War, Genocide, and the Owning Class
With the encouragement of Nazish Riaz, a South Asian Co-Counseling leader, Jo Saunders (the International Liberation Reference Person for Owning-Class People) and I (the International Liberation Reference Person for South, Central, and West Asian-Heritage People) co-led this past April a War, Genocide, and the Owning Class Workshop, for U.S. RCers. I loved co-leading it with Jo, staying close to her, and discharging and thinking with her.
RECENT WARS
The frequency and destructiveness of war have increased dramatically since the end of World War II—there have been over a hundred and sixty wars, which have killed twenty-five million people.
Contrary to popular belief among USers, the United States is not a peaceful nation. It has been involved in wars and genocide for a long time. Its history began with wars against Indigenous people, and today it has the most powerful military in human history. No country comes close to it in military power.
Since World War II, the United States has spent over fifteen trillion dollars on war—money that could have supported meaningful well-paying jobs, affordable housing, health care, education, a transition to a humane and green economy, workshops on recovering from distress, and so on.
There are no good wars. World War II was a disastrous war. The United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan) with nuclear bombs, killing countless civilians, and was complicit in the bombing of civilians in Dresden (Germany). The imperialist fascist regimes of Germany, Italy, and Japan were defeated—but racism, imperialism, classism, and anti-Semitism were not eliminated. After World War II the two superpowers, the United States and Russia—both armed with nuclear weapons—began fighting for control of the world.
Since World War II, the United States has been directly involved in sixteen wars that have killed more than six million people, more than half of them civilians. It has been indirectly involved in a hundred and fifteen wars—carrying out capture-or-kill raids; toppling regimes; funding, advising, and training foreign forces; and selling arms to one or both sides of a conflict.
Because the U.S. Congress has not declared war since 1942, the United States does not consider itself at war, and most USers don’t realize their country has been involved in all these wars—most of them to promote the economic interests of the owning class.
THE WORKSHOPS
Jo and I led two parallel workshops. I led one for owning-class Indigenous people and People of the Global Majority, and Jo led the white folks. We did introductions and a closing circle together.
I started my workshop by reiterating what we know to be true about humans:
- Humans are inherently good.
- There are no bad humans.
- There are no human enemies.
- Humans get hurt.
- Violence and threats of violence hurt humans.
- There are no inherent conflicts of interest among humans.
- Humans have a built-in healing process and can heal from emotional hurts.
- Unity among humans is achievable.
I also shared the following:
- We can end war as a way of (supposedly) resolving conflicts.
- We can end the genocide of Indigenous people.
- We can intentionally replace capitalism with a global economic system that does not rely on war and genocide.
- Militarism, war, genocide, and domination cannot make us secure. We become secure as we unite and as we eliminate all oppression and violence.
We worked on our earliest memories of isolation and defeat, on reclaiming power and hope, on unity and connection with others, and on our earliest memories of conflict and how it was handled in our families, cultures, religions, tribes, and nations. (Growing up, most us received no useful information about resolving conflict.)
We also worked on where our owning-class families had colluded with the occupying colonial and imperialist powers and on dishonesty, lack of integrity, greed, and betrayal.
We each shared how much wealth we own and where the wealth is invested (in stocks, land, and so on).
We concluded that all USers need to work on these things. The following are some suggestions:
- Discharge on early isolation and defeats.
- Discharge about land in the Americas being stolen from Native people and wealth being stolen from enslaved Africans and people of the Global South.
- Proudly claim U.S. identity.
- Oppose the destructive actions of the U.S. government, including its wars.
- Learn about U.S. treaties with Native Americans and U.S. foreign policy.
- Discharge on not colluding with silence and secrecy about U.S. military action.
- Discharge on divesting from funds and industries that support war and the fossil fuel industry. Do you own stocks, a 401(k) [a retirement savings plan sponsored by an employer], an IRA [individual retirement account]? Chances are [it is likely] you are invested in industries that directly or indirectly support militarism and war.
Working on my U.S. identity and discharging on war and genocide left me more optimistic. It is also good to know that people around the globe are taking thousands of anti-war and anti-genocide initiatives (largely ignored by the major media).
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion
list for leaders of wide world change