European Criminals

State Crimes, Not Personal Opinions: This category designates individuals who exercised institutional power when slavery and colonization were legal, administered by the state, and integrated into national economies.

Under their authority, states adopted legal texts authorizing capture, purchase, sale, and exploitation of Africans; granted charters to colonial companies with sovereign powers; levied taxes from human trade and colonial resources; and mobilized armies to secure conquered territories.

These are state crimes: violence legalized, planned, and monetized by public institutions. Naming this responsibility establishes a clear chain of decision-making. Where slavery and colonization occurred at scale, political power authorized, protected, and normalized them.

This is not targeting contemporary peoples—it is historical accountability for institutional decisions that shaped the modern world.

A Note on Scapegoating and Historical Accuracy:

In many contemporary discussions about colonialism, blame is often misplaced. One persistent and misleading narrative claims that « the Jews » were responsible for colonialism or were its primary beneficiaries. This claim collapses under basic historical scrutiny.

Colonialism was a project of European states—Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy. These empires were organized, legalized, and enforced by governments ruling Christian-majority societies through formal state mechanisms: royal charters, parliamentary acts, colonial codes, military conquest, and administrative rule.

During the height of European imperial expansion, Jewish communities were largely excluded from political power, barred from land ownership in many regions, and frequently persecuted. They did not command colonial armies, draft imperial laws, or govern overseas territories.

Responsibility lies with: European states and monarchies, colonial ministries and parliaments, chartered corporations and financial elites, legal systems that normalized dispossession, and populations that tolerated or profited from these systems.

The same pattern can be observed today. The actions of the Israeli government do not represent Jewish people as a whole, just as the crimes of European empires do not represent all individuals within those societies. Power lies in governments and systems, not in entire peoples.

Jewish people are not the problem. Muslims are not the problem. Christians as individuals are not the problem. Systems of power that weaponize religion, law, and identity to dominate others are the problem. Clarity demands that we stop blaming entire peoples and start naming institutions, states, ideologies, and historical decisions.