Banned by the cowardly tribalist anal retentives at r/AskHistorians

Actually, that would be r/AskPseudoHistorians, since the reason for my ban is that one cannot question empirically unsubstantiable claims of genocide, i.e., Kirkpatrick Sale type claims that American Indians were genocided.

Here's the ban message:

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in /r/AskHistorians because your comment violates this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

Note from the moderators: The definition of genocide does not require intent to eradicate a people completely. The correct definition is intent to harm a people whole or in part. European settlers engaged in indigenous genocide. Minimizing/denying it is unacceptable on AskHistorians.

And here's my response.

No, you don't really want to chat, because you permabanned me. Second, I know that (see Gaza) complete eradication doesn't have to be intended. Third, that said, per your comment and the sub's definition, you don't really want discussion about this issue in general. Fourth, from that, I've been banned by tribalists besides you before. Fifth, it's cowardly mixed with tribalism to downvote me for a comment related to an archived post where I can neither comment nor downvote back in the first place. SIxth and related, of course, a hidden list of mods only doubles down on the perception of cowardice.

On the second and third response points, it's not just me. Plenty of liberal academic historians, and even some leftists, reject this claim. This isn't just wingnuttery. AND, if these are actual academic historians?

THEY KNOW THAT. Tribalist pseudohistorical non-skeptical leftists. The starting point is what percentage of American Indians were killed in "zones" within a "reasonable" distance of European contact, and how and why. The percentage is certainly not Kirkpatrick Sale's 90-plus percent.

Second point is whether intent involved deadly intent. Many European actions could indeed be called "ethnic cleansing" but fall short of genocide.

Things like this would be discussed by actual historians, and per this Oxford piece, actually are. (Unfortunately, that site is nowhere near perfect, with pretendian (he IS!) Ward Churchill leading off the bibliography. Vine Deloria's son is second. Tying to this issue, sadly, even after being exposed as a pretendian, and not just by vengeance-seeking wingnuts, a place like Mother Jones continued to platform him. (Cheyenne-Muscogee Suzan Harjo has been a leader in exposing the likes of Churchill, including Churchill himself.) Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a leading pusher of the genocide thesis today, is also a pretendian, though she's tried to elide away her past claims then backpedaled from them more fully. Actually she's only rejected her Cherokee claims, which she peddled after peddling her Cheyenne claims. See Pretendians website. Also note that besides Churchill and Dunbar-Ortiz, it includes other academics like Elizabeth Hoover. In fact, I counted 13 current or former academics among 27 listed people. Remember, these are only those who have been formally identified as such.

The one other thing, off the top of my head, is are these people librulz who are wagon-circling tribalists, or non-skeptical leftists?

Back to the issue. Could individual actions be considered genocide? Absolutely!  Anglo America's treatment of Gold rush and later California Indians definitely is, in my book.

In many cases, we have ethnic cleansing. That's quite serious, too. But, it's not genocide.

The old post I was criticizing? The mod identifies as Nez Perce and Yakama, so I'm not allowed to criticize. I guess I can't criticize Bari Weiss for thinking the Holocaust justifies everything. I guess, more to the point, that I can't also point out that Indian slavery was sometimes chattel slavery, that the potlatch culture involved human sacrifice and other things. Oops, I guess I did. (Shockingly, that Reddit admitted it, but without any moderators weighing in.)

That gets back to the first point above. We have numbers for the Holocaust. We have numbers for Gaza today. We have nothing better than a broad range of guesses for pre-Columbian Contact American Indian numbers. And, many websites that say 90 percent or more of American Indians were killed go with the passive "It is estimated" and no citation of sources.

Related are stories about how so many American Indians were killed that it contributed to the Little Ice Age. Even if the 56 million in approximately 120 years is correct? That's 56 percent of a pre-Contact 100 million, if we take that number as a population guess at contact that's reasonable. It's not 90 percent. And, noting that the definition of genocide doesn't include full extermination, there's other issues. Above all, that's that there was intent behind all of this.

We have other issues. Those are issues like "likely" in the first paragraph and "may" in the second.

We also have lies on related issues.

First, in today's US, Sir Jeffrey Amherst's failed attempt to spread smallpox by blankets is about the ONLY attempt to deliberately spread disease, lies (they are) of people like Ward Churchill aside.

Second, since we don't have really good numbers of pre-Contact American Indians either in the US, or the "New World" as a whole, percentages of death are a mug's game, too. Pre-Contact Western Hemisphere population has been estimated by sound academics at 8-15M on the low end to more than 100M on the high end. In the US, it's been from less than 2M to more than 15M. See this paper, but also note it's problematic for calling this a "holocaust." The climate change paper above claims 60 million, and it has to claim that many, or almost that many, to avoid a "genocide" that results in negative population.

And, if we're seriously going to claim that disease spread is de facto genocidal, then why aren't the Mongols called out for genocide via plague? Yes, it's snarky. And, it's also serious.

As for the de rigueur threat of banning from Reddit if I try to circumvent it? This:

Otherwise, on the de rigueur "don't attempt to circumvent this ban" note? I've already called you people anal-retentives on my own feed. I wouldn't want back here, especially if tribalist pseud-historians are allowed to pontificate.

Such notes in general are some mix of condescending and snooty.

And pretentious. That second comment got a response: 

I'm not sure if you want us to respond to your list of points, or if you just want to vent your spleen at us, but either way, you can consider this matter closed.

To which I replied:

Thanks for giving me yet more material to write about is my response. Per my second paragraph above, why would I think you would reopen it, and throwing in presumptuousness on your side, why would you think I cared? Even before this, I'd realized this sub wasn't all that.

There you go.

I had already "threatened," as with r/BiblicalAcademic, to create a new sub, not "public" but not fully "private," either, but rather the third category on Reddit, and this probably did it!

Or, back to the OP at Reddit? Per the above and per my Bari Weiss and Gaza? Should we accept all Indigenous "science" (yes, scare quotes) as actual science? No, we should test it. Unfortunately, the likes of High Country News went, yes, "woke" in a wrongful way on this issue during COVID.

Back to the OP at Reddit further.