When I first got on FB I made a hobby of debunking fake news stories and memes. I still do, but just not as much, because the trolls that share them just keep doing it even after being proven wrong. Also, I learned that fake news monetizes itself by tempting you into opening and sharing their links, so the process of debunking can serve the villain's purposes. Now I rely on internet services that test the credibility of sources, and if the source is bad enough, I don't open the article, but demand the poster provide the same story from a better source (most fake news are also news aggregators, meaning their stories are not original inventions, but based on other actual legitimate sources, just distorted, so you can almost always find a real journalist addressing the same story).
As White Nationalists move closer and closer to the American mainstream, they have turned their pseudo-histories into an ever-expanding industry. You have all seen the mostly fake arguments regarding "Irish Slaves in America" and that the "First American Slave Owner was Black." Both are based on true stories, but both are deliberately distorted and wildly inaccurate to serve a racist agenda.
There's a new one, arguing that Blacks and Arabs (unstated but obvious from the pictures, they meant Muslim Blacks and Arabs) invented slavery, and the USA led the world in abolishing it. I won't share the meme because, as I explained in the first paragraph, that would be feeding the beast. I will, though, share my debunking:
When a meme is deliberately, factually, false and racial provocative, all at the same time.
(1.) Black and Arabic people didn't "invent" slavery. It is among the oldest of human institutions, stretching well into the mists of pre-history; it has no identifiable inventor and likely pre-dates the rise of modern humans. Every single empire or nation state, regardless of time, place, or ethnicity, in the whole of human history, was founded on slavery, and it wasn't until 1804 that we the saw the creation of a Republic that stated from day-one that all persons were, by definition, free. The landmark republic was Haiti, which is majority Black.
(2.) Anti-slavery movements progressed in fits and starts all over the world starting in the 14th c, but few of these gained significant ground until the last half of the 19th c. Tunisia, which is Arab and Muslim, abolished slavery in 1846, putting ahead of most of the White Christian World, but the last country to abolish slavery was Black and Muslim, Mauritania in 1970.
(3.) Slavery still exists in every country in the world, even though it is officially illegal. There are places where it is practiced quite openly, usually in the form of indentured servitude which is recognized as slavey under international law. The UN resolution on the subject was issued in 1948, but a number of nations still haven't ratified it and the USA refused to do so until 1958. Currently, either Iran or India are probably the worst offenders (Iran as percentage of population, India in terms of head count of slaves). Neither nation is Black or Arab.
(4.) In the USA there are an estimated 400,000 slaves right now. In 2019 New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was arrested for using the services of a prostitute and it was also established that the brothel (Orchids of Asia Spa) was keeping the girls as slaves and openly advertising the sexual services.
(5.) Slavery as a legal institution ended in the USA with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865; it took a Civil War to make that happen, and we were well behind much of the rest of the world, including places in the Black and Arab world. We were never the anti-slavery leaders, but the followers. Also, I suggest you read the Amendment again, carefully; there is still one specific form of slavery is still enshrined in the Constitution of the legal in the USA.
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