Image from the Museum of the American Indian
Genocide is a biopolitical act that is done to create “living space”—lebensraum, as the Nazis termed it—for an artificially constructed “race” that expands its population by stealing and occupying the habitat of another human population.
I visited the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian last week and re-learned the history of the Euro-American genocide of Native Americans. When Native American populations were not wiped out summarily, they were told to leave their homes or else they would be annihilated. The Trail of Tears—forced emigration—was the result, and it occurred over and over again.
I visited the Holocaust Museum, too, and re-learned the history of the forced emigration of Jews from Germany in the 1930s. When WW2 began, the option to leave Germany vanished for Jews and the industrialized genocide—that also included millions of Russians, Poles, Romas, non-binaries, "criminals" and the "infirm"—commenced.
War is a type of eugenics that is waged by the aggressor for the purpose of “cleansing” a habitat of another population’s DNA so it can be replaced by its own. It is an immediate eugenics when compared to medical and economic types.
Israel is telling Palestinians today they must leave Rafah or else they will be annihilated. This is a Trail of Tears event and it has the political and material support of the US and most European governments.
I have, in this blog, documented how settler colonialist cultures rely on the biblical narrative of the Israelite’s genocide of Canaanites to justify their genocides.
Perhaps I have not expressed my disgust fully enough that US culture never corrected its original mistake of creating itself via genocide. I was raised during the Vietnam War, and when it ended in total failure I was taught in high school and college that US culture had learned a lesson. But it didn’t. 911 happened, and we became a fascist nation, pretending to deliver the world democracy while destroying it comprehensively.
The Holocaust Museum is a failure for those who hope that it might teach us to prevent genocides—because it concludes its narrative with Israel as the beacon of hope, and does not fold Israel’s history into the larger cosmopolitan history of what I have just written about using a few simple words.
It can succeed if it includes Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, however.
Do you think it has room in its building for that history?
I did not see any available space for it.
Such content is forced to emigrate and exist somewhere else, perhaps a reservation or refugee camp—or it will be erased.
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