Trivialiazing Genocide
On the final page of the Journal, the Black African Holocaust Council expands upon its overall mission. Under the heading, “What We Struggle Towards,” the Council lists ten goals, each written in militant, urgent tones, that especially reflect a hostility toward legal and governmental institutions. Common to all of these stated goals is the underlying assumption that the Black community cannot attain equality through the traditional, mainstream channels. For example, the fourth of these goals declares that:
There is no justice for the Black African in this society… We are political prisoners! The mass destruction and persecution of us as a people (pogrom) at the hands of this government and its people have led us to conclude that obtaining justice under the law will never happen. Therefore we struggle towards the freedom of the Black African men and women in these concentration camps.
The Council’s appropriation of the terms “pogrom” and “concentration camp” closely resembles a practice that his become fashionable in Black extremist circles — that of trivializing the Nazi genocide in hopes that by comparison the suffering of African Americans will be magnified. The individual using this tactic most prominently — virtually as a rhetorical staple — has been BAHC leader Eric Muhammad’s own mentor, Khalid Muhammad.
