The neo nazis and supremacists are full blown terrorists. The use of terror is not only part of their ideology, it is their historical legacy. Lynching, killing, maiming, genocidal discourse and practice, is their contribution to recent human history, and their unabashed pride. The refusal to label them terrorists is highly suspicious, and simply smacks of tacit approval. At the root of their extreme ideology, is the belief that some human groups are naturally inferior to others, and can be used as slave laborers, or be disposed of. Championning these beliefs were Mussolini, in the case of Ethiopians, and Hitler, in the case of Jews and Gypsies. Before them were the European white supremacists in North America, who professed blacks were an inferior race, worthy to be enslaved, according to their warped world view. Terror was the chosen method of all these brutes, who never hesitated to preach and profess violence, to the point of extermination. Even in Africa, whenever there were mass murders, those were always justified by a racist discourse. This was the case in Rwanda, in Sudan, and in the Biafra war. But let us ask, who are these fascistic brutes working for? A quick glance at this sad landscape shows that in every case, brutality is a method to justify and enforce social injustice and gross inequality. The fascist thugs are nomore than guard dogs for a dominating mafia. Mussolini and Hitler did not come out of nowhere. Both started their dark careers as security guards labeled “brown shirts”, whose job was to break the
strikes of workers asking for better work conditions or pay. They were hired by the billionaires of their day, to squash the claims of the poorer classes asking for more equality. Jews in Europe being at the bottom of society at the time were a target of choice. The Ku Klux Klan played a similar role in the aftermath of slavery’s abolition in the United States. These thugs were thete to make sure blacks were terrorized into subission, lest they ask for more equality. The fascist movements, up to the present times, always play up to the interests of their bosses, and act as a terror army against those who dare
challenge the status quo, in a society where inequality has become too much to bear. Nationalist discourse, race, blood, religion or soil, are the useful idiot’s tools to allow for the propagation of violence. As Africans and as Jews, who have been for centuries the chosen targets of these divide and conquer tactics, we cannot be blind to these repetitive strategies. When we see the guard dogs, we know too well that those who sent them only use race or religion for their unjustifiable domination over peoples and resources. The Talmud explicitely and repeatedly expresses, in many stories told from Roman, Greek, Persian, and Babylonian times, how the tyrants of these empires used their thugs to divide, conquer and terrorize the people, already using race and religion as tools of unjust profit and weapons of mass extermination. From Nabuchodonozor to Titus to Hitler and Mussolini, that part of history did not change. But our belief in a G.d of Justice only grew stronger with each episode, and we will be there, centuries from now, to tell how we defeated today’s practitioners of terror and racism, and how all humanity learned to see each other as we all are in the Eyes of the Creator, equally humans, and equally deserving of happiness and peace.
Racism and terrorism: the unavoidable mix.
