Being born in 1985, I have no clue of what Europe was like before WW2.
Sure, the world was made up of colonial empires, and it was a Eurocentric world, and the British Empire was the most dominant.
Our ancestors were the perpetrators and the third world was the victims, because they were victimized by European colonizers and imperialists.
But now, after 80 years or so, Europeans have become the victims.
We are attacked for being European. And for expressing the wish to preserve our national identity.
And all the other people of the world are the perpetrators. Because they would like to impose their culture on us Europeans.
Perpetrators can become victims very easily.
Do you know what makes the European Union so strong? Do you know what makes us so united?
The awareness of being the victims of the outside world. Of billions of people who still hate us and would like to destroy us, by imposing their lifestyle, their culture, their way of thinking, their religions on us.
I think there's an ebb and flow of history which has to be recognized, but we also need to learn from our mistakes.
I would suggest a leading factor which contributed to colonialism in the first place was because Europe itself was also under attack from conquerors, such as in Spain, as well as in the last days of the Byzantine Empire when southeastern Europe was open to conquest. I've heard it suggested that if the Ottoman Turks had not raised the tax on pepper, then European colonialism and imperialism never would have happened. Every event has a cause and effect. That doesn't justify the conquests, greed, slavery, racism, capitalism, murder, and other such atrocities associated with colonialism and imperialism, and that has also led to a great deal of resentment against Europe and America.
But when there are atrocities, it's not due to a race, ethnicity, or religion. It's due to a certain malignant mindset which appeals to the baser parts of human nature. That's the basic problem at hand: Human nature. I recall the movie
Judgment At Nuremberg in which Spencer Tracy's closing speech makes some interesting points:
If he and the other defendants were all depraved perverts - if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs - these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How *easily* that can happen! There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: *survival as what*? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. *It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult!* Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what *we* stand for: *justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!*
Under the tenets of natural law, what enlightened humans call "atrocities" would have no more moral significance than a pack of wolves feeding on their prey. If we continue to rely on "human nature" to be the basis of civilized society, then it won't ever be that civilized. We have to restrain ourselves and our nature, as well as eschew morally repugnant ideologies which justify themselves through Social Darwinism. And yes, the left needs to clean up their act in that area, too.
