Could genocide really happen here? Leading scholar says America is on 'high alert' - Raw Story - Celebrating 17 Years of Independent Journalism
Could genocide really happen here? Leading scholar says America is on 'high alert'
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."
This article first appeared in Salon.
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.
I recently interviewed Hinton by phone. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
You gave your book the title, "It Can Happen Here." You are, of course, playing off Sinclair Lewis' classic novel, "It Can't Happen Here." Like Lewis, you are combating the illusion of American exceptionalism, the idea that freedom, democracy and progress toward equality are almost like laws of nature. In fact, you make the argument that "it" has already happened here. Can you explain how the belief that "it can't happen here" is historically wrong?
I think of two contextual blockages that prevent us from grappling with our past, and the present that is informed by it. One is what you just named, "American exceptionalism," the "not us" idea. You know, "this is America and it can't happen here." We get this over and over again. The corollary to that is "not me." That's the idea, "Oh, it's a bunch of crazy racists over there. I have nothing to do with that." From "not me," we get the "bad apples" idea. I spend a lot of time in the book addressing the fallacy of "bad apples" and "the hater" — the isolated villain. The danger of these concepts is that if we allow people to believe that "not us" and "not me," they will soon think, "Well, then it's not my problem."
To the second part of your question, that was how the project began. I was testifying in the trial of Nuon Chea right as Trump was riding into power. Many people were making analogies between Trump and genocidal leaders. As someone who studies these things, I am always wary of direct historical analogies. I think of them more as echoes, or patterns that take place, and we can look for a manifestation. For example, if we look at the history of fascist ultra-nationalism, there are many echoes with the Trump administration. 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.
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