D'Souza: You're so dug in ideologically
that it would twist your mind
to admit
it's a long distance from Eleazar Wheelock to Hitler.
Student: Genocide!
D'Souza: Why are you shouting?
Let's make this the last question in fairness,
and I will have extended the time.
Go for it, the mic is yours.
Student: Why is it the very descendants of the people
that lived here before colonizers came in
are the ones that are almost the most marginalized
in this country and systematically suffered because of that?
D'Souza: I'll try to answer that as best I can.
The condition of the American Indians,
we have to look at it two-fold, historically and today.
Historically, it was the Indian Wars,
the broken treaties by the white man,
Wounded Knee, the battles, the massacres.
It was also a plethora of diseases that spread
through the Indian population brought by the white man
and that decimated the American Indian population.
There's a book I recommend
to you by the historian William McNeill
that's called "Plagues and Peoples."
It talks about how massive populations have been
decimated historically by diseases brought by outsiders.
For example, the black plague in Europe killed one-third
of the entire continent brought from Asia unintentionally.
I'm not going to say that's genocide
because genocide implies a deliberate intention
to exterminate an entire population.
That's why the use of the term genocide
is very irresponsible on your part in this case.
Student: No I don't think so. D'Souza: You don't think so?
D'Souza: You think,
and I'm going to ask you now for your evidence,
that there was a conscious intention
to wipe out the Indians as a people?
Chapter and verse, let's hear it.
Student: What do you say about the very thing
that this institution was initially founded
on, essentially whitewashing the native Americans?
[indistinct]
What do you say about the foundational theme
for "Indian" schools that were created and then the things
about head hunting Indians and prizes for that?
It was a clear incentivization
by both the U.S. government and by people
to be able to take over the property,
the land, the things that people had here
before the colonizers came.
D'Souza: Eleazar Wheelock leaves Yale and comes
up here into the woods of New Hampshire to set
up a college to Christianize and educate the native Indians.
Are you saying that he wanted to exterminate them?
Student: I think that's a questionable [indistinct].
It has to do with understanding culture
and whether or not you can actually
help someone by Christianizing them.
D'Souza: Right, but pause for a moment because see,
part of education is making distinctions, right?
Let's say I believe, as a Christian,
that your life would be infinitely better than it is
if you became a Christian, and in that sincere belief,
I read the Bible to you
and I start proselytizing you. I'm not Adolf Hitler.
You may not go for it.
You may think that I'm conning you,
but you can't deny that my motivation
is actually to save your immortal soul.
What I'm getting at is that for you then to say
this is genocide and not be able to even back off from that
even though we're looking at a very specific case where
you know there's no evidence to support your position,
but you're so dug in ideologically
that it would twist your mind to admit
it's a long distance from Eleazer Wheelock to Hitler.