Why Black Friday is the perfect mutation of the First Thanksgiving Colonialism 

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
8
5

Black Friday is the shopping day after Thanksgiving in America where stores drop prices to ridiculously low levels causing ugly scenes of violence outside department stores as desperate people shove and stampede past each other in an orgy of consumerism that makes one sad and repelled in equal measure.

Since 2006, there have been 10 deaths and 107 injuries caused by this hysterical and desperate consumerism, which in a perverse way seems like the perfect mutation of colonialism that was the very First Thanksgiving dinner.

Americans trace their first Thanksgiving to Pilgrims sharing their first harvest in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation. Squanto, a Patuxet Native American from the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eels and grow corn while the Wampanoag leader Massasoit provided the Pilgrims with food during their first winter because they had run out of supplies.

By 1622, the Powhatan tribe so angered by colonial encroachment of their lands attacked Virginia which in turn justified the escalation of violence by the English to take more land.</div>

Which is why Thanksgiving has always seemed like a terribly odd day to ‘celebrate’ in any sense.

The real story of the First Thanksgiving  seems to be of religious zealots (who were so fanatical in their own self righteousness that they were effectively thrown out of Europe) almost starving to death until indigenous people generously provided them with the skills to survive which the invading culture simply used to strangle off Native American existence.

When you consider the genocidal horror launched against the Native Americans in the wake of the First Thanksgiving and how that First Thanksgiving would not have happened without the generosity and compassion of those Native Americans, the obscene violence of desperate consumerism seems to be the perfect companion celebration to a Capitalist Thanksgiving celebration that is neither thankful or giving.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

8 COMMENTS

  1. Bloody well said as usual in your riveting way Martyn.

    Humans are now sitting on the top of a cliff of bedt about to consume us all so this is only hastening our eventual demise.

    Winston is well aware we are headed for a very messy fall when the banks run dry and the stock markets crash to half their share price levels of today.

    “ship of fools all.”

  3. HIDEOUS forerunner of the ugliest demos of human consumerism in USA.
    People stampeding clawing over each other to get a price reduction on something THEY DON’T EVEN NEED.

    MEANWHILE, some councils ARSEHOLES have decided that we don’t really need a holiday at Easter and, …… SHOPPING shall continue.
    Hasn’t anyone noticed how this has become a trend?

    ((Enemies)) of Christmas (some of us know who they are. Worship $$$$ that’s all)..- already ruined it for us by opening shopping on Boxing Day.
    And turning Christmas into nothing more than a shopping orgy that everone’s getting sick of.

    WHAT A FUCKING SHAME!!!

    CHRISTMAS used to be a lovely quiet time for a few days in the year when EVERYBODY chilled out, relaxed, family time. Roads were quiet.

    ALL THIS HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY BY STEALTH.
    SO slowly people don’t notice…and get used to it ..as normal.

    To tie this up with “Black Friday” (UGH Brings out the ugliest in humans)

    ….just MORE of the SAME AGENDA.
    TURNING HUMANS INTO MINDLESS SLAVES. SHOPPING. MAKING HUMANS THINK THAT SHOPPING IS ALL WE WERE PUT ON EARTH FOR

    HOW RETARDED!
    WHY are humans regressing into a mind controlled slave reality?

  4. This is capitalism gone wild, on steroids, where the market shouters scream, free this, free that, if you buy at least so many pieces of the same.

    It is like throwing the fodder in front of the starving swine, who fight over it.

    It is most disgusting, but it shows us very graphically, how deteriorated and degenerated our ‘society’, now based almost purely on consumerism and wastage is ‘functioning’.

    I get disgusted with the MSM reporting also on alcohol and drug excesses and hospital emergency wards overloaded. That is the result of pushing products that people use for escapism, from a shit life as mercenaries, and of commodities, basically.

    It is the shit society we have that makes people behave like this, it is wanted though, and to control people even more, the media is engaged to create sensationalist headlines and anger about those who take it a bit too far, what is usually encouraged.

    This society we live in is shit, it is true shit, it has no humanity left in it, except serving needy food from food banks, but you would not get a food parcel, unless you first go to fricking WINZ, to get a letter saying, you exhausted all your entitlements with them.

    I still do not get it, why do people put up with all this, are they so dumb, are they so over controlled, are they so scared, are they so useless, or what else???

  5. 10 deaths and 107 injuries over 10 years seems well pretty reasonable for a country of 323 million people. Price of capitalism maybe? I get this orgy of consumerism doesn’t fit the socialist narrative but some context is always welcome.

    • Capitalists believe that the earth’s resources are infinite … or if they don’t, they don’t care because there will be no consequences to them personally because they’ll be dead (or maybe not, if climate change starts screwing water supply and destroying their cities through flood and fire).

  7. Worse yet is these stores only have a couple of these heavily discounted teevee’s (or whatever) which is why people queue up outside for hours beforehand and then stampede when the doors open. Most find that the heavily discounted items are sold-out in the first few minutes, and then they are roped into buying something “better” although it costs a “bit more”.
    Sadly, I see the practice and branding of “Black Friday Sale” is also being heavily promoted here in NZ (this is the first year I’ve really noticed it in advertisements), with many stores adopting the same US sales tactics. I guess Boxing Day wasn’t enough.

Comments are closed.