11–20 of 79 posts
The persecution of religious minorities in Europe resulted in a very secular Europe—-because many of them fled—-and a very religious America, because that’s where they all went.
Did they really just put "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…" into the abstract? I am not going to believe that was accidental.
If you don’t understand the meme, it’s an old Monty Python skit[1].
Apparently, there are many other major religious persecutions that are not well-known today. These include the Nguyen Lords persecutions and ethnic cleansing of Chams people that used to live and control more than half of modern Vietnam, for more than a thousand years [1],[2]. Interestingly, both of the Catholic Church of Spain and Nguyens Lords of Vietnam regimes employed Pig or Pork Policy as a control measures to…
Secular ideologies killed about a two hundred million people in last century alone and nearly destroyed all of civilization.
Secular Totalitarians were putting people in gas chambers and gulags by the 10s of millions 'In The Name Of Whatever' (and of course, about 1/2 of those secular ideologies were specifically anti-religious).
If you look at a map of Europe, you can see the 'near term effects' of living under Soviet Authoritarianism quite obviously.
That said, I doubt very much that 'The Spanish Inquisition' has strongly material effects today, rather, those groups who were 'On The Side of Power' were more likely to prosper, than those on 'Other Sides', in all eras, in all cases.
Vienna 'prospered' as the HQ of Hapsburg 'Empire', some other places, would have not been so well off, obviously.
I downloaded the data set but was unable to parse, if anyone has any suggestions please share.
This article makes me think about the internet conspiracy that the spanish inquisition invented Rome, which did not exist
Whoa, I've never heard of that one before. Any off the wall homepage with mid-2000's aesthetics that lays it out for me?
The vast number of commentators seem to be taking the insanity at face value. A lot of comments like 'Wow, that's an interesting perspective' of 'I've never heard that, they don't teach us everything in school'.
While I'm not worried about that meme, it's just shocking to see how easy it is to delude people.
Combined with the Pew polling showing young people don't really get their news from normative sources, it's a bit worrying. Cable news is all Senior Citizens while Gen Z is off on Twitch and TikTok.
The persecution of religious minorities in Europe resulted in a very secular Europe—-because many of them fled—-and a very religious America, because that’s where they all went.
Only a small fraction of American settlers / colonists were fleeing religious persecution, and those mostly came from a few countries in western and northern Europe. There weren't many religious fanatics emigrating in the 1600's from Greece or Poland.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoa, I've never heard of that one before. Any off the wall homepage with mid-2000's aesthetics that lays it out for me?
There are TikTokers with a lot of influence promulgating it from their basements. The vast number of commentators seem to be taking the insanity at face value. A lot of comments like 'Wow, that's an interesting perspective' of 'I've never heard that, they don't teach us everything in school'. While I'm not worried about that meme, it's just shocking to see how easy it is to delude people. Combined with the Pew pollin…
You can see evidence of that sort of thing in every online community, even right here on Hacker News. No community is immune from being weaponized to spread outright nonsense. The question is what you can do about it.
Did they really just put "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…" into the abstract? I am not going to believe that was accidental.
Smoothly done, but obvious to anyone that knows the reference.
How many people understand the converso crisis and its antecedents that threatened the very existence of Spain? The widespread social unrest that resulted that the Inquisition was brought in the resolve? Or that the judicial standards of the Inquisition were ahead of their time?
Persecution and forced conversion were not the objective, and indeed, the very notion of forced conversion is understood as not only evil by Catholics since it violates the conscience of the unbeliever, but it is an impossible feat because conversion can only be done freely. Rather, it was the widespread fear of feigned conversions, to obtain high offices, among the general populace that led to widespread unrest (many conversos had attained high ranking positions in the Spanish government). Whether there was any truth to these fears is another story, but the unrest was such a threat to the stability of Spain, that the Spanish Inquisition was called to resolve this crisis by subjecting the matter to an orderly judicial process. Some may argue that the later ultimatum of conversion or expulsion is a kind of de facto coerced conversion, but that's debatable, especially given the number of Jews who left for places like Poland.
We can criticize the affair (which, despite the investigation of claims of heresy, was actually of a secular character), but the attention it has received though the "Black Legend" as some egregious orgy of evil (committed by the Protestant's favorite punching bag, the Church) out of step with even the common practices of the day is simply wrong. Sadly, these sorts of things can seep into historical accounts and curricula, especially when they agree with prejudices. So I wonder about the substance of an article that uses this episode as a basis for investigating this question.