Anti-Thanksgiving

[Guest guest]

ICelebrating Genocide!

Dan Brook

 

En Espanol:

Celebrando el Genocidio

www.zmag.org/Spanish/0201geno.htm

 

Many people annually get as stuffed as their turkeys in celebration of the

Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday,

so much so that it is not just a holiday, but really is (as the etymology

implies) one of our Holy Days, almost universally celebrated by Americans.

In its sacredness, families get together to (unintentionally?) celebrate

one genocide (against Native Americans) by committing another (against

turkeys). Can we celebrate in good faith and conscience?

 

On Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks. We give thanks for being the invader,

the exploiter, the dominator, the greedy, the gluttonous, the colonizer,

the thief, indeed the genocidaire, rather than on the other side of

imperialism's zero-sum murderous game. As Mark Twain points out in his War

Prayer, wishing and being thankful for one's own success and victory is, at

the very same time, wishing and being thankful for another's defeat and

destruction. Do we want to make these kinds of wishes and give these kinds

of thanks?

 

The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran declared that " it is the honor of the

murdered that they are not the murderers " . Perhaps, but it is a very

difficult honor to uphold. Native Americans, at least those who have

survived the over 500 year genocidal project, are the poorest ethnic group

in the richest country of the world. Each year, a group of Native Americans

gather at Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day to mourn and fast in honor of

their people and in memory of what is lost. What do we want to be honored

for? What honors are Americans thankful for?

 

It was once earnestly asked by Native Americans, " Why do you take by force

what you can have by love? " Christopher Columbus reports in his personal

diary that when he arrived in the Americas he was amazed. The Arawaks, with

curiosity and joy, came to greet the people coming off the ships from

Europe. The Arawaks (whom Columbus mistakenly thought were Indians) were a

peaceful people, by all accounts, willing to share anything they had,

offering both emotional kindness and their physical objects. Columbus

describes how remarkable these people were. So innocent of weapons and

violence, Arawak people would initially reach out their hands to feel the

strange, shiny objects called swords. The Arawaks would only " work " for a

few hours a day, " spending " the rest of their time relaxing, socializing,

and creating their culture in the ways that people most enjoy. Columbus

also tells of how the Arawaks had no " shame " , being able to walk around

naked or make love whenever they pleased. With the tiny amount of gold on

their island, they fashioned jewelry to adorn themselves. As with many

other pre-contact indigenous groups, the Arawaks essentially lived in

Utopia. Can Americans be thankful for living in a utopian society? Are we

thankful for having destroyed one? Should we be grateful for having so many

deadly weapons? For being so greedy for gold, both actual and metaphorical?

 

As Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange is fond of pointing out, Columbus could

have done one of a few different things after encountering the Arawaks of

whom he was so impressed: (1) Columbus could have quit his travels and

lived the rest of his days amongst this remarkable people. In fact,

millions of people today spend thousands of dollars and their precious

couple of weeks of vacation trying to experience modern conditions

resembling these ancient ones. (2) Columbus could also have continued on

his journeys, exploring other islands, encountering new peoples, and

searching for India and elsewhere with which to trade. While doing so, he

could have expanded and developed his writings, perhaps doing valuable

ethnographic and comparative sociological research. (3) Another possibility

is that Columbus could have rushed back to Europe, declaring the wonders of

Arawak society and urging that the best minds of Europe go to visit and

study the Arawaks. As a result of doing so, Europeans could have

incorporated aspects of Arawak society into their own, if not emulating it

altogether. Are we proud of and thankful for our hubris and ethnocentrism?

 

Of course, Columbus did none of these. Apparently, there was a fourth

possibility. With grave implications, Columbus wrote in his diary that with

fifty men he could enslave the entire population and capture all their

gold. This was no empty boast. The " savage " Arawaks were enslaved, many

were tortured, their labor exploited, and their wealth stolen and shipped

off to Europe. During this process of imperialist superexploitation, men

had their hands chopped off, women had their breasts sliced and their

pregnant bellies cut open, babies were thrown into the air, sometimes

crashing to the ground and other times being impaled on those strange,

shiny swords, presumably all in the name of Christianity, Civilization,

and, eventually, Capitalism. The Arawaks were literally exploited to death

and they are now extinct, all of them having been killed off through

virulent brutality, overwork, and disease. Are Americans thankful they

weren't Arawaks? Are we thankful for not being the dehumanized " Other " ?

 

The Pilgrims later came to America to escape religious persecution from the

British, apparently in order to commit ethnic and religious persecution

against the Native Americans and, later on, others. And this they did, and

we in fact continue to do, effectively and mercilessly. At the time of the

first Thanksgiving in 1621, it was also the dawn of another type of

genocide. 1619 marks the first year that human beings were brutally

" imported " from Africa to become slaves in America, if they happened to

survive the cruel capture and horrific Atlantic crossing. So while Africans

were being heartlessly torn away from their homes and families, viciously

enslaved and dehumanized, tortured and killed, Native Americans were being

attacked and annihilated. By the time that President Lincoln re-invented

and instituted the Thanksgiving Day tradition in the early 1860s, the US

was fighting its civil war. The US Civil War may have been fought over

slavery (and labor more generally), though it was certainly not fought for

the slaves (or for laborers). Sadly, there is much, much more to the tragic

history of genocide and US complicity. Is it for this legacy that Americans

give thanks? Are Americans thankful for the results of racism and classism?

 

In Europe, during the 1930s and 1940s, various demographic groups were

being systematically targeted by the Nazis, including leftists and

unionists, people with physical and mental disabilities, Jews and Jehovah's

Witnesses, gays and lesbians, the Roma (so-called Gypsies) and the small

number of Blacks, as well as other misfortunate minorities. Although we now

know that the US had accurate aerial photographs of the rail lines leading

to and from the death camps since 1941, among other pertinent information

obtained even earlier, the US did not enter the war against fascist Germany

until almost 1942, only after the US was physically attacked by Japan. Even

then, however, the US neither bombed the rail lines or the death camps

themselves, nor allowed in large numbers of refugees from fascism. Indeed,

just like Haitians in the 1990s and Afghans in 2001, Jews in the 1940s were

sometimes turned back to their respective Hell. Millions and millions of

people died unnecessarily. Adding insult to injury, the US government even

paid war reparations to US corporations, including General Motors, which

were supplying the Nazi military with much-needed machinery and vehicles,

for the damage done to their German factories due to the Allied bombing

campaign. (The US government went further by guaranteeing safe passage for

many Nazi officers and even employing a number of them, some of whom helped

advance biological and chemical weaponry as well as death penalty

technology in the US. Other Nazi officers were supported, especially in

Europe and Latin America, as an oppositional force against real or

suspected communism.) Likewise, the US was seemingly uninterested in

Japan's genocide against the Chinese in Nanking, and then did (and does)

little to stop China's genocide of the Tibetans since the 1950s. The US has

also never been interested in the genocide against the Kurds or Armenians.

The US was interested, however, in setting up concentration camps in 1942

for Japanese-Americans and, to a much lesser extent, Germans and Italians.

Are Americans thankful for our hypocrisy and selective democracy?

 

In 1965, the US supported and facilitated genocide in Indonesia. Under the

US-supported military dictatorship, half a million to a million

communist-sympathizing peasants were killed in Indonesia. Their lives are

considered so worthless that a more accurate number of those killed is

nearly impossible. (A more recent example of this mentality is from the

Gulf War, during which US bulldozing tanks buried an unknown number of

slaughtered Iraqis in the desert. When asked how many were killed and

buried in these mass unmarked graves, General Colin Powell coldly replied

that he wasn't interested and didn't care. Secretary of State Madeleine

Albright followed up that mentality by stating on TV that the hundreds of

thousands of additional kids who have died since the war, due to sanctions,

are a worthwhile price to pay. For whom?) The US supplied some 90% of the

weapons and training to the Indonesian military, in addition to favorable

trade and investment, but also provided logistics and specific names of

Indonesian activists to be targeted for death. The Indonesian military

gladly obliged, taking the US hit list and then accomplishing their task as

best as possible. Since 1975, similarly, the US has sponsored and abetted

genocide in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, culminating in the latest round

of " newsworthy " massacres at the end of 1999. Nearly the same time that the

modern Indonesian/East Timorese tragedy began, the US condoned genocide in

Cambodia, after committing acts of genocide throughout South East Asia in

the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, the US supported vicious and murderous

wars in Central America, central Asia, and southern Africa, in which

hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, were killed, with many more

disabled, displaced, and disappeared. The US also sat idly by during the

genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, while almost totally ignoring slavery and

genocide in Sudan throughout that entire decade. Furthermore, the US

persists in continuously building, vigorously marketing, and violently

employing chemical, biological, nuclear and other weapons of mass

destruction. Are Americans proud of US foreign policy? Of supporting

murderous dictators and regimes? Of maintaining deadly double standards?

 

At the same time that the US has, by far, the most expensive and powerful

military on Earth, it also has a high poverty rate, the largest prison

population, a relatively high infant mortality rate, tremendous

overconsumption and waste, a stingy and demeaning welfare program, an

active capital punishment program, and almost as many privately owned guns

as people. Are Americans proud of US domestic policy? Of supporting

murderous policies and programs? Of maintaining deadly discriminatory

standards?

 

There are many reasons to celebrate and Americans have a lot to be thankful

for. Genocide should not be one of those things. What are we doing on

Thanksgiving Day? We would be appropriately appalled if Germany or Austria

were celebrating a Holocaust Memorial Day, where Germans and Austrians got

together with their families for dinner on their official day off, joyously

remembering the things that are important to them, just as American

families get together for Thanksgiving Day and think of things to be

thankful for. (Similar scenarios, just as ugly, could be constructed for

white supremacists, rapists, and murderers.) Some activities and events are

inappropriate just because of the context in which they occur and the

history of suffering they represent. Thanksgiving Day is clearly part of

that history. Are Americans thankful for forgetting their own history, for

having collective cultural and political amnesia?

 

We do not have to feel guilty, but we do need to feel something. At the

very least, we need to reflect on how and what we feel. We should also

review our history and what it means to us and others, while we must

rethink our adopted traditions, including our Thanksgiving High Holy Day.

My personal (and therefore political!) resolution for the new year is to

stop celebrating genocide. American Thanksgiving may be sacred to some, but

it's utterly profane to me.

 

 

Academic / Activist Call for Justice and Peace:

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/peace.html

 

! Lots of LINKS - Search and Enjoy !

http://www.hotlinks.com/members/cyberbrook/

(soon to be discontinued)

 

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" Frequently the only possible answer is a critique of the question

and the only solution is to negate the question. " --- Karl Marx

(Grundrisse: Notebook 1, The Chapter on Money, October 1857)

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