The Tether King (Kunta)

Genocide was very common throughout human history. So why did Germany ever have to pay reparations to Jewish victims of the Holocaust? Why should Germany be held accountable for something that had been practiced by so many civilizations before it? After all, at the beginning of that same 20th century, Germany had already committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia decades before the Holocaust. Massacres, ethnic persecution, enslavement and extermination were hardly new inventions of the Nazis. So why single out Germany? Why demand accountability for something that was common at the time? War was equally common in the 19th and 20th centuries. So why was Germany and Japan forced to pay reparations after the World War? Why should any country compensate another for the consequences of war when human beings have been fighting wars since the beginning of civilization? Does this reasoning sound intellectually bankrupt to you? Good. Because this is precisely the reasoning we are subjected to whenever we raise the issue reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. Suddenly, we are reminded that slavery was common at the time, that Europeans were not the only people who practiced it. Can anyone name another system of enslavement besides the transatlantic slave trade that forcibly uprooted millions of people, transported them across oceans and left generations of their descendants permanently displaced from their ancestral homelands? If so, let us demand reparations for its victims too! For centuries, European nations codified slavery into their laws, protected it through state institutions and made human beings legally recognized property. France’s infamous Code Noir, introduced in 1685, legally classified enslaved Africans as movable property, made slavery hereditary and authorized brutal punishments, including mutilation. It was only in 2026 ( yes this very year) that France’s Parliament voted to formally repeal this legislation. We are talking about state-sponsored crimes, written into law and enforced for centuries. Why should the states responsible be exempt from accountability? If your argument against reparations is that everybody was doing it, then you are not offering a historical defense. You are simply suggesting that atrocities should become exempt from accountability once enough people have participated in them.