After WWII, parts of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, & perhaps Germany, Romania, and the surrounding areas should have been a next and then given to the Roma and Sinti peoples to create their own state cus that would have been very funny

Anything which pisses off Hungarians Czechs, Russians, and Nazis is good by me

One of the weirder arguments used against Zionism (weird because it’s irrelevant and other arguments are better) is that the Romani peoples didn’t have a nationalist movement or demand for sedentary statehood, but that isn’t exactly true

There were various 1s,but they didn’t coalesce to anything bc:
1. Romani peoples, esp Sinti, in Western Europe were more or less settled & integrated
2. Romani peoples in Eastern Europe were obliterated
3. Romani peoples had more migration opportunities within post war Europe

4. Any such state or homeland would be in Eastern Europe, which would fragment Soviet Bloc territory, while the West, for diplomatic reasons, had no interest in demanding such a segmentation or pissing off the USSR

5. The groups were too disunified across country, religion, region, language, class, politics, age, etc
6. Romani nationalism tended toward demands not legible to territorial regimes of Sovereignty

(I.e. there were some who wanted something like a homeland or home base, but most wanted unity across countries, within their extended community group & ethnicity, w free movement, protection of & recognition by the state,self-determination but also conditional participation etc)

7. Anti-Zhiganism prevailed where Romani peoples were most prevalent, yet it was unacknowledged, and relatively unnamed, whereas the places that recognized the issue tended to have smaller Romani populations

8. No extended organizational network, let alone with a united from, democratic centralist & federalist hub & spokes structure, let alone with 50-100 years of experience & training as Soviet Cadres existed

9. In the post-WWII context, both the Soviets & US wanted to universalize the lessons of fascism, and not ties them to specific groups of victims—what we know now as the narrative of particularist focus emerged later. Then the US wanted to rehab Germany’s image.

10. Last, but not least—indeed, the main important reason (lol)—was simply that nationalism, territorialism, inter-national ethnic solidarity, & collective trauma politics, let alone with a material organizational base, did not exist among the Romani peoples.

By the time said ideas and movements *did* begin to take hold among various groups, the war was over, the Cold War begin, and the rest of the reasons I mentioned prevented it taking hold. Thus, there was a lot of emigration (for ex, to the US), assimilation, & quietism.

Estimates of Roma/Sinti ppl range from 1-20 Million (I’ve seen lower & higher but those are the most common bounds),&this large variance in part stems from much of the above—annihilation,settlement, assimilation, emigration, quietism, illegibility, informality, anti-Zhiganism etc

Anyway, if it’s not obvious, I’ve recently taken up this area of research as a casual hobby—very very intro level on my part, so i’m no expert, but Romani history and the history & present of anti-Zhiganism deserves more study and concern

Studies of individual prejudice against Romani peoples find it incredibly frequently throughout Europe, and some other places—even more worrisome is that it’s not just implicit or unspoken prejudice tests, but open affirmations. For ex. 80% of Czechs polled in one study.

In the study, 80% of Czechs said they would move if Roma peoples moved to their street and would not allow their children to marry a Romani. Their overt anti Zhiganism was found at higher rates than their antisemitism, islamophobia, homophobia, racial prejudice, xenophobia, etc.

The overt rates for all of these ones range from small but real (10-20%) to plural or majority (40-60%), while covert obviously usually finds higher rates, but overt anti Zhiganism was more common than many of the other types of prejudice, whether overt or covert.

A while back an Italian court of appeals (I believe it was the Cassation but I am not an Italian legal expert, so I do not know for sure—it may have been a lower court), ruled that while discrimination is illegal, anti-Zhiganism is not because it is based in fact.

During the Axis blood reign, Roma & Sinti peoples were targeted. The absolute & relative numbers are appalling. Most forms of Nazi targeting had some variation—Jehovah’s Witnesses could convert & enlist, or Gay people sign a vow of celibacy to escape concentration camps. Few did.

At the other end were those like Communists/Anarchists/rebels for whom there were almost no exceptions except high profile cases, labor shortages or conversion to Naziism before capture, & Jews,for whom there were no exceptions, except very briefly end of war skilled labor needs

The targeting of Roma & Sinti peoples combined both poles and varied based on three factors:
1. Geographic/national location
2. The specific Nazi head, their faction & ideology
3. Settlement/homeownership

So, in Germany itself, so-called ‘settled G*psies’ (the Nazi term, which is not used anymore, because it is pejorative), usually Sinti, were not targeted until the end of the war. Hitler was not focused on them, but underlings were.

Some Nazi commanders saw Roma & Sinti peoples as a preserved unique offshoot of the ‘Aryan race’, fetishized them, and therefore did not pursue, or even worked against mass killing, though they certainly did many abysmal things anyway

Others saw Romani peoples in the worst possible light, as the next most Jewish people to the Jews, and sought to have them eliminated. In parts of Eastern Europe & the Baltic’s, for example, close to 100% were annihilated.

As far as this goes, Romani peoples are descendants, actually, of peoples between Iran & Bangladesh—i.e. the Indus Valley, but spanning much of the reason—though the people that were the actual ‘Aryans’ displaced them & are responsible for their exile.

Many communities in this region today resemble them culturally & linguistically, and these communities are usually consigned to the lowest caste roles or exterior to it entirely, depending on the country.

Interestingly, Judaism as religion & original people—the Ancient Hebrews—also largely came from parts of the same broad region, though closer to Babylonia etc., also fleeing state formation.

While obviously having had taken diverse trajectories from different starting points, it is nonetheless true that there are similarities and either broad or specific overlaps in origin, trajectory, history, culture & modern day existence.

horseback steppe nomads, organized into familial hierarchical units, who accommodate themselves to the state & city, and sought to learn from it or rule it, but not mimic it or absorb it, were therefore amenable to statehood, war machines & civilization

Except for the period prior to the Romani diaspora, and except for Biblical era kingdoms, the difference between groups like Jews and Romani from Steppe Nomads is their diasporas were traditionally *not* enthused by or legible to the state, civilization & war machine.

Their tactics, culturally & politically, once in the broader Eurasia region (Europe, North Africa, Levant, Central Asia, Russia, etc) were also different—Jews relied on appeasement & periodic settlement, seeking protection through supplication, while Romani peoples used movement

Jews often dreamt of being permanently settled and accepted into the society. Romani peoples dreaming of permanently moving, were often forcibly settled and assimilated. Both happened to both in different proportions & times.

We see similar things occur with other nomadic groups like the Kurds, Bedouin, etc., or intermediary groups like Druze, Circassians, the Lebanese overseas diaspora, the Chinese diaspora, Parsis, etc. Slezkine unites all of these as ‘service nomads’

There are many other groups that fit this bill—Spirit Folk,the Hobo networks of yore, many semi nomadic semi mobile ethnic/kin networks throughout Africa, etc—but with a couple exceptions most peoples on this list usually had some religion, state, society etc with which to relate

So, for example, the overseas diaspora from China & Lebanon—& not for nothing, many people in Asia call the Chinese diaspora ‘our Jews’—have the Chinese & Lebanese state, respectively, kin networks & religious ties/institutions.

By and large, historically, Romani peoples, & Jews lacked these, as did, with varying degrees, Kurds, & Bedouin, Berbers, Copts & Druze. It’s all on a scale though—many of these groups had, say, religious, but not other ties, etc.

Aside from Romani & Jews, can you guess which groups suffered the most in the process of state formation, empire expansion, empire collapse, waves of religious conquest, crusades, pogroms, religious wars, etc?

This is because non-settled peoples—*especially* if they have a coherent, internal identity & social ties, let alone uniting them across national & religious & linguistic lines—are anathema to the state, war machine, and ‘Civilization’ (as normally used, not the alt definition)

Indeed, the continual violence against & dispossession of nomadic peoples & diasporas is common to *all* empires in history in every continent, but, what’s more, the *specific* nomads targeted by Europe, North Africa, Levant, Russia, Central Asia, Arabia, etc were held in common

A common revisionist argument (it’s not revisionist anymore because it’s basically consensus now), is that what became the Islamic, MENA, Ottoman, etc world, what became the Russian Empire & USSR, what was left of the Roman Empire, & Europe were a single meta mega civilization

They shared religion, history, trade, territory, marriage, culture, mythology, food, practices, wars, institutions, etc., and they shared dislikes for nomads & diasporas of certain types, that they held in common.

They also held in common something else—their relationship to the African continent —they’re either in North Africa, or share its sea, and/or they surround Africa on two sides, with easy access to the third, which is bounded by water.