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Dr. Alex Hinton: Genocide in the US??

41 min • 3 september 2024

In this episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Alex Hinton explore the potential for genocide in the U.S., highlighting historical and contemporary atrocities. Dr. Hinton emphasizes that genocide can target groups based on social constructs such as race, gender, and sexuality, among others. They discuss the rise of white supremacism and hate speech, and Dr. Hinton identifies risk factors such as political upheaval, economic instability, and armed militias. Dr.Hinton also stresses the importance of critical thinking and depolarization to prevent genocide, and suggests an easy way for everyone to do so without committing 40 hours per week to stay abreast of all of the issues and topics.

Key Takeaways:

Genocide and mass violence are not typically planned from the beginning. They often evolve from other behaviors stemming from upheaval and past atrocities, scapegoating, grievance, and legitimation of formed hierarchies.
Hate speech is everywhere—left, right, and center. Wherever someone is on the political spectrum, they can agree it's bad. The problem is that people sometimes disagree about what constitutes it.
People are busy. Trying to keep informed can be a full-time job. One little thing everyone can do pretty easily to begin to do this in general, as we enter the political cycle, just pick a left-leaning, more centrist, and right-leaning news media source then on the top of the hour, turn on the TV, and flip between them and see the headlines.

"Ideology is central to all genocides, in some sense. Ideologies provide legitimation to disempower groups, and to legitimate different forms of hierarchy within a society and in the extreme. That then lays the basis for saying that groups are inferior." — Dr. Alex Hinton

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