Conquerors, Migrants, and Refugees

Migrants and refugees have become a major topic of concern in all forms of media and in almost every country, including the U.S. It is surprising then that various commentators all too of-

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ten overlook that our species has been on the move, to express it popularly, from its very beginnings. Indeed, some of the earliest modern European settlers moved from Africa across the Caucasus Mountains not quite as far back as the first recognizable human beings. They did so in part because they were by nature adventurous and inquisitive, could not sustain themselves in their habitats because their climates changed, and significantly, they had become capable of leaving their surroundings and adapting to others. Other early groups of Africans moved into Asia and some of their descendants much later moved across what is now the Bering Strait and with time created such civilizations as the Maya, Aztec, and Inca. Indeed, although barely hidden in a nebulous past, in terms of their consequences, these massive migrations filled whole continents with our kind.

Another unique phenomenon emerged early on. While some areas into which successive groups of migrants adventured were unoccupied, others were occupied and, with the clash between the newcomers and the settled groups, anthropologists and historians notice the start of an ingrained fear and hostility toward outsiders. This was enhanced over and over in the following centuries.

At some point during Americans’ early education, most surely have heard about one of the most amazing migrations of peoples during the early Middle Ages, the so-called Völkerwanderung. It involved tribes that were pushed westward from Central Asia, the Caucuses, and the plains of what is today southern Russia and Ukraine; they moved as far west as the British Isles, Spain, Portugal, and even North Africa. As Huns, Goths, and Vandals cascaded westward, they displaced and massacred, and tribes had to move out of each other’s way in order to avoid being trampled in this stampede. In the end, these migrants succeeded in undermining the Western Roman Empire.

One of the prayers in churches ever since that time has been, “Save us, oh Lord, from the Vandals.” Even as a child in the safe environment of a small mountain church, I sensed that the Vandals must have been fierce and detestable and that I needed to avoid being vandalized. I sensed that they had long ago disappeared and since then new groups had taken up the cause of mayhem and plunder. The migrations aroused fascination and fear in me and surely in many others.

From the very beginning of our species, one can thus ob-

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serve two overlapping occurrences: on the one hand, tribes or peoples who moved to areas with better living conditions, whether these areas were already occupied or not; on the other, refugees, people who were running from tribes and bands who had entered their areas with all too many terrible consequences. One of the outcomes of later migrations, like the great peoples’ migrations, is that some migrants were not only or even primarily looking for better food supplies or climate, but rather to benefit from what others had built up. Because of this phenomenon, the earliest fear of strangers, whether they were migrants or refugees, was further enhanced in our collective memories.

The Vikings were a later group that went on an expanding rampage, now usually politely called explorations, and travelled not only across the North Atlantic, but also penetrated through Russia all the way to Byzantium. Hardly anyone was happy about their arrival, and people who did not want to be subjugated fled for their lives. Surely, to no one’s surprise, those who escaped were not uniformly welcomed in the areas to which they ran.

More recently, the Mongols initiated massive relocations of people as their armies headed eastward and westward from Central Asia. Townspeople in particular tried to get out of the way; if they did not, they were forcibly integrated or killed. A similar onslaught occurred when the Tatars moved westward from the same area and displaced people in their path with their unspeakable viciousness; we know from Russian history that people escaped their path northward into massive forests.

Just as with the tribes who moved westward during the peoples’ migrations, few were led by thoughtful or caring leaders; with time the phenomenon of the dynamic, authoritarian, and brutal leaders had emerged. Their unique visions and calculated approaches to life and death gained them loyal followers as well as fierce enemies, and frightened the people in their paths. Names of such conquerors as Attila the Hun, Alaric I, Genghis Khan, Batu Khan, Tamerlane, and many more come to mind.

Almost as dramatic as the Eurasian migrations were the massive transatlantic explorations of Europeans, specifically those from Spain and Portugal in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, of South and Central America, and the later migrations from northern and other parts of Europe into what became the United States and Canada. As these migrants/conquerors moved into and settled in these (to

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 them) backward areas, they displaced or subjugated native populations. Displacement and subjugation in all cases was associated with violence and disease transfers that decimated local populations and in many cases forced them to move on; that is, to become refugees in their own lands. Today we would call them internal refugees.

The forced migrations of African captives into this same world, and their enslavement there, is one of the other travesties that is associated with conquest and exploitation. While some national histories glorify the exploits of the explorers and colonists to this day, the shadow side of their activities cannot be talked away. In all parts of the Americas, groups of people live in ghettos and reservations as reminders of their past and current refugee status.

Even more recently, one needs to point to the massive relocations of human beings as an outgrowth of the policies of Stalin in the Soviet Union and Hitler in National Socialist Germany. Stalin’s forced relocation of hundreds of thousands from their homes to unfamiliar and nearly uninhabitable areas of Siberia is rarely spoken of now, but we know that few survived. Most thoughtful persons today also know of and accept the terrible pressures on and displacement and murder of European Jews and other minorities and of their need to flee, if they could, their tormentors. Then there were the 14 million Eastern European Germans moving west and the rarely told hardship of Poles and Ukrainians who were forced to move westward from areas that were taken over by Russians after WWII.

Several considerations are implicit in the more recent developments linked to this topic. One is that over time states or nations arose and refugees or migrants were not simply entering an area that might be lightly defended and thus readily overrun, but locals in some cases even accepted the newcomers. However, with the development of nation states, migrating also became the act of crossing borders. Implicit in this act is either an official acceptance of migrants (like Eastern Germans in Germany after WWII and Syrians in Germany today, or European Union internal-worker migrations), a tacit acceptance of their presence (like Mexicans in the U.S., even if called illegals), or an outright rejection of them (like Hungary’s current hostility toward all refugees).

Another major consideration is the emergence of dictatorships in the 20^th century. Uniformly they were highly nationalistic

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in their governing approaches and endeavored to strengthen what they interpreted as a weakening of their traditions or, specifically in Hitler’s case, their Volk (“the people”). This nationalist posture included fear of outsiders, whether internal “strangers” or refugees and migrants. Thus, dictators used the long-held and deeply rooted fear of outsiders to gain power and to exploit their populations once they attained it. Such thinking lingers on today in right-wing politicians almost everywhere around the globe. We saw them in action during the Brexit debates and outcome, and we hear their loudmouthed fear-mongering from Russia to the U.S., where Trump has won the presidency partly by promises to seal the Southern border and keep out Muslims. No doubt, these anti-immigrant politicians exploit the fear of outsiders that our species learned from its very beginnings, and has been reinforced ever since then, in order to gain attention and power.

Finally, another development is the massiveness of the current migratory and refugee problem. As many as 60 million people are being displaced from and in their countries/regions because of civil wars, famine, dictatorships, dysfunctional governments, lack of employment opportunities, and many other woes. What is different today though is that because of modern media, principally social media, almost everyone knows about the human beings who are migrating and escaping from one place to another in order to be safe and to provide for themselves and their families. Because there are so many of these migrants and refugees, their cases are so readily dramatized by right-wing politicians, who argue that these people’s intent is nothing other than to flood into and undermine every self-respecting nation’s supposed core citizens.

The reason, then, for reaching back to some of the earliest migrations, conquests, and refugee situations is to highlight the deep-seated fear of outsiders. Through historical and literary investigations, and many educational settings, we heard and hear of migrations and refugees and are thus consciously or unconsciously aware of this human past; that is, even without the rhetoric of the political right, outsiders frighten segments of every national or regional entity because they might overwhelm them. In the activation of fears regarding “hordes” of outsiders, traditional values of hospitality that are part of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam are being supplanted, and thus even generous governments encounter difficulties to accommodate these often desperate fellow human beings.

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Not surprisingly, today the individuals and groups most readily frightened about refugees and outsiders are those least familiar with outsiders. Among these frightened people are those who live in rural areas and disadvantaged groups, such as the unemployed or underemployed. In Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, they were mostly men who lost their footing as a consequence of several economic upsets; in the U.S. today, they are white lower- and middle-class men and women who have been left out or left behind during the second industrial revolution; in both cases, lack of appropriate education is one of the main components of this malaise.

A final thought about the U.S.’s own history of aggression and rejection. Few observers today seem to know that it was this country that resisted, almost vehemently in some cases, accepting refugees, including the desperate European Jews of the ‘30s. No wonder Americans resist accepting the traumatized Syrians of today. Implicit is that deep down we are afraid that the same inhumane displacement that America’s white forefathers imposed on Native Americans might befall us. Some members of our communities deny this perpetration or even that white Europeans did anything untoward, but denial means awareness. We sense that our forefathers wronged the Native Americans, but in order to reduce our guilty feelings about this wrong, we make them out to be “no good Indians,” people whom we despise and fear almost in proportion to the wrongs we did to them.

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