[tenpies]

I always wonder, if there had never been a trans-Atlantic slave trade, would modern opinion in the West be that slavery is perfectly fine?

After all, the West still doesn't really care about slavery - there's more slaves today than ever in history. They also do not care about benefitting from slave labour or they would boycott the top countries in the Global Slavery Index: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc... Slavery continues to be a thriving industry in Africa and the Middle East for example, and for the most part concern about this only comes from a few Western NGOs.

It largely seems to be a matter that at some point became politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather than an actual concern. I wonder if it will ever stop being in political vogue.

[colpabar]

>It largely seems to be a matter that at some point became politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather than an actual concern.

It's diabolical. The ruling class, who benefitted the most from slavery, have figured out how to use it to keep people from uniting against them. According to them, it was white people who enslaved black people, not rich people who enslaved poor people, and we should all be upset the former and never think about the latter.

[wyager]

The global elimination of slavery, to whatever incomplete extent that happened, was primarily a British and Christian moral crusade. Christian morality plus the feasibility of replacing slavery with industrialization is what made the global reduction of slavery possible. I say this as a non-Christian. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say the West “doesn’t really care” about slavery.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

What does any of this have to do with the subject at hand?

[DiggyJohnson]

Not OP, but the transatlantic slave trade is materially related to the history of Haiti, which is the topic at hand.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

But he's not talking about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, he's talking about the bad-faith right-wing talking point of "There are slaves all around the world today!!!" None of the groups that OP professes to care about are part of the transatlantic slave trade.