The land isn’t unoccupied. The people who were there before are going to be a constant problem for the settlers because they will always resent being pushed out of their homes.
The settlers have to kill or permanently displace the people who lived in the land they’re trying to settle in order to settle it.
That’s what the process is.
Theyre settlers.
They’re violently displacing and killing the people on the land they want to settle.
Well you can send settlers to an empty desert. You can also send settlers to a sparsely inhabited land and have them get along with the locals. It's not like it's physically impossible.
I see the concept of settler as someone who goes live somewhere where there aren't many people, not a role where conflict is a major part of the thing.
West Bank settlers sent by Israel were already highly questionable, but if they start doing things like this, they're just soldiers with extra steps.
I'm talking about things that are possible. There wasn't any physically unavoidable reason the colonization of North America had to turn into the mess it did.
It was sparsely populated. It would have been possible for Europeans to negotiate in good faith, not kick people out of where they lived, and fairly compensate for any harm caused.
And in fact, while overall the result was overall pretty damn deplorable, you can dig in history and find some examples where it went well, at least for a while.
My point is that it's not that settling is not inherently borderline an act of war. It can easily, and it often does, turn out badly, no one's arguing against that.
But even though that's the case, there are degrees to these things. Between literal genocide and cultural harm, for instance.
Am I arguing that anyone SHOULD settle any area? Not really. But I'm also not willing to put literally every case in the same basket.
Settlers from Europe could never have coexisted with first peoples.
They couldn’t do that because their mode of living, as well as the pressures they were under from their home countries would never have allowed it.
It is literally not possible to say “uhh, George, I know there’s all these great resources you want in the new world, but we decided to instead live as Cherokee. Bye now!” and not face either reprisal or replacement with new settlers who will comply with the demands of their home countries.
Maybe try Antarctica as an example? There are a few people there, and it seems quite possible to settle without conflict (assuming some treaty alterations). Some atoll no one uses all the time? Maybe a lost cause, bloodfart doesn't seem all that interested in the good faith distinction you are pointing out.
I see your point though; the distinction, to me, motivates using less neutrally connoted wording. Something like "invaders" or "raiders". Nice and clear to everyone.
B seems rather intent on making sure the neutral word is seen as a morally charged one. Seems like making one hard project into two projects and thus just increasing the difficulty to me.
Ah thanks for clarifying that. I wasn’t aware that Joseph smiths followers integrated into Mexico and that Israeli settlers are really just Palestinians.
They followed those nations norms and laws around immigration, right?
You said Israeli settlers are just immigrants and implied that Israel’s unwillingness to punish its immigrants is unique.
In my reply I compared Israeli settlers and American Mormon settlers who both cannot be called immigrants because they’re not moving into and integrating into an existing nation, but pushing that nations people out in order to create a new nation or expand an existing one.
Settlement and immigration are wildly different things.