The Intellectual Ethnic Cleansing of America

Ideologies, histories, jobs are being abolished, wiped, scraped, while a physical ethnic cleansing has begun, and more is sure to come in this twisted version of the United States

Zenith record player-radio that belonged to my Great Grandmother Juanita

My grandparents on my father’s side—both of his parents—were born in Mexico, and in today’s America would have been likely candidates to have been rounded up, detained and deported. My great grandparents on my father’s side might have suffered a similar fate. On my mother’s side, white great grandparents from Sweden, maybe they could have blended in, escaped the current round-up of foreigners in this sick and twisted version of America that seems to target brown skin. But who knows?

None of them are around to feel this version of intolerant America, though a kind of inherited trauma has somehow seeped into my soul, makes me feel like ICE officials might knock at my door, drag me away, though my father was born in America, as was my mother.

What I mostly feel, besides seeing an actual physical ethnic cleansing going on, which has started with round-ups of thousands of Latinos in Indiana and Florida, and which will surely grow to the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions throughout the states, is intellectual in nature, and started years ago with conservative attacks against so-called woke ideology. There is no one definition of woke, but we could say it’s simply the idea of bringing an awareness of past oppression against people of color, which includes history from perspectives of people of color, which traditionally has been ignored (how about the once missing history of The Bath Riots in 1917—ever hear of those? Missing histories are real, and fascinating, and enlightening to the iniquities people of color have suffered). This awareness of peoples of color and the oppression they have endured and currently face is what helps make America feel like it’s leaning toward equality. Because equality means understanding and empathy and awareness and representation. Being aware of something like the history of farm labor in America, or the history of oppression against Mexican Americans in schools throughout the 1900s, or restrictive covenants against people of color seeking housing in California 1900-1970. But what happens when history threatened with being erased? Why would America do that?

Power. Greed. More power. Dismissiveness. Paranoia. The inability to take responsibility for a nation that has probably punished more people than it has helped. Trail of tears, anyone? Blankets infected with smallpox, anyone? How big was that genocide against indigenous peoples in just North America anyway? Ten million? Slavery, anyone? Don’t make me do math.

The tech giants are in on this new terrible version of America. Elon Musk is a right-wing Nazi giving us the finger from behind billions of dollars and cool space gadgets and high-tech ideas. If you haven’t seen his Nazi salute then you’re not looking, or blind to the history of fascist regimes that deny blatant fascism like Nazi salutes. They will wave their militant white supremacy flag then tell you straight to your face, “No, I didn’t.”

Thing is, Musk wasn’t silent with his salute to a regime hell-bent on creating an ideological wasteland for people of color and progressive women. And Zuckerberg, with his caesar haircut of the modern day tech empire, salivating through his liquidy eyes, telling us in a thinly veiled speech of power and lust, that dis- and misinformation will no longer be fact-checked on his platform that has upended more than American elections. Yeah, Facebook has spread memes created by propaganda groups in likely every country on the globe. Do a deep study of any election anywhere and you’ll probably see something you wish you hadn’t. I did a deep dive into Nigerian elections over the past ten years. It was wild. And that’s definitely another story.

Either way, The Zuckerberg Speech means that Meta can create a new reality of illusion and disillusionment for the American and global masses, which makes Zucko lick his greedy lips, and feeds directly into what I keep saying amounts to intellectual ethnic cleansing here in America. And since Zucko said he was inspired by Musk, which is the kind of tech-bro scent I don’t want anywhere on my body, then we know that those same tech bros equal fascist bros, and that Big Brother isn’t just one dude collecting your data that can be used against you, but is multiple billionaires, multiple platforms, including data on what books you order on Amazon that Besos might freely give to the current regime. This also includes what wokeness you’re penning straight to your Microsoft Word, unless you’ve disabled “Optional Connective Experiences” in your privacy settings. Even so, I might switch to Scrivener or the like.

The question of deleting Facebook, Insta, or X now isn’t, Am I a coward who can’t stay in the fight? but is, Do I need to protect myself because I can’t trust big tech not to give my help-the-oppressed ideologies to this regime, which might get me punished for being a rebellious big-hearted brown-blooded American?

What is this, China, Russia, North Korea? Nazi Germany?

Unless states like California set up their own “Board of Social Media Truth & Lie Inspectors,” which will never happen, then truth has become nothing more than what gets posted on your feed, which if it’s like mine, is kind of weird already with all the fucked up ads and follows I didn’t click in the first place. Not to mention, I only see the same three people’s posts who don’t acknowledge my comments anyway.

Believe me when I say there’ll be an even larger government and third-party run propaganda social media campaign engineered to make you think that people of color are all Marxists and Communists for having a non-white conservative opinion. Conservatives don’t even know what Marxism and communism is anymore. These are just terms to make other Americans hate your dissenting opinion of intolerance and hate campaigns. Read your Cultural Revolution history lately? What happened to those intellectuals? Yeah. Bad things.

Social Media platforms being in bed with the federal regime, means there will be no pushback, no checks, no balances. Disinformation will pour into your feed, whether it’s an ad promoting the All-new Wal-Mart Woke Finder, or your insane grandmother saying brown people live on Mars and should be exterminated, or your dipshit neighbor telling the world that lizard people rule ethnic studies departments. Hopefully you never friended your idiot apartment maintenance guy with that big mouth still crying Pizzagate. You know, the guy who says that MLK was a Nazi white guy in blackface? He’s exactly like that same uncle or cousin or in-law some of us have who spout occasional n-word jokes, wetback jokes, slanty-eye jokes, because he thinks you’re white and racist like him. And of course those joke posts will get automatic follows by the tens of thousands in this new America. Mark my words, the allowing of disinformation and racism across social media is tantamount to intellectual ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic studies departments are in for a war. Yeah. No kidding.

We already know the current regime has in their agenda every form of ethnic cleansing. Take one look at Gaza where Trumpista himself says he wants all the people out, which is . . . ethnic cleansing . . . and all that property will go to . . . well . . . just who? Well, we know Israel, but to who else? American companies for sure. Huge swaths of land to wealthy builders. I wouldn’t doubt a new Trumpista state out of this. Will that be before or after the War for Greenland? Yes, yes, it’s not a far stretch to imagine Trump hotels in Gaza, and more teslas exploding outside them. Car bombs after all have occurred in some areas of the Middle East since that little war where America stole oil and a million lives via disinformation campaign of weapons of mass destruction. Talk about an ongoing hornet’s nest of stupidity.

On our own soil you’ll see more and more intellectual ethnic cleansing. Books will be banned en masse like never before. Sure, sure, yeah yeah, I get it, you might disagree with all I’m saying like the white writer who dismissed me years ago when I called the new regime fascist. He said I didn’t know what the word meant. All I will say is his name is Sean and I blocked his white ass then, and laugh about him now nearly ten years later. Then there were the people who didn’t believe me when I wrote back around 2012 or whenever that conservatives were on the march toward anti-intellectualism. I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t a new idea anyway. Anti-intellectualism is still their jam.

Wait wait, you didn’t read today’s headlines? Libraries and universities and so much more has come under attack with the regime freezing all financial federal assistance, which is a blatant attack against people of color and their histories and perspectives, and is an all-out intellectual ethnic cleansing war against ideologies and perspectives of people of color. The article I linked to, which literally contradicts itself between the title and its content, has at least a core tone of hatred, including some scary quotes that monies were paused because the regime has a laundry list of intolerance that is quite huge: “other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Yeah, America is a fuck show and we’re in it.

This new intellectual ethnic cleansing isn’t new, but is now federally mandated. Funny how it comes at a time where California’s teachers are slamming together their ethnic studies syllabi. When I taught an ethnic studies writing class, my students were sweet, and thanked me. I loved all of them. Yet to those who crave power in America, what I was teaching was pure hate. Talk about disinformation. Their paranoia has permeated their skin like some kind of infection. Truly, their lack of mercy evident in this forever portrait that will likely be a mural in some ghetto for centuries to come.

I recently wanted to rescue an old Zenith radio-record player that belonged to my Great Grandma Jenny (Juanita), who we called Great Grandma Lita. From family lore, I understand it was bought for her by my uncles in the 1960s. After she died, somehow the radio came to my father, who passed twenty-five years ago. It has sat in more than one apartment, and when I had it, I wood polished it often. It has been allowed to nearly fade away (like some of the themes of a book I’m trying to sell, American Fade). We saw some of this Latino fading when working-class Latinos voted for the new regime, which had stated up front its distaste for . . . Latinos. They saw the word illegals and hated too, but didn’t stop to think that it was also skin color . . .

And now we see these same working class folks disappointed that the new regime is ignoring them and their pocketbooks. More wool pulled over eyes. They will fade too if they don’t get back into the fight.

We intellectuals who are people of color already understand the perspectives of the oppressed and ignored—that’s what we’ve been fighting for, to continue to be heard, for our perspectives to be welcomed as part of America.

America’s new regime is saying no.

I’m just expecting that a lot of us will eventually get our books banned, especially if the novel I’m writing sells during this regime. It tackles an age-old morality question—should the oppressed be allowed their revenge? It also tackles Confederate monuments, infrastructural racism, colonialism and settlerism. And so does Ten Sleep, which is coming out in June as it focuses on such issues as settlerism in the American West in the past and present. If Ten Sleep gets banned, well, that just means it will join a legacy of rebellion. And I’m okay with that. Word-grounds are trenches and battlefields, swords and war-cries to never give up.

Things really are bad, so bad. If you think this intellectual ethnic cleansing won’t get worse, way worse, consider that this is January 28 of year one. Now imagine year four. There’s no rainbow. There’s no pot of gold. There’s fascism and a fight. And you won’t be getting a bag of cookies when it’s over. Neither will I.

I’ll be in La Quinta in a few days on February 1 talking with two horror writers at the La Quinta Public Library. Register for free. If you’re around, we can talk about this more. There will be food, conversation, and a short reading from The Deading.