> Considering the fact that they were an aggressive, conquering empire that committed institutional mass murder, yes, they’re roughly equivalent to the Nazis. Why wouldn’t they be?

So could we say the Spanish were also equivalent to the nazis? Are they equivalent to the nazis today? And did anyone need to eradicate Spanish culture for this change to take place? What about in Britain or the Netherlands?

> It demonstrates that the culture wasn’t completely eradicated

No, it doesn't. Looking closer to home I can tell you that the Irish language is still spoken despite centuries of measures taken to eradicate it. What no longer exists, however, is the culture that was present prior to the arrival of the the Christians and the British. We literally don't know their beliefs, they were perverted and silenced by those who wrote the histories and set the norms going forwards. At best we have an image.

Contrast this to Japan or Germany where our understanding goes back much further. Japan has living traditions older than the furthest date back where we can confidently talk about the practice and belief of the Irish. Neither Japan nor Germany underwent the same level of cultural eradication.

> Besides, what makes you think self-determination is so important? That’s just your cultural value that you’re trying to impose! That’s the deeper point I was making that you’ve completely glossed over.

No, quite the contrary. The people you are talking about: where do they live today? Who governs the land they live on? By what laws do they live? Are those laws more rooted in Roman legal structures or Aztec ones? The imposition of a Westphalian style state on them is exactly what I see as evidence of their loss of cultural power. The words I have to describe this are admittedly rooted in European thinking and I wish I had alternatives myself.

> Food, clothing, popular sports, etc. are all aspects of culture, and many of them are becoming globally homogenized, which represents the eradication of culture

I'm still not sure what you're saying. I agree with you here and I think it's tragic. Cultural imperialism never ended and Europe and her descendants still haven't learned to listen to others.

> explicitly trying to propagate, like “human rights” or “feminism”.

Almost every part of the world has taken on the European model of statehood. These are almost all signed up as members of the United Nations, which is again rooted in Westphalian thinking. As part of this they make commitments to human rights and to feminist actions. These have created serious change on the ground in many places.

I also want to say that it shows a bias to consider these western ideas. Many movements around the world do and have existed in support of personal freedoms and against the continued oppression. And indeed the west is not at all unified in these matters and still has far to go.

> When push comes to shove, almost nobody actually believes it.

How can you say this when there is ample evidence against it? Even in Ukraine there are conscientious objectors choosing not to fight. Again they might not be "pure" enough for you but the idea that pacifism is fringe or that you can speak better to their true belief than they can is ludicrous.

> No, quite the contrary. The people you are talking about: where do they live today? Who governs the land they live on? By what laws do they live? Are those laws more rooted in Roman legal structures or Aztec ones? The imposition of a Westphalian style state on them is exactly what I see as evidence of their loss of cultural power.

Why does that matter to you? Why don’t you simply believe, as most cultures throughout history effectively believed, that might makes right and that the ability to conquer equals the right to govern? You hold a very specific set of cultural values that you arrogantly imagine to hold the status of “universal human rights” which are fundamentally rooted in Christian humanism.

> How can you say this when there is ample evidence against it? Even in Ukraine there are conscientious objectors choosing not to fight.

I never claimed that genuine pacifists didn’t exist, only that they are a fringe, which is true.

I take it you agreed with everything else I said about language etc?

> Why does that matter to you?

I grew up in a post-colonial society and know how painful it can be. I believe that there are structures in place in the society I live in that perpetuate systemic disadvantage to the cultures of others, and that they effectively do so in my name. I am aghast at the behaviour of Europe in the past and feel a sense of responsibility to understand and fight against modern day imperialism.

> You hold a very specific set of cultural values that you arrogantly imagine to hold the status of “universal human rights” which are fundamentally rooted in Christian humanism.

I would ask you not to call me arrogant. I explained the short comings of my language. I disagree with Westphalian defaultism.

> Why don’t you simply believe, as most cultures throughout history effectively believed, that might makes right and that the ability to conquer equals the right to govern?

Why would I? I have my own set of beliefs and my own cultural background. I don't believe the Spanish were right then because they had more might. I don't believe the Nazis were more right than the people they eradicated. I believe the modern Mexican state does inherent violence to the expression of the cultures that came before it.

Do you? It seems you're arguing that the cultures that were there weren't eradicated at all and still exists happily, while also telling me to accept that they didn't have enough might to be right and that's why they had to go.

> I never claimed that genuine pacifists didn’t exist, only that they are a fringe

We might have different definitions of "fringe" then. But the original reason why I commented to you was to take issue with your claim that "everyone agrees that certain cultures deserve to be eradicated."

> I take it you agreed with everything else I said about language etc?

Not at all; I just didn't feel like repeating myself.

> I would ask you not to call me arrogant.

I apologize. I think the better term might be "ethnocentric", in the sense that you are using your own culture as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, in this case that of colonial Spain. Which isn't necessarily a problem--most of us do the same thing--but it's good to be self-aware about it and to understand that this inevitably leads to conflict between cultures, of exactly the type that we've been discussing. I'm just trying to get you to back up far enough to see that. More about this later.

> It seems you're arguing that the cultures that were there weren't eradicated at all and still exists happily

As I've been saying, what actually happened is a matter of degree that doesn't quite fit the term "eradication". If you took a late 19th century Prussian and showed them modern day Germany, they would probably lament that their Germany no longer exists. You would probably get a similar answer from a Meiji-era Japanese. And I think we agree you'd definitely get the same answer from a 16th century Mexica. Some version of all three cultures exist today, but all three cultures were bloodily dominated by a foreign conqueror with fundamentally incompatible values and then forcibly reshaped to fit those values. It's harder to see the parallels because you and I are closer to the values of 1940's America than 16th century Spain, but in principle it's the exact same thing.

> while also telling me to accept that they didn't have enough might to be right and that's why they had to go.

Not at all. I'm trying to take things up a level of abstraction and point out that your rejection of "might-makes-right" is, in and of itself, an expression of your own cultural values.

Let me see if I can illustrate this another way, with an anecdote from the British rule of India. In some parts of India, there was a religious custom, "sati", in which a widow would be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. The British found this horrifying. Charles James Napier was one of the British governors in India, and he enforced the British policy of prohibiting sati. When the priests complained to him that sati was simply part of their religious customs and that their customs should be respected, Napier replied, "Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

At some point, this sort of thing inevitably happens whenever two cultures are incompatible enough. Let me try and pull in the last piece now.

> But the original reason why I commented to you was to take issue with your claim that "everyone agrees that certain cultures deserve to be eradicated."

If you'll give me enough leeway not to take the word "everyone" completely literally, I think my claim is pretty defensible. For instance, virtually everyone did seem to agree that ISIS needed to be eradicated. There are some principled pacifists who would have preferred to leave ISIS alone, but I think it's perfectly fair to consider those people a fringe, especially if they, themselves, were directly being attacked by ISIS--not just to the degree of random acts of terrorism but in the way ISIS was violently invading parts of the Middle East in their heyday.

Was ISIS a "culture", or just a radicalized mass movement of murderous fanatics? They considered themselves a caliphate. I'm sure the Aztec priests who hauled unwilling victims to the top of a pyramid and cut out their still-beating hearts on a regular basis also had a certain self-regard, just as I think the Spanish probably considered them a bunch of murderous fanatics. And look, I agree that the Spanish in total did a lot of terrible things in Mexico, but I don't think eradicating a religion that is centered around hauling unwilling victims up a pyramid and cutting out their still-beating hearts was a bad idea, just as I don't think it was bad for the British Empire to prohibit sati or to (eventually) stop the slave trade, even though the slave trade was a long-standing practice of many west African cultures. That's not the same as endorsing everything they ever did, any more than I endorse everything the Allies did in the Second World War.

My point here is that there are always going to be limits to cultural relativism, and that almost every culture in the world is eventually going to try and reshape other cultures to be more compatible. And when it comes to my personal preferences, I think I am actually much more on the "just leave other cultures alone" side than most people. But there's always going to be some limit to that, and even the decision of where that boundary lies is just going to depend on your culture. There's no neutral middle ground outside of anyone's cultural values here.