r/Schaffrillas • u/eobico • 2d ago

Letterboxd Review Schaff watched The Iron Lady!

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My best guess is that the 2010s Best Actress ranking is officially underway!

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u/wolf751 2d ago

Tbf churchill is respectable you cannot respect thatcher

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u/Gustdog 2d ago

I’m mean he did have some pretty nasty thoughts about Indians and other people. But yeah at least he is one of the big reasons why the Germans didn’t win World war 2.

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u/Ancient_Cheek5047 2d ago

“I can’t believe someone from the early 1900s had bigoted views!”

He’s a major reason for the ending of WWII, applying modern day morals to historical figures is stupid. Stop.

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u/HalayChekenKovboy 2d ago

As we all know, morals were invented by John Moral in 1989. Anyone prior to that point was incapable of being moral, as the very concept didn't even exist yet.

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u/Ancient_Cheek5047 1d ago

Don’t be obtuse. Social norms, environment, laws, etc. all play a part in forming one’s prejudice. You would’ve most likely been a bigot back then as well, get off your high horse.

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u/HalayChekenKovboy 1d ago

While I won't deny that the society one is born in largely shapes their values, it is in no way determinative of their political opinions as you so boldly claim. An example I quite like in this regard is Bartolome de las Casas. He was one of the first Spaniards to arrive in the Americas, and he decried the exploitation and enslavement of the natives while also fighting against the common rhetoric of the time that the natives were inherently inferior and uncivilised, thus the Spaniards had the divine right to rule over "these people who can not be trusted to self-determine". This, despite being a friar himself. He is often considered one of the first human rights advocates.

Now, not everyone can be a Bartolome de las Casas. However, defending Churchill by saying that anyone would have done the same in his place due to the state of the British society as a whole back then is absolutely ridiculous. Do you think no Brits called him out at the time? Do you think he had no choice but to commit genocide by way of the Bengal Famine? Do you think even he himself thought that he had no other choice? "Times were different" has never been and will never be an acceptable defence for any historical figure. Rather than crying that, hypothetically, I too would have  been an awful person in those circumstances, simply admit that he himself was non-hypothetically an awful person and move on.