Who Goes Anti-Colonial?
The origins of my (De-/Re-)Constructing Worlds project can be traced back to an initiative that I organized to re-write the genealogy of human sociality from the Paleolithic through to the present over the course of fifteen seminar sessions between July 2020 and February 2021.
For nearly two decades prior to organizing that seminar, ever since reading my mother’s copy of Malcom X’s Autobiography at the tender age of thirteen, I had been consciously aware of the horrors of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the horrors of the Euro-Atlantic centered (neo)colonial power formation that prevails over our deathly world of suffering today. But something changed about my awareness of the horrors after situating 500 years of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy in the context of 50,000 years of human sociality.
Simply put, my awareness was no longer simply an awareness of the existence and persistence of the horrors: it had became an awareness of the fact that the horrors were totally unjustifiable and unnecessary. The horrors were born of desensitization above all else and, thus, they were horrors perpetrated and perpetuated for senseless reasons. After the fifteenth session of the seminar, I could better understand and make sense of how it is that such horrors came to exist and to persist, yes, but I could no longer silently acquiesce to the existence and persistence of such horrors. My new awareness demanded of me that I confront everyone I know with the fact that such horrors were and are unnecessary, and that I tell everyone I know — especially those who would claim to be artists, philosophers, and scientists — that we have to do something to counter these horrors.
Alas, so many people that I know have become desensitized to the horrors of Euro-Atlantic centered (neo)colonialism, and I find that my pleas and rallying cries too often fall on deaf ears.
Consider the New World genocides of indigenous peoples that murdered 50 million; consider the Transatlantic slave trade that murdered 4 million in the process of transforming 10 million into breeding stock for a caste/class of chattel; consider the Late Victorian Holocausts that murdered 30-60 million by way of malnutrition and starvation; consider the genocide in the Congo that murdered 10 million to get rubber and ivory out of Africa to European centered global markets; consider the fact that many, many other initiatives in mass murder were undertaken by Euro-Atlantic powers on the lands they colonized since 1492. Now, consider the fact that all of these initiatives in mass murder undertaken on colonized lands hardly elicit the same reactions in the Global North as does the Nazi Holocaust that took place on European soil and murdered 11 million. This is the case in spite of the fact that the initiatives in mass murder that took place in the colonized world gave rise to and refined the racist rationales and the banal bureaucratic evils that yielded the Nazi Holocaust in Europe. Those who decry the Nazi Holocaust in Europe without, in the same breath, decrying those Euro-Atlantic initiatives in mass murder undertaken in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas that paved the way for the Nazi Holocaust are effectively claiming that the Nazi Holocaust was wrong only because it targeted the wrong peoples, good European peoples, for mass murder: only non-European peoples are fair game for mass murder.
Before I continue on, I feel that it is necessary to clarify what I mean when I use the term “murder”. Citing the work of Michel Foucault, in a previous dispatch titled “Another Black Man in America”, I wrote that my use of the term “murder” refers beyond “simply murder as such” and includes “every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.” In other words, in addition to referring to the ritualized spectacle of “murder as such”, I have been referring to murder disguised as the unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, to murder disguised as normal(ized) accident, and to murder disguised as the collateral damage of society’s pursuit of progressive optimization. Friedrich Engels made a very forceful case for using the term “murder” in this way.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds […] in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.
To understand murder in this way is to understand that the Euro-Atlantic (neo)colonial project has been the most murderous social project undertaken in 50,000 years of human sociality. Ay, and this social project, already ongoing for 500 years, has yet to run its course.
Yesterday, I reread an article titled “Who Goes Nazi?” that Dorothy Thompson published in the August 1941 issue of Harper’s Magazine. It is a fascinating piece, and I’d like to quote at length from it here.
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.
It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any racial characteristics. Germans may be more susceptible to Nazism than most people, but I doubt it. Jews are barred out, but it is an arbitrary ruling. I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance. There are Jews who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis”; there are full-blooded Jews who have enthusiastically entered Hitler’s secret service. Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind.
Re-reading Thompson’s text, I thought that an equally interesting and macabre parlor game to play would be to speculate who in a showdown would go (neo)colonial. Of course, given that Euro-Atlantic (neo)colonialism presently prevails over our world, we would probably need to alter the tense of the question and ask, “Who amongst us has already gone (neo)colonial?” Some will inevitably discover that many non-Europeans amongst their acquaintances have already gone (neo)colonial. This is because Euro-Atlantic (neo)colonialism, like Nazism, is not necessarily about race and nationality; it is about nurturing and appealing to a certain type of mind. Euro-Atlantic (neo)colonialism would never have made it so far without nurturing and privileging non-European proxies and redeemers.
Then again, we might also flip the script and speculate who in a showdown would go anti-colonial and what sort of showdown would trigger them to do so. Because, really, this is the question that we should all be asking ourselves as Euro-Atlantic (neo)colonial powers set a series of Late Davosian Holocausts into motion along with so many climate catastrophes.
The showdown that made me go anti-colonial came when a global pandemic inspired me to put 500 years of unjustifiable and unnecessary initiatives of mass murder by Euro-Atlantic (neo)colonial powers in the context of 50,000 years of human history.
What was or will be the showdown for you?
