Never Again: For Anyone

Over 76 years, Zionists have weaponised the memory of the 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust not to fight against racism and fascism, but to justify their apartheid regime and genocide against Palestinians, while enjoying the full support of Western powers.  

Today, 27th January 2025, on Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), we also reflect on the open wounds of the ongoing Israeli genocide and some poignant examples of Western-complicit massacres around the world, including but not limited to:

The Genocide of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (1500s – 1800s):

The Genocide of Indigenous Peoples across the Americas by European settlers is, without a doubt, one of the bloodiest chapters in human history. It’s estimated that the violent conquest of the American continent decimated almost 90% of its population in less than a year, that is around 56 million people, 10 times the population of present-day Scotland. 

From the arrival of the first Spanish colonisers in what was known by the Lucayan people as Guanahani (present-day Bahamas) in 1492, followed by the Portuguese invasion of Tupinambá territory (Northeast of Brazil) in 1500, to the foundation of the first British colony in Powhatan land (Virginia) in 1606, the European process of territorial expansion and land grabbing spanned centuries. 

All the while, the Transatlantic Slave Trade became the sustaining pillar of European colonial greed, that sought to exploit the resources found in ancestral native lands. Between the 1500s and 1800s, around 15 million were trafficked from Africa to be used as enslaved labour in the Americas, becoming the largest forced migration in history. It is estimated that over 2 million Africans died on the journey known as the Middle Passage.

Combined, the European colonisation and slave trade left an indelible legacy of racial inequality, economic exploitation, and cultural erasure that continues to shape the Americas today.

The Genocide of Indigenous Peoples of Australia (1700s – 1900s):

The British Colonisation of Australia began in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay to establish a “penal colony” to harbour convicts, from Britain and Ireland, sentenced to hard labour as punishment for predominantly petty crimes.

Over the following decades, the British Empire expanded its colonial rule, claiming the territory as "terra nullius" (nobody’s land), even though Aboriginal Australian people are estimated to have lived in the continent for over 65,000 years prior. As the British settlers seized their lands, epidemics ravaged the island’s indigenous population.

Moreover, at least 270 frontier massacres of Aboriginal Australians have been documented during Australia’s first 140 years, as part of state-sanctioned, organised attempts to eradicate its First Nations people. Because of colonial genocidal acts like state-sanctioned massacres, the Aboriginal Australian population went from an estimated 1.5 million before the invasion to less than 100,000 by the early 1900s.

After years of assimilation policymaking, Aboriginal Australians still struggle to retain their culture and fight for recognition and restitution from the Australian government.

The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and the consequences of the colonial partition of Africa

As the Berlin Conference concluded in 1885 with the signing of an agreement ‘regulating’ European colonisation and the butchering of Africa during the period known as New Imperialism, King Leopold II of Belgium gained absolute powers over the Congo Free State. A reign of terror that lasted over 20 years.

It’s estimated that 10-15 million Congolese were killed under Leopold's rule – due to a combination of starvation, disease, direct violence, and exhaustion from the forced labour used to exploit the territory’s natural resources, such as rubber. While these atrocities are often referred to as the Rubber Terror (1885–1906), characterisation as a genocide is still disputed.

The colonial legacy continues to affect the ethnic tensions seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today. Like in many African countries, made up borders were drawn by European colonial forces, grouping diverse ethnic groups with little regard for historical rivalries. While the colonisers sought to maintain control over the subjugated populations, ‘divide and conquer’ became an infamous colonial practice, exacerbating tensions.

The Berlin Conference set the stage for colonial massacres and conflicts for decades to come. In Namibia, German colonial forces, emboldened by their imperial ambitions established at Berlin, brutally suppressed indigenous groups like the Herero and Nama, resulting in the Namibian Genocide (1904–1908). 

Similarly, the arbitrary borders and colonial legacies in Rwanda, deepened by German and Belgian rule, sowed deep ethnic divisions between the Hutu and Tutsi, which would later culminate in the horrific Rwandan Genocide of 1994 – with France playing a highly controversial role, only recently recognised by present-day Macron’s administration. While the French government has denied direct involvement in the atrocities over the years, a pile of evidence suggests that France's actions, both before and during the genocide, contributed to the scale and intensity of the violence.

The Bengal Famine under British rule (1943)

In a striking parallel to the Irish Potato Famine – which occurred almost 100 years prior and in which 12% of Ireland’s population is estimated to have died – the Bengal Famine of 1943 was exacerbated by British colonial policies, not exclusively by drought as previously insinuated. 3 million people are estimated to have died in Bengal (present-day Bangladesh).

Whilst a cyclone in October 1942 had damaged the autumn rice crop and resulted in disease which reduced the crop yield, there should still have been enough rice to feed the people of Bengal. 

When Japan took control of Myanmar – then known as Burma – from the British in 1942, the British government implemented scorched-earth policies in Bengal. The British government did not have the resources to fight against a Japanese attack in Bengal, thus implementing a Denial Policy whereby rice and boats from towns and villages in Bengal were confiscated and sometimes destroyed. The aim of this policy was to ensure any invading force would not be able to load up on food and transport. 

The result of this policy, however, would prove catastrophic for the people of Bengal. In East Bengal more than 65,000 boats were stolen, boats where a lifeline as these were vibrant fishing communities. Meanwhile over 40,000 tons of rice were removed from rural Bengal. 

Although repeatedly warned of the consequences, Churchill’s cabinet continued to export over 70,000 tonnes rice from India to Britain between the months of January and July 1943. This rice would be used to feed the already well-supplied British soldiers and boost European stockpiles. Once again, Great Britain's racist ideologies proved to influence its policymaking, with Churchill being quoted as blaming the famine on the fact he believed Indian’s were “breeding like rabbits”. 

The Genocide Convention and onset of the Palestinian Nakba (1948)

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty formally adopted by the UN and created in direct response to the Nazi Holocaust, when Germany systematically killed 6 million Jewish people.

Revealingly, this is the same year as the creation of the ‘State of Israel’. The establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine (then under British rule) was a project founded and facilitated by the British Empire, through the issue of the notorious Balfour Declaration (1917) during WWI, as it scrambled to maintain its power and dominance in the world following mass revolts in Ireland, India, Egypt and throughout its other colonies. 

The Zionist Project was merely a convenient tool the British used to expand its Neo-Imperialist agenda. Thus, the violent process of forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state began – under UN Resolution 181, backed by Great Britain and the then-emerging superpower of the United States.

This is the process known as the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, that saw over 750,000 Palestinians driven into exile and over 500 Palestinian towns and villages erased from the map.

Over the past 76 years, the Zionist campaign of relentless dispossession and expansion of settlement, ethnic cleansing and colonisation exposes the reality of the Palestinian struggle until now: the Nakba never really ended.

Western-complicity in the Cambodian Genocide (1975–1979)

The bloodstained rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, following a period of civil war and unrest amid Cold War tensions between the United States, Soviet Union and Communist China, led to the decimation of roughly a quarter of Cambodia’s population at the time – an estimated 2 million people. 

While the Khmer Rouge carried out mass executions, and used forced labour, starvation, and torture to target intellectuals, ethnic minorities, religious groups, and political opponents, Western powers played a seldom recognised role in establishing and prolonging the Khmer Rouge’s influence over the region. 

Later declassified United States government documents have shown that the criminal bombing of then neutral Cambodia by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger between 1969 and 1973 caused such widespread death and devastation that it became critical to Pol Pot’s propaganda campaign and consequent ascension to power. In dropping the equivalent of five “Hiroshimas” on a predominantly peasant society, the United States killed an estimated half a million people. 

After two and a half years in power, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese in 1978. Focusing on countering the Vietnamese influence in the region, the United States, China and notably the Thatcher administration, backed Pol Pot now in exile in Thailand. The liberation of Cambodia by the Vietnamese was hardly recognised as such, as it had come from the “wrong” side of the Cold War.

Although the Khmer Rouge government ceased to exist in January 1979, its representatives were allowed to continue occupying Cambodia’s seat at the UN, backed by US and UK diplomatic efforts. While the Khmer Rouge in exile got almost everything they wanted, a Security Council embargo on Cambodia cemented the suffering of a traumatised nation.