That’s the paradox of the man and probably the reason personal notes will indubitably be checked before being published: for someone who fought so hard against Nazism, he was strangely comfortable with casual racism and silent about the atrocities of the Algerian war.
Churchill is similar and possibly more familiar to the English-speaking public: presented as a lion against Hitler, but don’t dig too much towards what he did with Irish republicans or around India’s independence.
I don’t think FDR was that much different if you read what he privately wrote about Jewish immigrants to the US in the 1940s or the internment camps of Japanese-Americans.
All three are the modern keystones of human-rights-defending countries, but the second best-known thing about them is how much effort they put into planning openly racist policies, up to genocides. You can read Hannah Arendt and re-read after accounts on what happened during the Battle of Algiers, the Bengal Famine, or Manzanar, and it hits differently the second time.
Yep, I agree with all of this. It's pretty jarring to see the disconnect between one's own experience coming from these post-colonial countries with family members who lived through these conflicts, and the "public" attitudes and collective recollection within these centers of power and the discrepancy with their own self-perception as proponents of "liberal values" and "human rights".
> That’s the paradox of the man and probably the reason personal notes will indubitably be checked before being published: for someone who fought so hard against Nazism, he was strangely comfortable with casual racism and silent about the atrocities of the Algerian war
That's why it's hard to judge past personalities with our modern standards. Go read what Jules Ferry or Victor Hugo said about colonies, they both were very engaged and vocal about human/civil rights yet they said the most insanely racist things, I don't think any known public figure alive today said anything remotely as racist as them.
>That's why it's hard to judge past personalities with our modern standards
This couldn't be more naive, you understand that these are not some default cultural norm of the time, shared by all, and we today are simply more empathetic and enlightened than them with each passing decade? These attitudes are a direct reflection of the political sphere and centers of power in which those originating these ideas are embedded within.
People knew racism and colonialism was wrong during WW2. They knew it long before then.
You can take any time and place in history, and if you look you will find someone opposed to colonialism, exploitation, and prejudice, for as long as those concepts have existed. Just maybe not in the military leadership, or political class, since their positions in society constrain the range of beliefs they would've held in order to enter such positions in the first place.
Churchill is similar and possibly more familiar to the English-speaking public: presented as a lion against Hitler, but don’t dig too much towards what he did with Irish republicans or around India’s independence.
I don’t think FDR was that much different if you read what he privately wrote about Jewish immigrants to the US in the 1940s or the internment camps of Japanese-Americans.
All three are the modern keystones of human-rights-defending countries, but the second best-known thing about them is how much effort they put into planning openly racist policies, up to genocides. You can read Hannah Arendt and re-read after accounts on what happened during the Battle of Algiers, the Bengal Famine, or Manzanar, and it hits differently the second time.