zlacker

>>ahmetc+(OP)
If we look at history, do the oppressed always become oppressors?

>>spacec+Y4
Mostly, yes.

Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.

Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.

Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.

Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.

>>meindn+fc
Not sure if I would lump all those up together, these examples are overly broad and have little in common. There's more than a thousand years and basically no causal link between Roman persecution of early Christians and Crusades, let alone European imperialism, especially if you take Ethiopian, Greek, Georgian, and Armenian Christians into account. Same for Russians and Mongols, there's a pretty large gap with a ton of events in between, and Mongol Empire was humongous to begin with, it wasn't about Rus' in particular. And communists that became ruthless oppressors were already radicalized during the persecution, it was literally the radical wing of a militant faction of a huge umbrella party that included people that would have felt right at home in modern EU (e.g. Kollontai and her early activism).

The better explanation is simple and banal - power concentration makes people abuse it.

>>orbita+ni
I wouldn't consider this "lumping the groups together", or that they must exist together in time... its likely a group may require many generations before they can "oppress" another group.

My list of examples is very similar to this one and the ven diagram here is "was oppressed became oppressor"... in most cases it appears that only if the oppressed are destroyed or I would argue in the case of America- controlled at the margins... then they don't circle back around to abuse their newly acquired power.