Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Violence grips the lives of millions of citizens in much of the world. India seems to be reliving the conflicts of hatred between its two predominant religions that came into a dispute at the time of the subcontinent’s independence from British colonialism. Hindus and Muslims clashed with such violence and hatred that the only solution was to divide the subcontinent into two countries: India and Pakistan. Today, this hatred between the two religions has been reborn, encouraged mainly by the Indian authorities of Hindu extraction.
The violence between Hindus and Muslims is comparable to that between Jews and Muslims. Violence rooted in opposing religious beliefs is blind and does not listen to reason. Reasoning loses, and the human stock of pure, unadulterated hatred wins. Even in the war between Ukraine and Russia, there is an element of religious confrontation. Between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, there already exists, too, a state of war. The Ukrainian government has been limiting the activities or outright expelling the religious leaders of the Russian Church from that country because of the suspicion that they are actually a fifth column of Putin.
Africa is experiencing the dismemberment of the tribes among themselves. Millions have been hanged, and thousands of children have become hired killers and so-called “child soldiers” who learn to enjoy killing with the power it gives them.
The extermination of the other seems to be the primary objective of any act of violence. In all cases, the violence is initially propitiated by political leaders. Especially when they discover that filling their followers with hatred is the path to power. In terms of political classification, such leaders are often classified as “populists,” seeking to attain and maintain control by riding a wave of irrational hatred. Their economic program is essentially irrelevant: socialist, statist, or market-based. It does not matter. The important thing for the populist is to keep his followers fanaticized and blind to any calm reflection. The important thing is to consolidate the irrational mass that follows the leader.
The leader, a key piece in the legitimization of the pretense of extermination, is the one who defines the “object of hate” that unifies the masses, exploiting their fears, beliefs, hatreds, and the superstitions that “guide” a population to focus on what it must destroy to live. That same leader commonly preaches love of neighbor precisely to cover up the fact that he seeks, in reality, the extermination of his opposite. His followers listen to his double talk and understand it as a license to act and, if necessary, kill in the name of “The Cause of the Nation”.
The Prime Minister of India preaches peace while his followers take to the streets to kill Muslims. The conflict between Jews and Muslims has no conciliation. The genocide of the Hutu against the Tutsis in Rwanda has meant the death of possibly a million people. Genocide is the order of the day.
President Lopez Obrador uses dual language to incite violence in Mexico. He claims to promote love and peace, yet he verbally assaults people from across the country’s cultural, political, social, and economic spectrum daily. No one is spared. He uses drug trafficking to subordinate entire areas of the country while corrupting the commanders of the Armed Forces. His dual language is understood by his followers, who attack officials of the INE, the Supreme Court of Justice, the UNAM, opposition parties, academics, and those who dare to question the president. He uses criminal gangs to attack and intimidate communicators and journalists throughout the country. He also uses them to intimidate voters during elections.
All are allies in using violence to eliminate opponents and control power.
AMLO uses verbal violence as a dual signal language for his followers to exercise physical violence against “his opponents”. Apart from poisoning the national environment with unrest never felt before, he is creating the conditions for exterminating any opinion contrary to his own. This is why he stated that he would like to live in Cuba. Of course! Dissenting from the official opinion in Cuba means ending up in jail.
Perhaps AMLO’s intention is not to practice genocide in Mexico itself, but achieving the extermination of his opponents is undoubtedly his political objective of greatest interest.
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