Tobirama Senju’s Policies and the Uchiha Genocide.
Tobirama’s defense-force arguments coming from people of color is quite … sad? Pathetic? Ironic? Petty? Take your pick. This is the guy who called Sasuke the “other” who’d have a tendency to side with “scoundrels” just ’cause he was an Uchiha when Sasuke hadn’t even said a thing about his plans.
He just assumed that Uchihas always side with the enemy! Is that how a person would react if he isn’t biased, racist, and bigoted? No. He says that he knew the Uchiha will be annihilated in the future (scan below). How? This is how this man starts this conversation:
Hashirama told him to stop saying such things, which means that he used to to spew this flowery racist rhetoric often!
He talked about democracy when Madara was around to stop him from getting the Hokage seat by spreading racist rumors about his clan:
He admits that the “curse of hatred” is a rumor. He never presented any concrete scientific evidence for his statements. This is the conversation Madara overheard and decided to leave ’cause he foresaw that his clan would be slaughtered if Tobirama ever took charge:
As soon as Madara left, Tobirama abolished democracy and set the trend for the Hokages to appoint the next successors when he didn’t let his brother elect Madara! It’s his dictator-system that was copied by every single village:
So he’s not only responsible for the political mess in Konoha (the power in the hands of the few), but the corruption in the entire Shinobi world (the big five, anyway)!
This is especially concerning because Tobirama was the first person who abolished democracy when he actually spoke in its favor first simply because he didn’t want any Uchiha in power. That’s right, Konoha actually operated on democracy when the original treaty was signed on the basis of equal treatment of the founding clans. But when Hashirama died and Madara was presumed dead, he went back to his own bigoted ways and started the precedent of the Hokage appointing the next successor in line, and Tobirama was the first person who did that! Hashirama was appointed through voting.
Now, why would he do that? Simple, he didn’t want Madara to take the Hokage seat (because after Hashirama, there was a high chance that people would’ve voted for Madara and Tobirama didn’t want that), which is why he ran along with a rumor that Uchiha suffered from the “Curse of Hatred” that affected their mental state and made them dangerous!
This is literally classification, symbolization, and discrimination. The first three signs of a genocide:
http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html
The people who green-lit and authorized the genocide, The elders’ council, are literally made up of the leftovers of Tobirama’s original squad:
Sure, it had Kagame in it, but Tobirama states pretty explicitly that Kagami was a part of his squad because he’d put aside his clan. Doesn’t it sound like “either you’re with us or against us” statement? It does, doesn’t it? Kagami was only trusted because he wasn’t chummy with his own clan. Otherwise, he would’ve been shown the same treatment!
(This, by the way, is quite similar to the line every racist employs to blunt the force of his blatant racism: “I’ve got a black/brown friend, so I’m not racist; but …”) And Kagami was Shisui’s ancestor, and he was an integral part of Tobirama’s original squad, and Itachi’s close friend:
Itachi was not only Shisui’s closest friend, but he also considered Shisui a “true brother”. The elders’ council is the last surviving part of Tobirama’s squad. Danzo also knew Obito before the massacre! Conveniently, he made himself known to Itachi when he needed to kill off his whole clan.
Besides, just because Kagami was from the Uchiha clan doesn’t mean that he wasn’t racist (it’s like suggesting that women can’t be misogynists because they’re women!), ’cause being in that squad meant that he knew about what Tobirama was doing and was fine with it like Itachi. The genocide was left entirely in Itachi’s hands as he detested his own clan and put the village politics above them. He was a fanatical jingoist, basically:
You can’t simply start bad-mouthing your clan out of the blue after mere six months of training, do you? It isn’t possible for someone to change this much in just six months that he’d started throwing kunais into his clan’s symbols, giving impassioned speeches filled with clan’s hatred, disrespecting his father, and committing the massacre. It means that he had these ideals from the start.
He’s not only disrespecting his father (this attitude would be severely looked down upon in Japan ’cause Itachi’s being utterly disrespectful to his father for nothing), refusing to back down, but he’s also openly speaking against the clan:
Why’s he doing this? Why would he put on an act to alienate the people whose trust he’s supposed to earn to keep carrying on his double-agent job?
There’s no reason to believe that Itachi didn’t despise the clan or what it stood for when in the end he felt no remorse for what he’d done even after he died (scan below). His ideals are exactly like Tobirama’s. Itachi was aware of the dark side of Leaf, but he was fine with all the atrocities Leaf committed in the name of nationalistic integrity:
The Uchiha were literally pushed to the outskirts of the village. This is Population Movement, and it’s a war-crime as it’s a “Precursor to Genocide”. This demanded an open revolt, not only a covert one. The Uchiha were well within their right to resist for the safeguard of their sovereignty, integrity, and lives. So they planned the coup after they had had enough. Shisui also told Itachi that Danzo stole his eye when he tried to use it to deescalate the situation:
Itachi didn’t even tell his own father that Danzo stole Shisui’s eye. Koharu said in front of Itachi that they (The Council) won’t give the Uchiha any power in the politics, something they rightfully deserved because of the original treaty that was signed on the basis of equality! This makes the whole situation completely illegal, unethical, and prejudiced from the Leaf’s side as you can’t simply go behind the clan’s back and temper with the agreed upon precepts within the treaty. The Leaf had no ground, moral or otherwise, to remove the clan from politics and village land and segregate them from the village and politics.
The elders never knew that Obito caused the disaster. No one knew! That’s only we readers who know that. Minato who knew died before he could tell anyone. So their suspicions were formed on no evidence.
Bijuu break free of their hosts all the time, and Kushina was going through a delicate phase of delivery. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t a chance that it couldn’t happen. It’s proven time and time again through the Bee and Gaara incidents. So this argument that “this could only be the Uchiha’s doing” is nothing more than their deep-seated prejudice talking. The council’s main problem was that they didn’t want the Uchiha to have their fair share of power (a prejudice that was born from the mistrust Tobirama had perpetuated for years). Danzo also knew about Itachi’s perspective on things and why he did what he did. So let’s not pretend that Danzo was some bogeyman and Itachi was an innocent child who didn’t know what he was doing. No! All of them agreed to this:
He even believed in it as an Edo. He showed no remorse for killing his whole clan even as he said his farewell. No, he said that an 7-year-old child should’ve averted the coup, not that the genocide was wrong. He said that they (Uchiha) needed to change, not I needed to change!
Coming back to Madara, he was right ’cause Hashirama probably appointed Tobirama as his successor; so it was actually Tobirama that caused Madara to distrust the Senju and Tobirama in the first place. As a leader of the clan, it was Madara’s responsibility to ensure the safety of his people. The Uchiha didn’t listen to Madara, but he did tell them that Tobirama was up to no good, and when the Uchiha noticed the mistreatment, they automatically sided with Madara’s original plan. You can’t blame people from choosing self-preservation over nationalism.
The treaties are created with the principles and agreements in mind that the participants would agree to the “terms of agreement” in the treaty. Tobirama not only abolished democracy, established a fascist regime in its place, but he also went behind the “terms of agreement” in the treaty to fuel his racist and bigoted agenda.
He started the surveillance by giving Uchiha the job of the police force, so that keeping them in line and their surveillance would be easy. The Anbu weren’t even allowed to be arrested by the police force without a warrant approved by the Hokage. Isn’t it amazing?
Tobirama gave them a job, but to keep the surveillance active, he made sure none of the Anbu could ever be arrested on any kind of suspicious activity against the clan. Doing that would’ve been considered an act against the Hokage and the village: treason! And then people claim that Tobirama did justice to the clan, because even here, he showed how detestable he truly was in his convictions.
By taking all of these steps, he removed the Uchiha involvement completely from the power structure in the village. This is a direct violation and breach of the contract of equality signed through the treaty! None of these actions are ethical, moral, just, or rule-abiding. They’re designed to shun the Uchiha more and more, to intensity their oppression. And they weren’t even pushed figuratively out of the village’s politics. No, they were literally pushed to the brink of the village:
Tobirama started this and by Hiruzen’s time the clan’s “population movement” was complete, which by the way is a “war crime” as it almost always leads to genocides. Well, it happened, didn’t it? Just like it does in real life and just like Madara had predicted?
Even Orochimaru disagreed with Tobirama’s methods, policies, and jutus. He stated that they all caused problems. Imagine that a vile criminal like Orochimaru is disagreeing with your methods:
Hashirama clearly states here that Tobirama did this “over and over again.” How’s he not racist and bigoted if he can’t seem to stop his racist and bigoted actions?
Tobirama used the “othering technique” that Ian Haney-Lopez called the “dog whistle” when he calls Uchihas “The Cursed Clan”, “A Clan Affected by Evil”, and “Clan with a Curse of Hatred”:
Quotes from the article:
“Exclusion and dehumanisation
The language being used by many national leaders not only activates people’s anxiety and fear around a perceived Other, it creates new processes of exclusion and dehumanisation.”
“People don’t just figure out on their own that collectively they need to be afraid of another group. Leadership plays a critical role. Often people who have been living with one another for years are made to feel suddenly that those differences have become threatening.”
“The stories we tell, and live, are not about facts but our values, fears and hopes – all of which, to a certain degree, are malleable. Our narratives don’t just reflect them, they also shape them. While anxiety about change is natural, Othering is not. Othering is socially and culturally constructed.”
What Tobirama did is Exclusion and Dehumanization. It isn’t a coincidence that all of the people that were directly involved in the genocide of the Uchiha were directly or indirectly linked to Tobirama. The council? Tobirama’s left-over squad. Obito? He knew Danzo before the massacre. Shisui? Kagami was his ancestor. Itachi? Shisui was his best friend. Both Itachi and Shisui willingly chose to serve the council and betray their clan.
Not to mention that, if the massacre was legal, then why was it done without the knowledge of all the people, kept under wraps, and Itachi was made to take the fall for the entire genocide? Does anyone here really (and seriously) think that the rest of the clans would’ve been “fine” with Leaf choosing genocide over diplomatic dialogues? No, of course not. Not in a million years. This was done precisely not to rouse resistance, opposition, and mistrust from the other clans, especially the Hyuuga Branch Clan that was already facing slavery.
I always laugh at the people who put forward incredibly stupid reasoning that the rest of the clans would side with Leaf if the matter got out. Why would they when they’d learn that Leaf has no qualms in choosing out-right genocide over an innocuous demand of a fair share in politics? If people sincerely believe that, then they need to read few books on revolutions, rebellions, and protests and, perhaps, spend less time on Tumblr as this conclusion is impossibly stupid, even for this site’s dwindling standards.
sasuke pro uchiha pro sasuke anti konoha tobirama itachi hiruzen naruto naruto manga danzo hashirama orochimaru konoha exclusion dehumanization racism bigotry genocide dog whistle isolation discrimination minato straight facts senju madara uchiha shisui analysis
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