A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“A culture that celebrates the annihilation of whole peoples, casually and without guilt or introspection, is devoid of human values at its very core.” Ultimately, such a society turns against itself. It’s not a sudden madness, but a long history of mass murder come full circle.
The Ultimate Logic of a Society Built on Mass Murder
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Mass murder is at the core of the American national religion.”
As a native-born American, I grew up watching cowboy and Indian shoot-em-ups in which the highlight of the movie was when the white guys in the circled wagon train shot the Indians off their horses until all the red men were dead, and very silent. Indians didn’t do a lot of screaming in pain when they were shot; they just expired. Same thing with buck-toothed Japanese, line after line of them, charging into U.S. machine guns, falling instantly silent and dead. It was somehow quite clean, almost antiseptic, these cinematic rituals of death, all staged for the broadest popular consumption to demonstrate the inevitability – and cosmic justice – of ultimate white victory over the darker races.
This was mother’s milk to the white American nation – which is why Richard Pryor and kids like me rooted for the Indians. Mass murder is at the core of the American national religion, which is a celebration of a genocidal march across a continent filled with other, doomed human beings. America’s contribution to European culture was to invite “all the nations of Europe” to come to these shores and become fellow “white” citizens, whose status was defined by the enforced inferiority of Blacks and the remnants of the Indians. Ritual burnings of Blacks were organized as great public festivals, attended by thousands, staged in order to affirm whites’ collective right to commit murder. This monopoly on violence was what made them white Americans .
“The modern mass American murder is overwhelmingly a white phenomenon.”
U.S. foreign policy reflects the nation’s origins and ghastly evolution into a globe-strutting mob, that empowers itself to kill at will. A million dead Filipinos at the turn of the 20th century; aerial bombing of Haitian villages less than a generation later; the totally unwarranted nuclear annihilation of two cities at the very end of World War Two; two million dead Koreans shortly thereafter; three million dead Vietnamese in the next decade,; and, since 1996, six million Congolese – all, and many, many more, slaughtered in the name of U.S. civilizational superiority – the ghastly opiate of the white American masses.
What kind of human beings does such a culture produce? To paraphrase the Bible, “By their massacres, ye shall know them.” The modern mass American murder is overwhelmingly a white phenomenon. Yet few whites ask the question, “What’s wrong with white America?” It is seems that white America lacks the capacity for self-examination. It cannot grasp the simple truth, that a culture that celebrates the annihilation of whole peoples, casually and without guilt or introspection, is devoid of human values at its very core. In the end, it turns against itself. That is the simple lesson of Newtown, and Columbine, and Aurora. The same cultural deformity creates a huge market for games like the very popular Assassin’s Creed
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
Responsibility for Haiti's deteriorating conditions does not rest on the Haitian masses. A population does not rise up spontaneously but depends on political movements and organizations to build it.
The AfD's landslide in Saxony-Anhalt reflects real working-class anger at the war and the arms buildup, but the party redirects that anger toward migrants and leaves the capitalist system that caused…
“DHS needs to be dismantled and held accountable for this complete inhumanity,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
In this week’s segment, we discuss the 55th anniversary and legacy of the 1971 Attica prison revolt. But we begin with the history of W.E.B. Du Bois and his struggle against the domestic repression…
Orisanmi Burton is the author of "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt." As we commemorate the 55th anniversary of the 1971 Attica rebellion, Burton…
