Warning: Some images contain violence and are disturbing. Also warning: This thread is ridiculously long. 75 tweets is insane. I apologize. But this stuff is important. I hope you find it compelling anyway. If not, I understand.
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2) So, what exactly do we mean by “eliminationism”? Here’s the academic definition:pic.twitter.com/FopgbvXaOP
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3) It was largely coined by Holocaust scholar Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, about the role ordinary Germans played in the Holocaust, which he described as fueled by “eliminationist antisemitism.”pic.twitter.com/pyU50iMEb5
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4) The book describes how in reality the largest numbers of Jews and other victims killed by Nazi directive were rounded up and gunned down or immolated en masse and buried in mass graves by ordinary Germans and non-Jewish residents of German-occupied territories.pic.twitter.com/6o5zGmdXye
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5) Here’s a scholarly discussion of it. We’ll keep it simpler here for everyday readers.https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol93/iss1/12/ …
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6) As I’ve explained previously, eliminationism first is expressed in rhetoric, and then that rhetoric inspires action. It’s a rhetorical twofer, expressing both contempt (placing the target beneath them) and disgust (evoking the impulse to purify). https://goo.gl/zqQLKm
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7) Eliminationist rhetoric has very distinct and immediately identifiable traits. It always depicts its opposition as simply beyond the pale, and in the end the embodiment of evil itself -- unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus in need of elimination.pic.twitter.com/Dhqc44mCSB
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8) It often depicts its designated "enemy" as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches or lice).pic.twitter.com/myrO3m3GwI
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9) It also associates them with disease, depicting them either as diseases outright or as carriers of horrible diseases such as leprosy. We have seen multiple recent examples of this, thanks again to Lou Dobbs and Fox.https://goo.gl/GzKBuK
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10) At other times, it depicts them as “invaders” or their presence as an “invasion”:pic.twitter.com/cndMOOUHLJ
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11) A slightly less virulent variation on this are claims that the opponents are traitors (who will “stab us in the back”) or criminals, or gross liabilities for our national security, and thus inherently fit for elimination or at least incarceration.pic.twitter.com/iAA9C9qKZU
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12) Regardless, any target of eliminationist rhetoric is depicted as a threat to the purity of the community – with clear sexual overtones. They are often depicted as threats to “virtuous white womanhood” – that is, potential rapists.pic.twitter.com/RB44Sw2jIh
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13) And yes, it's often voiced as crude "jokes", the humor of which, when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred.pic.twitter.com/tPBcNJIlKp
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14) The most important aspect of eliminationism, however, is how it functions, i.e., what it does: It creates permission. And what it creates permission for, ultimately, is the unleashing of our darkest id, our violence. It’s easier to kill something you see as vermin.pic.twitter.com/iLK98oYWJb
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15) Eliminationism is buried pretty deeply in the European psyche, closely associated with early Christian notions of filth and purification, which often related to violent means of ridding the world of sources of contamination, including self-flagellation.pic.twitter.com/lUDBpY4DOa
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16) It also grew out of early Christian beliefs about the world outside of their own, particularly “wild” places full of “savages” who were not always deemed human. Those same beliefs became closely associated with other views about filth and contamination, the domain of women.pic.twitter.com/DIdQY12nNV
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17) The most egregious outbreaks of eliminationism in early Europe were the anti-Jewish pogroms that began in about the 12th century and were often associated with returning Crusaders. https://goo.gl/Q82s62 pic.twitter.com/Dhalzvj79R
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18) This later morphed into such phenomena as the various Inquisitions, notably those in Spain, which featured mass killing events known as autos-de-fe:pic.twitter.com/JPTN3OZxfl
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19) When Europeans arrived on the American continent, this attitude translated neatly into the genocidal treatment of the indigenous population there. Indeed, early Spanish invaders used autos-de-fe as a means of imposing “discipline” on Mayan natives.pic.twitter.com/vSgLIqiA64
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20) These attitudes deepened and hardened over the ensuing centuries. By the time American settlers engaged in the process of depriving Native Americans of their land holdings over the course of the 19th century, their subhuman status was considered a given.pic.twitter.com/oA9Ut413Ny
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21) Thus, when Col. Jamers Chivington ordered his men to massacre women and children at Sand Creek in Colorado in 1864, he justified it with the exhortation: “Nits make lice!” An estimated 500 people, all natives, were killed.pic.twitter.com/QEqpWIPrDi
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22) These attitudes remained intact among American whites well after the genocide of Native Americans had been more or less completed in the 1880s. Indeed, after the outcome of the Civil War, eliminationist racism became much more focused on freed African American slaves.pic.twitter.com/jpRr3iMYc4
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23) Most eliminationist rhetoric portrayed blacks as innately criminal and lazy, and black men as an omnipresent rape threat. This threat was used to justify literally thousands of extralegal lynchings between 1880 and 1940, in what became known as “the lynching era.”pic.twitter.com/IzbnyAGM81
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24) Lynching was a cornerstone of the legal disenfranchisement of black people after the Civil War in the South, which was better known as “Jim Crow.” The black populace was terrorized into submitting to this disenfranchisement by the threat of being hanged.pic.twitter.com/U67jQhQ12O
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25) Much of this history has been intentionally buried for decades, and white people are shocked to learn about it now as it resurfaces. Most black folks, on the other hand, have been aware of it for years.https://goo.gl/23DK56
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26) Eliminationist rhetoric had a psychosexual component. It described men as “black beasts” and “jungle animals,” and dwelt on black men’s physical features and virility. Black lynchings were unique in that the victims were usually mutilated sexually; lynched whites were not.pic.twitter.com/qCBTB9b6en
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27) The attitudes underlying this eliminationism were common not just in the South but throughout the country. This is why the “Sundown town” phenomenon was most prominent outside the South. https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.php …
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28) Sundown towns – which had ordinances forbidding black residency after sunset – were explicitly eliminationist in nature.pic.twitter.com/LCCYDlv7x8
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29) They often were associated with a racial-cleansing event in which the black neighborhood of a town would be burned out and its residents forced to flee. They called these “race riots.” They reached a peak in 1919, in what was called the “Red Summer.” https://goo.gl/NAVS3e pic.twitter.com/sqciPp74AW
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30) The largest of these occurred in Tulsa in 1921, in what had once been an economically prosperous black district. White men in planes dropped incendiary bombs from planes during the assault. https://goo.gl/o15Jwz pic.twitter.com/uT36ZoR8E0
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