While reading a recent article by an infamous feminist (no link for her), I rolled my eyes all the way into the cerebellum. The occasion was her assumption ‘the white man’ the archetypal oppressor of History. Nothing could be further from the truth. Looking back through recorded history, the historical record refutes this unwarranted assumption.
Through the ten thousand or so years of recorded history, the aggressors are almost uniformly horse-riding highlanders. The history of violence consists of steppe warriors descending on agricultural populations trying to make a living. The ‘white man’ was usually the victim, not the aggressor.
Consider the Hunnish invasion of the Western Roman Empire in the middle of the fifth century. Under the leadership of the warlord Attila, the tribal Hunnish forces, tawny-skinned men all of them, raided Western Europe all the way into the plains of Catalonia. It was there where they suffered their first defeat in the year 451, at the hands of a Visigoth/Roman coalition, the ‘white man’ fighting for its political life.
Moving forward to the year 1241, consider one of the greatest defeats of Christendom. That year, Mongol forces attacked and defeated the Kingdom of Hungary, and almost conquered all of it. The Christian forces were severely outmatched at the Battle of Mohi, when Mongol horse-archers outmaneuvered and outfought Christian knights and brought the Kingdom of Hungary to the brink. About a third of the population of Hungary were killed or enslaved. The kingdom survived because the Great Khan of the Mongols had the decency to die that year, forcing the Mongol invaders to retreat in anticipation of a civil war.
I could multiply the examples—say, the Muslim invasion of Spain in the 8th century, the Mongol rule over Russia—but there’s no point. What I’m denouncing here is the malicious ignorance of the “evil white man” interpretation of history. Pink-hued people in Western Europe were like any other people all over the world. Sometimes good, sometimes evil, sometimes superstitious and ignorant—a people, like any other. Nothing more and less than normal human beings.
As for History’s Oppressor, there is no such thing. Our ancestors were victims and oppressors, often at the same time. Such is the nature of the human condition.
