Could Genocide Really Happen Here? Leading Scholar Says America Is On 'High Alert'

[appalachiablue]

- National Socialist Movement (NSM) members wave American Flags & NSM flags on a march from the Washington Monument to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol bldg., April 19, 2008, Wash., DC. Between 30-40 members of the group marched to bring attention to illegal immigration; about 1200 city police officers were on duty.
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- Alexander Laban Hinton on his new book, Trump's snake metaphor and the rising danger of white-power movements. Salon, By David Masciotra, July 11, 2021.

Even the title of Alexander Laban Hinton's new book provides a chilling summary of the current danger facing this nation: "It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the U.S." Hinton is one of the world's leading authorities on genocide and atrocity crimes. He is the author of 12 books on the subject and directs the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University. He testified as an expert witness, at the trial of Nuon Chea, who was prime minister of Cambodia during the genocidal tyranny of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

With sober analysis and in assiduous detail, Hinton explores the ways the United States is "simmering at a low boil," and evinces every risk indicator for widespread mass atrocity crimes. White supremacist organizations and armed militias are mobilized for political action, the Republican Party has declared war on multiracial democracy and right-wing voters have become increasingly radical and hostile, falling into the personality cult of Donald Trump and the apocalyptic cult of QAnon.

As historian Timothy Snyder, philosopher Jason Stanley and former Republican insider Mike Lofgren have also warned, the U.S. is teetering at the edge of fascism. With "It Can Happen Here," Hinton brings his knowledge and experience to bear on a dynamic history of the Trump administration — taking his readers inside his classroom, to white power rallies and to his own testimony at the Chea trial. One of the book's strengths is its accessibility. Written with literary style rather than in dry academic prose, it makes for fascinating, albeit deeply disturbing, reading.

Alarming but never alarmist, Hinton provides a chilling introduction to genocide studies through a chronicle of his travails during the Trump years. The echoes of historical genocide are impossible to miss in contemporary American politics. Most Americans undoubtedly prefer to think of the United States as immune to the forces of history, and above the various forms of political violence and societal collapse that have affected every populated continent on the planet at one time or another. Hinton is here to tell us that kind of passivity and apathy is all too likely to create the conditions for historic catastrophe...

Continued,
https://www.salon.com/2021/07/11/could-genocide-really-happen-here-leading-scholar-says-america-is-on-high-alert/

[unblock]

1. Perhaps some native Americans have a view on whether genocide can happen here....

The very notion that genocide might be some alarmist view of a far-fetched atrocity that can only occur in other places actually helps enable a genocide.

Not only *can* it happen here, but in fact certain forces have specifically set the stage for it over the past 40 years.

[appalachiablue]

2. As the first part of his book title says, 'It Can

Happen Here.' And it has happened here, meaning genocide, of Native Americans full on by white Europeans. The author references atrocities against Native American and settler colonialism briefly in this passage from the article. Genocide could have been prefaced by '21st century' or something else in the title to distinguish it from the earlier genocide.
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I started noting the echoes, and then we got to Charlottesville. That was when I felt it was necessary to take it on, and bring to bear an analysis of the risk and danger of mass violence.

That begins with a long journey through the specific lens of genocide studies, and a genocide-driven revisionist look at the United States, which leads us through settler colonialism and the connection between the need for land and need for labor, which sets everything in motion. I also teach about atrocity crimes. We're talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Indian Exclusion Act, what happens when we push Native Americans further and further west and, of course, systemic white supremacy.

Oddly, now the latter is being pushed through the frame of "critical race theory." I don't use that language, but I'm certainly familiar with the literature. When I began writing the book, few people were having these conversations, and now they are commonplace. The speed with which the discourse has changed is remarkable.

[BlueMTexpat]

4. Your post is

spot on. Sadly.

As for 21st-century echoes, I have had the shudders ever since the Bush II Administration instituted "Homeland Security."

"Homeland" is just too uncomfortably close to Hitler's "Fatherland" for me, with all the same connotations.

[unblock]

5. Many echoes of naziism. But specifically, the notion of "enemies within" is truly frightening.

They have expanded from demonizing black people and some lunatic fringe communists to demonizing all minorities and basically the entire Democratic Party.

That notion leads directly to a purge.

Very scary times.

[alwaysinasnit]

3. k&r for visibility

Thanks for posting!

[onetexan]

6. K&R - chilling & frightening

[srobertss]

7. They sure feel like Nazis

So I started picking up on videos and books based in WW2 Germany, just to understand the parallels. One thing that struck me is that the Nazis were beating up Jews in public as early as 1934, five years before the war. So that actually reassured me that Nazis were worse than Republicans. But the adoration of Hitler by a big portion of German citizens has resounding parallels. Interestingly, Hitler had only 37% of the vote when he gained political power. But then Hindenburg gave him power over dissidents after the Reichstag fire. Then he really gained traction. And when Hindenburg died, he gained full rein. I haven’t read enough to understand why Hindenburg handed over so much control to Hitler, but my hope is that there is a strong enough opposition to Trump that that can’t happen here. But then there’s the monkey wrench of climate change. That could throw everything into disarray. I have started to think that extreme climate change denial is behind this sharp rise in hatred and insanity from the MAGAs. Things feel so extraordinarily brittle and combustive, in spite of a vigorous economic recovery. I struggled for insight into why things have shifted so significantly. I know Trump is a catalyst, but why did so many people fall for him so suddenly? What has shifted? Heat domes, catastrophic wild fires, plastics clogging the oceans, extreme hurricanes, ocean rise. Surely that is permeating at an unconscious level and maybe more intensely because of the denial. That would make me crazy, to see what’s happening but feel compelled to proclaim it a hoax. That’s enough to throw anyone into fear, anger, and magical thinking.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. If they stick to Jews, maybe gays, they might be able to get away with it.

Fortunately, most are so unorganized it isn't as much as a threat, but given the popularity of "Q", well...

[lagomorph777]

9. Are they asking whether it can happen again? We've had several occurrences already:

(1) Extermination of 90% plus of the Native American population.
(2) Slavery.
(3) The Trump Plague (slaughtered 600,000 Americans by deliberately spreading COVID).