Re: New book: American Heart of Darkness - Macrosocial Evil and Religion
The subject of the Native American genocide has been brought up, and I thought that I would share what my research brought out as far as the connections of genocide to the religious beliefs of the first Europeans that settled in North America. The following starts at page 410 in my book and tracks the effects of the destructive religious beliefs of these people. One connection that is never made is how this critical path of pathological beliefs led from the Americas to the Jewish Holocaust...
Author Richard Drinnon, in his excellent book, Facing West: the Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building, traces these pathological fears and manifest hatred back to the very foundations of these Europeans’ belief systems. Although they thought of themselves as devout Christians, it is hard to see anything in their belief systems and behavior that had anything to do with the ministry of Christ. This author does not recall anything in the teachings of Christ that advocated racism, militarism, and genocide resulting from extreme fear and hatred. One would venture to say that such beliefs and behavior are, in fact, antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. One could look at Christianity as having been founded by a leader who had transcended the belief systems at the time only to have later “followers” corrupt virtually everything he stood for. These so-called “followers” would fit Andrew Lobaczewski’s description of “characteropaths” that manipulate the founder’s teachings to serve their own nefarious self-interests. Add to this the final stage of Lobaczewski’s ponerization process whereby outright sociopaths gain control of the system, and we now have what has become of much of Christianity in the Americas. One has only to turn on the news to see such aberrations as self-proclaimed “evangelists” advocating such things as “taking care of” heads of state that do not suit his likings. Pat Robertson did exactly that a few years back when the democratically elected head of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, did or said something that was not to the “right Reverend” Robertson’s liking. This author does not believe that Jesus would be humored by such actions in his name. Further, one would be hard-pressed to even imagine that Jesus would be impressed that the first “Christians” in the Americas would undertake the wholesale slaughter of millions of “heathen savages,” witch trials, burning people alive, hanging natives in groups of thirteen to honor Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles (the Spaniards did this), and so forth. One would think that Jesus would be disgusted by these criminal actions.
The settlers in North America had some interesting belief systems that were infused in their religious beliefs. Although interesting, these beliefs were very destructive and actually persist to this day. One common thread, for example, is Calvinism of which one essential element is that anything that is not be turned into a commodity and marketed is “useless”: forests need to be cut down and the wood “harvested.” It is “worthless” when just left to grow. The native peoples did not cut the forests down to harvest the wood, plant crops, and so forth. They therefore were considered worthless people that needed to either change or be done away with. They were not doing anything useful with the land. Never mind that these people raised plenty of food by working with the land rather than against it and had been nurturing themselves quite well for many thousands of years. It is hard to find facts on the native people’s health, life span, medicine, and quality of life. However, the records from the native peoples themselves and even the descriptions from Westerners, including the Spanish and the English, paint a picture of a people that had advanced medicine, were much healthier than the Europeans, probably lived longer, and were clearly happier than the Europeans. There have been several European sources that also stated that when Europeans lived with the Indians, they did not come back. They voluntarily stayed when they had the option. This apparently was always the case as there was not even one case documented during colonial times of Europeans that voluntarily returned. If there were any cases to the contrary, this writer missed them; and the reverse was not the case either. This writer found no instances where Native Americans voluntarily stayed with the colonists when given the option. It appears that the Indians were having a good time and that the colonists were not.
It also appears that this relative misery of the colonists was largely self-imposed, and this apparently manifested itself into a real problem for the Indians. Having a good time, pleasurable experiences (especially when physical pleasure was involved), laughing, joking, playing cards, dancing were considered by the Puritans mostly to be sinful, against God, and therefore evil. Of course, anything evil had to be dealt with in very severe terms. It had to be stopped at all cost. So between Calvinism and Puritanism, you had the perception of useless, evil, godless, and sinful savages that clung to their ways and would adopt neither Christianity nor a “civilized” life style. The outcome is clear, these people and their way of life had to go; and the quicker, the better. This conclusion had been arrived at almost 400 four hundred ago along with the methods of accomplishing this. These powerful forces were in play throughout American history and are just as much a player today as they were in then.
Even today, the Native Americans are losing treaty rights, land, and resources. From the early sixteen hundreds on, there has been continuous warfare against Native Americans, and that warfare has consisted of the use of all means of destruction and extermination. Not only military force was used but also social, political, cultural, economic, and legal policies were employed to destroy the native peoples. The media played an instrumental role in what can easily be described as a North American holocaust. Anyone the authors’ age is able to recall the Cowboys and Indians scenarios in the movie theaters where brutal, bloodthirsty Indians attacked wagon trains of virtuous settlers scalping women and murdering children until the brave US cavalry came to the rescue. Apparently, this was the theme from the very beginning to the end. This entire process went on until extermination, which could be marked as early in the twentieth century when the native population was down to roughly two hundred thousand people. This was an insignificant number. The native population had been exterminated. Something that had never been done in history, but an act that rippled across the Atlantic Ocean.
Author and lecturer Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes the connection that “all of Europe was watching this.” He also points out that the methods and propaganda techniques used were not lost when the Nazis began to formulate their own programs of annihilation against the European Jews, Roma, and others. One has only to watch the Nazi propaganda films from the WWII era to notice the similarities. Visual parallels and analogies to vermin and inferences of nonhuman status were evident in both. Concentration camps were not much different from reservations where inhumane conditions, including starvation, where prevalent. Chomsky goes into interesting details on how the Nazis were keenly interested on the American ability to control public opinion on a variety of fronts...