Before the Final Stage: America Is On the Edge of Genocide — A Q&A with Matthew Pearce

NAFO founding member Matthew Pearce led me to the work of Dr. Gregory H. Stanton on the Ten Stages of Genocide. This interview with Pearce shows we still have time to prevent the worst if we act fast

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I didn’t want to write this report. I’ve been researching the subject for the past three days. I like to give actionable ways to resist and to help the most vulnerable. At the Women’s March in Washington DC on January 21, 2017, a Swedish woman I interviewed told me:

“Protect Democracy. Endure the difficulties, and the labor of democracy. Shortcuts do not work for the people… it only works for the strongest. You must always get in touch with the weakest person. From there is where you walk, and from where you work.”

I took that message to heart.

I also interviewed a 100-year-old woman at the Women’s March in DC, and she told me to work harder, and I promised her I would.

So in our post-show chat with Matthew Pearce in our interview for RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, he told us about the ten stages of genocide, and how he thought the US might already be somewhere around eight.

As grim as it was, I knew immediately I had a duty to report this to you. As we learned from Mamuka Mamulashvili on Friday, duty has no expiration date.

Pearce, a founding member of NAFO, led me to the work of Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president and chairman of Genocide Watch. From 2010 to 2019, he was a research professor in genocide studies and prevention at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, USA. He founded Genocide Watch in 1999. He was the founder (1981) and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project and is currently the founder (1999) and chair of the Alliance Against Genocide, the world’s first anti-genocide coalition. According to his website:

Dr. Stanton comes from the lineage of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a women’s suffrage activist, and Henry Brewster Stanton, an anti-slavery leader. Actively involved in human rights since the 1960s when he was a voting rights worker in Mississippi, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ivory Coast and as the Church World Service/CARE Field Director in Cambodia in 1980.

Dr. Stanton has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Law School, and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2001-2002).

In 1996, he developed The Ten Stages of Genocide and summarized it as follows:

Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages occur simultaneously. Each stage is itself a process. Their logic is similar to a nested Russian matryoshka doll. Classification is at the center. Without it the processes around it could not occur. As societies develop more and more genocidal processes, they get nearer to genocide. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.—Genocide Watch

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust summarized Dr. Stanton’s ten stages as:

1. Classification – The differences between people are not respected. There’s a division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which can be carried out using stereotypes, or excluding people who are perceived to be different.

2. Symbolisation – This is a visual manifestation of hatred. Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear yellow stars to show that they were ‘different’.

3. Discrimination – The dominant group denies civil rights or even citizenship to identified groups. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, made it illegal for them to do many jobs or to marry German non-Jews.

4. Dehumanisation – Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’.

5. Organisation – Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out the destruction of a people.

6. Polarisation – Propaganda begins to be spread by hate groups. The Nazis used the newspaper Der Stürmer to spread and incite messages of hate about Jewish people.

7. Preparation – Perpetrators plan the genocide. They often use euphemisms such as the Nazis’ phrase ‘The Final Solution’ to cloak their intentions. They create fear of the victim group, building up armies and weapons.

8. Persecution – Victims are identified because of their ethnicity or religion and death lists are drawn up. People are sometimes segregated into ghettos, deported or starved and property is often expropriated. Genocidal massacres begin.

9. Extermination – The hate group murders their identified victims in a deliberate and systematic campaign of violence. Millions of lives have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition through genocide.

10. Denial – The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime.

Since Matthew Pearce is the source who led me to this work, I decided to interview him on this topic for the Bette Dangerous community. Here is that Q&A:

Before the Final Stage: America Is On the Edge of Genocide — A Q&A with Matthew Pearce

Heidi Cuda: When did you first learn about Dr. Stanton’s work on The Ten Stages of Genocide?

Matthew Pearce: I started therapy for PTSD & Trauma. I spent a lot of time talking about my Grandmother but also how I always felt like an outsider in the UK. The Trump first term passed me by. I started to follow Ukraine war in 22 & Joined NAFO. I became more & more aware how american Left & Right help Russia hide or deny their crimes - So Qanon bio labs and tankies calling Ukrainians Nazis. Seeing these two sides come together I saw the patterns I learnt from my Grandmother. My family were destroyed by early 1941-my Grandmother arrived on a boat in dover. She was given work and a home not dehumanised, so I saw what Farage is was trying to do. It is scary but there is resistance.

There is a major set of differences between the UK and the USA. The UK has a level of dehumanisation from the Conservative Party and Reform UK, but luckily it is not systemic and is receiving substantial pushback. Reform failed to win the most recent Welsh Special Election despite being predicted to do so. There was a large push from the progressive coalition. The UK lacks the gun or violence sub-culture, police/military/ice infrastructure, systemic corruption in the Capitol and cult-like behaviour visible more widely in the USA.

I found Dr. Stanton when I was researching a way to explain what was happening in the UK, Ukraine and the USA, the Bobby McFerrin video was also a way to explain innate human social group control and interaction.

Heidi: Why are you concerned for America?

Matthew: You are on the same path as Russia w.r.t Ukrainians, China and the Uyghurs. I am not certain which group will be first, but there are 4 candidates in my opinion. The order I have given them is based on the level and type of dehumanisation I have seen on social media.

1. Haitians

2. Transgender people

3. Latin American migrants

4. Muslim Imams due to the fake Christian narratives or Muslim women, because of their veil/head dress.

There is a strong element of male violent psycho-sexual domination in the American far-right hence my inclusion of people targeted for their gender or sexual orientation. (Author’s note: They are setting up a scenario that allows them to then come for any political enemy imo.)

Heidi: What stage do you think we are at?

Matthew: You are past stage 7 for sure. You have euphemisms (secure the border, anti-grooming, protect the children) and acts of violence declared as self-defence.

Stage 8 is the likeliest candidate.

Your society now divides people by religion, nationality, sexual orientation and political views and treats them differently. The “enemies” of Trump/The People (both now have the same meaning) are now listed, then threatened and persecuted. Many are deported, starved and murdered (in camps). This report notes:

“This fiscal year, 22 immigrants died in detention – 10 between January and June. At the Everglades facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” advocates say more than 1,200 detainees are missing, with families and lawyers unable to locate them... Of a record 59,762 people held in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention as of September 21, 42,755 or about 71% have no criminal conviction, according to TRAC.”

These camps and the boat murders are the preparation or actually are the first genocidal massacres (1200 disappearances of a specific group of people), and therefore take you to Stage 8, approaching 9.

Heidi: How do you see warring in Venezuela playing into this?

Matthew: Venezuela is important. It allows for state level dehumanisation of another country’s population. If it occurs, it will be the first of a genocidal campaign in Latin America based on a false self-defence from “drugs and cartels”.

It and El-Salvador would then likely allow the construction of prison camps overseas in a similar way that Germany used Poland & the Baltics. It will certainly start slowly-but the pattern is clear. But, it may also be like a flick of switch as in Rwanda. It is not possible to say.

Heidi: What would you like to tell the American people?

Matthew: If you do not want to be remembered in the same way as the Germans & Russians are from the 1930’s you do not have long. The boat murders, the destruction of the White House and closure of Congress are necessary because they test limits. the lack of pushback is another tick in the box for stage 9. The jump is a big one. I am not a conspiracy loon. But when that jump is made then there is no turning back. It is a point of no return.

Heidi: The final stage, 10, is denial it never happened.

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Matthew Pearce is a founding member of NAFO, a pro-Ukrainian decentralized fund-raising group of volunteers who accidentally reinvented information warfare. His Mattppea’s Substack is powered by ‘righteous anger, ADHD, and Coffee.’ Pearce, a UK-based economist and technologist, reports on the cost of disinformation, the pipeline from Moscow to the West Wing, and how the world set itself on fire. Among his newest series is When the Fields Fought Back.

📺 When the Fields Fought Back: Part V — The Broadcast Century

Author’s note: At the beginning of the deportations to concentrations camps, I wrote in my Byline column: How many is enough? I ask that question again today.

How many is enough?

Hot Type: How Many is Enough?

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