group, because of course it does, and ignores important trade centers. I am literally too lazy to underline it all. /25
"Why don't Indigenous people get mad at each other for what their nations did to one another?"

I can't speak for them being a white guy but I have a hunch it might have to do with their shared intercontinental experience of being devastated by European settler colonialism. /26
And actually, to his point, sure. As a scholar of American genocide, I want to know more about the Gallina who appear to have been wiped out in a genocidal fashion in 1275. I wish those primary sources exist. They might not so I need to focus on the other cases. /27
This man loves to pretend there are no distinctions. Was Manhattan sold? Probably. Cool. But, what about the Spanish? In the Caribbean and elsewhere, you were confronted and read a decree in a language you did not speak. If you refused to comply, you were taken as slaves. /28
Again, we are talking about two continents with innumerable groupings of unique people. Sometimes there were fair & straightforward land sales. Cool. But other times, it was about tricks, treaty violations, & violence. Those instances matter more than the times it went nice. /29
Indigenous people are the best environmentalists for their own land. They would have managed to keep their lifestyles alive even with guns. Also, the European fur trade triggered the disastrous Beaver Wars and late America had a policy to depopulate the buffalo. Stop it. /30
You started this nauseating train of text by saying that an app is showing students who lived where they live. "Liberals" (as if I wish most liberals were anti-colonial) aren't wishing whites never arrived - they want modern societies to pay respect to what was destroyed. /31
Any policy to "protect" native people in the colonial context that I know of was either reversed, obviously ignored by new nations in the same territory later, backhanded paternalism, or roped in with cultural annihilation. Save your theory. /32
Whoa. Someone said the quiet part out loud. Remember, he made a Twitter account to defend this thing. And it contains this sentence...out of nowhere. /33
This is a little out of my field but I am going to say no. It had more to do with military might to enforce the empire. 1500 was different than 1800 in that regard. It's why Matthew Perry road up to Japan with four ships in 1853. Same game, different board. /34
One, are you high?

Two, you are right about the Mongols.

/35
"Un-genocidal" isn't a word. It sounds stupid.

Two, this claim only works if someone agrees with the lack of genocide premise. A premise set up with "smallpox blankets yo" and nothing else. /36
That "un-genocidal" nonsense was so important that the editors gave it the only, IDK what the term is, but special separate quote. The summary. The take-away for the quick scroller. Europeans not only committed no genocide; they did the opposite. /37
/37a
Meh. "European farming was more efficient so the Native Americans days were numbered regardless in terms of population growth" schtick. Again ignoring colonial violence, displacement (forced or otherwise), and so on. /38
"Why refuse to adopt the wheel?"

That is how he ends a paragraph about cultural destruction. As if it was about giving people guns and similar to the Chinese inventing paper. It wasn't about banning languages, rituals, religious practices, etc. No, it was about sharing. /39
In 1746, the British Parliament passed the Dress Act which banned Highland Dress in Scotland as punishment for Jacobitism and ensuring warrior clans were under gov't control. Attacking a culture for control, sound familiar?

Why didn't the Scots just adopt the wheel? /40
See? Europeans were nice & gave native people guns so they could...kill game to give them furs & shoot at the natives they didn't like. It's not like they would suddenly cut off supplies when they no longer liked certain...wait, that's exactly what happened. /41
No. Piss off. Not wasting my time on this bit. /42
1, the Spanish Empire had a racial/ethnic caste system. There was no equal.

2, civilization used in this context speaks for itself.

3, enslaving/murdering multiple civilizations prior to this defeats your entire argument. Many people didn't live to see her "benevolence". /43
To borrow a term from the Holocaust, Bartholome de las Casas was "righteous" and he wrote hoping to find an equally righteous audience. That means nothing beyond him. The existence of any Righteous Among the Nations does not negate or lessen Nazi crimes. Same thing here. /44
Leiden University, come get your boy. He needed to cite a rando on Facebook to come to the conclusion that history is complicated. /45
Really? We are really going to have to do this? Fine. Let's do this. /46
No. Wahunsenacawh wouldn't be a cultural imperialist. You want to know why? Because Powhatan forces never landed in Liverpool. /47
She was a political hostage and there is evidence that her conversion was forced. The "less interesting" (🚨) name was her being forced to relinquish her identity for that of her captors. She may have been 17 when she was given away. /48
She was a sideshow. A trophy of Rolfe's from the exotic west that showed that an indigenous person could be forced into European norms. I assume. Also, to be trotted around like a tamed dog, isn't the opposite of racism. We also have a name for it - humanism. /49
Not mentioned in the article because her story was no longer useful to the ideology being pushed is that the potential 17 year old died at either 20 or 21 after mothering one son. She died of unknown causes and buried in Gravesend, England in 1617. Four years post-marriage. /50
This is the sick and twisted part of articles like this. It makes Pocahontas into a feel good story; into Disney. Not a tragedy about forced cultural abandonment and potential sexual violence. /51
The Pocahontas case study is the canary in the coal mine for Anglo-American colonial violence against indigenous women, building on earlier examples of course, that continues to this day with missing and murdered Indigenous Women in the Americas. /52
He should be ashamed for almost every word of this nonsense but this...this is specifically sickening. He built this entire piece with the idea that he is the historian with senses who wants the crazies to come to the center with mutual understanding yet he pitches this BS. /53
One, it was more than a few.

Two, "Hello fellow kids".

Three, he said the quiet part again. /54
Yeah. English-Native relations forged in the four year marriage between one nation and a British settlement. Good thing every other relationship between Anglo-American forces and indigenous people was predicated on that great and flawless political dealing. 🤦‍♂️/55
One, the Penn frontier at the time was interethnic chaos with competing interests.

Two, there are numerous examples of genocidal massacres in the period.

Three, Moravians are complicated but generally resisted the aforementioned murder but did engage in cultural damage. /56
The forebearers of Paleo-Indians arrived in the Americas from 45,000 to 12,000 BCE. Cultures change, traditions, change, etc. Like horses being added later but...who the hell are you to say it is common sense to change what worked for tens of thousands of years more or less? /57
Look, that is what to broad and simplified but going back to his statement: What kind of white savior nonsense is this?

Common sense? Really? That's the word choice. And those who didn't have common sense were "wild" and needed to be in gov't camps for their own good. /58
Did...did no one edit this? Did no one read this? Why was this left in? What?

Who was his best friend? Johnny Depp? /59
This is all nonsense framed like a point. You can be historically oppressed or be of an ethnicity with a history like the Moravians and still be part of settler colonialism. Post-Civil War black soldiers and settlers are a perfect example of this in the American West. /60
As are Native Americans who fought in the imperial wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. History, as the author learned after checking his Facebook notifications apparently, is complicated like that. /61
Seven Years War, Pontiac's War, Paxton Boys, Conestoga Genocide.

Read a damn book before you write things like this. /62
Thank all that is holy and righteous. /63
Wouldn't it have been nice to link to the article so people could see it and read it? Just like naming the app, why put up more possible chances for people to make up their own minds? /64
I covered the last bit. As for the former, I mourn for the innocent settlers who murdered. But, those weren't cases of genocidal violence 99.9% of the time. You can't say that the other way. /65
One, eww.

Two, this is just dumb. "The marriages are tainted". What? What? If a trapper married a woman to help his trade and make peace, it only mattered in the context of the band/tribe/nation (depending) that he married into. Stop making this vast, sweeping argument! /66
The economic historian doesn't know the difference between debt and enslavement. Let that sink in. /67
Abolition did jack for Indigenous people, by the way. It doesn't matter in the context of denying colonial crimes. The topic being writing about. /68
Want the answer? Recognizing the destruction of nations by settler colonialism.

Also, no. This was not asked in good faith. Most of this is sarcastic, half-baked nonsense. /69
We aren't rewriting anything. The primary sources speak for themselves. If you read them, you would have seen this. Why are you so obsessed with the secondary material? Oh, right. This entire POS is ideologically-driven garbage. /70
Ah...here it is. And no, I am not going to waste my time. /71
Couldn't agree more Jeff but spoilers, you are the problem rather than the solution. You see historical truth as a Marxist conspiracy and recognizing wrongdoing as a threat to liberal democracy. The app or the BBC article aren't dangerous - this is. /72
I am linking to the article that, as of this moment, is still public. I, unlike the author, believe in reading material I disagree with and letting people make a case based on evidence. /73 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-myth-of-the-stolen-country
When I write articles, I hyperlink to current material I cite or I provide a citation to where it can be found. This did neither. It is propaganda. He does not want you to have your own opinion of the complicated history; he wants you to have his. He's afraid of peer review. /74
That is why, over two days and 75 tweets, I did thing. It is why others have written threads too. If he won't put his stupidity on the chopping block, #twitterstorians will drag the block to him. Now, I need a drink. Thanks for reading. /end
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