A month for easy conversations. Hey! Let's tackle genocide, shall we?
At least this first instalment needs no content warnings.
Before we start, February was a brutal month, and I was not able to keep up my normal writing schedule. It was also an abnormal month in many ways: moving homes caused severe escalation of my day-to-day struggle with physical disability and, of course, there’s the Trump administration. I do wish to apologize to folks, especially but not only my subscribers, for pausing the writing in a time when good information, analysis, and information is so necessary, but I also want to communicate that there is strong reason to believe this isn’t going to recur any time soon. So. Let’s get back to work shall we?
Today’s topic: genocide.
Genocide is frequently misunderstood and always a fraught, contested topic. From those who deny the Holocaust happened to those who argue that efforts to bring light to missing and murdered indigenous women are somehow inappropriately playing on guilt over past genocide as a strategy to win undeserved power and influence (the power to be murdered but have your murder investigated, I guess?) public conversations regarding genocide are never easy. Some of the more difficult conversations to have, however, are ones where warnings about genocide are issued.
The immediate tendency of a society is to dismiss such warnings. “We are not 1944 Germany!” is the counter-claim. And indeed they are not. They never are, which is the point. Warnings are issued to attempt to prevent a thing which has not yet happened. A week after sweeping one’s porch clean of ashes is not the time to issue a genocide warning.
Because genocide is a crime of near-literally unspeakable evil and because warnings must be issued before the guilt of committing the crime has attached, there is never a time when such warnings are well received. Over the past decade many voices have warned of genocide coming to the United States in the near future, but not mine. Not in earnest. Not in the detail required. I am changing that this month, March, 2025.
This warning will not be easy to read; it is certainly not easy to write. And it will have to come in multiple parts. I also will focus more on the threat of genocide to trans people than to other groups. This does not mean that I believe that genocide cannot come for others or even that trans folks are most at risk. I honestly don’t know how you would reduce that to a percentage that could rank the danger to Ohio’s Haitian immigrants over South Dakota’s Standing Rock nation over Tennessee’s trans community. I will focus on threats to trans people because this is where my knowledge is stronger, and thus is the approach from which I can write most clearly, with fewer allowances for my ignorance distracting from important points.
It is certain that as you read you will question, “But can this really happen here? Is it remotely possible that the United States under Trump, with all the capacities of accountability in the information age, could ever equal the dehumanizing cruelty of the Nazi regime - not even in numbers, but in the qualities and expressions of its hatred?”
I have been asking that question for months now, and rather than frightening you by insisting that the answer is yes, it is my hope in writing these essays that you will absolutely terrify yourselves by admitting the answer is, “We do not yet know.”
Crip Dyke also writes for the delightfully cussmouthed Wonkette!
Who knew trans writers are allowed over 800 followers on BlueSky. It might actually be illegal for you to try to join in.
Ta, Crip Dyke. It. Can. Happen. Here. It's up to ALL of us to prevent it. Trans rights are human rights, full stop. Nothing else will do, ever.
After WWII so many people in Germany said they didn't know what was happening in the camps. But you knew that groups of people had their civil rights curtailed. You knew that people disappeared from their homes, entire families and neighborhoods. That wasn't done in secret. When people lose their civil rights then the govt. can easily argue for genocide. Oh sure maybe not in the open at first but it doesn't take much to get it going in secret. Especially if you surround yourself with loyal psychopaths who will do whatever you want. I'm terrified of the future.