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by pbhjpbhj 2883 days ago
I'm not sure it really works to consider the Irish, my own recent ancestors, as ethnically differentiated from the British. The Tudors were seemingly descended from Irish Scots who conquered Gwynedd in the first millennium CE, for example. But I that doesn't matter, it's what the controlling forces at the time thought.

I'm not well versed in the Potato Famine but I understood it was primarily about rich landlords and wealthy Britons caring naught for any poor people. Confounded with "Catholic vs Protestant" tribalism.

Though Trevelyan appeared to believe strictly in hands-off pure Capitalism and didn't seemingly worry about religious affiliation ("Protestant and Catholic will freely fall and the land will be for the survivors.") which was a proxy for being "English" vs Irish.

We've switched to a different sort of evil perpetrated for different reasons on different people in a different time; the natural conclusion is that you erred in your initial claim and so are trying to bolster your conclusion with other information?

If you want to say British controlling powers have been involved in genocides, motivated at least in part by racial or xenophobic hate, then you'll get no opposition from me. But 'multiple generations coordinating to create conditions in which a famine can kill' as a mode of ethnic cleansing? I'm not seeing it in the argument you're making.