My Country is Genocidal
What’s happening in the United States is genocide.
I’m being told that this is dramatic language. I wish it was hyperbole, but I am using precise language.
Genocide has a clear definition with several tenets. It has for nearly 80 years. It was defined at the end of World War II because, while the German mass extermination project was not the first genocide, it was extremely shocking to white society. The Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term and lobbied for global response to genocide. Today, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security recognizes the following:
“Genocide is a process, not a single event. A key feature of the genocidal process is that it is not only a systematic but also a patterned form of attack on a group.”
On their website they have developed a toolbox for genocide prevention, featuring in-depth articles with clear terms, indicators, and actions. Below are the main three:
11 Principles of Genocide Prevention
The Lemkin Institute differentiates Red Flag Alerts from Active Genocide Alerts. It currently identifies ongoing active genocides in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Palestine. It describes Red Flag Alerts in this way:
“The Lemkin Institute issues Red Flag Alerts when developments occur in countries and regions that exhibit several red flags for genocide. We understand red flags as immediate developments that have the potential to radicalize and/or bring together destructive historical trajectories and move a society further towards a mass atrocity event aimed at destroying one or more collective identities. Our Alerts focus especially on developments that we feel are not being adequately appreciated for their genocidal potential by the global public and media, and that therefore need reconsideration within a genocide prevention framework.”
It’s well known that ICE is deplorably violent. The project to detain and deport “illegal immigrants” – though neither word in that phrase is strictly adhered to – is nothing short of ethnic cleansing. ICE has killed many people at this point and is rapidly developing toward concentration camps.
In January 2026, Prince Shakur uploaded a video about whether it’s time to leave the US. He gets right to the point at 0:45 seconds in, sharing about a friend whose family had escaped a violent and brutal regime in Central America. Their parents said, “We should probably leave the US when people in unmarked vans show up into neighborhoods and start kidnapping people.” I’ll embed it here so you can see the face he makes right after saying that.
Video by Prince Shakur - Is It Really Time to Leave America?
I am white, and that makes me safer than many people in the US. I am not in the most targeted group in the country. However, for years the Lemkin Institute has been sending out Red Flag Alerts for a group I am – trans people.
In March of this year, the Lemkin Institute issued its third red flag alert about the anti-trans genocide. Its first red flag alert for a trans genocide in the US was back in 2023. They also made a statement about the violent murder of a trans child in 2024 here. In 2025, they highlighted an anti-trans agenda under the Trump Administration.
Last year, a notable incident was the murder of Jonathan Joss, a gay and Indigenous actor best known for his role on the show King of the Hill. His husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzalez, is trans, a detail often omitted from reports of the story. Neighbors often harassed the couple with homophobic slurs. They burned down their house killing 3 of their dogs, and threatened them with a crossbow. When the neighbor threatened them with a gun, Joss pushed his husband out of the way and was killed instead. At this time, the trial for his murder has been indefinitely delayed and I can’t find any other recent coverage about it.
The German Nazis began with sterilizing and killing disabled people in 1933 and the same is happening today. For decades, hundreds of thousands of people have been dying while waiting on disability claims. Even if you succeed in getting them, they are woefully inadequate for attaining housing and sustenance, much less medicine. Disabled people are an afterthought, if we are considered at all. It was disheartening to see the fierce disdain expressed for our survival over putting on masks in an ongoing pandemic.
Being disabled in the United States almost always means being forced into poverty. We don’t have the physical capacity to work all the time. Many mental illnesses create barriers to working with organization, details, and consistency. Instead of offering support, the US system legalizes paying us even less for our time and effort.
Also in 1933, the Nazis plundered and shut down the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research). It was the first attempt to establish sexual science research and had been in place for 14 years. Among the famous burned books were unknown amounts of research and data about sexuality and gender.
I've spoken at length on this blog about this country's history of genocide, too. It would not be a new thing for the US. From its earliest roots, the US committed genocide against many nations of Indigenous people, and its participation in the transatlantic slave trade is another genocide. This is not merely a situation of comparing the US to Germany. After all, German Nazis were inspired by US segregation in the first place.
A project called Trans Genocide Watch has utilized clear definitions of genocide to keep track of what elements are being used against trans people in the United States. The site has broken links now, but their pages full of research and citations can be accessed on the Web Archive here.
Because this site is rapidly disappearing, I’ve saved a .pdf of the home page, and you can download it here:
Here is an image from that page that highlights 7 of 10 signs of genocide that are present, mostly present, or in the preparation stages against trans people.
It doesn’t start with extermination camps. It starts with prejudice and hatred. Hate crimes are treated like isolated incidents, if they are reported at all. Dehumanization is so rampant, many reports are full of the wrong names and pronouns. Violence is followed by having our identities erased. As trans people, we are being killed and then dressed up as the projected fantasies our parents imagined of us.
For years, my partner and I have been discussing the growing danger of being trans, disabled, and poor in the US. When this kind of danger is present and growing, there is a limited window of opportunity to get out. As a trans friend recently put it, “By the time it’s bad enough that I need to get out ASAP it'll be too late.”
We planned meticulously for months. At the beginning of August 2026, we fled the country.