My friends had encouraged me to do a write up where I answer a lot of questions that they, who don't live in the US, have had about everything going on. Not just recently, but in general. They want to better understand the sociopolitical climate that led to this situation, and, more specifically, what the perspective of the average American citizen was. So i asked around, got a general list of questions, and set to trying to answer them as best i could. Yes, my friends and I are giant nerds. Thank you for asking. And whoooo buddy, this post is gonna be a doozy no one will read. But I need to vent like a mf.
The more I kept writing, the more exhausted I got having to go over the same shit over and over and over again. And while I'm totally fine opening those kinds of conversations with people who I know are asking in good faith, I feel like that's not actually the case with a majority of people I come across online asking why something is the way it is. For most people, they don't want answers. At least not true ones. Because those answers undermine the narrative that American citizens are all nationalist, pro-war, pro-gun, rich, and don't want any form of socialist programs ever. The reality undermines the very justifications that allow people to participate in xenophobia without ever really having to consider whether or not the motivation behind their xenophobia is even grounded in reality or propaganda.
So, because no one actually gives a shit. I'm just gonna bitch instead. Plus this is about a mile long so I know no one is going to read it. Screaming into the void is a favorite past time. Leave me alone.
None of those things mentioned are true, however, as they so rarely are in situations like these. Americans also hate Trump. Americans also hate wars. Americans also want socialist federally funded programs to benefit citizens. Americans also want easily accessible and useful public transportation. Americans want worker protections. Americans want housing protections and landlords to be kept on leashes so they can't fuck their tenants. Americans want stricter gun control. Most Americans do not own guns. Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Most Americans have at least one dependent in the home with absolutely no assistance to their aid or support.
And people will read that and ask, "Well then why do Americans not simply rise up?! Isn't that why you all wanted guns for was to prevent this from happening?!" No... That is what the NRA told you the point was so they could justify their attacks on gun regulations and any politicians trying to enforce them as "patriotic", as well as further enforce the narrative that American citizens support their government. Because if they didn't, well, as you said, why wouldn't they have done something? If you're looking at a situation and thinking, "oh, my god! This sounds insane! How could anyone support this?!" yeah, um... most people don't that's actually how humans have always worked and this time isn't a unique exception to that sociopolitical diversity.
So why is any of this relevant? Why am I bothered? Why do I care? Well, I don't typically discuss my ethnicity, especially online, because I hate the way outsiders treat my people. Whether it's fetishizing us or treating us as lepers, there is more than enough hate to go around for my people. And, to this day, pretty much every country in Europe is still actively committing genocide against my people. I bring it up here because I've seen the newspaper clippings from my family. The few who managed to survive the holocaust. I saw how people talked about us and justified our suffering as being our own problem, and certainly not an issue worthy of anyone stepping in to help. I saw people make the same exact comments time after time after time. I saw people who had every opportunity to reach out a helping hand, spit in the faces of my people. We were among the first groups to be targeted. If not THE first group. And, well, you know how the rest of the poem goes.
80% of my people's entire population was wiped out by the end of WWII. And that same violence and oppression is being carried on in the name of Europeans who gleefully and proudly support the inhumane persecution of my people. Kidnapping our children, burning our homes, beating our young, rejecting us from any attempt at social integration, like getting a job, and then they act shocked that these people they wont let work have to steal to survive. So I know what it means to be a victim of western oppression. I know what it is like to see the obliterated bodies of your loved ones and having only the power to pray that is the last time that it happens. I don't need a lecture on western imperialism or the impact it has had on humanity. (Especially not from European nationals who go from calling Americans racist to saying my people all deserve to be wiped from the face of the earth in about two seconds flat.) My people have suffered that wrath for, literally, thousands of years now. So when I tell you that you do not understand anything about what you are talking about when you simply scream about how US citizens need to "do something", I'm telling you this as someone who understands and recognizes these patterns repeating now.
You can compare 2026 US to any historical revolution you want. You can compare it to successful rebellions in other nations while completely disregarding the vast socioeconomic and sociopolitical differences between the two. But the fact remains that, no matter how angry or frustrated you get, it doesn't magically make the American people capable of overthrowing their government. And the fact that you think they can when no other nation or army in the entire world has ever been able to even come close, would be hilarious if it wasn't so comically obvious that the assertion they can is merely a mask to cover the reality of the condemnation towards Americans as little more than xenophobia, plain and simple. You think Americans can rise up, because the US government told you that they can. And you wanna know why the US government told you that? So that you would ignorantly assume that Americans were in complete and total control of their nation, and therefore must support the actions of their government. Most people tend to stand down on intervening when they believe the citizens are all for what the fascist regime is doing. And I feel like I shouldn't have to point this out, but I'm unsure of anything anymore, but, fascists lie. That's kind of one of their main things. Believing a narrative sold to you by a government you know is fascist about whether or not that government has the support of it's people seems, you know, not smart.
Because let me be clear. When you say "Americans deserve this", you are talking about the Americans who are being torn from their families and locked in cages. You're talking about all the little girls who are turning up pregnant in ICE detention facilities and being forced to carry those pregnancies to term. You're talking about every single black person who has been gunned down by a completely out of control police state. You are talking about the victims of the prison industrial complex who are literally just slaves. You are talking about the tens of thousands of sex trafficking victims. You're talking about every trans person who is having their very identity stripped away from them. You're talking about every single person whose right to vote has been denied to them at a time where voter suppression is worse than it's been since the civil rights movement. You're talking about every single victim whose abuser is out free because of a government that rewards cruelty.
You don't get to make these sweeping generalizations about the morality of Americans like they are some monolith and then backtrack the second you remember innocent people also exist in the US and are suffering, being tortured and dying too. This isn't some terror the US government reserves only for their "enemies". This is shit they do to their own people, and have always done to their own people. The US has committed war crimes on their own people that they don't even commit on foreign enemies in war time. You KNOW the US government is full of a bunch of corrupt liars who are experts in propaganda, but for some reason you're perfectly content to believe what they've told you about the american people. I wont say what I think about that bound in logic, but you can use your imagination.
And omfg, I have to address this... all the white gen x women self flagellating all over social media about how "omg, yes. we totally deserve it! hate us harder, daddy!" Yeah, those bitches are not the ones suffering. In fact, those bitches are the biggest demographic of supporters for this admin. That's why they're trying so hard to glaze foreigners for shitting on Americans because 1. They know they're the problem, but they think that if they skewer themselves for the gratification of outsiders, they will be forgiven of all their contributions towards leading us here - which foreigners keep proving them right by glazing them right back as being "one of the good ones" for being willing to throw all those people I listed above under the bus. And 2. Because, aside from white men, they are the ones who are the least effected by the shit happening right now. They don't give a shit about how you see American citizens, because their life will not change one way or the other when their brown and black neighbors start dying and/or going missing. They will keep right on laughing at every single school shooting joke you make with zero regard for the victims of those tragedies. But hey... They're Americans. So it's okay to make fun of their kids getting gunned down in schools because of their government. You think there would be some sort of, I dunno, solidarity there. But I certainly cant see it. So fuck those dead kids! Ammirite?
"Oh, but Americans act like that when their country kills kids!" Do they? Because, again, American citizens do not support anything happening right now. So is it really that they are all super stoked about their government's war crimes, or is it that you're specifically being shown unhinged tweets written directly from members of this absolutely insane admin and then attributing that to everyone else so you can make yourself feel better about making fun of kids getting violently murdered? Weird. I can't seem to think of any fascist regime currently involved with the events happening now that would ever find their own citizens and soldiers making videos and posts mocking grieving parents of murdered children. Surely there is no parallel to be made here. You get the point. Moving on.
The people out there trying to educate people on the reality of how America works and what it is like to be a US citizen aren't doing so as a means to absolve the US government. And that you think so proves you have dehumanized these people enough to the point where you don't even see them as humans anymore. You see them as an extension of the US government, and as such are therefore directly responsible for decisions made that they literally do not have any power to prevent. And this assumption allows you the clean conscious of feeling like you're standing on the right side of history by lambasting and shitting on, lets be real, mostly innocent people who are actively being victimized by the government you are blaming them for. This isn't a condemnation against anyone for being pissed off. Everyone should be pissed off and furious. This is more a condemnation of people's idea that they are above falling for propaganda. They see that there are some Americans who have bought into propaganda sold by the US government, and they assume that because they recognize that propaganda and know those people fell for falsehoods, that they are therefore completely incapable of ever getting duped by those same con artists. You know, because they're not as stupid as Americans.
If you think any of the following generalizations are true:
Americans are rich
Americans do not support social welfare programs
Americans are all nationalists
Americans love their government
Americans support Trump
Trump won legitimately both times
Americans love war
Americans do not want or care about gun control
Americans do not want to invest tax ddollars into education
Most Americans have guns
Americans trust the US government or the military
America is (or ever has been) a true democracy
Americans are not facing food scarcity, homelessness, poverty, or dying en masse because of their government
Americans are pro-capitalism
Congratulations. You've been duped by propaganda.
I know the question is gonna come up... "how can it be propaganda if it makes them look bad?" Propaganda doesn't have to make anyone look good. It just has to accomplish a specific agenda that benefits the people who are pushing that propaganda. And I can't think of a more consistently useful tool of fascism than ostracizing citizens from anyone else that could possibly help them. You know, at least not until 25 million people are dead and we are all chanting "never again" in the streets and still clinging, ever so desperately, to that one little scrap of justified hatred and bigotry that carries on into the next generation and the next and the next, until here we are and everyone is scratching their heads in complete confusion. For my people, the holocaust against us never ended. For my people, we knew what was coming then, and we know what is coming now. The writing is on the wall, the bells have been rung and the lines have been drawn. And when all is said and done we will watch you all sneakily pick up another scrap of prejudice for the victims you ignored, to remind them that, you can help, but only if you decide that enough innocent people have died first. You know. To teach them a lesson.
And you know who will never learn that lesson? The people responsible for all this. The only people who will suffer are the innocents, and if you're willing to let innocent people suffer just to stick it to a handful of red pill twitter bots that will never feel the consequences of your bitter resentment, then maybe you're just a piece of shit.
In summation, the "too long, didn't read" of it all. The American people cannot overthrow their government. It is literally not possible. BUT! Even if it were possible, I think we can all safely assume that isn't going to happen, regardless of why. Yes? So now what? Is the plan just to scream at Americans to fix it until the lunatic pulls the trigger? I actually saw someone the other day say, "Why should we have to sacrifice our armies to clean up your mess?" And my brother in christ, what tf are you actually talking about? This isn't some isolated catastrophe where only the shitty stupid americans are suffering the consequences here. This dude just threatened nuclear warfare. This is ALL OF OUR PROBLEM now, whether you like that fact or not. You have the choice to push your governments to take direct action now, because you do not live under a fascist regime. And, mind-blowing i know, but you don't actually have to go to war with the US for your country to do something.
Cut off trade with the US
Ban every single member of every branch of the US government from setting foot on foreign soil, and tell them that if they do, they will be arrested and held for trial at the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Don't travel to the US. Yes, even for fucking sports. Pro-tip: Sports < Humanity
Pressure your nation's teams to pull out of the world cup in protest.
Pressure your nations to prevent anyone from traveling there for vacation. (Yes, somehow there are still morons traveling to the US for vacation.)
Push for a UN coup and strip the superpowers from having veto power and only cut them in under EXTREMELY heavy regulatory conditions. Including getting rid of nuclear weapons, and charging every single conspirator of this shit show. Even the ones not from the US.
Every single one of those things is about a million times more doable than the American people taking over their government. Maybe lets start brainstorming alternatives to just screaming online. I mean, you can also scream online as well, but like... Maybe do a little fucking multitasking here.
PS Because it always comes up I just want to nip this one now. 'America' is not a continent. There is North America and South America. Americans are not called "Americans" because of some sense of self superiority. They're called Americans because "America" is the last word in the nation's title. Which is how it works with every other nation in the world named "Something something of Something". United Kingdom of Great Britain. Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Etc etc etc. You get the point. It's not unique to the US. Thank you for coming to my tangent. Shout out to my United Kingdomians out there!
This part especially:
âYou don't get to make these sweeping generalizations about the morality of Americans like they are some monolith and then backtrack the second you remember innocent people also exist in the US and are suffering, being tortured and dying too. This isn't some terror the US government reserves only for their "enemies". This is shit they do to their own people, and have always done to their own people. The US has committed war crimes on their own people that they don't even commit on foreign enemies in war time. You KNOW the US government is full of a bunch of corrupt liars who are experts in propaganda, but for some reason you're perfectly content to believe what they've told you about the american people. I wont say what I think about that bound in logic, but you can use your imagination.â
