To many of us, the violent persecution of certain ethnic, racial, national, religious or political groups is something we’ve only read about in history books or seen on TV or read about in the papers or social media. Quite often, the victims of such persecutions seem far removed from our place in time or geographic location.
Unfortunately, for most of humanity, it’s difficult to empathize with the victims of oppression, even genocide, when they’re perceived to be far from us, which can also mean racially, ethnically or religiously distant.
There’s a reason most Americans and Europeans have more sympathy for Ukrainians suffering from Russian bombings than for Palestinians who are now the victims of a systematic genocide being carried out by Israeli forces and financed by the US government.
Naturally, most people across the globe who aren’t in the line of fire don’t realize how lucky they are to be living in the right place, at the right time in human history.
But will it always be that way?
My story as one of those people
In the US, those who see me walking down the street would never suspect I am the son of two Colombian immigrants. I’m too fair skinned to fit the stereotype of the typical Latino, which I’m convinced has spared me a great deal of discrimination while growing up in the States.
However, I remember one day when I was in tenth grade in Orlando, Florida. I was talking to another Latino student in Spanish and another kid walked up to both of us. He put the palm of his hand up to his nose and started pretending to inhale some imaginary substance. Although I was only around 14, it didn’t take long for me to realize he was pretending to snort cocaine right in front of my Spanish speaking friend and me.
Then the kid asked both of us, in a mocking, bullyish manner, where we’re hiding the cocaine that we smuggled in. I had travelled to Colombia several times as a kid, but I was still too young to be fully aware of the stereotype of Colombians (or simply Latin Americans) as cocaine smugglers. That was perhaps my first experience being treated differently, in a negative light, because I was speaking the wrong language.
Let’s fast forward a few years, to the year 2000. I had joined the US Air Force, not because I wanted to fly planes or go to war, but because I was desperate to move out of my house, and that was the most efficient way.
Basic training was a rough scene. Sixty men all sleeping in the same large room with bunkers. Lots of testosterone. Some of the so called “trainees” caught wind of the fact that I was of Colombian descent after I had mentioned it to someone. There was one guy, Justin Messineo was his name, who always felt compelled to bully me, in part because of that.
He was training to be an Air Force cop, and one day he came up to me and told me how he wanted to go to “my country” of Colombia and kill everybody there because “they bring drugs into this country”.
I was quite offended, and I wanted to hit him in the face, but that would’ve gotten me kicked out and sent back home with my tail between my legs, and I didn’t want that.
After basic training things went much more smoothly, until the tragedy of the 9–11 attacks. That was when the proverbial “us vs them” really exploded in the United States and many other countries. I was angry. Having been born on Long Island, New York, I had been to the city many times and had even visited the Twin Towers on a few occasions.
The tragedy had hit close to home, and like many Americans, I was quite distressed for quite some time as a result.
Not long after the attacks a friend of mine, also in the Air Force, began proudly boasting how his friends in his native West Virginia had beaten up some of “those people”. When I asked him what people he was talking about, he said they had physically attacked and assaulted some Indians.
“But what did Indians have to do with 9–11?” I asked him. He rolled his eyes and said something along the lines of “Whatever, all those brown people. They’re all the same. They hate us and we have to punish them for what they did.”
Although I was only in my early twenties, I realized his comment was beyond ignorant, but we remained friends nevertheless, at least until my time in the Air Force was up and we both went on our own respective paths.
The “mother homeland” that wasn’t
After completing my four-year term in the Air Force, I decided to move back to what I believed to be my “mother homeland” of Colombia (I had never actually spent more than two consecutive months there until then) and pursue my bachelor’s degree in Journalism.
I was convinced that upon my arrival I’d be greeted with open arms from all Colombians because I was one of them, and I would never have to deal with taunts about being a “drug dealer” ever again.
But the reality wasn’t quite what I had anticipated upon taking up residence in Bogotá.
Instead of calling me by my name, I was called “gringo” by my classmates (which isn’t exactly derogatory but is still meant to highlight that you belong to the “other” group). It also turned out my Spanish wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was, and I was often taunted for making mistakes whenever I gave a presentation using my imperfect Spanish.
A turning point came when two classmates came up to me and told me that Americans “got what they deserved” on 9–11. I was so shocked I didn’t even know what to say, and similar to the case with trainee Justin Messineo in Air Force basic training, reacting violently would have only gotten me kicked out of college, so I forced myself to stay calm even though I was filled with rage.
On another occasion in Colombia, I remember waiting in the street for the light to turn green so I could cross, when a random woman came up to me and called me a “spoiled mommy and daddy’s boy” with an angry/sarcastic tone after merely giving me a glance and then walking off. I was baffled at first, until I remembered that being as fair skinned as I am, in Colombia, was usually interpreted as having been born into wealth.
Yeah, so spoiled during childhood was I that I left my home to join the military and risk getting sent to war.
Learning more about the world
After graduating college I would spend some time living in different parts of the world, where I learned that hate is everywhere and hurled in every direction imaginable.
While in Japan I found out many (but obviously not all) Japanese dislike people from neighboring countries, such as Korea and China, and how women in the Philippines are often regarded as “prostitutes” just because of their nationality.
Before living outside of the US I had been naively convinced that racism and bigotry were just the common traits of small town redneck Americans.
After having lived in a few other countries for extended periods of time, I learned to appreciate the sad fact that racism and bigotry are human hallmarks.
An eye for an eye… as long as it’s not my eye
Much more recently, I was visiting some relatives in rural Colombia. We were together having some drinks and chatting when the topic of Israel and Palestine came out of nowhere. I was quite surprised when one of them started ranting about how Israeli forces are justified in bombing refugee camps, hospitals and schools, because Palestinians are terrorists and because this is about “an eye for an eye”.
I find it insane how some of the worst atrocities in human history can be “justified” with the mere use of a very simple -and ancient- adage that consists of only five words.
Just then something occurred to me. As many people already know, Colombia has its own history of extreme violence, perpetrated in large part by both far left-wing guerrillas and far right-wing paramilitaries, of which many Colombian civilians have been victims over the years (kidnappings, bombings of office buildings, malls, etc).
I told this individual to imagine if those left-wing guerrillas of Colombia (many of whom are vehemently anti-American) decided to band together, cross the border into the United States (either legally or illegally) and kill thousands of American civilians in one of the worst terrorist attacks on US soil since 9–11.
Many people in the US, as was the case shortly after 9–11, would crave revenge against those horrible people far south of the border! Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, desperate to appease the vengeful electorate (let’s get that re-election, baby!), would suddenly feel the urgent need to retaliate and begin deploying fighter jets to Colombia, where they would launch missiles that fly directly into residential buildings, hospitals and schools, massacring scores of people, including countless children, and inflicting mass suffering on the Colombian civilian population.
One of the American soldiers in a fighter jet would be a man named Justin Messineo, who is extremely excited at the idea of inflicting so much misery on all those horrible “drug dealers” who attacked his beloved country, by dropping bombs everywhere possible.
If such a scenario were to actually take place, where Mr. “Eye for an eye” from rural Colombia grew up, I wonder if he would still condone such atrocities when he and those he loves are on the receiving end of the bombs and shrapnel.
(Though I do believe such a scenario would be much more likely under a Trump presidency, don’t think the Biden administration is incapable of commanding such atrocities simply because of the myth of the “benevolent democrat”. History shows otherwise.)
When the victims become the victimizers
Most people have the tendency to perceive the world in terms of “good” and “evil”, or, thanks in part to Hollywood and uncle Clint Eastwood, as a never-ending fight between “good guys” and “bad guys”.
The problem with this belief is that reality is never so simple. I am personally acquainted with someone who survived the Holocaust as a child and went on to write a book about his atrocious experiences during this dark period in human history (a person who, for much of my life, I had profound admiration for). This person has spent years travelling the globe, going to schools as a guest speaker and talking to young people about the horrors of the Holocaust. One would think the lesson would be that we should all learn to love one another, regardless of race or religion, to prevent something so horrific from ever happening again.
And yet, this same individual continuously sends online messages to friends and family with memes and images disparaging Muslims and making them look like the most despicable creatures ever to roam the Earth, adamantly spreading the same hateful mentality of which he himself was a victim many years ago.
The reason I mention this is not to call out this single individual for hypocrisy, but to show that all humans, regardless of who we are or what we’ve been through, are capable of becoming the victimizers, even if it’s simply in the form of spreading messages that fan the flames of hate against hundreds of millions of people because they belong to the wrong religion.
That’s how genocides begin.
We are all part of the wrong tribe, somewhere
My life experiences living in different parts of the globe, and at home, have taught me that we are all part of the wrong tribe to someone else, whether we are dark skinned “criminals” or Colombian “drug dealers” or Filipino “prostitutes” or “filthy” homosexuals or “evil Zionist” Jews or despicable “terrorist” Muslims or immigrant “criminals” or just “spoiled and privileged” white colonizers, there will always be a person, or group of people, who hate us because we are one of “those people”, whether or not we are even aware of it.
When looking through comments on social media from random people around the world, you can really see how pervasive hatred is in today’s global society, and it goes beyond just the traditional targets. I’ve seen comments calling for the persecution and even torture and execution of liberals, conservatives, vegans, environmentalists, religious people, atheists, rich people, poor people. Just think of any group and trust me, they’re on someone’s shit list.
We like to think most of the worst atrocities only happened in some bygone era, and that humans have “evolved”, but the truth is -as I have expressed in many of my previous articles- our minds are still the same as those who enjoyed watching slaves get eaten alive by lions in the Roman Coliseums over a thousand years ago, or the people who enjoyed burning “witches” alive during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Scarily enough, the physical brain structure of nearly every human being alive today is no different from that of the Nazis who carried out some of the most horrific atrocities against the Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals (among others) less than 100 years ago and, as in the case mentioned above, some of the survivors of said atrocities are themselves capable of the most horrific crimes against humanity today, as long as it’s against another group other than their own.
For those of us who have never been shot at, thrown into a concentration camp, been on the receiving end of a bomb dropped from an aircraft thousands of feet above, or simply attacked by a single individual… all for being part of the wrong group, there is no guarantee these good times will last forever.
Many of us don’t realize WE are “those people” because we have never left our comfort zone, but that comfort zone may soon become an uncomfortable zone if global heating reaches levels we have never experienced, igniting forest fires, hurricanes, droughts, and floods with unprecedented severity, forcing us to migrate to new lands where we are no longer “us” and are now “them”.
As economies collapse and resources become scarce, the shrinking number of people still in a relatively stable situation won’t blame our own industrial activities for what’s going on, they’ll blame them, those people who “we” never liked and who are now trying to take “our” precious food, water, and land, a people who might just be you some day.
And even if this were to never happen, all we need is enough irrational people to elect and agree with a genocidal leadership, along with an obedient military, for the post Holocaust “never again” to happen “again and again”.
Perhaps this is something worth reflecting upon before using the proverbial “eye for an eye” when justifying revenge against groups of people we love to loathe, lest we want to live in a world where nobody has any eyes left.
