[jernfrost]

I agree, I don't think Europeans have been worse than others would have been, we simply had the means to do it. However I find it problematic that so much of the brutality gets swept under the rug.

E.g. it is typical of political propaganda how Stalins starvation of millions of Ukrainians is used to disparage socialism. However it is far less known that Britain starved quite a lot more people in India, often in the name of capitalism. Food was shipped out at gunpoint to foreign markets while people starved to death on the grounds that markets should not be disrupted.

There is also the belittling of other people, through ignorance of our own past. E.g. the Chinese with Mao is presented as somehow more barbaric and brutal. The US presents itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy despite slaughtering the native population and enslaving millions of blacks.

I don't think westerners are inherently worse than anybody else. I just dislike the smugness in particular by great powers such as the Britain and the US, who present themselves as these big civilizing forces.