Last night, news broke after a whistleblower exposed that #ICE is forcibly sterilizing women in its camps, many of whom are Indigenous Central & South Americans. This is horrific, but it’s hardly surprising. Let’s examine why. THREAD 1/x

The US has a long history of forcibly sterilizing #BIWOC & indigent & mentally ill women, in addition to its long history of committing acts of #genocide against #BIPOC through the theft, forced displacement, & sale of children. See Laura Briggs, Taking Children. 2/x

But eugenics & #colonialism are not only part of #UShistory, the US was the template for a number of Nazi projects. Timothy Snyder argues successfully in Black Earth that Hitler’s concept of lebensraum, or living space, was a colonial model based upon US Western Expansion. 3/x

It saw Eastern Europe, specifically #Ukraine, as territory ripe for extraction necessary for Germans to obtain an American quality of life. This was Hitler’s #settlercolonialism. Further, in Hitler’s American Model, James Whitman shows how the Nazi regime studied US race laws 4/x

& US Federal Indian Law. It was the US #reservation system - originally designed as prisoner of war camps under the US Dept of War - & anti-Black miscegenation laws across the US outside of the #JimCrow South that were the literal template for the Nuremberg Laws. 5/x

Quote: “In 1928 - 5 years before he came to power & over a decade before the outbreak of World War II - Hitler praised the US for establishing its dominance through the #genocide of Native Americans. White Americans, in Hitler’s words, ‘gunned down the millions of R*dsk*ns... 6/x

“...to a few hundred thousand & now kept the modest remnant under observation in a cage,’ by which he meant reservations. According to Hitler, white Americans had provided a model for other ‘Aryans.’ Just as the US had transformed itself into an immense global power... 7/x

“... through the conquest of the West – & extermination of the ‘inferior races’ that lived there – so too would Germany rise to immense power through a campaign of conquest & extermination in the lands to its east... & referred to #Jewish pop they exterminated as ‘Indians.’” 8/x

When we study #UShistory & disentangle it from #whitenationalist myth, something much darker emerges. We no longer view the US as something benevolent or even benign. We see it as it actually is: a modern empire in decline, but one which was built on #slavery and #genocide. 9/x

Back to the #Latinx pop & #border. In his recent book, The Deportation Machine, Adam Goodman shows how the US has used violence, #detention & forced deportation to solidify agricultural corporate profits and white citizenship laws. 10/x

The US was using #ZyklonB gas in non-lethal doses to “disinfect” migrants at the US-Mexico border. (See the Bath Riots of 1917.) This was not only the inspiration for the gas chambers at Nazi #deathcamps, it was the same exact gas, just now used in lethal doses. 11/x

Our current reality is not an isolated moment in time. It is shocking, but it is not a surprise. When we say never again, we mean now. Protect #BIPOC. Protect women. Say no to US genocide. #NeverAgainIsNow 12/12

Addendum: The coerced sterilization of #Latinx women, specifically, is also not new. For more information, please watch the documentary, No Más Bebés. http://www.nomasbebesmovie.com/?fbclid=IwAR1pz5T6D4x-OP8fSPdQjxOzphc54sjeocQ1BbRSlzYcrzrKXQpkUiRT4B4