Work in progress

🍃 Day 1: Sunday, November 10

Fantasy // Court 

🍃 Day 2: Monday, November 11

Time-Travel // Hanahaki 

🍃 Day 3: Tuesday, November 12

Cultural Differences // Traditions 

🍃 Day 4: Wednesday, November 13

Children // Vows

🍃 Day 5: Thursday, November 14

Secret relationship // Seals 

🍃 Day 6: Friday, November 15

Political Hostage // Confessions

🍃 Day 7: Saturday, November 16

 Sometimes I feel dialogue between Konoha and the clan could have avoided the disaster. 

Who's responsibility is it to open dialogue, though?

When there's such a massive power imbalance in place, how is it conceivable for a marginalised people to initiate any brand of discourse in their favour? Socially ostracised minorities, and in the case of the Uchiha I'd add physically relegated since they were confined to their compound and to a very specific (and pointless) role within the village, don't possess such agency to enact a diplomatic intervention. Simply put, they don't possess the devices necessary to be taken into consideration.

A dialogue in this specific scenario can be defined as a discussion or negotiation, so that all parties involved can reach a (possibly mutual) understanding or obtain an act of arbitration.

But a Tyrant of any form will never be open to any brand of compromise. Konoha is not a democracy. It's not even a hybrid democracy: it's a military authoritarian oligarchy*, in which the division of labor in large organisations has inevitably led to the establishment of a ruling class which is very strongly concerned with protecting their own power (and it's hardly a coincidence that said ruling class is composed primarily of T0birama's former pupils) - Danzo is quite literally the embodiment of said hunger for power, and Hiruzen is a weak willed fool.

It's only at the point of no return in which he makes a very bland attempt to propose a more pacific solution to the dilemma:

"I'd like to deal with them through words."

Nice try Sarutobi, such a pity you did absolutely zilch to follow through (what a surprise, eh?).

And come on, he knew Danzo like the back of his decrepit, wrinkled hands: he knew what his old comrade was capable of (Danzo's list of heinous up until then was long indeed: murder, treason, conspiracy, abuse of power, criminal negligence, torture, war by proxy...) and he was very much aware that his Shadow would without a doubt execute his diabolical plan to commit mass murder, with or without the his, THE Hokage, approval.

If Hiruzen truly had the Uchiha's fate at heart, he could have done so much more to prevent their annihilation.

Warn them. Place Danzo under arrest, or better yet, have him executed for high treason, lord knows that his comeuppance was well due. Detain Itachi, too. Dismantle the entire fucking structure of the ROOT there on the spot and have those two wretched Elders impeached.

And what could the ROOT possibly do, once their Overlord's well under the sod? They'd have no point of reference, nor purpose! They had no true identity, if not to obey Danzo's whims. Remove him and you remove their sense of existence.

Would they insurge? Possibly. Or maybe not, at least not all of them.

The ROOT was only constituted of a select few brainwashed zealots, some of which would have gladly mutinied if their own life wasn't on the line: it wouldn't have been particularly complicated for Konoha to subdue them, especially with the aid of the Uchiha clan.

It's a gamble Hiruzen should have taken, had he wanted to prevent the ethnic erasure of the Uchiha.

So, should have the Uchiha sought out a diplomatic path? (I'll ignore the obvious fact that to accuse them of failure to communicate and open dialogue is such a poor excuse for justifying the genocide inflicted upon them... I mean, to dumb it down a little: it's ironic because when someone is being abused, we frequently ask, "Why didn't you fight back?," but the minute that person has the guts to actually fight back, everyone questions wether that abuse really did happen, as it might have been "mutual abuse," particularly if the victim retaliates violently.) I'm fairly sure they did: it holds to reason as a coup d'etat is usually regarded a last expedient strategy, given the extremity of it (and it's also subtly implied either from the data books or in canon material if you reconstruct the events).

Fugaku Uchiha was quite obviously a Kage-level Shinobi, (probably) on par with Minato Namikaze in terms of sheer ability and he was considered for the role of 4th Hokage - conversely, heavy tensions were fast rising with the Uchiha, and Konoha chose Minato instead (again, not by coincidence in the slightest, the Kyuubi attack represented a very convenient contrivance in order to permanently exclude the Uchiha from ever entering Konoha's political structure and to further spurn them). Fugaku, as an esteemed shinobi, at least in virtue of his extraordinary potential and service to the village, would most certainly have made an effort to reason with the Hokage as it was in his people's best interest.

Obviously, whatever attempts were made on his behalf to seek fair representation for his clan, didn't lead to much: 7 years down the line from the nine tails attack and the Uchiha are still confined to a spit of walled in land tightly located in proximity of the village's only prison (and I have several extensive thoughts on this particular matter, but that's for another meta), a pathetic role within the village which is entirely designed for their control and surveillance, no political representation within the framework of the village and they've become an even further invisibilised people in regards to whom the vast majority harbour mistrust - whether by propaganda or rumour, the result is the same, the Uchiha are "othered".

The Uchiha were already planning a coup, and forgiving them without consequences would have set a dangerous precedent.

And yet, Hiruzen willingly pardoned others time and time again. Both Danzo and Orochimaru, which personally I'd repute as the most morally corrupt characters in Naruto, were somehow, inexplicably, forgiven.

Danzo's case specifically just baffles me from a political standpoint, because he actually did attempt to have Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, supposedly his close friend and comrade under T0birama's guide, assassinated all because he deemed him too weak to lead Konoha (but more because he coveted that power since he was merely a teen - so much for T0birama's self-righteous teachings and verbose blathering about the curse of hatred and the importance of loving the village, you'd think that the second would have done a better job at selecting his apprentices, but I suppose the main requisite for the job was to be an Uchiha hater and no one fit the bill better than Danzo Shimaru...).

If that isn't a disloyal act of treason, then I don't know what is.

And yet he emerges from his failed coup not only entirely unpunished, unscathed and free, but with a very powerful underground militarised organisation under his control!

Now that sets a precedent.

But here's an interesting concept: not all coup d'etats unfold in bloodshed. Danzo's certainly would have since he was on the verge of polishing off Hiruzen along with a couple of orphaned kids, one of which was a partially failed lab experiment, but it's not a given in every single case.

While we're all very much aware that Danzo would rule with a bloody iron fist, who's to say the Uchiha clan would have done the same, though?

Where does anyone within the manga claim that that insurrectionist group was bound to seize and remove the government with the use of sheer brutality?

A non violent revolution or soft-coup is still a revolution, as long as the instated powers and establishment are dissolved: if anyone had the capability to subdue and render innocuous an old geezer well past his prime, it's the Uchiha with their expertise in genjutsu - a bloodless revolt was very much a viable option, and believe what you will, but Fugaku was hardly the savage butcher he's often made out to be in fanfiction.

Yet, somehow, we've absorbed this notion that these utterly feral terrorist Uchiha madmen had nothing better to do with themselves than concoct a ferocious assault and eagerly ignite a civil war, whilst inaugurating a public crucifixion... or something along these lines...

Though I suppose what is what happens when we take Shisui's and Itachi's as a gospel truth:

Here Shisui is narrating. He dreads the very threat of an intestinal conflict erupting, consequently exposing the village to external invasion.

But these are the words of a naive, good-willed child. However, his fears are sadly mirrored in Danzo's hammering rhetoric: so they're not genuine, but instilled into him, branded into his mind, a fear-ridden idea masterfully implanted into him to have him break away from his own clan and embrace nothing but the Leaf. Of course, it doesn't quite work, as Shisui's fear is so great that he commits suicide and entrusts Itachi (hah!) with what's left of him: his only remaining eye.

I find there are very strong inconsistencies with this hyperbolic narrative: Konoha willingly renounces their most powerful clan, a clan which is in possession of an unrivalled kekkei genkai and that has de facto faithfully served the village for decades since its birth, in order to safeguard a conjectural internal peace. By destroying such a crucial part of its hive, Konoha truly does expose itself to external threats; without the Uchiha, the village is gravely weakened, it's exposed and it's fragile.

How is that even remotely logical?

It's not.

The Uchiha massacre was never a matter of preventing civil war, that was just an overemphasised empty threat, a deceptive fabrication to fool impressionable young Uchiha minds so that they blindly believe that they belong to and within Konoha, and bring them to betray their own blood in the name of an (illusory) greater good.

Sadly, it was all only ever about the Elders maintaining their undisputed seat of power:

The phrase "If they're going to usurp our power," really does says it all, don't you think?

Rehabilitating/reintegrating the Uchiha as a whole could have been a solution

I reaaaally have to very strongly disagree with this approach.

What exactly should they be "rehabilitated" for?

An invisibilised people that's been forcefully marginalised by its own country don't need to be reintegrated, as they're not at fault nor hold no blame for what's been done to them: instead, they deserve fair political representation and equitable social consideration - something which the Leaf really didn't care about at all.

I cannot stress this enough, Konoha did everything in its power to gradually other and alienate the Uchiha, via political repression, through the decades. As long as they functioned with obedience and respected the village's entrenched dogmas, they were granted the privilege™  of existing there (for utilitarian purposes of course); but the instant sedition arises, Konoha answers with holocaust - and even worse, the UM wasn't really even a cause/effect dynamic as the Uchiha never even had the blithering chance to defy authority: all it took was that bootlicker blabber mouth Itachi disclosing what little he knew of his father's intentions, to have his entire clan wiped out of existence.

So, even willing, there is no space for rehabilitation nor reintegration, in Konoha - as a militaristic regime, it will always seek to exploit underrepresented and undesired groups up until they're still useful; when they become too much of a threat to the status quo, or a burden to the system, then the system responds by fabricating a reason to have that group permanently removed, all whilst convincing the unwitting spectator that it was actually warranted or deserved. That's what fascism is all about.