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The Hate Symbol

by Tag Barbarason

Nowadays you hear a lot of noise about who finds what symbol offensive, the NAACP* campaigns against the Confederate battle flag , the ADL battles against the sadly dishonored sun wheel ( We'll let the Hindus, Jains. Taoists and Native Americans fight 'em on that one) and Christians demonize the pentagram .

Well, there's a symbol that offends me, too. A a symbol under which millions have been tortured because of their religion or sexual practices or simply for the enjoyment of the torturers,tortured until they betrayed everything they held dear, then tortured or burned to death. A symbol under which countless genocides have been committed, whole nations enslaved or wiped from the face of the earth . A symbol under which the lore and learning of some of the worlds greatest civilizations has been destroyed, books burnt and people murdered. A symbol under which more depredations have been committed, more terror instilled, more human misery brought forth than all other symbols combined. I'm talking about the cross.

Let's start with the conversion of the Germanic peoples. The freest tribal societies on earth were transformed within a few generations into rigid feudal dictatorships, the tribesmen converted into subjects. Although the Germanic conversions were usually peaceful, torture and outright genocide were employed where expedient. Sadly, the formerly polythiestic Germanics have been some of the most fanatical monotheists. The next victims were the Baltic peoples; the "old Prussians' exterminated, the Wends, Letts and others brutally subjugated. The recent history of Europe is the history of Christian intolerance, of the crusades, the inquisition, the witch-burnings, A thousand and a half years of murder and torture, under and in the name of the cross.

The subjugation of Northern Europe of course was a mere dress rehearsal for perhaps history's greatest crime, a crime committed under and in the name of the cross...the destruction and enslavement of the peoples of the Americas. Mexico one of the world's great centers of civilization and learning reduced to a state of utter thralldom,, never to recover, the other nations of Central and South America similarly reduced; the nobles and learned classes exterminated, the peasantry enslaved. To this day these nations are ruled by a fabulously wealthy white Christian elite from palaces in Spain France and Switzerland.

Imagine the knowledge and cultural treasures lost when thousands of manurscripts were burned, the lore and learning of countless generations, the lives work of tens of thousands of people. Imagine the value that these thousands of texts , texts in mathematics, engineering, astronomy, history and religion would have to scholars today. All of them destroyed under and in the name of the cross.

It was under and in the name of the cross that Africans were enslaved, that Africa was colonized and her tribal structures destroyed. Ninety percent of Africans have abandoned the old, tribal religions. Today the best places to live in Africa are simply brutal kleptocracies whose elites rule from palaces in, Spain France and Switzerland, while the rest of Black Africa has become a nightmare of warlordism pestilence slavery and genocide.

In North America it was under and in the name of the cross that the slave system was perpetuated, that many Native nations were exterminated, and the rest subjected to a forced destruction of their culture, language and religion.

The Jewish people have been among the foremost victims of persecution under and in the name of the cross . The inquisitions were often directed at them. The Nazis at least allowed their victims to die as Jews..the inquisitors would torture the Jew until he betrayed his God and his people, then burn or torture him to death, spiritually an even greater crime. A crime comitted under and in the name of the cross.

The extermination of the Tasmanians, the subjugation of the Polynesians, the Maori, the Australians, the millions of Muslims and tribal peoples exterminated in the Phillipenes these were all hate crimes committed under and in the name of the cross.

"Those crimes happened int he distant past" say the sob-sisters, "surely you cant hold them against the cross of today." The crimes committed under and in the name of the cross continue today as missionaries continual their assault on tribal religions in the Americas, Africa Asia and the former Soviet Union. In our own society, our own time, the women branded whores, the children branded bastards, the families ripped by religious intolerance, the drug war (largely a construct of the Christian right) that has ravaged our cities, destroyed untold lives, and turned the bill of rights into toiet paper, these are all hate crimes committed under and in the name of the cross.

I realize that this simple and beautiful symbol has also given solace and hope to millions, including some of my own ancestors and blood-kin. And of course , like many Heathens, I'm profoundly libertarian, and certainly have no objection to the cross displayed on the persons or private property of Christians or their institutions. As long as its not hung on anything built with my tax dollars, I really don't give a rat's ass one way or another except when I have to listen to the whining about "hate symbols." to put it in Christian terms: Let he without sin cast the first stone!

*(By the way, if the NAACP was interested at all in helping their people they'd be doing something about the drug war that had destroyed many of their communities and criminalized large numbers of their people.)

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