For You

Recently, a candidate for the United States Senate bragged in a campaign ad that she is "more conservative than Attila the Hun." In response, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asserted in a Twitter thread that the Huns were actually quite progressive: "So Kelly Loeffler is boasting that she's to the right of Attila the Hun. Tells you something about the modern GOP; but did anyone think to ask how right-wing Attila really was? As best I can tell, the Huns were if anything to the left of other societies of the times: compared with their neighbors they had relatively few slaves and treated them relatively well, and they offered considerably more freedom and power to women....Of course there was the whole sacking cities and slaughtering their inhabitants thing. And I guess that's the part that appeals to modern Republicans." I recognize that mapping contemporary categories like "conservative" and "progressive" onto the life of a fifth-century ruler is fundamentally anachronistic. But I'm curious to know if Krugman's assertions about the Huns are accurate. Was Attila more humane than his contemporaries in his treatment of slaves and women? Are there any other areas of his rule which a contemporary observer might label "progressive"? And while we're on the subject, what do Hun experts think of the original campaign ad's portrayal of Attila? [Edit: formatting]