Thread by @dogemperor

Again, "The Purge" refs aside: This is classical genocidal language. Others are comparing to Kristallnacht, I myself have made explicit comparisons to Rwanda's Interahamwe and Montt's Kabiles in Rwanda, the Bucharest Pogrom is probably the most apt comparison

A thread:

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https://twitter.com/KamalaHQ/status/1840526130031317329

One of the groups I consistently point out in terms of historical genocides and what MAGAts and Christian Nationalists have been primed for--along with the NAR Christian Nationalist genocide in Guatemala in 1983 and Rwanda 1994--is Romania's pre-Nazi fascist era.

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Romania--to an extent seen with few other countries involved in fascism and Fascist (sensu Mussolini) inspired movements--were explicitly, overtly religio-fascist.

The Iron Guard and Legion of St. Michael the Archangel wrapped themselves in the cross while carrying a flag

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And this extended to (in a move that would be repeated by Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala in 1982) explictly describing their fascism, their violence, and their extreme antisemitism in explicit religious terms of religious crusades.

The Iron Guard also did blood oaths

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and by 1933 they'd been banned in several Romanian municipalities, the PM of Romania formally banned the group in 1933...and on 28 December was assassinated by the Iron Guard after an attempted insurrection.

The King did his best to try to keep them out of power,

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but by 1938 was forced to dissolve the government and rule by decree, and by 1940 was forced to name Ion Antonescu--who was linked with the Legionnaires--as PM and was forced to abdicate in favor of his son (who effectively declared Antonescu dictator).

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After this, the Legion of St. Michael the Archangel was declared the only legal party in Romania, the actual head of the Legionnaires (Horia Sima) became deputy premier, and Ion Antonescu was made an honorary head of the Legionnaires

Shortly after, the killings began

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The Legionnaires, unlike the Nazis, didn't really industrialize genocide, and instead (again, in a strong parallel to what Efrain Rios Montt did with the Kabiles 43 years later in Guatemala) set up religiously motivated death squads

8/xen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guar…

And Ion Antonescu pretty much discovered Goldwater's Law ("If you let religious extremists in, you will live to regret this decision") when he suggested that Romania *merely* be fascist like the Falangists in Spain, and the Iron Guard wanted a CRUSADE.

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And just HOW BAD the Iron Guard and Legionnaires were should be noted in that Ion Antonescu was actually asking the Nazis for help at one point *because the Nazis were actually the less extreme of the two groups*--as we'll get into

Note: We are about to go into TRUE horror

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And just as Ion Antonescu was desperately trying to reach out to Hitler, the Legionnaires launched THEIR coup against Antonescu...and unleashed a pogrom in Bucharest that featured scenes straight out of the "Saw" movies

11/xen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionnai…

The Bucharest pogrom (unlike the Rwandan genocide, or the larger Holocaust) isn't known for the volume of its killings, but IS known for the exceptionally bloodthirsty nature of them, which managed to horrify the Nazis when Antonescu was able to put down the rebellion

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And pretty much for the whole period that Antonescu had been in control, Jewish people had been used as a political scapegoat--and similar to RTLM in 1994 in Rwanda, or the attempts now targeting Haitians in Springfield--a LOT of agitprop was flying to justify genocide

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And this led to acts of unspeakable violence that would only be paralleled in the Rwandan genocide, with war crimes that would resemble something out of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (and forgive me if I don't go into detail; the Wikipedia article does enough of that)

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Suffice it to say that it was enough to horrify Nazis--who were perfectly *okay* with genocide.

That said: Things did *NOT* improve once the Legionnaires were suppressed, it was more "different flavours of unspeakable violence fueled by the same antisemitic rhetoric".

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Just about a year after the Nazis had saved Ion Antonescu's ass (and officially turned Romania into a client Axis state), Antonescu himself would do a repeat of the Bucharest pogrom in Iași that had similar scenes of horror

16/xen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia%C8%99i…

You see, on the day the Iași pogrom started--right when the Nazis were distracted by invading the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa--pretty much *all* the Legionnaires were released from prison, deputized by sympathiser police, and handed weapons.

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And quite unlike in 1940, Antonescu was the one who telephoned the garrison commander for Iași telling him to wipe out every Jewish person in Iași, with false claims they were engaged in criming, violence, and attacking police and soldiers in the streets

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Cue the same "Saw"-esque/"Texas Chainsaw Massacre"-esque scenes, but on a MUCH larger scale, and with the cops, Legionnaires, and even occasional townspeople not only viciously murdering Jewish people but anyone who tried to defend them

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Iași is also one of those particular parts of the Holocaust in Romania that we aren't sure how many died--unlike Germany, Romania didn't keep records while they were hacking people to death and occasionally throwing them on meathooks (yes, seriously)

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But in just that eight-day period, anywhere from 13,266 to over 15,000 people died in unspeakable violence.

Fortunately, those involved in architecting the killing fields in Iași did not end up as karma Houdinis; the King conducted a coup in 1944, similar to Italy

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But the Iron Guard and its atrocities, and the Interahamwe and RTLM being the literal voice of genocide in Rwanda, and Efrain Rios Montt standing up in a NAR megachurch describing the Guatemalan Genocide as "spiritual warfare" against "Satanists and Communists"...

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I don't necessarily think of "The Purge". I think of Romania in 1940 and 1941, and Guatemala in 1982 and 1983, and Rwanda in 1994, and, yes, Tulsa in 1921 when I hear that stuff

Though if "The Purge" imagery gets you off your ass to vote to stop it--good

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