Opinion on Genocide
Whenever you hear mention of genocide, such as the Jewish Holocaust or the near destruction of the Native Americans, you can’t help but wonder how anything like that could happen. You tell yourself that there is no way you’d let that happen to you, or your friends and family. But how can you be sure? Without having actually experienced it, you don’t know for certain how you would act or what you would do.
But, if that time ever came, at least we would have history to learn from. And thus, we would not fall so easily into the tricks and traps set by our persecutors. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the Armenians who suffered and died in the Armenian Holocaust, the western world’s first historical account of genocide.
Thus, the question I would like to address and explore is a simple one: How can the victims of genocide allow such a thing to occur?
In the case of the Armenian Genocide, fellow countrymen were set against one another as the highest officials of the Ottoman Empire spewed poisonous propaganda meant to paint the Armenians in a false light. As a result, their Turkish neighbors turned against them, believing them to be not only traitors, but also the primary reason for many of the nations problems. The facilitators of this genocide used textbook tactics by dehumanizing, dispiriting, and dividing the Armenians so as to prevent them from uniting in revolt. Also, the Turks sought to weaken the wills of the Armenians even further by imprisoning many of their leaders, sending their military men to labor camps, forcefully deporting a large majority of them, and executing many others.
Similar strategies were used both in the Holocaust, where Jews were turned against one another at the labor/death camps, as well as during the colonization of the Americas by the Europeans, who spread lies among the various tribes, causing them to distrust and fight against each other.
These approaches worked because they subscribe to the widely-acknowledged stages of genocide, numbers 3 and 5 in particular. The third stage, dehumanization, focuses mainly on a psychological assault meant to infuse doubt and self-loathing into the victims. Eventually, the genocide progresses to the fifth stage, polarization, in which the perpetrators move to separate the victims both physically and psychologically in an attempt to keep them too busy being wary of one another, so that they become oblivious to the horrible genocide they face.
Now, although many people may say that a modern instance of genocide is impossible, history has contrarily proven it to be a probability. Faced with the hypothetical question of how would one react if one was a victim of genocide, many people would strongly assert that they would resist to the utmost and that the attempted genocide would fail. Regardless of whether or not those assertions would be true, I am simply thankful that we have not yet had to find out.
And I will continue to hope that that remains true.
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January 5th, 2009 at 6:29 am
I am simpily appalled by the slow and/or near non-exsistant actions by the world since the second world war, which the world said \"never again\"! That was then and this is now, where globalization and capitalism rule. If it affects the U.S. in a monetary form we will jump goto war and risk the lives of our people, yet when it\’s just some thrid world country we\’ll do exactly what the world did in the 40s, and either pretend we didn\’t know it was happening or use a excuse of we\’re doing all we can. No-one seems to realize that millions of lives could of been saved in WW2 by not rejecting jewish immigrants, once there was confromation of these camps they could\’ve made a truce to stop the killings and delt with the Nazi\’s afterwords, or worked with those who tried to contact the allies about overthrowing the Nazi\’s 2-3 years before 1945 saving 20-40 million lives. The governments came up with all sorts of excuses, yet they acted like it was not their problem and not a priority. Don\’t confuse this with them not helping some Jews, any Jewish person who had something of value such as Einestine they helped (sound familiar? Himmer did the same). And what of the Russian mass killings in Poland and Ukraine? People were so shocked to see them death camps and we acted like we knew nothing and all Germans were guilty of not stoping it, yet the few who tried where either sent to the same camps or killed. How could the world only blame one group of people who were totally brain washed and knew only what their goveronment allowed them to know (yes many had heard rumers, yet the Allies knew more about the actual horedous acts then the majority of the Germans, its one thing hearing some jewish people are being killed while knowing millions of Germans, Russians, and others were being killed, and knowing that there were camps killing thousands of innocent people every hour!)? Where were the liability of the Allies to make saving these people their #1 priority? I mean any such effort would of saved atleast 10 million people at what cost, an extra thousand Americans, and an extra thousand British, Atleast ten million lives many of which were women and children weren\’t worth the cost? Just as the Germans who if they didn\’t think about the rumors or wonder what was happening to the Jewish being taken away, then it wasn\’t there problem or responsibility, the world did the exact same as there were reports and confirmations of the acts at the camps, yet because they were fighting the Germans they were not questioned why didn\’t they put saving more lives ahead of gaining the most territory and gaining the most technology? The world has forgot the guilt it felt then and now is making the same mistakes decades later! The U.S. the supposed protector and fighter of democracy and human rights has only been of late the fighter of protecting it\’s profits and only protects the safty of Americans. In Africa the world waited too long in the 90s, in the Balkins the world again only came to the party after the fact, during Stalin\’s rule we never helped millions (which would\’ve prevented Russia becoming the power it did and making 1/4 of the world become it\’s prisioner), and finally now in Durfur we speak out, yet do nothing because we need there governments help (the same political B.S. which prevented saving 10s of millions in WW2 by both not making the stopping of the death camps their top priority, and by not stopping Stalin who killed as many or more then Hitler. What amazes me is the world doesn\’t learn from it\’s past mistakes, and many times help mold or aid these anti-crists to do the horendous acts they commit. It was the treaty after WW1 that built hate in Germans which through a mad man got directed at the Jews because the winners justice had to make one country the bad guy, yet if I remember history it was the Serbs who assasinated someone, which by the way if it had happened to the U.S. we\’d of done the same just as in Afganistan, yet in history there has not been one war where the U.S. has been the bad guys or been punished for acts? Just as Germans where brain washed by a few nut cases, Americans have been walking around beliving that we are always right, that we are the good guys, but don\’t the good guys usually help those who can\’t help them selves and also punish our own war crimes? If the U.S. was truely what it thinks it is (the best place on earth aka. where anyone can abtain the American dream) with all the checks and balances wouldn\’t we be able to make sure our government did the right thing instead of all the coruption and greed that will go to war over oil or invade two countries over a couple hundred Americans dieing, yet won\’t go to war to save hundreds of thousand or even millions of lives. We don\’t even hear on the nightly news on our local stations of the real tragities happening in our world, instead we only hear news about someone stealing money or someone selling drugs, or the feature of channel 4 undercover busting people leaving court driving without thier licence! Are the rest of Americans really so stupid and nieve to the real world and real events? It\’s come down to no-one cares about anyone else unless it happens in our back yard, because then it could happen to me or my family. Who wants to hear about a Genocide thousands of miles away, it doesn\’t effect me does it? I can\’t happen to me or anyone I know so there isn\’t nothing I can do! That was the same attitude which Closed its eyes and let Hitler get as far as he got, and the Stalins bring the world to the brink of distruction, because if you only care about your life and money, someone else will someday affect you or your family because your eyes were closed, and since you didn\’t help others who were being mass murdered, maybe no-one will help you or me.