Franklin would have, for sure, but I’m pretty sure the rest of them would have just kept raping their own slaves.
Franklin famously preferred older women.
I did not know that, I just knew he liked French prostitutes.
Not all. Pretty sure John Adams would not have been.
Hamilton and Jefferson would probably have written most of them though, about each other.
I don’t think they would have been called the Epstein files though. It probably would have been called the Franklin files. All of this stuff seems like Ben Franklin’s jam.
No I don’t think Ben Franklin would have done it for espionage or spying purposes I think he would have just done it for the love of the game.
I agree, Ben probably would have indulged and not cared about using it to his advantage.
Hamilton and Jefferson were absolutely cold blooded in their political pursuits and use of published letters. They would have used any opportunity to cut the other down. Maybe mutually assured destruction would have stayed their hands on that particular indulgence, though Hamilton did famously out his own affair to clear himself of the embezzlement allegation.
Ben Franklin’s letter from 1745 is pretty good evidence that he liked older women. We’re not just talking 30’s here either; he implies women in their 40’s and older.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/eros/praise-older-women
The misogyny is strong, but at least it’s not pedophilia.
I get that a lot of this linked article is written to (correctly) change the narrative around slavery erasure but some of it delves into baseless hyperbole that can’t be anything but counter productive.
For example:
Evidence suggests that sexual abuse of slaves was so fundamental to chattel slavery that it’s reasonable to assume any histories of “kind” slave owners are complete fabrications designed to preserve the legacy of the masters.
That is either playing fast and loose with wording or an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof.
On one hand, the “kind” slave owner is always a fabrication because the act of owning slaves is inherently immoral and reprehensible. This view makes the claim a borderline platitude; perpetuating an institution that enables rapists is very obviously unkind.
On the latter interpretation, you’re claiming that rape was so universal that any slave owner was almost certainly a rapist (especially if they claimed they weren’t). This would require some sweeping evidence, think studies on the demographics of mixed race slaves or on medical records tied to sexual assaults.
So what evidence follows? Excerpts from Frederick Douglas giving second hand accounts of rape and of Harriet Jacobs giving her first hand account. Nothing that incriminates slave owners broadly beyond Douglas’s phrasing “…in [rape] cases not a few,…”.
I don’t even deny that the evidence might exist, and I would love to see it brought to light if it does. But the thing about slavery, and specifically the USA’s commercial cotton slavery: it’s fucking awful enough if you just list verifiable facts without aggrandizing. Even if everything in this article were true, it doesn’t move the needle much farther beyond the baseline of American slave ownership.
If you’re going to broadly claim “America’s founding fathers were sex traffickers that raped children” then please, name names! Bring receipts! You can’t open with…
These facts are not debatable. [Child sex trafficking] happened.
…and then lay out a single link rehashing that Thomas Jefferson was a massive piece of shit. What do we know about the other 54+ Founding Fathers?
baseless hyperbole
an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof
I do not think it is much of a stretch to think that there were a fuckton of rapists in times past, judging by the fuckton of rapists in contemporary time. To be honest, I think it is awful of you to assume that men in positions of power do not rape, when we have so much evidence that they do (and please do not talk to me about “not all men rape”, because that is not what we are talking about, we are talking about systemic issues).
Boys at 16 years old rape sleeping girls, because they can. Film directors and businessmen (unsuccessful ones as Trump as well) rape women and children, because they can. Slave owners raped their slaves, because they could. This is a question of power dynamics.
Bring receipts!
No.
Finding it offensive to expect evidence for any such accusation is absolutely asinine. What a stupid fucking conclusion.
Expecting an American to have historical literacy is considered one of their gravest insults. Akin to telling an Israeli they are bad at raping children.
Do you disagree on my remark that Trump is a pedofile rapist or only that about the slave owners that also happened to be founding fathers for a genocidal empire?
There exists ample evidence of how widespread rape is today and throughout history. I do not see why you give slave owners the benefit of doubt in this regard, seeing as they had a blatant and fundamental disregard for their fellow human beings, in their eyes property.
I really appreciate posts like this. Thank you for making Lemmy a better place!
poor confused westoid still believes in the myth of abolitionists that own slaves
John Adams didn’t own slaves, but keep riding that ignorance.
Founding fondlers
In fact, it goes back all the way to Christopher Columbus: https://museumfacts.co.uk/atrocities-committed-by-christopher-columbus/
All European colonizers were child sex traffickers (among the rest of their crimes).
Inb4 conservatives change from
“Mary was a teenager”
to
“The Founding Fathers were pedophiles too”
Inb4 hell freezes over you mean 😅
AFAIK Ben Franklin preferred old women. And I mean old. Like over 70. Lots of letters to people telling them how widows are the best partners because they know what they’re doing. And that they’re more open to threesomes/foursomes.
Isn’t there a fairly well documented history of him raping his slaves? He may vocally advocate for older women fun, but dude fucked pretty much anything with two tits, a hole, and a heartbeat.I was thinking about one of the other dudes.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he was into abusing slaves because it was a good ol’ boys’ club. Franklin did inherent several slaves, got to know them, realized they were people, freed them, then became an abolishinist.
At the end of the day, however, he still agreed with the 3/5ths. Compromise. And be was still buddies with monsters like Washington and Jefferson. Otherwise, everything we know about his sexual history points to him wanting older women, which is part of why he wanted the ambassadorship to France.
I just did a look see and while I saw it broadly asserted a few times on social media I can’t find any specific allegations like we have with Jefferson who is positively known to have fathered children with slaves.
I might be mixing them up.
Especially Jefferson. Not Franklin though. Benjamin Franklin in a letter to a young man listed 8 reasons why an older mistress was preferable to a younger one.
Also people thought Washington was gay so…
Who did? He was married to Martha with no accusations of homosexuality.
Also not really sure how this is a response to what that guy said.
Never had kids with her and she was a widow.
Is where it started. You’ll find various opinions on it/his inner circle.
Potentially he wouldn’t be interested in raping little girls.
And little boys?
Maybe but it’s a mitigating factor towards traveling to the island in the first place.
The island is a symptom, not a cause.
Still relevant to being mentioned in the files.
ESPECIALLY JEFFERSON
Maybe not Franklin. He’s on record as preferring older ladies.
So, you’re saying he would have only flown to the island for Ghislaine?
No, she’s not french
I don’t think they airplanes then
Who is downvoting this? Legitimately.
People who think this is an attempt at saying “see, pedo’s aren’t that bad even the founding fathers are ones”
European settlers
Brainwashed Americans
usians*
don’t lump me with the nazis
*conservatives
Don’t lump me in with the nazis
Nah, you get lumped in just like every non-resisting German was, and for good reason.
Sweetheart, just because I haven’t committed suicide-by-cop doesn’tean I’m not resisting. You sound like incredibly fertile soil for the fascists to plant their seed in when they inevitably try to take your country over. You should learn some empathy before that happens.
Where was this energy when umbrella said the same thing?
Umbrella is from one of many countries of America not from USA, he is American too and has no obligation to unfuck USA.
Hard disagree. You live here, you fight for here.
They have as much obligation to fight this administration as any natural born.
Are you seriously saying if I move to another country, that I just sit back and let fascism take hold there?
No, fuck you and them for being lazy.
If we’re doing a find-and-replace of “Americans” with “USians”, the result is “Brainwashed USians”.
So, unless you consider yourself brainwashed, you weren’t included.
most democrats don’t care about fascism when it’s being sponsored outside the us.
there is only a small sliver of us leftists that don’t apply to this.
I never said anything about Democrats. Anyway, the Democrats are a conservative party, they’re just less conservative than Republicans.
Uneducated people and I don’t even like ml memes but can’t deny this fact.
Why don’t you like ml memes?
Removed by mod
Lemmy.ml is one of the big communist instances, sure, but in no way fascist nor fascist collaborators. Communists support collectivization of production and distribution via establishing socialism, economies where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes are in control of the state. Fascism is about cementing capitalism and bourgeois rule in countries where capitalism has decayed. These stand diametrically opposed.
On Lemmy.ml’s meme communities, you see lots of leftist memes. Fascists are banned, as well as fascist memes.
Too fire; can’t handle the heat
If this happens to an international tennis star, imagine what happens to young, poor girls with little support
How many MLs reading this are Americans?
I’m both a Statesian and a communist, sure.
The fuck is a Statesian
A less colonialist term for “citizen of the USA.”
O7
Ok, cool. I’m asking out of genuine curiosity. How does this post make you feel? You’re in the overlap of the targeter and the targeted.
As a show of good faith, let’s commiserate. I agree that our “founding fathers” weren’t good people by today’s standards, but I’m in the camp that their ideas of classical liberalism were fine. I feel shame that our country is built on genocide, slavery and exploitation, but at the same time, I want to hold our current leadership to a higher standard and ahem prosecute them. I understand that you don’t agree with classical liberalism, and that’s fine, I’m not looking to pick a fight. But I imagine you feel some confusion and conflict as I do?
Respectfully, your position doesn’t make sense. Liberalism brought us here. Liberalism was built on top of the slave trade, of colonialism, of plunder. This system produces people like Epstein and Trump.
With all due respect, that’s sounds like leaps of logic, like saying he scientific theory leads directly to and only to nuclear warfare.
Does classical liberalism only lead to slave trade/colonialism?
Copying over @Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 's comment reply to you:
This is a very idealistic view of history. Ideology did not create material conditions, material conditions created ideology (and ideology was used as a tool to reinforce material conditions)
The slavery, genocide, capitalism and colonialism came first. Then liberalism was created to justify it. And I do want to emphasise that all of those 4 things were justified using liberal logic, that was the point of liberal logic.
The first liberals deemed the “unenligtened” to be subhuman, incapable or governing themselves, worthy of being treated like livestock and as fundamental threats to the ruling order. This was their justification for doing everything they did, you can read their writings on native Americans and Africans and see exactly what classical liberalism was all about.
Later waves of liberals ended up using liberal logic to abolish slavery. Great. But the reason they did this was because the capitalist mode of production had superceded the slave mode of production. The surplus of proletariats hated competing with slaves and having their wages be reduced. Meanwhile the northern bourgeoise often had friction with the southern planters since the planters were rentiers extracting wealth from the whole economy like parasites.
Modern liberals now proclaim themselves to be great champions of “liberty” (the liberty for the bourgeoise to buy property), but they by in large continue to support capitalism and western imperialism*. And frankly, why wouldn’t they? That was what the ideology was created for.
*you can see this in their insistence upon using “white man’s burden” arguments whenever foreign intervention comes up
Do you know how many enlightenment figures were wildly racist, how many of them profited from slavery while pretending to stand for freedom? Scientific racism is a direct evolution from this.
As for whether liberalism now would lead to more of the same, of course it would, it has no built-in method for people to not be exploited, to discourage greed, to stop genocide, etc. How would you suggest we prevent any and all of this within liberalism?
I’ve been thinking for a long time that any large-scale organization will lead to greed, corruption, injustice, et al. It’s only since I’ve been reading about ML that I learned I lean anarchist. Vanguard parties sound like a bad idea to me.
I’ve been thinking for a long time that any large-scale organization will lead to greed, corruption, injustice, et al.
Why? Seriously, think about it. Are you appealing to a supernatural explanation like “human nature,” or a materialist answer? Is the presence of any corruption or greed unacceptable or incapable of countering with structures and checks?
It’s only since I’ve been reading about ML that I learned I lean anarchist. Vanguard parties sound like a bad idea to me.
Why are vanguards a bad idea, in your eyes? The working class should organize, and the most politically advanced should organize in parties. Can you imagine if we refused to let scientists perform research? If we refused to let surgeons handle surgery? Why should revolution be any different? Any long-term, complex project should be led by those who study and train for it.
This is a very idealistic view of history. Ideology did not create material conditions, material conditions created ideology (and ideology was used as a tool to reinforce material conditions)
The slavery, genocide, capitalism and colonialism came first. Then liberalism was created to justify it. And I do want to emphasise that all of those 4 things were justified using liberal logic, that was the point of liberal logic.
The first liberals deemed the “unenligtened” to be subhuman, incapable or governing themselves, worthy of being treated like livestock and as fundamental threats to the ruling order. This was their justification for doing everything they did, you can read their writings on native Americans and Africans and see exactly what classical liberalism was all about.
Later waves of liberals ended up using liberal logic to abolish slavery. Great. But the reason they did this was because the capitalist mode of production had superceded the slave mode of production. The surplus of proletariats hated competing with slaves and having their wages be reduced. Meanwhile the northern bourgeoise often had friction with the southern planters since the planters were rentiers extracting wealth from the whole economy like parasites.
Modern liberals now proclaim themselves to be great champions of “liberty” (the liberty for the bourgeoise to buy property), but they by in large continue to support capitalism and western imperialism*. And frankly, why wouldn’t they? That was what the ideology was created for.
*you can see this in their insistence upon using “white man’s burden” arguments whenever foreign intervention comes up
Are we talking about liberalism or neoliberalism? My understanding is that liberalism is, ostensibly, grounded in enlightenment ideals.
Neoliberalism is a subset of liberalism. Liberalism is older than neoliberalism, and was in fact built on the slave trade and colonialism.
That is effectively the case in history, and I don’t think OP is denying that, but the philosophical basis is more about individual human rights. I think OP is asking how Americans feel about how far from those ideals we have strayed, which is completely off the fucking map. For my part, I question the cost to society that prioritizing individual liberties like property rights has had, but I don’t think that capitalism itself is inextricably linked to “classical liberalism”, and Americans tend to insist that it is. It’s a confusion born out of ignorance and propaganda.
The “Founding Fathers” were shit people, but the constitution as an evolution of enlightenment ideals is a pretty sound document, we just haven’t lived up to the doctrine. The same could be said about communism as practiced by authoritarian regimes.
Liberalism was pushed by capitalists in fighting the aristocracy. In that sense, it was progressive, but only in that context. Now, it’s outstayed that welcome, and is used to fight against progress. We have lived up to the constitution, it was designed to protect capitalist profits and rule as a settler-colony founded on genocide.
As for communism, the various socialist countries have lived up to Marxist ideals. The problem is that, at least in the eyes of some typically western communists, socialism in real life means having all of the struggles and imperfections that come with being real, and these imperfections can’t compare to the perfect, almost religiously pure ideal of socialism in western leftist heads. If we uphold Marxism correctly, we support this existing socialism, warts and all, for being dramatically progressive and liberatory for the working classes.
Hey, i appreciate the chillness and will try to respond in kind. I can understand feeling conflicted, but personally I severed any emotional connection with this country several years ago after I could no longer reconcile my shrinking self-conception as “an american” with my growing self-conception as a human being. It’s not just that they were seperate; they were fully att odds with each other in a very physical, material way. If I recognize that there is no deep fundamental difference between my humanity and anyone else’s, and if I consider myself part of the human family, I can’t ignore the devastation that this military-economic-cultural thing we call America has wrought on our family. If I see myself as a cell in the body of nature, I can’t help but look at the effects of America and see it for a cancer. That doesn’t mean everyone in it is “bad” or “evil” of course, and i personally don’t believe in these concepts to begin with. The reality is more messy and complex than any quick moral assessment can say, but at the highest level the practical assessment is simple: America is a boat anchor on the neck of humanity. It’s military enforces an economic system that’s killing the world, the ideology it spreads is parochial and antisocial, and we who live inside it are both it’s victims and it’s accomplices, forced to work our lives away for rich pedophiles while economically supporting atrocities on other people elsewhere.
The desire to hold leaders to a higher standard is totally understandable, but the question of what they lead renders it moot in this case. American leaders are people who sit at the helm of a world-spanning death machine, and no decision they make, no matter how high-minded and well intentioned, can change it’s basic function, which is to churn human, plant and animal life into profit. Like Darwinism, the evolutionary pressures of capitalist imperial politics actively selects for these wretched people, and against anyone who might even try to rein in it’s excesses, even as ineffective that would be. The only way to hold the leaders of this system to a higher standard is to hold the system to a higher standard, and the highest standard this system can realistically be held to is to be dismantled and replaced with something capable of producing stable and equitable results. Capitalism itself is like a nanobot Grey Goo apocalypse: instead of breaking down everything to produce more nanobots it breaks everything down into profit. I consider it an existential threat to life on earth,and anything that upholds capitalism or stands in the way of it’s destruction to be an acceptable loss for the preservation of the biosphere.
I hope I haven’t gone on too long, but I feel that gets to the heart of it. For the love of humanity and all living things, I’ve forsaken any attachment to this predatory so-called society.
I’m in the camp that their ideas of classical liberalism were fine. I feel shame that our country is built on genocide, slavery and exploitation
Not an American here, but do you not see the contradiction here? From an outside perspective this reads the same as a German saying
I’m in camp that hitler’s ideas were fine. But I feel shame that the riech was founded on genocide slavery and exploitation.
Like I’m genuinely confused here.
I’m guessing I got downvoted because I said I’m fine with classical liberalism?
Yes, being fine with the system of capitalism and all it entails when it’s clear that we need to advance to socialism is a problem.
Every Western country is a mix of capitalism and socialism. The US absolutely should move towards the socialism end but capitalism won’t vanish, most importantly because it’s detractors never offer a viable alternative.
Pretty much a guarantee that a big chunk of people wasting time and resources on an internet discussion board are in some way benefitting from capitalism.
Every Western country is a mix of capitalism and socialism.
Capitalism and socialism are modes of production, ie descriptors for the principle aspect of a given economy. Having a public sector does not mean you have a socialist sector, just like having a private sector does not mean you have a capitalist sector. Public sectors in capitalism serve to support the private, and private sectors in socialism support the public. Determining which aspect is principle, ie governs the large firms and key industries, and which class controls the state, is how we check for capitalism vs. socialism.
The US absolutely should move towards the socialism end but capitalism won’t vanish, most importantly because it’s detractors never offer a viable alternative.
Socialism is a viable alternative, see the PRC, where public ownership is the principle aspect and the working classes control the state.
Pretty much a guarantee that a big chunk of people wasting time and resources on an internet discussion board are in some way benefitting from capitalism.
The English-speaking internet does have a large portion of labor aristocrats, ie those who benefit from super-exploiting the global south, but that doesn’t mean socialism isn’t a necessary advance. Imperialism is decaying, thankfully, which necessitates socialism, not to mention the moral victory.
I’m also looking for a reason to believe that the MLs here aren’t a bunch of angsty edgelords who just use ML as an excuse for lashing out. You definitely seem like the rare exception, Cowbee, and I appreciate you for it.
i used to mock my woke older sister when i was young for espousing ml perspectives because i assumed it was just angsty teenage edgelord know-it-all behavior and it prevented me to learning about leftism until i was middle aged.
i’ve learned that others characterize mls as you’ve done; so it’s clear that it’s a social phenomenon; and i wonder if this sort of characterization is leveraged somehow to social engineer americans away from socialism, since the epstein files suggest global scale mass social engineering.
I can’t assess if I think this way because of American indoctrination right now, but y’all just seem so mean and angry.
Everything I see come out of ML instances here has the same sneering, tribal in-group-good-out-group-bad attitude that I see not only MAGA people post, but also what I’ve seen queer people post that drive “normies” away and push them into conservative rabbit holes.
I understand y’all are frustrated with liberals and liberalism and the capital-W West. I agree that the injustices of these systems is sickening. But these memes are being broadcast outside any echo chamber, and they attack individuals personally, who also use very different terminology.
Lemmy’s MLs have terrible optics and, frankly, I think that’s hurting your cause a lot more than MLs seem to care. You’ll never get their support and they’ll resist you and your cause.
We deal with a lot of people telling us all sorts of bs and speaking over us when we talk about historical facts that we actually researched, or even our own lived experiences for those of us who live through invasions, coups and so on.
We see the genocides going on right now, and when we sit down to learn more we find out that there have been endless such cases perpetuated by the same capitalist class for capitalist interests, we learn about the torture, the humiliation, the meticulous extermination of whole peoples with their languages and cultures gone forever, just because their labor or their land has value that capitalists wanted to extract and plunder. I’m too young to have lost someone personally, but when my parents were children we had a US backed dictatorship that disappeared children like them, alongside leftists, liberals, indigenous people… The US taught our military torture methods and bribed them to keep going, and when they were finally gone we inherited a fucking DEBT that we literally can’t repay you, and because we can’t repay you we need to keep getting loans from your country, with strings attached, like more austerity, as our people die homeless and cold. And if we succeed to get a proper socialist government while playing by the rules that your government imposes, they’ll just coup us, like they did to Salvador Allende. Surely you see why we’re angry now. It’s not personal. If you don’t wanna talk to us, you can opt out, it’s whatever to us.
I 99.5% agree and sympathize. I know how lucky I am that the biggest existential threats I’ve faced are depression and joblessness, and a lot of my friends are much less lucky. I don’t know how to fight for them while also making sure they’re safe.
The remaining half a percent is when you say it’s not personal. A lot of these memes and a lot of comments I get from MLs seem quite personal, treating “liberals” as a monolith.
MLs have a lot to be frustrated about. We advocate organizing in real life, which has its own frustrations, and when most people are still supportive of capitalism it’s a constant uphill battle. We arn’t angsty edgelords using ML as an excuse, but often tired and drained because we are MLs, leading to many of us lashing out.
So Marxist socialism and classical liberalism are mutually exclusive?
Leftism starts at anti-capitalism. Liberalism is pro-capitalism. Simple as.
Any kind of socialism is mutually exclusive from classical liberalism; not necessarily on every bullet point but broadly speaking. The common thread among the various socialist ideologies is typically that the economy and society exist to provide for the needs of the people.
Yes
My curiosity is genuine piqued. Any recommendations to read about this in particular?
Liberalism is the ideology supportive of capitalism. Marxism is supportive of socialism. I think it’s important to recognize that liberalism was driven by capitalists to fight the aristocracy while justifying their own future rule.
Marxism opposes it in theory, not practice. Soviets had nomenklatura - senior party members and officials who controlled key positions in government, industry, the military, and media. They didn’t “own” factories but they controlled them.
This place is so overwhelmingly biased that it will most likely refuse to acknowledge this and maintain their simplistic black-and-white views. Marxists simply abolished the term “aristocracy” in a formal sense while continuing such practices.
