From: "heather" <heather-AT-teknopunx.co.uk>
Subject: Re: The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 13:16:20 -0000



----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Coull" <coull2-AT-btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 10:45 AM
Subject: The Great Thanksgiving Hoax



> I'm not sure why Heather decided to forward that piece of right-wing,
> pro-capitalist, pro-capitalist-state propoganda to the anarchy list.
> Maybe she was stoned when she sent it and just hadn't realised
> that's what it was.

Yup, right again Dave-only scanned it, and the words SOCIALISM DOESN'T WORK
leapt out at me (thought of our dear friend JT). Combined with the fact the
guy who sent it is an anarchist and historian who I wouldn't have suspected
of posting right wing drivvle I presumed it was suitable for consumption.
Now wondering why he posted it to the list i got it from. Am forwarding your
comments to him to find out! Perhaps he was expecting someone on that list
to react as you have. Thanks for taking the time to write this, cheers-see
you thurs-and looking good for saturday too.
love
Heather
 Anyway, whatever the reason, it does have to be
> pointed out that it  _IS_  right-wing, pro-capitalist,
pro-capitalist-state
> propoganda.
>
> Of course there is no such thing as pure , unbiased history.
> All history is written from a point of view.  But this is a particularly
> biased example of history-as-propoganda.
>
>
> > > The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
> > > by Richard J. Marbury
> > >
> > > Each year at this time school children all over
> > > America are taught the
> > > official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio,
> > > TV, and magazines
> > > devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all
> > > very colorful
> > > and fascinating.
> > >
> > > It is also very deceiving. This official story is
> > > nothing like what
> > > really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and
> > > sanitized
> > > collection of half-truths which divert attention away
> > > from
> > > Thanksgiving's real meaning.
>
>
> I agree that the real first thanksgiving was not like the picture
> American children are presented with. What the colonists
>    -   the survivors   -   were giving thanks for was having survived
> that first year. They were celebrating not being dead. The fact
> that they  _did_  survive was  _entirely_  thanks to the Indians.
>
> This Richard J. Marbury puts the success of the Mayflower
> colonists down to capitalism. I disagree. I think what happened
> was that they gradually learned from the Indians about new crops,
> and new things to eat, and new ways of surviving in this new
> world. This did not all happen in the first year, it took time
> for the lessons to be applied and to take effect.
>
>
> > > Many early groups of colonists set up socialist
> > > states, all with the
> > > same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in
> > > 1607, out of every
> > > shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half
> > > would survive their
> > > first twelve months in America. Most of the work was
> > > being done by
> > > only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths
> > > choosing to be
> > > parasites.
>
>
> Calling Jamestown in 1607  " socialism "  is ridiculous !
>
> There were differences between the settlers of the Chesapeake
> and the settlers in New England. Whereas the settlers of New England
> were mostly puritans   -   people who were seeking a  NEW  England
>    -   those further south simply brought the old England with them.
> The Mayflower settlers were political and religious dissidents who
> had first left England many years before, first trying settlement in
> the NETHERLANDS. They went east, to begin with. A typical puritan
> settler household consisted of a man around forty years, his wife,
> and several children. The men had mostly been artisans of some
> kind back in England. These were not the poorest, the most downtrodden,
> but modestly prosperous skilled workers, who brought some useful
> tools as well as skills with them. Both the very poor and the very rich
> were absent from their ranks.
>
> By contrast, the Jamestown settlement was organised by  ARISTOCRATS.
> People who were used to being waited upon hand and foot
> in England and expected the same thing to happen in America.
> Of course, they brought their servants with them. And their servants
> were willing to serve them. The only problem was, their servants
> knew nothing about living off the land, only how to serve the food
> up to their masters once it had been produced.
>
>
> > In the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population
> > fell from five-hundred to sixty.
>
>
> Yes, a lot of the colonists died. But like the New England colonists,
> they had some help from the Indians. In actual fact, the typical
> daily food intake of the colonists at this time was pretty good.
> There were many people back home in famine-struck England
> who would have envied them. What was killing them wasn't hunger,
> but sickness. The choice of Jamestown as a settlement site
> had been idiotic. It was situated at a spot on a tidal river where
> slack water hung around a lot of the time. There were lots
> of parasites ( quite apart from the human kind ) and lots
> of diseases. There was a chronic shortage of fresh water.
> Most people had diarrea most of the time. That's what was
> killing them, not hunger.
>
> The Jamestown colonists had been expecting an easy life.
> They had thought that they could make themselves masters
> of the Indians, like the Spaniards had done in South America.
> And they were expecting to find  GOLD , like the Spaniards
> had done. They last thing they were expecting was to have
> to work to feed themselves. And most of them, whether aristocrats
> or servants, had few, if any, useful skills. With the combination
> of this and the stupid choice of settlement site, no wonder
> they were starving. The colony continued as a disastrous failure
> until one day they really did find gold. Golden Virginia. Tobacco.
> They discovered that there were people back home in England
> who were stupid enough to pay to smoke the stuff. Once
> they started trading in tobacco, they were able to have supplies
> sent from England, and they were able to have a more advantageous
> trade with the Indians, and they spread out, away from the idiotic
> Jamestown site.
>
> But there was absolutely no "socialism" involved at any stage.
> The English aristocrats in charge of the colony would have
> been outraged by the idea. The thing that failed was not
> "socialism" but aristocracy. Or rather, the aristocratic system
> would have failed if it hadn't been for the discovery of addiction
> to tobacco. That ensured the continuance of a some kind
> of aristocratic system in the South long past its sell-by date.
>
>
> Dave