Genocide is nothing new to humanity. People probably tried to wipe out entire clans with flint axes. But industrial-scale murder was perfected in the 20th century. The Holocaust used mass media, mass transport, and mass murder in ways that hadn’t been possible before. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true.
The colonization of North American also used propaganda to move people into already-occupied land and to demonize the soon-to-be-former occupants.
Railroads made mass movement of settlers possible in a way covered wagons never could. Hell, we Americans were violently relocating entire peoples before the civil war. The US Army largely grew out of the need to commit mass murder of native people.
There’s plenty of scholarly work on what made the Holocaust unique: it’s industrial scale, it’s near-success in its goal of completeness, its scientific approach to propaganda and mass murder. But genocide is in no way a new thing.
One of the unique things about the Holocaust though was its affect on how we think of genocide. As soon as the war ended, scholars began to piece together what makes genocide possible and asked the Big Questions, like, “what makes people do this?”, “was it something about the Germans?”, “Could this happen in America?”
Scholarship into genocide and authoritarianism helped us to define future atrocities (although has not been very helpful in preventing them). It showed us that we who live in liberal democracies are not immune from participating in mass murder. In fact our lofty ideals often blind us to our own actions.
I hadn’t intended to talk about any of this, but people seem to think that the current American crisis is a simple political disagreement, or think that nothing really bad will happen because we’re Americans and we don’t do really horrible things. Usually.
But we have, we do, and we will again unless we pay attention to what history can teach us and remember the difference between humanitarian actions and horrible ones.
The key to understanding ourselves and our role in the current crisis is to stop believing in the exceptional. First, American Exceptionalism blinds us to our own faults. It lulls us into inaction because we believe we’re better than this. We could be but we’re not. Ideals without action are not terribly helpful to a kid being ripped away from her mom.
Execeptionalism has a second facet, one where we tend to brush off horrible acts as unique, odd, exceptions to the rule.
So when a major political figure disseminates a racist meme, we minimize its importance as either an odd, one-time thing or the rantings of someone way outside the mainstream.
This is dangerous. Why are we so quick to dismiss obviously racist words and actions? Well, many of us dismiss them because we kinda believe in them. And others just don’t want to believe we Americans are capable of such things…again.
What Holocaust scholars can tell us is that we should “treat every poison word as a promise.” Rhetoric is “pre-action”. Racist words inevitably lead to racist actions if no one speaks out. When Huckabee tweets out an image like the one above, he’s both speaking to his base and testing you and me. If it’s seen as acceptable, then mass deportations won’t seem as crazy later on.
The U.S. is not currently perpetrating a Holocaust, but neither was Germany in 1933. Genocide requires careful preparation, and here is where we Americans and our delusions about our own goodness are in deep, deep shit.
Because genocide is not just about mass murder; it’s about power. Genocide is a horrifying tool used by authoritarians to create and maintain their own power. Authoritarians don’t care who they oppress, as long as they have a group they can use as “the other”. And this is knife-edge we are walking on today.
Trump and his supporters are creating the conditions for authoritarianism and genocide. They have classified, in this case creating “immigrants” and “us”. They have symbolized, that is used symbols to help set the mood of discrimination. Note the tatoos in Huckabee’s photo, which merges nicely with Trump’s rhetoric about MS13, the violent gang whose actions Trump uses to paint all immigrants. Note the use of the flag not as a proud symbol of who we are, but as a way to separate “us” (those who stand) from “them” (those who kneel). Discriminationis quite easy; immigrants are forbidden from many jobs, and are hired under the table, underpaid, overworked, with the threat of ICE held over them. Football players who kneel instead of stand for the national anthem have their livelihood threatened. Trump, not for the first time, has used dehumanizingrhetoric to refer to immigrants, minorities, and others as he finds convienient. His recent use of “infest” is not accidental, not a one-off. Fox News has mirrored this, becoming a de facto state news outlet. These are well-established tools of dehumanization.
The administration has also organized, strengthening tools like ICE/Border Patrol, giving them increased and unfettered powers, expanding their mission. People are now asked for papers not just at border crossings, but in “zones” near boders. Families are separated, locked away.
America is not committing genocide — now. But we are very far down the path that others have taken toward genocide, and that process is being used to consolidate power in ways we haven’t seen in the US in a very long time. Even if we never make it to the final stages of genocide, the forces of authoritarianism have succeeded in eroding the norms of civiliazation. This is not something that we can easily recover from. And those who do not speak out are collaborating.
