Yeah, as I said above the only problem I have this the statements in the OP is the word “planning”. It crediting Trump a level of long term strategy he clearly doesn’t have. There is no master plan here, just a narcissistic fascist with declining mental faculties doing whatever the last fascist lackey he spoke to suggested.
I disagree. I feel the problem is that some people are fighting imaginary battles with Trump rather than joining in with the people who are fighting the real battles. Stopping Trump, as you note, is the priority. So convincing those people to stop fighting the imaginary fight and join the real fight would be helpful in winning the real fight.
And when I asked for three specific things we should focus on instead, you absolutely failed.
But so much of the fight IS imaginary, in the sense that ideas and identity are perceptions and filters of reality rather than on-the-ground reality.
You state in the OP that “Trump is not planning on committing genocide.” How do you know that? You can reason inductively and make the argument, but you can’t know what (or if) he’s thinking.
I don’t think, from my analysis of the data, that Trump is planning on committing genocide, but I can see that he has, in fact, begun: ICE’s actions have made it much more dangerous to perform Latino culture (esp. speaking Spanish, or English with a Latino accent) in public. When the government suppresses a culture, that’s a step toward cultural genocide. There has also been a lot of dehumanizing rhetoric about Latinos, usually coded as “illegals” or some variant thereof. Dehumanization is a key step on the road to literal genocide.
So it’s not even necessary that HE plan it. He’s laying the groundwork for it, whether deliberately or inadvertently. That must be combatted.
The fact that we’re not resisting effectively has more to do with our lack of leadership, the size and shape of our population, and the nature of our in-person interactions.
Sure, I cannot say with absolute certainty that Trump and the Republicans are not planning genocide. Maybe they do have a plan for rounding up the approximately 100,000,000 non-white Americans and sending them to deathcamps where they will be killed, leaving an all-white America as the result.
But they can’t start doing that tomorrow. As you note, they need to lay the groundwork. They have to strip away the civil rights of non-white Americans before they can round them up and kill them en masse.
So maybe the Republican plan is to strip away civil rights in 2025 and commit genocide in 2030.
So should we be fighting that 2030 genocide plan? Or should we be fighting the 2050 strip away civil right plan?
Let’s say we put our efforts into fighting the 2030 genocide plan. And we win. The Republicans call off plans to exterminate all non-white people. Hooray! We won!
Of course, while we were fighting against the 2030 genocide plan, the Republicans were moving ahead with their 2025 strip away civil rights plan. And they won that one because we were fighting a different fight.
So the Republicans won’t be killing all the non-white people. That’s good. But nonwhite people can’t vote, or own property, or testify against white people in court, or marry white people, or go to school with white people, or drink out of the same water fountain. That’s bad.
Now scenario two. We put our efforts into fighting the 2025 strip away civil rights plan. All of our efforts because this will be a hard fight. If we see people wandering off to fight the 2030 genocide plan, we tell them to come back and fight alongside us. We need their help today.
And we win. We defeat the 2025 strip away civil rights plan. Do we now go on to fight the 2030 genocide plan? No, we don’t have to. Because the 2030 genocide plan can’t happen without the 2025 strip away civil rights plan. By defeating the 2025 plan we also defeating the 2030 plan.
So now nonwhite Americans aren’t being exterminated. Still good. And they can still vote and have equal rights. That’s also good.
We can win tomorrow’s battles by winning today’s battles. So we should be putting all of our efforts into fighting today’s battles.
The trouble I’m having with your logic is as follows: in what way are these fundamentally different fights? One of the reasons why it’s so bad to strip away people’s rights is that it means the government can do terrible things to them in the future, and they won’t have the power to fight back. Genocide is one of those things. All of those things are in the future, relative to the time when rights are removed, because that’s how time works.
So are we supposed to try to convince people it’s bad to remove civil rights without discussing possible consequences? I’ll grant that genocide is probably the worst case scenario, and it isn’t guaranteed, but it’s not like the USA doesn’t have a history of participating in genocide, even if we ignore everything that is currently happening that is arguable genocide or leading up to it.
I do think there are more vs. less constructive ways to talk about all of this, but one thing I find unconstructive is dismissing potential fears as “hysteria.” Are all of them going to happen? I doubt it. And yet, government goons are kidnapping my neighbors, and sending them to god-knows-where. That’s a real thing that’s happening. Call me hysterical, but that scares me.
I certainly won’t call you hysterical because you’re concerned about the government kidnapping people. Because, as you note, that’s something the government is actually doing. So we should be fighting against the government kidnapping people. That’s a real fight.
But suppose you have a neighbor who lives down the street. She’s concerned about the government kidnapping people because she believes the government is setting up extermination camps where they will kill all the people who they’ve kidnapped. So she wants to fight these extermination camps. This is an imaginary fight.
Then the government comes along and produces credible proof that they do not have any extermination camps. Yes, they are kidnapping people but those people are only being deported to third world countries not killed.
So your neighbor is relieved. She was worried about genocide and now that fight’s over. But you go to her and ask “What about the way the government is kidnapping people? Aren’t you going to help us with that fight?” And she says “No, sorry, I put all of my efforts into stopping the genocide, which was a greater horror. I don’t have anything left for fighting kidnapping, which isn’t as horrible as genocide anyway.”
I find this scenario implausible. I know we’re taught to accept the lesser evil, but I really don’t think “oh, well, as long as it’s not genocide” is a thing.
See, this feels so much more implausible at this point. What could this particular government, known for its lack of connection with the truth, do or say that would be convincing? I’m having a very hard time picturing that.
And I am also having a hard time imagining someone who is willing to fight the government kidnapping people only if it’s a genocide, and not if it falls short of that (especially knowing that the best they could do is prove it isn’t a genocide yet). That’s just not how people work, in my experience.
I feel like this imaginary neighbor is not a good guide for how to deal with my actual neighbors.
Really? Because I feel that’s exactly how a lot of people work.
Tell them about a really huge problem and get them worked up over it. And then tell them the huge problem has been handled. And they’ll be really relieved that the huge problem that they were worried about has gone away.
And then say “Oh, by the way, as long as we’re talking anyway, I guess I should mention this tiny little problem that’s also going on.” And a lot of people will say “Don’t worry about that tiny little problem. I’m just so relieved about the huge problem.”
Set the bar up at “the government is planning on killing millions of people” and you’re going to have a hard time getting people worked up when you say “the government is planning on arresting people without proper due process.”
I said that earlier in the thread; they don’t like to hear that. The only correct answer is that this is all the fault of the people who tried to stop it.
So, right off the bat, “Trump is planning a genocide,” and “Trump is planning to eliminate all non-Whites” are vastly different statements. The odds of Trump turning the US into an all-White ethnostate are practically nil. The odds of Trump targeting a specific, disfavored minority group (such as Palestinians, or trans people) and attempting to eliminate them from the population, on the other hand, are relatively high.
The way you fight the 2030 genocide plan is by fighting the 2025 civil rights removal plan. These goals are absolutely not in any tension whatsoever.
It seems to me the outcome with your hypothetical neighbor is going to be the same either way. As you stated it, she’s worried about the kidnappings, because it might lead to genocide. If the government can convince her that genocide is off the table, she’ll stop caring about the kidnapping.
But… wouldn’t this play out exactly the same way if you convince her that genocide’s off the table? The only difference is when she jumps off the resistance train: either right at the beginning, as soon as she expresses concern over genocide to you, or at some indistinct point in the future, where maybe the government comes up with some sort of proof that it is not and never will commit genocide against any of the groups whose civil rights are being attacked?
From a pure tactical point of view, it seems like the best approach is to encourage this woman’s fears so she engages in the fight to pushback against the current civil rights infringements, and at least get some measure of aid out of her, rather than put her off the fight entirely before she even starts. If she was wrong about the incipient genocide, you at least have her help until this mysterious proof of government good-will shows up - and since there’s really no way to prove a lack of future ill-will, it’s a safe bet that’s never going to happen anyway.
I don’t think most people would see “It turns out they are only detaining these people in horrible conditions, not actively murdering them” as “hurrah, this huge problem has been handled.”
I think it’s more likely people would be cheered and energized by the idea that the huge, horrible unsolvable problem they have been fighting is actually somewhat less horrible and possibly more solvable, and make them more energetic about fighting. That’s how I would feel, anyway. (It’s how I do feel.)
Yeah, if she’s waiting for actual proof of genocide to get up off her butt, she’s probably not going to be a fighter. Fighting the powers that be, like so many things, is a matter of practice, not theory. The ones who can fight the best are the ones who practice it at any opportunity. Which makes them annoying when times are pretty good, but crucial when they’re not.
Yeah, it’s bad for the conservatives how they’ve established a history of telling lies which makes it hard to convince people to believe them when they try to tell them something is true.
Yup, that’s a bad thing for them.
A bad thing for people in general, I suppose, when they’re trying to tell the truth but they’ve lost their credibility by making things up. I wouldn’t want to be in those people’s shoes trying to convince other people of something important after having made some over-the-top claims that I couldn’t back up.
Yup, yup, yup.
The other thing about genocide: it’s not that they want to murder the Other. They just want the Other to be permanently consigned to an underclass (see also: sexism). If they can just make it so that the Other is afraid to live their authentic self in public (see also: homophobia, transphobia), they can force assimilation. We don’t mind people who know their place, and you really have to kill very few of them without cause to maintain the status quo (see also: Black people). Taking their children away breaks the chain (see also: Native Americans and the recent separation of families at the border).
Everyone thinks genocide looks like 1940s Germany, but 1950s America already has the model. There are people out there who lived it: talk to them. You don’t have to kill everyone. You just have to kill and expel ENOUGH, and we’re already on track.
I get that you think you are making this point, but it sure seems like there’s a big difference between people having an honest panic about things that could happen, and just totally abandoning the idea of facts and reality.
If nothing else, the relative power and responsibilities between a rando posting on social media and an official government are very different.
ETA: I also think we have to get people out of panic spirals. Insinuating that they are lying or making things up will do the opposite of that.
From an imaginary person that you created.
This clip is a great analogy to how the Trump regime works. Lots of implied threats. If people call out the implications, are they really being hysterical?
Or, maybe another way to put it is that the final solution of a genocide is awful… but genocide also contains those other things. @Little_Nemo , I think you’re mistaken when you think that the problem people have with genocide is simply that it results in dead people. It’s all of the disempowerment and violence that could lead to a people being literally killed as one outcome of many. @Dr.Drake explains it well.
If someone is engaged in the issue only when it passes some personal purity test of whether or not the vocab word used to describe the issue 100% meets their interpretation of the word… I think we can count on them never engaging with the issue at all.
This is an unrealistic bar for the concept of genocide.