To pick up where I left off with the horrid screed by T.C. Writer, I Hate Black Women, I feel the need to put things into perspective so that we are better able to fight against those who wish us harm.

Some may think that me comparing the widespread prosecution and blame of black women for all of black society’s ills to how the Nazis blamed the Jews for all their problems better learn their history before they are doomed to repeat it.

In order to get the full perspective, you have to understand where Germany was post World War I. They were utterly defeated and humiliated in a war in which they were the chief aggressors, and the victors made them pay dearly for that mistake with the Treaty of Versailles, which would left Germany destitute. Things were grim. Country morale was at an all time low. Mass unemployment. Poverty. Hopelessness.

Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required “Germany [to] accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage” during the war (the other members of the Central Powers signed treaties containing similar articles). This article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US $442 billion or UK £284 billion in 2015). At the time economists, notably John Maynard Keynes, predicted that the treaty was too harsh — a “Carthaginian peace“, and said the reparations figure was excessive and counter-productive, views that, since then, have been the subject of ongoing debate by historians and economists from several countries. [SOURCE]

Someone or something had to be the blame for their situation, and Adolf Hitler, who had once been dismissed as a right wing kook, finally started getting an audience to listen to his hateful rhetoric blaming the Jews for all their ills.

I’m going to pause right now, so you have an opportunity to think about the people in social media who many of us have dismissed as “kooks” who have steadily gained power and audience in their rhetoric against black women, and tell me again how I’m exaggerating.

Now back to Germany: When the stock market crashed in 1929, the ripple effect throughout Europe was cataclysmic. So what happened? Hitler and the Jews blamed “greedy Jewish speculators” who artificially drove up stock prices. When all seemed lost, Germany sought a savior, and all of a sudden, that right wing dude with the funny mustache magically appeared a whole lot less kooky.

When you take a group of hopeless, powerless and defeated people, there’s always going to be the desire to cast blame. Hitler gave the German people their boogeyman, so that’s why they turned the other way when innocent Jews were dragged from their homes, their belonging confiscated, be humiliated, dehumanized and killed like sewer rats.

When you pound out constant propaganda saying the same lie over and over and over to a group of powerless people who NEED to blame someone, you leave the scapegoat vulnerable to all sorts of horrors–disrespect, violence, rape, murder. When you convince a group of powerless people that their lives would be better if that boogeyman of a scapegoat could be completely eliminated off the face of the earth, they will turn the other way and allow it.

Sound familiar? How many times have we lamented about these hateful people being co-signed by the so-called “good black folk” with their consenting silence and absolute refusal to stand up against this?

The days of “Just ignore it and it will go away” are over. We have ignored it, and like cancer, it has spread virulently. The passive approach has only allowed for our enemies to go unchecked and unstopped while we continue to remain vulnerable.

So…what are you going to do?

Fight back, but fight smart. Be STRATEGIC. Go to the source, find out who holds the purse and bring it to them. Hit them where it hurts that most, and stop paying people to dehumanize and degrade you.

Sign the petition. Keep dogging Amazon to take this mess off.