The Death of Convenience
What does it take to get someone to commit genocide?
The answer, it turns out, is as terrifyingly simple as a slightly nicer truck, a new tv, a good couch.
All this is at the forefront of my mind right now as I belatedly abandon Instagram - the last Meta product I still use. It's also the only Meta product that still remotely works, but that's another story.
Since 2021, we've had hard proof that Meta knew they were destroying people's brains and lives. Leaked internal documents show widespread discussion about measures the company could take to reduce the spread of COVID conspiracies, election denialism, and hate speech and genocidal rhetoric.
Those measures were either slow-walked to the point of ineffectiveness or ignored completely, all because they would reduce engagement and time on site, which is the basis of Meta's advertising income.
COVID conspiracies went unchecked, and now we face an endemic disease with long-term, even deadly consequences. Election denialism led to attempted coups in the US (and Brazil for good measure). Moderators could see the conspirators onboarding and planning in real time, but were directed by Joel Kaplan - future newsletter subject and ghoul - to ignore it in order to keep politicians from attacking them.
And in Myanmar, Ethiopia, and India, the company refused to employ enough moderators who spoke local languages to effectively remove hate speech. Despite warnings, these places were ignored.
In Myanmar, perhaps 43,000 Rohingya were killed, and more than 700,000 made refugees. Possibly as many as 600,000 have been killed in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. And in India, and especially Gujarat state, pogroms against the Muslim population have left uncounted dead in nearly 15 years of social-media fueled violence.
By all rights, Mark Zuckerberg, Joel Kaplan, Cheryl Sandberg, and anyone who made decisions at Meta in the last 20 years should be in The Hague.
I knew all this. So why did I continue to hang on to Instagram until now?
Because it was convenient.
I needed to promote comedy shows! I needed to promote the podcast! I needed to keep in touch with friends! I needed to help organize! And hey, I dumped Facebook and Messenger, but I just gotta keep this one little thing, right?
It makes a grim sort of sense that the tool that's so effective for organizing militias and hate groups is also pretty good for getting people to watch you tell jokes at a brewery in Northglenn on a Wednesday night.
For all their insignificance, though, these choices are how a genocide is made. And convenience is like anything else: enjoyed in moderation it's fine, even helpful. But it can become addictive and deadly.
For nearly two years now, I've been immersed in Genocide Studies (the subject I would be getting my Master's Degree in right now if that was a practical thing to do). Between large swathes of this newsletter and the podcast launching later this year, there is one thing I want to make sure people understand.
If you are reading this, you are capable of committing genocide. That means you are also capable of resisting one.
When we think of genocidaires, we often picture a lunatic: someone manic in their drive to eliminate their targeted group of people. We picture Hitler at the lectern, gesticulating and gazing into darkness. We picture RTLM, the radio station that helped to disseminate anti-Tutsi hate speech in Rwanda.
Lunatic bigots like this are a feature of genocide without a doubt. They are the people who plant the ideas and craft the architecture of elimination. But they are not the majority of those guilty of genocide by a long shot.
For every Hitler, Heydrich, or Habyarimana, there are thousands of people willing to sign forms, staff prisons, or simply continue filling their role in the genocidal society. Without even a fraction of these people, the wheels of violence would not turn.
Baiting the Hook
In 1955's remarkable They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945, Jewish journalist Milton Mayer interviewed ten everyday Germans who all fit the bill of "Little Nazis." These are people who joined the party after its ascendancy, and they joined it for a number of non-ideological reasons: keeping a job, career advancement, profiting from confiscated Jewish property, or simply because it was more convenient to do so.
At one point, Mayer has the following conversation with a colleague who, despite his reservations, joined the Party:
"The world was lost one day in 1935, here in Germany. It was I who lost it, and I will tell you how.
"I was employed in a defense plant (a war plant, of course, but they were always called defense plants). That was the year of the National Defense Law, the law of 'total conscription.' Under the law I was required to take the oath of fidelity. I said I would not; I opposed it in conscience. I was given twenty-four hours to 'think it over.' In those twenty-four hours, I lost the world."
"Yes?" I said.
"You see, refusal would have meant the loss of my job, of course, not prison or anything like that. (Later on, the penalty was worse, but this was only in 1935). But losing my job meant I would not have been able to find another. Wherever I went, I should be asked why I left the job I had, and, when I said why, I should have certainly been refused employment...
"The next day, after 'thinking it over,' I said I would take the oath with the mental reservation that, by the words with which the oath began, 'Ich scwöre bei Gott, I swear by God,' I understand that no human being and no government had the right to override my conscience. My mental reservations did not interest the official who administered the oath. He said, 'Do you take the oath?' and I took it. That day the world was lost, and it was I who lost it."
This colleague would open his apartment to fugitives of the regime, saving dozens. And yet, for him, it was not enough. And I feel comfortable saying both that, in taking an oath of loyalty to the Nazi Party he bears a degree of responsibility for their crimes, and also I can understand (though not condone, of course) why he made that choice.
Convenience isn't just limited to things as consequential as your livelihood. Even inessential comforts can have a profound effect on what people are willing to tolerate.
In Black Earth, historian Timothy Snyder spends time looking at a term you may remember from school: lebensraum, or "living space." We're taught that this refers to the territory Hitler set out to conquer to provide more land for Germans. Like many things we learn in history class, this is only part of the truth.
See, "living space" doesn't just refer to land on a map. It also refers to a "living room," which was not a luxury most Germans had. They looked across the Atlantic at the comforts of US homes, and believed that, if they gave ordinary people those luxuries, it would be harder to make them resist the Nazi state.
So land was gobbled up to increase available food supplies, thereby lowering the price of food, and increasing the buying power of "Aryan" Germans. These households were able to afford more luxury goods, and were more reluctant to risk them. Consumer comfort begets moral cowardice.
We see another example of this in the School of the Americas. In her excellent book titled (wait for it) The School of the Americas, Dr. Lesley Gill outlines the way Latin American military officers were introduced to American consumer luxuries to help secure their allegiance to the American economic system.
Through pickup trucks and color TVs, these officers were not only hooked on consumerism, they also were able to get soldiers to follow them because they aspired to the same luxuries. These armies and death squads were responsible for genocides and massacres in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and more.
One of their most infamous crimes was the assassination of then Archbishop (now Saint) Óscar Romero at a hospital chapel in El Salvador. Romero had grown into a proponent of Liberation Theology, which preached freedom for the poor and the rejection of exploitative systems like the one that killed him.
We Don't Have to Lose the World
What are we prepared to sacrifice for the sake of our neighbor? Especially in an alienated society like our own, what would be your breaking point?
This is not a far-off hypothetical. This is here. This is now.
The Lemkin Institute and Genocide Watch currently have warnings for genocidal rhetoric, legislation, and violence in the US. The latest major happening is Meta allowing hate speech against queer people, migrants, and people of color on their platform under the guise of "free expression."
Before I deleted my Instagram, I saw friends posting messages saying they hate the changes and were sorry that people could be so cruel. As of my last day on the app, those friends were still active users.
And I get it. I sincerely do. As an artist, performer, organizer, you have been trained to build your livelihood's foundation on these platforms. But whether you choose it yourself or it comes to you as a firestorm outside your home, the end of convenience is imminent.
Stop letting bigots and fascists profit off you. Don't let them make you dependent on them. Stand with your neighbors, your loved ones, your community as we ask for your help. We don't have to lose the world.
We can choose on whose terms we build the world to come. Let's choose each other. There are more of us, anyway.
LFC Corner
If you didn't know, Liverpool Football Club is one of the things that helps me when the world is too much. And I'm very tired this week, but wanted to spend a few words talking about one of the two best himbos in the squad: Harvey Elliott.
Two brilliant goals since returning from injury, and he looks incredible every time he takes the pitch. Arne Slot has preferred to play Dominik Szoboslai as the forward midfielder, but Elliott brings a little more creative spark and chaos that helps break down stubborn defenses. I hope he stays, even if he's not starting every match.
Also, a moment for that hair.
