HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE

Throughout history humans have been killing one another without mercy, because of racial, ethnic, religious, political and other differences and territory grabs. What we call genocide and ethnic cleansing today has been happening, in one way or another, throughout human history. We never seem to learn from the past the right lessons, only how to do the killings more effectively and efficiently, without mercy or regret. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Burning Times, the takeover of the new world and its land from the Native Americans, The Shoah (Holocaust), and genocidal crimes in Tibet, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and many more places throughout the world, past and present, show the inhumanity of the human race towards each other, and these crimes will go on into the future, “genocide inspires genocide”. It seems history must repeat it’s self over and over again; humans will not get past the psychology of hate. Lessons which should be learned are lost in ignorance.

Even defining the word “Genocide” is difficult for many governments and individuals, though its definition seems very clear: “The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group” (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2015). But this definition leaves many gray areas that groups and governments can use to get around global laws on human rights and genocide, to go on with their own criminal agendas against humanity. The definition does not explain or define what really makes up a group of people, or how many people in that group can be killed before it is considered a genocidal incident and not just an ethnic cleansing event. The question here is: How can you stop something that cannot be fully defined? And if it is defined, will global governments really come to the rescue of the “other? “An “Early warning System…and a coalition of support”(Rittner, Roth and Smith, (2002) Will Genocide Ever Stop? (Essay) Controlling Genocide in the Twenty-First Century, Herbert Hirsh (pages 131 to 137), may help in some cases of genocide, but changing the human psychology towards indifference, violence, and hate may be the only way to really stop the killing. But this is no easy task either, when religion and even science can be used to excuse this type of crime, to keep the majority in the mind set of hate.

The view “my tribe is better than your tribe“, seems to be somehow ingrained in the human psyche. That we are somehow different, not even the same specie. We must have someone we view as “the other”, who is below us, the scapegoat for all our troubles. Those who start genocidal crimes use this weakens in the human psyche to promote their agendas through propaganda. Dehumanization is one of the key tools to the destruction of a group of people, using their differences from the society around them to show that they are aliens in their own country or region, using pseudo-science and religion to back this up. Categorizing the targeted minority as a threat to the whole, desensitizes the majority, allowing the justified killing of the group, without question. “A common belief of this kind is that all members of a group share a common “essence” – an invisible something that distinguishes the group from other groups and leads to common group characteristics, or at least the tendency to develop these characteristics” (Rittner, Roth and Smith, (2002) Will Genocide Ever Stop? (Essay) Psychological Foundations, Clark McCauley, Page 77-82). Leaders in genocidal acts will use all available tools to spread the hate that enables them to commit their crimes, keeping the psychology of hate into play. During World War II Hitler and the Nazi Party used old prejudges and myths towards the Jews to label them as the dangerous outsiders, who threatened the Christian German Aryan majority in Germany. Jews were labeled as an impure race that needed to be eliminated; images of vermin (rats and cockroaches) were used as propaganda symbols. Old religious myths were also brought into political play; Jews were labeled as Christ killers, which meant as a group they all most suffer, their Christian neighbors had a duty to make this so. The myth from the 1st century of what is called Blood Libel, “the claim that Jews kill gentiles motivated by ritual/demonic impulses”(Dennis, Rabbi Geoffrey W. (2007) The Encyclopedia Of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, Page 36 to 37), also was used in Nazi propaganda. All these psychological tools of hate increased the hatred and fear of the Jews in Germany, the rest of Europe, and the world during this time, closing borders to Jews and any hope of escaping the nightmare. This type of propaganda plays on our need to have “the other” to fear and hate. In Rwanda the Hutus used faulty pseudo-science and pseudo-anthropological research to prove that the Tutsis were another race or even another species from themselves. The Tutsi were labeled as being something less than the Hutus, “the other”, who had to carry different identification cards. This goes back to the human mind set saying “my tribe is better than you’re tribe.” Charismatic leaders play on this mind set to pull the majority into the crime, making them believe that it is being done for them out of care, for the good of the majority. That it must not be stopped, because it is saving them from the invisible “Boogie Man”, the enemy, that their leader preaches about and that faulty religion and science proves as some type of evil threat to their group.

Perpetrators of genocidal crimes also rely on putting their victims into a never ending psychology of fear, humiliation, and guilt. Labeling a group of people with something different than the majority (like identification cards, symbols or special laws that only pertains to them), can affect the victims psychologically. Torture (including rape), starvation, slave labor and public executions also are used to wear down and destroy the targeted group or groups, to break their spirits, minds and destroy their bodies. The victims may live in such fear that they just shut down emotionally, and may give up completely. Others may even start believing that something is truly different and wrong about themselves, and that the perpetrators are right in some way. After living through such inhumanity the crime of genocide goes on in the surviving victim’s psyche. The individual may feel humiliation from being raped or tortured themselves or watching this done to others and not being able to do anything, blaming themselves for being weak physically or spiritually, when in reality they could do nothing. They may have flash backs of the horrors they have seen and experienced, and have survivor’s guilt. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, phobias, drug and alcohol problems, and other emotional and mental problems may affect the victim for the rest of their lives. Genocide and its crimes live on in the survivors minds and bodies and the souls of the dead that it leaves in its destructive path. But human beings ignore even those that have lived through it and their experiences, repeating it over and over again. The cry for “never again,” seems to be ignored by the global community. Indifference and hate goes on in the world, though human beings have witness such horrors, we do nothing to stop the next tragedy. We ignore real science, which proves the human race is all connected genetically and biologically, inside we are all made the same, blood, bone and tissue of the same human DNA. We are all creatures that need love and safety, to be mentally and physically healthy. We also ignore the religions around the world, who all speak of loving your neighbors, your follow human beings. That killing another human being is an abomination to humanity and the Universal Soul.

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RACISM AND HATE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH

Has the American Southeast changed from its intolerant and unjust past? Is racism, ethnic and religious intolerance still factors in how justice is laid out and how people are treated by their neighbors in the southern states, also called the Bible belt? Many would say, yes, it has changed do to great men and women like Martin Luther King JR, who fought peacefully to gain rights for all to live in justice instead of injustice. The Bible belt has become more diverse over the years, because of climate, cheaper real estate and jobs, which bring people in from New England, western states, (like California), and from other countries. This means that the once very homogeneous white Protestant Confederate South of the past has a mix of different cultures, ethnicities, races and religions. Many cities like Atlanta, Georgia have a cosmopolitan atmosphere, with many different communities interacting together, not at all like the stereotypical old South.

It is hard to imagine that not so long ago, race and ethnic differences were a major factor in everyday life in the Southeastern states (and the rest of the country in different degrees), from the time of slavery to modern times. African-Americans were thought of as sub-humans, enslaved, mistreated and oppressed. In the mid 1900’s even after being freed from slavery for almost a century in Southern states, they had to fight to vote, couldn’t use the same public areas as Caucasians, or hold certain jobs (hard labor and domestic jobs were deemed theirs) and they were constantly being showed through unjust laws, their place compared to their white neighbors. The history of the Confederate South owning slaves made it easy for whites to feel superior to their black neighbors, a lot of them had ancestors who owned slaves, and viewed it as a biblical right. Other minorities were seen also as outsiders, trying to corrupt their old ways. Jews from the North and South, who fought right alongside Martin Luther King JR. for the rights of African-Americans to have all the rights of their Caucasian neighbors, were viewed with old biblical anti-Semitic hate. They were told to stay out of what was the Southern Protestant way of life that Christians were the true Southerners and the ones who made the laws. Catholic Southerners were viewed also as a threat to the Protestant Southerner’s viewpoint; Catholics followed a pope, which was a foreigner. Foreigners were dangerous to the old ways, bringing in different viewpoints on political, religious, cultural and racial issues. That the Old South did not want to face, because it might cause dangerous change, where white Protestants might have to interact with “the others”, and give them the same rights as they had in all parts of daily life. Progressive Southern Protestants who fought for the rights of African-Americans were also viewed as being unsouthern and unchristian, traitors to racial purity and the Southern lifestyle. 

Today the Bible belt is more progressive, thanks to new comers coming in and more liberal Southerners speaking out. But the old Confederate South still is alive and well in the rural areas, (especially), and in the government and the legal systems in many states and their counties. The Confederate flag still is considered a symbol of Southern pride against what is perceived as a protest against Northern aggression and a mythical Jewish controlled government that has pressured them to change. Many still talk of the old ways, not liking the change that is slowly happening. Some Southerners still would live in the times of slavery or Jim Crowe if they had their wishes; others do not like that black children can interact with white children in their schools, some high schools even have racially segregated proms, so parents are more at ease. Just a few years ago, one Southern university made it permissible, finally, for interracial couples to finally be able to date on their campus, without getting expelled. Hate groups still have a strong role in many ways. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), founded after the American Civil War in Georgia to try to regain white supremacy through intimidation, terrorism and murder, still exist today. Other hate groups like American Front, National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), The Nationalist Movement, Stormfront, and a variety of skinhead groups and other hate groups, all can be found in various Southern states (and non-Southern states also), hiding under the First Amendment and Second Amendment, of free speech, free assembly and the right to bear arms. All of these groups are home grown terrorists, but the legal system usually ignores them as just good old boys until someone is murdered. They are a normal part of some areas of the South, with little or no protest, having community activities, even parades down Main Street. 

Other parts of the United States have issues on race, ethnicity and religion which can get heated and dangerous. There is racism, antisemitism and religious intolerance everywhere in the country, but the Southeast seems to take more of a pride in thinking in the old ways and celebrating them, and remaining more racially and ethnically separated. The governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell in 2010 declared the month of April as “Confederate History Month” (and so has others), honoring for the most part the historical crime of slavery and the inhumanity of racism and hate. Other Southern States would also like to honor Confederate history on their books. Should slavery ever be celebrated? It is these factors and mindset that still causes injustice in many ways, causing poverty, unfairness in the legal system, and at times still hate crimes (not just in the American South, because these cultural ideas are spread throughout the country). I for one will not be celebrating "Confederate History Month”, my ancestors fought against slavery in the South, people like them should be honored not slave owners and those that fought to keep slavery.

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AND JUSTICE FOR ALL? FACT OR FICTION

The United States believes it has the cornerstone of human rights within its borders. But our past and present shows a different picture, a history full of human rights violations, that go back to the beginning of our history. In our past you can find many Holocausts of hatred and oppression. But we seem to forget somehow, through patriotic and religious zeal, how this country truly began, and how we have treated our own citizens throughout our existence. If you read some books, newspaper articles and editorials today you will find a rewriting of our past, a total fiction, which somehow history has magically changed into a fantasy; a mythical tale, full of lies and colorful trappings. Our educational systems also rewrites history in favor of a Disney styled world, where everything is perfect. But history cannot be changed to fit one’s need to feel superior, neither can false patriotism and religious beliefs change history, and the fact that human ignorance, bigotry, and hatred has been a part of American culture all along.

When the white Europeans came to the New World, they viewed the Native Americans as just savages, animals, needing to be saved by European culture and Christianity. They believed that it was a God-given duty to convert or murder the natives. Ignoring the fact that these were human beings like themselves, who already had rich cultures with many religious beliefs that had existed for thousands of years, they were not savages in any way. This began years of genocidal acts against the Native Americans, by forced conversions, massacres, and concentration camps. In fact Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party in Germany, fashioned his death camps after what we call Indian reservations. Today much of Native American culture is forgotten, even to its people. Many live in poverty and are treated with little or no respect by their white neighbors. Most white Americans have little knowledge of Native Americans or their culture, and many still view them with total ignorance. 

The owning of African slaves is another part of our history that is at times forgotten or excused. These human beings that were violently kidnapped from their own part of the world were sold into a nightmare. The greed of slave traders, and the laziness and racism of slave owners fueled the slave trade. When talking about the founding fathers of the United States, we speak of how heroic and wise they were, but never mention that they were slave owners and supported slavery, just like the rest of white culture at the time, especially in the southern states. The Confederate South, also called the Bible Belt, fought the north for the right to keep owning their slaves. They used Christian doctrine to verify the right to own another person. Austin Cline states; “The primary focus of those using Christianity to defend slavery and segregation was the story of Noah, specifically the part where his son Ham is cursed to serve his bothers. This story long functioned as a model for Christians to insist that God meant Africans to be marked as servants of others because they are descended from Ham. Secondary was the story of the Tower of Babel as a model for God’s desire to separated people generally rather than have them united in common cause and purpose.” Web Essay: Christianity in the Confederate South: Southern Nationalism and Christianity (2007).This idea was a total twisting of what is really said in the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible.) 

After the Confederate South lost the Civil War to the north, things did not improve for the freed slaves. They were treated as threats to white culture; many feared that they would get equal rights to whites and racially mixing. They were hunted down, tortured, and murdered without one thought of their humanity. Around this time America’s first home grown terrorist group was founded. In 1866 the Klu Klux Klan was formed by Confederate veterans of the Civil War in Pulaski, Tennessee, angered because of the ending of slavery. The far-right Christian Klu Klux Klan started a history of ethnic and racial hatred and violence throughout the American South, causing other hate groups to slowly form across the South and the country. Cline states: “Although the South lost the Civil War, White Supremacy remained an important component of Christian teaching for the next century. White Christian churches taught that slavery was a just institution, as were Jim Crow laws and segregation; that white Christianity remained the last, best hope for western civilization; and that white Christians had a mandate to exercise dominion over the world — and especially the darker races who were little more than children” Web Essay: Christianity in the Confederate South: Southern Nationalism and Christianity (2007). Southerners supported politicians and other legal systems that guaranteed total segregation of the races. They did not want to share any public arena with their black neighbors, strongly enforcing Jim Crow laws. If you were black you had separate bathrooms, drinking fountains, parks, schools, and other public areas. You could not eat in restaurants with your white neighbor, or enter places of business through the same entrance. Jews and other minorities were also targets of the Klu Klux Klan’s violence. The United States government did little to change this, viewing it was a state’s right to choose their laws. Sadly, a lot of those in Washington D.C. agreed with the white supremacists.

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, lynched in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his freedom fighters and other people like them made great change in the American South and the rest of America. King and many people like him died for these changes. But there is more work to be done. Today, the United States has many hate groups around the country; the KKK, Aryan Nations (the Church of Jesus Christ Christian), the American Nazi Party, National Association for the Advancement of White People, (founded by former KKK leader David Duke), and many others. Their objects of hate are African-Americans, Jews, liberal Christians, gays and lesbians, immigrants, and many other minorities. These hate groups hide behind the American Constitution, false interpretation of religious doctrine, and twisted patriotism. Their members are active in our communities, politics and legal systems. Can we have true justice for all? When we still let these terrorist groups exist within are borders. When they have done the very things that terrorist around the world have. That is a question that can only be answered by “no”.  Martin Luther King Jr. said; “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” Martin Luther King JR., Essay: Letters from Birmingham Jail. 

THE MYTH OF RACE: RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND RACIAL SEPARATISTS

A person’s perceived racial identity can be a blessing or a curse. In the United States race has always been an important subject, which has carried with it oppression and segregation. This history began with the encampment and genocide of the Native Americans by the European explorers, the enslavement of Africans in the New World, the recent history of the strong segregation of the Jim Crow laws in Southern states, and the long and hard fight for racial integration. Racial hatred still thrives today in the United States and throughout the world, sometimes in the light, and sometimes in the shadows. Separatist groups, using both faulty science and twisted religion, try to separate the human race into sections and define each race into superior and inferior species. But what really is race?

The origin of the human race has always been a fascination for both science and religion. Charles Darwin in 1859 was one of the first scientists to come up with a theory based in science, which explained the human race’s existence called evolution. Darwin’s theory of evolution supported the fact that the human race was one species. However, this also allowed for other scientists to come up with theories of unequal evolutional processes, and the theory of “survival of the fittest”, where human groups are in competition for resources. This view also allowed for racism in a different way, viewing darker skinned ethnic groups as less evolved than lighter skinned ethnic groups. Science today bases its theories on bones, genetic findings, and artifacts from the distant past, to support the theory of evolution and the development and movement of the human race. “The earliest hominids evolved from apes about 5 million years ago, but modern humans (Homo sapiens) didn’t emerge until 150,000 - 200,000 years ago in eastern Africa, where we spent most of our evolution together as a species” (“Go Deeper: Human Diversity”) http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-godeeper.htm. Most of today’s scientists do not view people through any mythical racial scenario; they categorize human beings by geographic and cultural differences.

The various world religions have many kinds of stories to explain the human race’s beginnings, and why we are here on planet earth, weaving beautiful and sometimes horrific tales of creation. In the Hebrew Bible’s Genesis, the human race began with Adam, a being sculpted by God from the earth. This story of the human race’s creation is recognized by three major religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many Native American creation stories also have the human race created from the earth, being of one race. In the Hopi tribe’s first story of creation they include a being called Spider Woman, who gives life to the human race after creating everything else on earth. In this story the human race slowly separates, going to different parts of the world causing conflicts within the human family, and forgetting the Creator. Finally they are destroyed and recreated, and we may be being recreated right now. In most of these creation stories, the message is the same; we are one species and to go against your fellow human being, is to sin against a Creator.

White separatists in the United States and throughout the world have a different viewpoint on the origins and the definition of what race is. They have used science and religion for hundreds of years to categorize humans into races and even different species, for their theories and beliefs. Using scientific research of the past and their own pseudo anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and bio-scientists to come up with an alternate theory for the human race, where each race developed independently and in different parts of the world. Religion has also played a part in separating the human specie, using stories of creation to support their viewpoint. The Christian Identity movement (which started in England), and other separatists Christian sects throughout history have used religion to support their theories of racial divide. They have used both the story of Christian creationism and the mythical “Tower of Babble”, which they believe is God separating the races once again. Followers of this form of Christianity believe that the separation of the races started even before the Garden of Eden itself, using creationism instead of evolution, to support their theology of racial separation and racial purity. Non-whites are viewed as soulless beast, which must be controlled or exterminated for their own good and to protect against racial or species mixing. Jews are viewed as the children of the devil, which the serpent represents, and a danger to the white race and Christianity itself. Any interracial breeding, which they believe was the real meaning of the “original sin”, is considered an abomination to God and the Christian faith, weakening the white race’s genetic and spiritual heritage. The white race is supposed to be protected at all times from the other races. The mythical white womanhood is to be protected, because women are the doors to the white race’s future generations and they have inherited Eve’s weakness for interbreeding with the other species. A white woman’s primary job is to ensure that the white race continues by picking a husband, who is racially pure, and having children and educating them about the importance of the white race and its purity.

White Christian separatists in the United States believe that at some time there will be what they call a race war, where the white race will have to battle against all the other races on earth, and that they will have to forcefully take the United States back from non-whites. Some of these groups believe this is already beginning with what they call the “culture war”. The movement teaches its followers not to trust the United Nations or the United States’ government, which they believe are backed by a Jewish agenda to destroy the white race and to take away its God given rights and country. Equal rights laws and affirmative action protections are viewed with mistrust, because separatists believe these laws are made to take away the mythical white man’s power. They also view hate crime laws as a push towards this perceived race war, where they are prosecuted for doing their Creator’s work. 

The theory that the human animal is separated into different races is a very young one. Even slavery predates the belief in different races, and was the product of conquest and power, not physical differences between people. “Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word “race” until it turns up in a 1508 poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings” (“Go Deeper: What is Race”) http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_01_a-godeeper.htm. Science today shows us that we are one species, not different sub-species. The human race has traveled and adapted too many different environments, which have changed our body size, type, and appearance. We have also seen recessive genes add to the different types of appearances that one may encounter in the human race, examples include blues eyes and red hair. Ancestry controls what your appearance and genetic makeup will be, not race. “Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye color, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her” (“Go Deeper: What is Race“) http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_01_a-godeeper.htm. The side effects of defining the human race into races has been disastrous, causing untold harm and death, allowing for brutal slavery, segregation, and numerous genocides in the past several hundred years. In the United States racial segregationists have committed numerous terrorist attacks on African-Americans, Jews, and other ethnic groups, burning and bombing churches, synagogues, and businesses. They have murdered their fellow human beings, without legal ramifications, using constitutional protections to back their agenda and actions. Today, these white separatist individuals and groups pose a danger not just to the individual, who is the perceived other, but also to the security of the countries they inhabit. 

Separating people into races and even species is scientifically and spiritually wrong. The theory that the human animal is separated into different races is a very young one, and hopefully it can be reversed, with cultural and diversity education. We call ourselves evolved and have the brain power for many great things, yet we look toward our own species with hate, seeing simple differences as an excuse to do inhuman and un-Godly crimes against each other. So are we really as evolved as we profess to be? This question may never be answered, if we do not want to even admit there is a problem.