Opinion Editorials, February 2014

The problem of racism is primarily the treatment of darker skinned people by the lighter skinned, that treatment always murderously damaging to humanity itself and not only the particular people being savaged by those who thought themselves, somehow, more human than others. But reaction to mistreatment on racial grounds, especially without consideration of the economic roots of such inhumanity, may be as dangerous to the survival of the race.

 Persecution understandably leads people to band together with their kind in order to survive against the forces of injustice that prevail against them, and one of the defenses against treatment as inferior is to adopt a belief system that claims superiority. As in:

 They hate us and persecute us because they are envious of our superiority to them.

 This can work in the short term to lift spirits and bring oppressed minorities together, but in the long term it can perpetuate the infantile disorder. The psychology business sometimes finds this a profitable form of treatment/therapy in societies based on capitalist individualism, like our own. But the social disease is far more serious and warrants consideration since it can lead to not simply one individual or group claiming domination over other humans, but almost all who occupy the dominator position to wind up claiming superiority. It’s only natural, they believe, since they are much better than those under their rule who resent their supremacy because they are inferior.

 This aspect of the infantile disorder can be seen in the recent ravings of a wealthy member of the 1% who claimed the 99% were somehow threatening a holocaust in their seeming envy and hatred of their superiors among the richest of the rich. The “h” word is not only regularly overused but has also become a verbal weapon in the hands of gentiles as well as Jews. Its use is designed to shame the person or persons at whom it is directed and silence any further critical thought on whatever subject brought it up in the first place.

 While some groups have no way out of their social dilemmas brought on by outside forces, like colonialism or the kidnapping of slaves, than to band together and fight back, this doesn’t lead all of them to sink into the supremacist mental state. Some do, of course but most don’t. A greater problem is when previously suppressed, exploited, used and abused groups become so enamored of themselves and their terrible history that they claim racial solidarity and vengeance on those they see as the root of their problems. With all the manifestations of political economics which ravage our people and our planet, we still face a problem of supremacy that is part and parcel of the economics, and may even play a role in the origin of systems which are wasting the earth and threatening humanity’s survival.

 We are made aware, almost endlessly, of the racism inherent in the Aryan beliefs of Germany’s Nazis, as though the notion of an alleged special quality of human being was something only common to them. Less a focus is the fact that many of Germany’s Jews – not most – also believed that their status was special as well, having been selected by god to carry out a covenant that no other humans were privy to. What followed the racial conflict of these two brands of “we are more special than you” identitarianism was a blood bath of misery and deprivation that befell both. Our version of history focuses more on Jewish suffering because it was more immediately blatant, murderous, and race directed. The actual death tolls suffered by both folkloric, mythologized and self-identified-as-special divisions of the human race may be much closer in number than many are able to believe after this historic version has been the only one for so long.

 The terrible suffering of innocent Jews of Europe in the ethnic cleansing and concentration camp experience put upon them by Nazis has become – in the west – an epic tale of brutality unparalleled in the history of humanity. Tell that to the indigenous people of what became North and South America and the Africans and Asians slaughtered during the conquest of the world by western civilization (?). But the dreadful experience of lighter skinned members of the race at the hands of other light skinned members, both European, was unique. Usually, euros slaughtered darker skinned innocents while establishing their self-created high standard of racial stature. This history is still neglected or barely acknowledged in the west except to receive occasional lip service by some politicians, especially at election times and in communities populated by descendants of the various previously butchered groups.

 Nevertheless, the figure of six million Jews murdered in gas chambers or by other means in a Nazi plot to exterminate the entire Jewish “race” has been taught in schools, churches and imprinted in popular culture with movies, books, tv dramas and documented (?) survivor reminiscence. That millions of Germans also perished in that war is hardly mentioned and when it is, a sort of “they deserved it” shoulder shrugging occurs. In this, the infantile disorder of humanity is strengthened as all are treated as guilty of what some may or may not have done. Thus, when three thousand Americans were murdered on 911, those among a middle eastern population who have been victimized and butchered by American policy might well have shrugged their shoulders and said “they deserved it, since their government murdered so many of us”. This is socially shaped and provoked thinking based on material experience for some but claimed by all, and can lead to imposed beliefs in one human type retaining a special status while all others, especially if identified as enemies, sink beneath the level of insects to a category below excrement, at worst, and invisibility, at best.

 The world still suffers this deadly disease of special-ism among minorities, with a supposedly racially divided USA a primary exponent in it’s commonly held belief in being an “exceptional” nation that god, democrats, republicans, multiculturalism or capitalist owners have given special responsibilities because it is so masterfully chosen. Or so goes the belief. What it leads to is the present world situation, frequently with race mongers calling others race mongers while they sometimes openly but usually surreptitiously claim to be:

 A master race of chosen people.

 We desperately need to rid ourselves of this politically implanted divisive idiocy before it helps destroy not only our economic and social environment, but the human race along with them.

email: fpscott@gmail.com

Frank Scott writes  political commentary and satire which is available online  at Legalienate

http://legalienate.blogspot.com

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editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org