NATIVE AMERICAN GENOCIDE

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BIBLICALLY SANCTIONED GENOCIDE

Genocide is as old as history. It has been a part of the human condition from the very beginning. Indeed, in the Christian Bible genocide is openly endorsed and celebrated as a means to create the promised land for God's supposedly chosen people. It's very specifically endorsed and the good guys in the Bible are the people who commit genocide. Saul, for example, is very specifically rebuked by Samuel for the sin of not completing a complete act of genocide that he was ordered to carry out. Religious totalitarianism in the Bible is also framed as a very desirable goal. The good guys in the Bible are the people who slaughter people of other religions, and stamp out other religions, and crush any other form of religion. The bad guys are the people who tolerate supposedly false religions, so these are factors that are definitely a part of the human condition. Although the Bible's activities are very extreme, particularly in the realm of religious persecution, the ancient world outside of the Judeo-Christian world was basically a relatively tolerant place.

GENOCIDE AS A PART OF THE BRUTAL HISTORICAL PAST

Now when we get to the issue of genocide we have to understand the basic structure of genocide in history. Genocide in history is mainly done by driving other people off their land and taking their livestock or taking their fishing fleets. This deprives the people of a means to survive. Part of the problem in analyzing genocide in history is the fairytale view of the past. The past was a harsh world, a desperately harsh world where life was constantly in danger. Ancient people living in rural societies were at the mercy of the weather. If it was this way, if it was that way, part of the crops would die. So that's very important. Also, famines would tend to lead to epidemics since they would weaken people and make them much more susceptible to disease. So we need to filter out the fairytale view of the past. But genocide is as we said before. It is as old as history. It's basically a a very standard procedure. Though the Jewish form of genocide in the Old Testament was a very extreme and particularly vicious form of genocide, though definitely not unique.

STRUCTURES OF GENOCIDE IN THE OLD AND NEW WORLD

Now when we come to of the issue of genocide in the European conquest of North and South America. We again come into different structures of genocide. A bit of the background needs to be understood for the ferociously brutal nature of the Spanish regime that sent Columbus on his journey and then proceeded to conquer all of what we call today, Latin America, Mexico and everything to the south except for Brazil, which was taken by Portugal. The regime of Ferdinand and Isabella was a murderous anti-semitic religious totalitarian state. They launched the most massive campaign of racial anti-Semitism prior to the Holocaust, leading to expulsion of 100,000 Jews from Spain under the most horrific circumstances. Ferdinand and Isabella also presided over the totalitarian nightmare of the Spanish Inquisition. So this is the state, this is the system that was unleashed in the so-called "new world."

GENOCIDE IN SOUTH AMERICA

Now the New World wasn't new. It had been there for a long time. But the arrogance of the Europeans used terms like "Columbus discovered America," as if America hadn'tbeen doing anything. As if it "ta-da" got discovered, sort of like a star getting discovered by a big producer and then becoming somebody. America was somebody long before Columbus, so this whole term of the discovery of America is in itself a disgusting form of racism, but that perhaps is a subject for another lecture. Now, as we look at the structure of European imperialism in the New World as we will call it, we see different forms of imperialism in Spanish America vis-à-vis the North America. Now in Spanish America you have a kind of imperial ruling class brought over from Spain ruling over the indigenous population. This is also true in Brazil, though in Brazil you had a very significant number of African slaves, a situation in which huge numbers of African slaves brought into the Caribbean for economic reasons.

GENOCIDE IN THE NORTH

In the northern areas you had a more classic form of genocide where the local populations will were not ruled over. They were driven out. They were driven out of where they were and this obviously did not have a very good effect on their ability to survive. What is the total death toll is at is a relevant point. No one will ever know. There's a book called the American Holocaust by standard and Mr. Stannard is a great scholar he start a terrific job of doing research there, but we are very skeptical of the figure of 100 million. Ultimately, you really don't know a large part of the Native Americans died of diseases brought by the Western invaders, but the total differentiation between those who died of disease and those who died of being forced off their land, nobody was around there with a clipboard or an iPad to jot all the stuff down. So no one really knows. We don't really know. What we do know is that it was a campaign of all genocide, particularly among to today's United States of America. This was founded on genocide. Indeed, Hitler used America as the model for the racial war that he wanted to launch in European Russia, and the idea of settling European Russia with Aryan blonde haired blue-eyed colonists, so on and so forth, this was very much do modeled after what Hitler saw as a racial war in the United States to seize land and then displace these people from their land. So we know for sure that America was founded on genocide. Indeed, in spite of the savage cruelty in the South by the Spaniards, the Anglo-American system in the North was in some ways far more horrific. A particular horrific element was the destruction of the buffalo herds, a wanton act of just vicious cruelty where they just slaughtered and slaughtered and slaughtered the buffalo herds just as an act of starving out the Indians, and are just exterminating a great natural resource. and this this also again was part of a campaign of genocide. The statements about genocide from US presidents are quite revealing. And they kind of speak for themselves, and the particularly brutal tactics used against the California Native Americans also speak for themselves. But this should be considered a useful introduction to our genocide article