The Massacres are Coming

We are on a dangerous path

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Call me hyperbolic, but I'm simply pointing out a potential end state of the path we're on. Left alone, a garden will eventually become a chaotic mess of weeds. The same is true for democracy.

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Right wing governments scare people into submitting to fascism.

Whether it’s immigrants, Antifa, or communism, they create a loosely defined boogeyman lurking around the corner ready to steal your wealth and freedom. Worse, they tell you these people are figuratively and literally raping and pillaging their way across your land.

While the world is experiencing a variety of threats, there is no boogeyman. These narratives are created to deflect your attention from the real problems, pitting the masses against each other or against outsiders. History shows us this works well to divert attention away from true socio-economic and resource problems towards scapegoats.

Reducing a targeted group to a pack of vicious, immoral animals that threaten your aspirational way of life heats a hatred that slowly transforms public caution into active oppression. It starts as anxiety and fear, becoming apathy to the occasional extrajudicial murder and concentration camp. A segment of the true believers becomes foot soldiers for the regime, and some, with either explicit or tacit approval, push violence to extremes eventually committing horrific crimes against humanity. This relatively small portion of the regime is all it takes to create a compliant society.

It’s an iterative process, which starts with routine dehumanization leading to subsurface actions that stop grabbing the headlines of the controlled media. The occasional brown family disappears. “They were probably up to no good anyway”, one might rationalize. Then places of congregation are targeted as a more efficient way to round up undesirables. Eventually, this expands to include anyone protesting the round-ups by classifying them as “domestic terrorists”.

Everything I described in the previous paragraph is already happening.

Despite this, most people are unaffected. The Dow Jones is above 50,000. Life goes on.

We used to wonder: “how did Germans willingly accept Nazi concentration camps?” This is how. Some begrudgingly accept the situation. Others oppose but don’t do anything. Then there are those who fully support the discrimination, believing that “other groups” have held them down and no longer belong. Finally, it’s their time.

It’s a slow iterative process that takes years and remains background noise as it’s happening.

Don’t believe me? Well, what’s going on with those random extrajudicial killings committed during the past year? The “right” kind of violence is already normalized by the regime, and excused via immunity and pardons.

I can’t predict the future, but the path we are on is dangerous. The next step to watch for will be group executions. Could be just a few people protesting or a horde of “invaders”. An official reaction to an undesirable event in the name if security.

Look at what happened to Spain the other day. A wave of about 50,000 people crossed from North Africa into Spanish territory. The crowd of young men entering the beaches is understandably frightening, regardless of who they are and why they’re there.

If this had happened in a country with border guards on hair trigger alert backed by immunity and fueled by hate this could have ended with machine guns mowing down rows of migrants. Again, this seems far fetched today but this outcome is only a few political chess moves from occurring.

Set aside the specifics of this example, and simply look at the scale. An angry, scared population predisposed to violence against “others” could eventually support simply murdering these “invaders”. We may be a few similar occurrences away from that reality, but in coming years, as heat becomes unbearable in certain regions and crops fail, the waves of mass migration will continue. And it will increasingly be considered a threat to domestic resources and one’s ability to feed their family.

Eventually, reaction to protests or border crossings might evolve into proaction. The systems are being put in place. Groups of undesirables concentrated within camps or specific neighborhoods. Roundups and one-off executions excused.

I want to believe humankind won’t revisit the atrocities of the past, but I must recognize the possibility. It is imperative this path is not followed, as once it starts it’s difficult to stop.

l believe we’ll find out how deep this abyss goes in a couple months, after mid-term elections.

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