this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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They're just pointing out the underlying logic behind the argument, and how applying that logic to other situations produces absurd conclusions. At no point did he claim the two were equivalent. In fact the whole point of the comparison is that the settler-colonialism is indisputably bad.
Let me make a similar argument to demonstrate. When I was in school, sometimes certain teachers employed or threatened collective punishment, if one person did something wrong, and no one confessed, then the whole class would be punished. Collective punishment is pretty awful and unjustifiable as a concept, like, the exact same logic behind it has been used to justify a lot of terrible war crimes, it was even used during the Holocaust, and it is explicitly prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Now obviously, whatever punishment my class had to deal with in school is in no way comparable to the Holocaust. I don't think it would be fair of you to get angry at me for "comparing" the two, because my point wasn't that the scope of harm was the same, only that if we can clearly recognize that collective punishment is a horrible war crime when the stakes are high, then we're left wondering why, in this other situation with lower stakes, would it suddenly become valid?
Likewise, we can see in the high-stakes context of settler-colonialism that if someone says, "Yes, it was bad to kick the Palestinians out of their homes, but now that it's done I might as well move in" that logic is obviously not valid. Why then, does the logic suddenly become valid when it's applied to the lower-stakes situation of someone saying, "Yes, it was bad to kill this animal, but since it's already dead, I might as well eat it?"
What part of that reasoning do you take issue with? What part of that "makes vegans look ridiculous" or makes you want to say something rude?