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In 1896, General Robert Baden-Powell
marched his troops straight into Kumasi, writes historian Sven
Lindqvist. Unsuccessful in two previous attempts to subdue the
Ashanti, the British declare victory as a result of Baden-Powell’s
leadership. For Baden-Powell, the future founder of the Boy Scouts –
he is in. Like Flynn!
The fun begins, for the victors.
Wasting no time, Baden-Powell seats
himself atop crates of biscuit tins and orders the arrest of the king
and the king’s mother. When the two appear before him, he orders -
as he is entitled by right of his race - the two leaders of the
Ashanti to “crawl on all fours.” They do! Someone, then, from the
invading party, thought it reasonable, let alone amusing, to add to
the narrative a drawing of the scene.
Baden-Powell, sitting regally before
the Ashanti people recognizes his right to shut down his empathy for
a people he sees as savage. The subjugation of the king forgoes any
thought on the part of the observers of fighting any further. At
least for now, all the people of the Ashanti “crawling on all
fours” join them to the cult of death.
“Exterminate the brutes,” is,
writes Lindqvist, the order of all tyrants. Humiliate and demoralize!
Wealth, then, will flow! Control over material resources and labor
will follow with little or no resistance! Exterminate the will to
fight for life!
Echoing the German philosopher
Hegel, with the conquest of Africa, the lives of the people ceases to
concern humanity.
In 2020, is it still expected that
Indigenous, Latinx, and Blacks follow the incoming administration and
“reach across the aisle” to the Baden-Powells of this era? We’ve
witnessed vigilantes making themselves visible, again, and sporting
long rifles and assault weapons, they’ve appeared at rallies, in
front of city halls, and at voting polls, shouting about freedom and
their rights while intimidating Black and Latinx voters. We’re
expected to shake hands with the MEGA-hat-wearing American who
refuses to accept their existence within a multiracial world for a
photo-opt and a feel-good-story the neoliberal media then
disseminates, despite the massive disinformation on social media
about Blacks, Latinx, and Indigenous people.
How hard is it to come to grips with
the fact that justice isn’t the reason the carriers of long rifles
come out into the streets? Love of racial diversity doesn’t make
Americans join militia organizations.
Why bow to lost
causes? Relics, like
Confederate monuments and flags…
I don’t see how this country moves
forward if the new Biden-Harris administration thinks it’s good
politics to negotiate with the fervor of anti-humanism while
activists and organizers sacrifice to bring about criminal justice,
equity in the workplace, healthcare for all, free education, and an
end to poverty, homelessness, dependence on fossil fuel…
Those fighting for and with humanity
are asked to bow to what?
During the 1980s and 1990s, if you
advocated for human rights, Americans bowing before a rising culture
of greed, called you a militant. An “old head.” “Agitator.”
Democracy, a fixture, already materialized from an idea to a reality,
no longer needed to be pursued. Today, if you want to see Democracy
overrun a culture of greed, then you are labeled an “extremist.”
Is it possible to trace in members of the Squad, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, the
legacy of General Baden-Powell? Working and speaking out on behalf of
the poor, the homeless, the uninsured, the jobless, the marginalized,
and the dehumanized, these legally-elected Congressional
Representatives, if you listen to right-wing rhetoric, are
“socialists,” “radicals,” aggressive upstarts hell bent on
taking away the “freedoms” of 40% of the US population seemingly
determined to follow to
the death the dictates of
right-wing emperors of death. Any thought or activity motivated by
the rejection of cruelty is taken as an assault on freedom!
What is really being heard here and
bowed to if not a corporatocracy? Control! Extermination of life!
To advocate for human rights is to
position yourself with “extremists,” supporting, in turn,
“extremist” ideas?
In the New World, look for
Baden-Powell’s descendants in Andrew Jackson, Bull Connors, David
Duke, Mitch McConnell. When Trump’s supporters show up armed to a
voting poll to intimidate Black, Latinx, and Indigenous voters, see
Baden-Powell. Charges of illegal voting in predominately Black or
Latinx or Indigenous populations link the British Empire of yesterday
with the American Empire today. Along with monuments to the
dehumanization of Black people still standing, Baden-Powell hasn’t
yet died. His spirit darkens the vision of so many Americans.
When I read that 55% of white women
in America would rather stand with Trump, “pussy-grabbing” Trump,
racist Trump, than would stand with Stacy Abrams or Cori Bush, I see
citizens clinging to a legacy of death. Think this is the reality
over 70 million Americans want to see? If the death of Black people
is required for this cult of death to live, why should any Black or
any person of color in America give in? Make America Great Again is
to return the nation to the economy of plantations and the
subjugation of other human beings. In this reality, 1 + 1 = 3, night
is day and day is night, and Trump’s inaugural on January 21, 2021
will be the best and biggest ever! No masks required!
Black lives matter, but not all
Blacks lives advocate for life. Resurrecting war hawks of whatever
stripe is extremist behavior.
And profitable!
Collaborators and gatekeepers
receive compensation in the 21st Century as they did in the 19th
Century as helpers assisting in the capture of their own in Africa
and as overseers on the plantations in the Americas. Corporations pay
handsomely. However ubiquitous are PACs, feel-good foundations, and
industry lobbyists in Washington D. C., members of the Squad aren’t
on the receiving end of corporate pay outs. After this year of the
COVID pandemic, the political collapse of leadership, and the blatant
display of police brutality against Black people, for any new
leadership to negotiate with cold military-minded corporations, all
of whom sit in wait for the first boom of “shock and awe” in
order to initiate the signing of contract papers their corporate
suits, is to bow to extremist behavior. The corporations only
interest is to sign contract papers giving them the newest
Baden-Powells atop the heap of those with the right to drill for oil
or dig for lithium - extremist behavior!
And it’s this extremist behavior
that is no less profitable for Black opportunists, too. For the
practice of bowing before corporate rule has historically signaled to
white supremacists the willingness on the part of the greedy and
cruel among the marginalized to remain contently a defeated people.
We have witnessed enough history to
know that we mustn’t bow; there are serious consequences to our
resignation: the neglect of our civic duty to resist permits the rule
of the tyrannical. In the legacy of extremists is opposition to human
rights. We’ve learned this bit of knowledge not from collaborators
or opportunists but instead from Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people
who rose up in defiance of the order to crawl on all fours. We have
come to this moment on the shoulders of Sitting Bull, Sojourner
Truth, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta,
Martin L. King, and so many, so many others!
In the legacy of these lives, we’ll
organize to move forward.
For the new incoming Democratic
administration there’s an opportunity to free this country from the
extremism of a death cult while promoting a culture of radical
and progressive
values. So where does this new Democratic administration stand on its
advocacy for human
- not corporate rights?
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