How Governments Disappear Humans

I found this, perhaps not in the strangest of places, but while watching a travel food show in Anthony Bordain No Reservations, somewhere in the seventh season, when he goes to Cambodia. Half Way through the episode, a woman begins talking about the Khmer Rouge regime led by Paul Pott, and I looked it up and began to learn about the horrors involved, not in the supernatural sense, although I couldn't believe humans could be capable of such atrocities, especially after what happened in Nazi Germany. Searching for patterns, I learned about the Uigurs and the Turkic Muslims and re education centers in Shinjang, China, the disappearances, torture and forced labor and eritrea of up to four hundred thousand people since nineteen ninety one, The Russian filtration camps during the Chechen Wars, the Volune, the Almarscot camps in Bosnia, and the nineties North Korea's prison camps me and mars Rohinga ethnic cleansing. These stories terrified me to my core. Ideas that spread like viruses and cause so much pain, and the way the messaging affects belief. I'm convinced if there is true evil in the world, this is it. And in all of these cases, they started with people having a hard time believing what was happening, justifying it with the law with seemingly valid reasons, allowing themselves to be cruel, saying that it can't be that bad, that those who sound the alarm are exaggerating, that's just politics, that it couldn't possibly happen again, And then it did, and it does. It happened with the Native Americans, with African Americans during the times of slavery, the Japanese interment caps never again, we say, and then it happens once more. Today, I'm going to tell you about the most horrifying acts carried out by humans. So please take care as you're listening. This is how governments disappear humans. My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story. One call them names. In nineteen thirties Germany, the Nazis didn't invent the hatred, they just made it. Formal laws like the Nuremberg Laws of nineteen thirty five legally defined who counted as a Jew based on ancestry if her grandparents were Jewish, you were Jewish, even if you've never stepped inside a synagogue. Religion turned into a racial identity that the state could regulate. In Rwanda, the division was even more rigid. The Belgian colonial government issued ID cards labeling, and these labels locked you into legal categories that shaped everything access to schools, jobs, political roles. When the genocide began in nineteen ninety four, these ID cards became a death sentence. At checkpoints, perpetrators would asked to see your papers and it could be killed on the spot based on what it said. The Ottoman Empire had its own versions of this during the Armenian genocide in nineteen fifteen. Armenians were already second class under Ottoman law for centuries, but they were further singled out as enemies of the state during World War One. The government claimed Armenians were conspiring with Russia and pose a threat to national security, and that label enemy was enough to justify entire communities being deported or killed. In Nazi Germany, Jews were called rats, and Rwanda Tutsis were called cockroaches and me and mar Rahinja Muslims were labeled illegal Bengalis labels like these are tools. They make violence easier by making people seem less than human. And it's subtle. But it's not just other countries. This kind of naming has happened here in the United States too. In nineteen forty two, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government ordered the force removal of over one hundred and ten thousand Japanese Americans, two thirds of them were U S citizens that were taken from their homes. They were labeled enemy, aliens or potential threats based solely on their ancestry. There was no trial, no evidence of wrongdoing, and entire families were uprooted in place into interment camps. Under Executive Order nine oh sixty six, the government created detailed records, maps, and property inventories. Japanese Americans were fringer printed, assigned family numbers, and tracked. A century earlier, the force displacement of Native American nations followed a similar path. Through laws like the Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty. Indigenous people were officially labeled as wards of the state that put them outside the legal protections of citizenship and sovereignty. The US classified their land as federal property and designated tribes as obstacles to settlement. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and the Seminole were forcedly marched from their ancestral lands during what became known as the Trail of Tears. Thousands died along the way. And what's common in each of these stories is the way that governments or societies first find a way to divide people and then formalize that division, to track it, to say you belong and you don't. And it's all very organized, very procedural, just names at first, but once those names are on paper, they can be used, and history shows they usually are number two. Say bad things about them. Words don't kill, but they prepare the ground for those who will. And before they're pushed out, locked up, or buried, they're spoken about in a certain way, loudly, publicly, and over and over until the language stops sounding strange. In Rwanda, for example, the airwaves were filled with poison. Broadcasters joked about extermination, warned of conspiracies, and encouraged the majority to defend themselves. And when the genocide began in April of nineteen ninety four, people had already been shaped by years of propaganda. This happened in Nazi Germany too. Joseph Goebel's Ministry of Propaganda spent years portraying Jews as parasites, corruptors, and a threat. Cartoons would show them with hooked noses and greedy hands, and school books warned children to beware. If people believed their neighbors were dangerous in subhuman, then they could be removed without guilt. In me and Mar, the Rahinda were labeled as Bengalis, implying that they were foreign invaders from Bangladesh, even though their families had lived in Rakhine State for generations. When the attacks began in twenty seventeen, soldiers and militias buried entire villages, They raped women, and forced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps across the border and throughout the government insisted it was merely handling illegal immigration. This is twenty seventeen, not even that long ago. But the most chilling examples are often the quietest ones, the one I mentioned at the start. In Cambodia, under the Khmer Rouge, people were linguistically erased. Intellectuals, professionals, and religious leaders were called new people, the phrase that stripped them of history and reduced them to a thread against a revolution. Anyone even wearing glasses or speaking French, maybe owning a book, could be marked for death. Now the pattern shows up over and over again. The labels get more violent, the speech becomes more casual, and leaders say things like they're different from us or they're taking over, And eventually entire populations are spoken of in metaphors as floods, infestations, diseases. And once people become a problem, the solution comes. Next, the way leaders in the media talk about a group becomes colder and rougher, allowed to be said without consequences. Hate becomes part of the public conversation and when no one pushes back, becomes normal. And once that happens, once is acceptable to mock, insult, or threatn whole groups of people in public. The damage is done. The people who hold the power know they can go further, and history shows they usually do. Three start the work. Once people are labeled and talked about as a threat, The next step is only paperwork. Violence comes from systems, boureocracies, forms, checklists, laws. With the groundwork has been laid, the system takes over, and it moves pretty quietly. In nineteen seventy five, the Khmer Rouge rolled into Panampen and declared that Cambodia would be rebuilt from zero, and within days the government emptied entire cities everyone, teachers, doctors, children, the elderly. They were forced to march into the countryside. Hospitals were cleared out, schools were closed, property was confiscated. There were no trials, no public explanations. It was all done under the logic of the revolution. The city dwellers were labeled as impure, or bourgeois or capitalist enemies. The killing came later, but first came the machinery of control, lists, orders, and silence. During Stalin's role in the Soviet Union, entire populations were displaced or eliminated by administrative decree. In the early nineteen thirties, Kulaks, which were wealthy peasants, were declared class enemies. Local officials compiled blacklists or families trains were organized to deport them to Siberia. There was no need for protests or mobs, just a chain of commands, signatures, and silence. Millions were caught in the net and Guatemala during the nineteen eighties, the military government launched a campaign called Bland Campagna Vittoria centaidos aimed at defeating the guerrilla insurgents, but the so called insurgents were often entire Mayan villages. Soldiers and paramilitary units used detailed maps and village registries to target communities for destruction. Thousands were killed. It was done under the language of counter insurgency, but the logic was clear. Remove the identity, erased the resistance. In every case, these systems were dressed in the language of order and policy. They claimed to be protecting the nation, securing peace, managing risk. Behind those words were the spreadsheets and blueprints built for displacement, even the tools meant for safety, which were birth certificates, senses records, ID cards that were repurposed in Nazi Germany. The government had already been tracking racial backgrounds for years, so when it came time to deport Jews, Roma and the other targeted groups, the records were already in place. The trains ran on schedule. The scariest part is in that these systems existed. It's how ordinary they looked while doing extraordinary harm. Clerks at desks, inspectors with clipboards, local officials just following the rules, and by the time the system is fully in place, it no longer feels like violence. It's just process four pick aside. Once the system is in place, something else has to be cleared before mass violence can begin, and that's doubt. That means silencing anyone who might raise questions, whether that be journalists, judges, teachers, neighbors, clergy, or even former allies. People who might ask is this right? They're dangerous to a regimed that's decided, it's already knows the answer. In April nineteen fifteen, before the full scale Armnian genocide began, the Ottoman government carried out a quiet purge hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, writers, priests, politicians that were arrested and instanbul and deported to remote provinces. Most were never seen again. They were the people most likely to speak out. Their removal created a silence that made the mass deportations and killings easier to carry out in the months that followed. In Germany, the Nazis targeted ascent from the start political opponents, especially communists and social democrats. They were the first to be arrested and sent to early concentration camps. As the regime grew stronger, even internal critics, Catholic bishops, Protestant pastors, conservative politicians, they were all threatened, sidelined, or killed. Books were burned, newspapers were shut down, Teachers were forced to swear loyalty oaths. Resistance didn't end overnight, but it did get quieter. In Yugoslavia during the nineteen nineties, nationalist leaders pushed hard to eliminate multi ethnic cooperation. Political moderates who promoted coexistence between Serbs, Croats and the Bosniacs that were called traders. Some were assassinated and others fled. The media was used to stoke division and paranoia, and by the time ethnic cleansing campaigns began, there were fewer voices left willing or able to object. I found that the same thing happened in Cambodia with the Khmara rouge, who was targeting anyone whom I question it. People with education, foreign language skills, or even soft hands were marked for elimination. Family members of suspected enemies were killed. Two. The idea was simple, no one should be left who could challenge the truth. As a regime to find it. This is the turning point, because once the people who would normally speak out are gone were too scared to try, there's nothing left to slow things down. The road ahead is open legally speaking, of course, five displacing people. Now what follows looks normal. People don't always disappear in the middle of the night. Sometimes they are told to pack a bag, like in nineteen forty two, the Japanese Americans were sent to camps surrounded by Barb's wire in remote deserts and mountains. The government called it evacuation, and later we called it what it actually meant. In tournament. Through the Armenian genocide, what began as deportations who became death marches. Armenians were ordered to leave their towns for relocation, but the routes had no food, no shelter, and no end. Thousands died along the roads and others were killed along the way. Women were abducted, children were taken from their parents. The promise of relocation was a lie. In Bosnia during the nineteen nineties, civilians were rounded up. Muslims and Croat families were forced to leave with whatever they could carry or face execution. In some cases, men and boys were separated and later killed. Now, in even more recent examples, the pattern repeats and me and Mar the Rahenga were pushed out of their homes by soldiers and armed mobs. Villages were burned, families fled across a border into Bangladesh, and those who didn't were killed or captured. The government insisted it was a security operation, but the scale and targeting told a different story. By the end of twenty seventeen, over seven hundred thousand Rahinia had fled. The language around these displacements is always careful. Governments speak of relocation or processing, clearance or protection. The victims are framed as threats, intruders, or burdens. The violence is disguised as policy, and by the time the photos and videos of camps and caravans show up, it's already well underway. What ties these moments together is not just a movement of people, but the message behind it. You don't belong here, not anymore, not with us. That message doesn't need to be shouted. It's printed on official letterhead, it's signed by an officer, and it arrives at the door. Backed by Law six, create Chaos, displacement clears the which strips people of protection, identity, and connection. Once they've been moved out of site into ghettos, camps, detention centers, forests, what happens next can happen quietly. This is the point where persecution becomes extermination. And Rwanda, the killing started fast after the assassination of the president in April of nineteen ninety four, roadblocks went up overnight. Of the course of one hundred days, more than eight hundred thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. Entire communities were wiped out, and the infrastructure that once tracked people by decards addresses they all made it easier to find them. In Cambodia, the population was sent into rural labor camps. The killing began slowly, though people who complained disappeared little by little. Execution sites were called killing fields. Victims were often told they were being relocated again, but instead they were being led to Maps decimated that nearly two million people died, almost a quarter of the population. In Bosnia, the violence was fast. In July of nineteen ninety five, more than eight thousand Bosniak Muslim men and boys were separated from their families under the watch of peacekeepers. They were loaded into buses, driven into forests and fields and shot. Their bodies were dumped into mass graves, and later, to cover up the crime, the graves were dug up and scattered. Survivors of the towns evacuation never saw their loved ones again. In the forests of eastern Poland and Ukraine during the Holocaust, entire Jewish communities were taken outside of town and shot. Men with lists walked door to door, collected families and marched them to the edge of the woods. Children were killed two Though these weren't hidden massacres, they happened near farms, roads and villages. Ordinary people saw them and most stayed silent. It often starts with the idea of removal, but eventually the question becomes why keep feeding, guarding, or transporting people as they're just not welcome here anymore. Now, the logic titans, the solution shifts, it becomes final, and by this point most of the outside world is either looking away or struggling to believe it. Governments speak in vague terms. The bodies are hidden or denied. There are no images from inside the worst places, only rumors, fragments, testimonies that sound too awful to be real. The killing stage is about the system accepting that people marked as them have no future. It's about society turning away or worse, participating. Seven change the story now. In the years after the Armenian genessid, the Ottoman government fell, but the denial remained to this day. Turkey refuses to recognize what happened in nineteen fifteen as genocide. Instead, it's called a tragedy of war or mutual suffering. After the Holocaust, much of the world said never again, and Germany built monuments, changed school curriculums, prosecuted many of the perpetrators, but even there, denial crept in Neo Nazi groups were emerged and conspiracy theory started circulating. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge trials took decades to begin. Many of the regime's leaders lived long, quiet lives before ever seeing a courtroom. For years, the genocide was barely taught in schools. Survivors often kept silent, unsure who to trust. It wasn't until a new generation pushed for truth that museums, memorials, and textbooks began to fill the gap. In Bosnia, workrooms were convicted at the Hague, but back home, many were honored. Streets were named after them, murals were painted. Some schools teach at the Surrey bernitza of massacre never happened in the United States. The government eventually apologized for the internment of Japanese Americans. Survivors were given reparations, but most of the camps are gone now. Many people don't know that they even existed. And this is what bothers me, even as I tell you about it. With so much killing and tragedy, all these stories begin to sound like just numbers and facts. It's the same reason why we react the way we do when we hear about a mass shooting on the news. As time passes, the clarity fades, the photos seem too old, or the stories just too distant. Becomes easier to think that it couldn't happen again, that maybe now we actually value lives. The same is true for the force removal of Native American tribes. The trail of tears is taught in schools, but often without the weight that it deserves. There are few monuments marking the thousands who died, few preserved homes or gravestones. The people are still here, but the history is usually told in past tense, as if it belongs to another country. If you take something away from this episode, please let it be this. The constant pattern of a fascist movement follows these steps, and it's based on works by Jason Stanley, Madeline Albright, Umberto Eeko, and Hannah Arendt. Create an enemy class, cultivate a mythic national identity, undermine truth and expertise, glorify law and order, militarize politics, euro democratic institutions control education and culture, suppress dissent, promote rigid gender roles, normalize cruelty. Doesn't this sound familiar? Now? From all this I've told you so far, none happen in the same place, different ideologies, different enemies, different borders. But the steps, they're familiar, and they repeat most of the time. The people inside these stories didn't believe it would go that far. They told themselves that it was just a phase politics or just talk. They believe their institutions would stop it, that the neighbors wouldn't allow it, that their country wasn't like that. And they were wrong, not all of them, though some helped people escape, some resisted until the end, but many, most watched it unfold and waited for someone else to act. That's why these stories are remembered, because of how many people let it happen. History whispers and repeats itself. What looks like bureaucracy today might be the bones of something far worse tomorrow. No country is immune, no society is too advanced. The truth is, any place can build the wrong system if the wrong story is told long enough, and if enough people choose to look away. So remember the steps, Remember how normal they looked as they began, and remember how hard it was to stop once they started. I was born in California and now lived in the US for most of my life. I remember being in second grade during the racist Pete Wilson's policies in the state. I understood them much later, but I remember the fear on banning bilingual education, saying that undocumented immigrants should be excluded from schools in public services. Instead of focusing on the efforts on legalization, ICE feels more like a machine built to show us that we don't belong. The patrols like an occupying force. Its job is to intimidate, to divide, and to disappear people. Parents drop off their kids at school and never come home. Children left and after school programs crying for someone who wasn't coming back, and somehow it's legal. When Trump said they're not sending their best, he was talking about my parents. When he said animals infestation and they're invading our country, he gave permission to eyes, to customs and border patrol, to racist communities that refuse to read, to travel, or explore ideas outside of their own echo chambers. That kind of language was chosen. That's the language of fascism. And let's not excuse previous presidents too. No one has come up with a solution that also gets accepted by the majority. In fascist regimes, the first step is to dehumanize a group, usually one that's racially, religiously or culturally different. The second step is to remove them, or to control them so fully that they can't resist. Ice rates, family separation, border camps, militarized checkpoints, and politicians telling us to go back to where we came from. That's not immigration policy. That's literally ethnic cleansing by paper work. I've shown you examples, and yes, I understand the points of not wanting people to keep coming into the country for safety. Reasons or whatever. But some of the very problems they're escaping from were created by the US foreign policy to begin with. And I've heard the arguments and I understand them, I really do. Some people say if they came to illegally, they should face the consequences. But what's the same energy for corporations that employment documented labor laws are adjusted for them white only for them? What's the outrage for the white Europeans who overstay visas. They're not putting cages, their kids aren't taken. Others might say, my grandparents came here legally. Why can't they please understand that your grandparents weren't blocked by laws designed to keep out people who look like mine. Before nineteen sixty five, US immigration law gave massive preference to white Europeans. Records show this. The National Origins quota system from nineteen twenty four to nineteen sixty five was designed to preserve a white, Northern or Western European demographic majority. Meanwhile, quotas on Mexicans and Central Americans were harsh and arbitrary, even though US companies recruited US for labor. They say, you should have come the right way. The thing is there is no right way for most of us. Please please ask a friend who's from a Latin American country what it's like for them to travel. It's the simple question, and not just to the US, but to other places. Ask them about the paperwork and sufficient proof they must show the agents while crossing borders. Plus, there's no visa for fleeing gang threats, no green card for working fourteen hour shifts under the table the meat packing plants. Then they say, why should we be paying for them to have benefits? Undocumented immigrants cannot receive food stamps, Medicaid, or welfare. They are eligible. And yes, undocumented immigrants pay taxes through individual tax payer ID numbers. That's how they file returns, and they pay into Social Security and Medicare but cannot access it. Survival cannot be a crime. Our presence challenges a myth of what the United States is supposed to be. There's this imaginary vision that the US is supposed to look a certain way, feel a certain way, and sound a certain way. As a kid, did you ever hear about the manifest destiny? It was literally a belief that the United States was destined by God and history to expand as territory across North America that's from ocean to ocean, and it was coined in eighteen forty five, and it's deeply rooted in racism. It treated non white populations like Indigenous peoples and Mexicans as inferior and obstacles to progress. The movement assumed that Anglo American culture was superior and that non white people had no rightful claim to land or sovereignty, reflecting and reinforcing white supremacist ideas. Perhaps the majority is afraid, afraid that our kids will speak more languages than them and graduate college, that will run for office, that will own land, that will remember everything they did to us and demand justice. So what can we do? We tell our stories. We start to pass to legalization and naturalization so we can vote. We protect each other, We sue ice, We build sanctuaries. We raise a next generation to know that fear is not Their inheritance was stolen long before we crossed any line. Some of our ancestors lived on it, their hands built it. We don't need permission to exist. They want to make us ghosts, but we're still here. If you have any questions about anything I mentioned in this episode, please reach out. This episode was intended to share with you the truth of the darkest times in human history, and perhaps you can help in spotting patterns