Do you regard Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, as an aberration? Think again, argues Jonathan Scott, a writer for Black Agenda Report in an essay reproduced in Oread Daily. The deranged loner Cho stands in a long tradition of mass murder and genocide that began with Jamestown. (To read Scott’s brief essay, scroll down a couple of screens past the introduction.)
According to Scott, the capitalist planters of early Virginia rank right up there with the Nazis as the great mass murderers of history. (There’s a special place in my heart for leftist screeds such as this: They regard the original Bacon’s Rebellion, otherwise relegated to obscurity, as one of the pivotal moment in American history. Indentured servants and slaves revolted against their capitalist overlords. After suppressing the rebellion, the planter class instituted race-based slavery to divide the white and black underclasses.)
American violence and mass murder, which began in Virginia, will not be prevented by gun control laws in Virginia today or any time in the future. This kind of violence can only be ended by putting a stop to the law superseding it and every other one, the law of rich eat the poor and the use of imperialist war to keep the rule of money continuously functioning.
Yes, friends, the history of Virginia is ugly, ugly, ugly. Celebrating the founding of Jamestown is like celebrating Auschwitz. Our ancestors contributed nothing of worth to the world. The state panel studying the Virginia Tech massacre should absolve Cho and the rest of us should slit our own wrists in self-loathing.
