It’s no coincidence, for instance, that New York City was among the most pro-Southern cities in the North during the Civil War; slavery was key to its economic success. Find out more. And in an August obituary of civil rights leader Julian Bond, the Times called his great-grandmother Jane Bond “the slave mistress of a Kentucky farmer”—a term that accords far too much agency to Bond’s ancestor and too little blame to the “farmer” who enslaved her. He didn't mention Mr Gates by name but in the US, Roger Stone, a former adviser to Donald Trump, said Bill Gates and others were using the virus for "microchipping people so we can tell 'whether you've been tested'.". : It depends on how you parse the timeline. Whether or not Anthony Johnson was the first American slaveholder, he was certainly not the last black person to own slaves. The ship Desire brought a cargo of Africans from Barbados to Boston in 1634; these people were sold as slaves. You can cancel anytime. In a June column on the legacy of Robert E. Lee that was otherwise largely critical of the Confederate general, New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks wrote that, though Lee owned slaves, he didn’t like owning slaves—a biographical detail whose inclusion seemed to imply that Lee’s ambivalence somehow made his slaveholding less objectionable. Continental drift was a revolutionary scientific theory developed in the years 1908-1912 by Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), a German meteorologist, climatologist, and geophysicist, that put forth the hypothesis that the continents had all originally been a part of one enormous landmass or supercontinent about 240 million years ago before breaking apart and drifting to their current locations. new environments in many ways. Efforts to free the miners, who were stuck underground for 14 days, took a dramatic turn on Sunday. Indentured servitude was difficult, deadly work, and many indentured servants died before their terms were over. Those who survived their terms received their freedom. However, there is no scientific evidence to support this theory, and the trial described in the Ahmedabad Mirror does not mention testing cow dung as a vaccine or prophylactic treatment. Slavery Myths Debunked The Irish were slaves too; slaves had it better than Northern factory workers; black people fought for the Confederacy; and other lies, half-truths, and irrelevancies. It turns out that Young and the organisation that held the conference where he made his claims have a history of spreading unfounded conspiracy theories. “Our new government is founded upon … the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition,” said Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens in his “Cornerstone Speech.” “This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”. But, as historian Marcus Rediker writes, the “ancient and widely accepted institution” of enslavement in Africa was exacerbated by the European presence. Believers of the oft-debunked Pizzagate theory falsely alleged that Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, and her aides were involved with a child-sex-trafficking ring at a pizza restaurant in Washington called Comet Ping Pong. It’s also true that slavery was based in the American South; that it formed the basis of Southern society; that white Southerners were its most fervent defenders; and that those Southerners would eventually fight a war to preserve and expand the institution. However, the technology is not a microchip and is more like an invisible tattoo. There were no photographers in 17th-century Virginia.). Nor does it change the fact that this institution left a profound legacy for the descendants of enslaved Africans, who even after emancipation were subject to almost a century of violence, disenfranchisement, and pervasive oppression, with social, economic, and cultural effects that persist to the present. The paper that helped the homeless. Rudy Giuliani’s New Theory on Debunked Georgia Video: They Were Handing Out Dope Rachel Olding 12/10/2020. “Slaves were better off than some poor people working in Northern or English factories. To elide this is to diminish the realities of chattel slavery, which—perhaps—is one reason the most vocal purveyors of the myth are neo-Confederate and white supremacist groups. The cow is considered sacred in Hinduism and some Hindu groups have claimed that drinking cow urine could boost immunity against the virus - a claim we've looked at before. But the two types of historical guilt aren’t mutually exclusive. The institution was protected in the Confederate constitution. Video, Vaccinated people may spread Covid, warns Van-Tam, A man who invited the world over for dinner, Star Wars supports host Arielle after racist abuse, Minister who promoted 'Covid syrup' tests positive, PM talks to Biden in first call since inauguration, many different false rumours about vaccines. In Arkansas, just 20 percent of families owned slaves; in South Carolina, it was 46 percent; in Mississippi, it was 49 percent. .css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link{color:inherit;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited{color:#696969;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link:hover,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited:hover,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link:focus,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited:focus{color:#B80000;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link::after,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited::after{content:'';position:absolute;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;left:0;z-index:2;}Eleven pulled out alive in China mine rescue. The most common theory about Bigfoot is that he is some kind of undiscovered species of primate, ape-like but more intelligent and more evolved than any we currently know of. Is it true? White adults (and children) labored in dangerous environments and were often hungry. Advertising. GGlove84 on July 07, 2017: I'm sorry but the evidence is there. More or Less is on ... the idea that there's a typical length of time for which people can pay attention to even that one task has also been debunked. A recent post on a UK-based Twitter account said: "Bill Gates admits the vaccine will no doubt kill 700,000 people" and links to a video featuring right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. Servants could even petition for early release due to mistreatment, and colonial lawmakers established different, often lesser, punishments for disobedient servants compared to disobedient slaves. Even if an enslaved person in the United States landed in a relatively “good” position—owned by a slaveholder who was inclined to feed workers well and be lenient in punishment—he was always subject to sale, which could happen because of death, debt, arguments in the family, or whim. “You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers,” declared Howell Cobb, president of the Provisional Confederate State Congress that drafted the Confederate States of America constitution. It is true that whichever pharmaceutical company develops a vaccine could potentially profit from the success, but the idea that this potential profit would be a motive to invent a pandemic is far-fetched. (N.B. A .css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link{color:#3F3F42;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited{color:#696969;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited{font-weight:700;border-bottom:1px solid #BABABA;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:focus,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:focus{border-bottom-color:currentcolor;border-bottom-width:2px;color:#B80000;}@supports (text-underline-offset:0.25em){.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited{border-bottom:none;-webkit-text-decoration:underline #BABABA;text-decoration:underline #BABABA;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-skip-ink:none;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;text-underline-offset:0.25em;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:focus,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:focus{-webkit-text-decoration-color:currentcolor;text-decoration-color:currentcolor;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:2px;text-decoration-thickness:2px;color:#B80000;}}new YouGov poll of 1,640 people suggests that 28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans. Is it true? From the origins of the virus to how it transmits, an Australian health security expert and an immunology professor address some of the conspiracy theories and myths being shared about COVID-19. He argues that the epidemic "will continue to be totally made-up" until there is a vaccine that "will bring money and corruption into the already full pockets of some". By Jack Goodman and Flora Carmichael BBC Reality Check .css-1snjdh1-IconContainer{display:none;height:0.875em;width:0.875em;vertical-align:-0.0625em;margin-right:0.25em;}Long watch: Is this Russian cult leader a fraud? Skin color. And you'll never see this message again. And even this measure was divisive: Opponents attacked it as a betrayal of the Confederacy’s aim and purpose. He concludes: "This is a sensational hoax, but a very successful one.". The theory is that if enough people are naturally exposed to the virus, the population could build up enough immunity to resist continued spread among the "herd" of people. 3. View comments () Post a comment. Which raises a question: Where did the myth of Irish slavery come from? Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. Slate relies on advertising to support our journalism. Since very few laws regulated slaveholders’ treatment of enslaved people, there would be no guarantee that the next place the enslaved person landed would be equally comfortable—and the enslaved had limited opportunity, short of running away or resisting, to control the situation. The article makes reference to a study, funded by The Gates Foundation, into a technology that could store someone's vaccine records in a special ink administered at the same time as an injection. Photo courtesy the National Archives/Getty Images. A Facebook meme announcing a "wonder drug to battle corona" and a "cow-dung vaccine" has been shared widely on Facebook in India. Blandina on November 07, 2017: I really like your article, I wish I could use this for a presentation of these theory's , I would like to use you as a source , however there's not enough information about the author. Slavery was at the foundation of economic and social relations, and slave-ownership was aspirational—a symbol of wealth and prosperity. A certain resistance to discussion about the toll of American slavery isn’t confined to the least savory corners of the Internet. Some of the posts, including one shared more than 1,000 times, link to a front-page story from the Ahmedabad Mirror, which reports that a trial of medicine derived from cow's milk, butter, ghee, dung and urine is under way. Someone shared it with our team via WhatsApp, where it is also circulating widely. Battling the 'homosexual agenda,' the hard-line religious right has made a series of incendiary claims. A small number of black soldiers were trained, but there’s no evidence they saw action. Bottom line: Even if many Irish immigrants faced discrimination and hard lives on these shores, it doesn’t change the fact that American slavery—hereditary and race-based—was a massive institution that shaped and defined the political economy of colonial America, and later, the United States. Conspiracy theories about Bill Gates have reached the Italian Parliament, where an independent MP called for Bill Gates to be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. We've found no evidence to support these claims. Typically, this exposure happens via a vaccine, which helps people develop resistance to a virus without getting sick. Even if Africans (or Arabs, or Jews) colluded in the slave trade, should white Americans be entitled to do whatever they pleased with the people who were unlucky enough to fall victim? By joining Slate Plus you support our work and get exclusive content. Deliberate experimentation has a lot in common with deliberate practice – the goal is to get better by developing crucial skills – but the means is different. During the AIDS epidemic, he said, conspiracies arose that HIV came from contaminated polio vaccination in Africa. But indentured servitude was temporary, with a beginning and an end. Is it true? One of his salvos: “Slavery was common throughout Africa, with entire tribes becoming enslaved after losing battles. We don't still whine about it. Some researchers refer to it as the North American Great Ape, though the species is, of course, theoretical. He said: "We don't have any significant evidence or study to quote that these have any efficacy against Covid-19. By Jack Goodman and Flora CarmichaelBBC Reality Check. Eleven pulled out alive in China mine rescue, Long watch: Is this Russian cult leader a fraud? While it makes some intuitive sense that a person would be rationally motivated to take care of his or her “property,” as the Economist’s reviewer suggested, historians have found that American slaveholders were apt to provide minimum levels of food and shelter for enslaved people. As historians Ed Baptist and Sven Beckert show in their respective books, American slavery was an economic engine for the global economy. Bottom line: This is another case of the “two wrongs” fallacy. Both MTN and Vodacom have also debunked the theories. How the pandemic has changed the world economy, The paper that helped the homeless. We move forward...not backward. We could compare levels of mistreatment of Northern factory workers and Southern enslaved laborers and find that each group lived with hunger and injury; both findings are dismaying. Above all, indentured servitude wasn’t hereditary. Did blacks serve in the Confederacy? VideoLong watch: Is this Russian cult leader a fraud? Here is a list of our 724 fact-checks in English so far, starting with the most recent: (AFP Graphics) 724. “It is a very sad aspect of African-American history that slavery sometimes could be a colorblind affair,” writes Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the Root, in a fascinating piece about the history of black slaveholders in the United States. We’ll get to that in a minute. One popular Italian video, which has been viewed more than 700,000 times on Facebook, has a caption claiming that the pandemic has been "invented". Politifact has debunked that claim, saying in 2015 that the theory started with Clinton supporters in 2008, not the candidate herself. Several experts told me the theory that the virus was meant to be a bioweapon doesn’t make sense, either. Anthony Johnson, the black ex–indentured servant whose bio opened the first episode of our podcast, did sue to hold John Casor for life in 1653, and the resulting civil court decision remanding Casor to Johnson’s ownership was (as historian R. Halliburton Jr. writes) “one of the first known legal sanctions of slavery” in the colonies. There is a strong anti-vaccination movement in Italy. While working on our Slate Academy podcast, The History of American Slavery, we encountered many types of slavery denial—frequently disguised as historical correctives and advanced by those who want to change (or end) conversation about the deep impact of slavery on American history. In the UK, the claim led to harassment of telecoms engineers and vandalisation of mobile phone infrastructure. You’ve run out of free articles. Long watch: Is this Russian cult leader a fraud? Typically, this fact is used to suggest that the Civil War was not about slavery. : The image in the meme above isn’t of Anthony Johnson. : According to the 1860 census, taken just before the Civil War, more than 32 percent of white families in the soon-to-be Confederate states owned slaves. The narrator of the clip is Stefano Montanari, an Italian researcher with a degree in pharmacology, who claims the end goal is to get everyone vaccinated. We’d like to offer counterarguments—some historical, some ethical—to the most common misdirections that surface in conversations about slavery. The large majority of slaveholding families were small farmers and not the major planters who dominate our image of “slavery.”. The Microsoft billionaire has been the target of many different false rumours about vaccines. Video. A few places. Rumors, myths and misinformation about Covid-19 have spread as quickly as the disease itself. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Good luck with your presentation! We've been debunking a few recent claims. 2010. The Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog, part of India's Ministry of Agriculture, confirmed there will be trials for a Covid treatment combining cow urine, dung, butter, ghee and milk - but not a vaccine. It claims that the coronavirus pandemic is a cover for a plan to implant trackable microchips and that the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is behind it. Some black slaveholders bought family members, though this humanitarian arrangement doesn’t account for all of the history of black slaveholding, as Gates points out. As historian and public librarian Liam Hogan writes in a paper titled “The Myth of ‘Irish Slaves’ in the Colonies,” “Persons from Ireland have been held in various forms of human bondage throughout history, but they have never been chattel slaves in the West Indies.” Nor is there any evidence of Irish chattel slavery in the North American colonies. “[European] slave-ship captains wanted to deal with ruling groups and strong leaders, people who could command labor resources and deliver the ‘goods,’ ” Rediker writes, and European money and technology further empowered those who were already dominant, encouraging them to enslave greater numbers. Coronavirus: Bill Gates ‘microchip’ conspiracy theory and other vaccine claims fact-checked. Enslaved workers were expected to supplement their diets when they could, by tending their own vegetable gardens and hunting or trapping—more work to be added to their already heavy loads. Bottom line: Even if Anthony Johnson was the first person in the North American colonies to hold a slave—even if many black people across the years held slaves—that doesn’t erase the fact that it was the racially based system of hereditary slavery that harmed the vast majority of black people living within it. But European demand changed the shape of this market, strengthening enslavers and ensuring that more and more people would be carried away. Conspiracy theory connects 5G to Covid-19. Up and until Kenya was formed in 1963, it was known as the “British East Africa Protectorate”. We don't have significant evidence or study to quote anything.". There were a large number of Irish indentured servants, and there were cases in which Irish men and women were sentenced to indentured servitude in the “new world” and forcibly shipped across the Atlantic. As the writer Saladin Ahmed pointed out, the concept of "alpha male" wolves that assert dominance over their pack through aggression comes from a debunked model of lupine social groups. But, as historian Ira Berlin writes, the slave South was a slave society, not just a society with slaves. At least they were given food and a place to stay.”. .css-po6dm6-ItalicText{font-style:italic;}Additional reporting by Laura Gozzi, Shruti Menon, Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh. Yes, European slave traders entered “preexisting circuits of exchange” when they arrived in the 16th century. Rumours took hold in March when Mr Gates said in an interview that eventually "we will have some digital certificates" which would be used to show who'd recovered, been tested and ultimately who received a vaccine. February 27, 2011. More recently, Hogan notes, several sources have conflated indentured servitude with chattel slavery in order to argue for a particular Irish disadvantage in the Americas, when compared to other white immigrant groups. Is it true? All rights reserved. They considered black people’s palates to be less refined than white people’s, and this justified serving a monotonous diet of pork and cornmeal. Carl Benjamin (1979–), better known as Sargon of Akkad, Carl I of Swindon or The Thinkery, is a YouTube talker, failed UKIP candidate for the South West England constituency of the European Parliament, right-wing reactionary and trend setter in the exciting new scene of dairy based fashion.Although Benjamin claims the mantle of "skeptic", his commentary often features theories of a … First up, a conspiracy theory about vaccines that has spanned the globe. : This is certainly true. This is a classic “two wrongs make a right” ethical proposition. There is no evidence whatsoever to support his theory that the pandemic is a hoax. A conspiracy theory linking 5G mobile telecommunications masts to the spread of the coronavirus is baseless and fake, South Africa's telecom regulator said … “Black people enslaved each other in Africa, and black people worked with slave traders, so …”, In a piece published in Vice magazine in 2005 (and still available on the Vice website), comedian Jim Goad offers a series of “feel better about your history, white kids” arguments. In the video, Mr Gates is talking about the efficacy of vaccines in older people and cautions about the risk of side-effects. Read about our approach to external linking. The children of servants were free; the children of slaves were property. The North American Great Ape. Read more. Naturally, this meant that slavery was vital to Northern financial and industrial interests. In any honest conversation about American slavery, we have to look at the tight economic links between North and South and the degree to which the entire country was complicit in the enterprise. If you value our work, please disable your ad blocker. Bottom line: Slavery was the basis of white supremacy, which united all whites in a racist hierarchy. The two mobile network operators began rolling out 5G across the country last year and aim to accelerate the roll-out once spectrum has been auctioned by the end of March 31. In 1641, the passage of the Body of Liberties provided legal sanction for the slave trade in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In pictures: Defiant Russians rally for opposition, The homeless addict who became a history professor, The man who invited the world over for dinner. A slave named Peter, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, April 2, 1863. a June column on the legacy of Robert E. Lee, The Myth of ‘Irish Slaves’ in the Colonies, brought a cargo of Africans from Barbados to Boston in 1634, sentenced to lifelong slavery in Virginia, considered black people’s palates to be less refined than white people’s. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”, The myth is a product of the post-war period, when former Confederate leaders worked to retroactively redefine secession from a movement to preserve slavery to a fight for abstract “state’s rights” and a hazy “Southern way of life.”, Bottom line: Even if there were black soldiers in the Confederate army, it doesn’t change the truth of the Confederacy: Its goal was the protection and expansion of slavery. But this is a distraction from the real issue: Slavery, as a system, legalized and codified the slaveholder’s control over the enslaved person’s body. It has not been rolled out yet, would not allow people to be tracked and personal information would not be entered into a database, says Ana Jaklenec, a scientist involved in the study. waves, some scientists say—they adapted to. But slaves were hardly in a better position. And when it was threatened, those whites—whether they owned slaves or not—took up arms to defend their “way of life.”. Last year, in an unsigned (and now withdrawn) review of historian Ed Baptist’s book The Half Has Never Been Told, the Economist took issue with Baptist’s “overstated” treatment of the topic, arguing that the increase in the country’s economic output in the 19th century shouldn’t be chalked up to black workers’ innovations in the cotton field but rather to masters treating their slaves well out of economic self-interest—a bit of seemingly rational counterargument that ignores the moral force of Baptist’s narrative, while making space for the fantasy of kindly slavery. 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