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In
his celebrated play Julius
Caesar,
William
Shakespeare famously said, “Cowards die many times before their
deaths; the valiant never taste death but once”. The matter of
death is subject to taste presents a biological conundrum. Unlike
food where one can switch dishes at will should the taste of one dish
fail to titillate one’s palate, the afterlife is not
scientifically verifiable via the taste buds. If death could be
tasted, those experiencing it would return to tell the tale, in a
manner of speaking. Save for what may be gathered from the annals of
fairy tales and fables, the returning dead have not been reliably
documented in their fantasized homecoming to relate to their fellow
humans the “taste” of an irreversible event.
Shakespeare
coined this ageless maxim almost exactly 400 years ago to the day, a
couple of centuries before Shakespeare’s Britain was to achieve
an unparalleled colonial and imperial status that quickly became
global. Suffice it to state, the British unwittingly later
genuflected and was content with her new servile role of doing the
dirty imperial work of their American cousins. Britain has now
switched roles from being a global empire to becoming America’s
helot, content at playing second fiddle and equally happy with
gobbling American leftover scraps in matters of global import. That
is aside from now turning into a fawning, unquestioning accessory in
America’s modern genocidal proceedings, especially in the
Middle East.
The
craven nature of imperial racism is amply demonstrated in phobias
that target entire peoples, known as c-phobias
(communal); phobias are defined as core
beliefs and irrational fears about things, creatures, events,
peoples, and nations. Exaggeration of phobias has been integral to
the colonial and imperial projects. Collective derision along with
scorn and denigration were necessary precursors and justification for
the tutelage of the colonized and unsolicited rule by colonizers.
Societies simply had to be designated inferior, their
states of being criminalized
to pave the way for colonizing societies and institutionalizing
bigotry as an indispensable tool for control and containment. With a
deft sleight of hand, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper erased
the history of an entire continent, claiming
that “…Africa had no history there is only the history
of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness".
Trevor-Roper’s
sentiments were the living embodiment of the British colonial mindset
long before he lent them a faux scholastic face of a disappeared
history. Beneath phobias lie gutless fears by rulers, of victims at
some later point exacting retribution for their subjugation and
humiliation and the dismantling of the colonial edifice. In part,
armed resistance to colonial rule in Africa could be seen in this
light when the colonized turned on their colonizers to regain their
self-esteem by ejecting the colonial yoke. Bullies are known to get
especially brutal with their victims to forestall payback at some
future point. Abusers are themselves known to suffer
self-esteem problems
that often occasion transference of abuse to victims via perpetration
of the cycle of abuse. The Freudian response may therefore lie in the
repetition of the cycle of abuse with role reversals.
The
rulers’ psychological fear of the ruled is implied
acknowledgment of the criminality of governing without consent of the
ruled – a principle often touted as the bedrock of a democratic
creed, which need not apply to purported inferior societies. Belief
in the justice of one’s cause need not always overlap with the
abrupt changing of rules. As matters stand, neocolonialism is the
conjured-up alternative to classic colonialism but with the same
lopsided relationships between colonizers and the colonized. It is a
phase that set in after the initial African euphoria displayed in the
aftermath of clinching political independence had dissipated. This
derivative of colonialism had the intrinsic perk of absolving any
direct responsibility of the ex-colonizers toward their former
colonial subjects – ending the “White
Man’s Burden”,
save for the occasional military interventions when former colonial
powers, France especially, perceived threats to their economic
interests with no pretense for the safeguarding of societies where
intrusions occurred.
Failure
of Africa’s post-independence leadership to follow through with
sound economic, educational, health, and political measures to
consolidate their independence made African countries easy targets
for erecting the later parasitic versions of neocolonialism. Warriors
of African liberation wars who became leaders of their countries
quickly turned into self-aggrandizing potentates betraying the public
trust and sacrifices invested in them during the struggles against
colonial rule. Beyond that, they put their countries on the imperial
auction block selling them on the cheap and lining their pockets
along the way.
Palliatives
were fashioned in neocolonial metropolises in their varied forms: the
British Commonwealth – headed, naturally, by the Queen of
England - not by King Mswati III of Swaziland, being one of such
pacifiers. It is reasonable to presume that appeasement was part of a
craven imperial measure to preempt nativist uprisings against the
imposed rule, knowing full well the lie of civilizing natives would
be exposed and backfire. The neocolonial emollient carried a divine
dimension, with the Church of England currently boasting of an 85
million strong worldwide membership.
This Church is headed – again and naturally, by the Queen of
England. Pacification is being implemented on political, economic,
and religious fronts. The Commonwealth Games are yet another
meaningless palliative for athletes to lend a social dimension to a
neocolonial charade.
In
America, the pacifiers have come to us in the forms of Supremacist
labels: civil (not
human) rights for African Americans, to keep them from taking their
genuine gripes to the UN and global arenas. Then came along the
notion of Affirmative Action, a palliative meant to coerce African
Americans into thinking Uncle Sam really cares for their well-being,
but the net effect as
James Baldwin wrote
about “Negroes being … expected to make peace with
mediocrity” and the attendant abandonment of the pursuit of
excellence; White Supremacy scarcely tires of pursuing endless
strategies of “keeping niggers in their place”. Then came
the sweeping notion of “political correctness”, while
ostensibly intended to protect Blacks from unjust censure, was in
effect a tool and cover designed to protect America’s Israel
firsters from indulging themselves in promoting Zionist Israel’s
control of America’s domestic agenda. Critiques
of Black History Month are insistent that if the shortest month is
reserved for Black History, the remaining ones must be for Whites.
The
British seizure of a Christian denomination later went hand in hand
with the indulgence of British colonial and imperial schemes
conferring spiritual dimensions to condescension and theft. In the
words of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, British
colonialists carried the Bible in one hand and the gun in the other.
Kenyans were instructed to close their eyes in pre-conversion
religious rituals. No sooner had they opened their eyes, their most
productive ancestral lands were stolen and renamed the “White
Highlands”.
In modern-day England, no Zimbabweans, Kenyans, Malawians, Nigerians
or citizens of other member countries of the British Commonwealth are
known to own sizeable chunks of land (“the Black Paddocks”)
in the lush meadows and farmlands of the English, Welsh or Scottish
countryside.
The
French, with their mission
civilisatrice,
were more blatant in expressing the need for civilizing and Christianizing
natives in as far-flung regions as Indochina, Lebanon, Syria, West
Africa, Algeria, Madagascar, Haiti, Tahiti. The 3
C’s
are shared by Britain and France in their colonizing missions:
Civilize, Christianize, Commercialize. America did away with the
niceties of European empires, starting with the genocide of the
native population, their dispossession, and corralling them into
reservations in tandem with the enslavement of Africans. The art of
diplomacy was discarded in the transference of atrocities from the
homeland to foreign lands, a phenomenon still vigorous to this day in
the Middle East.
Infantile
palliatives offered ad
nauseam
and reserved for natives of color,
are
now totally bereft of meaning: promotion of democracy, the rule of
law, and human rights, with the companion acts of genocide carefully
excised from any serious discussion. Institutionalized racism failed
to tally with the nonsensical principles enunciated by the
Anglo-American empires by their purported “founders” that
were more for domestic Supremacist consumption than for those
incorrigible natives and enslaved Africans.
An
important aspect of what passes as imperial cowardice is the
perception of overarching imperial powers over societies accompanied
by hollow declarations of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Beneath
such declarations lie subconscious craven fears of imperial subjects
echoing cries for justice, equality, and fraternity to their imperial
overlords. Regardless of the setting – parity is never
achieved, not even approximated, between imperial hegemony and those
forced to submit to it. Were that to happen, the edifice upon which
imperial projects are constructed would crumble. Economic
inequalities – the backbone of hegemonic control favoring
imperial metropolises, necessitate the exploitation of abundant
natural wealth in dominated societies. This implies that a prime
source of the inordinate wealth of the empire would be under serious
threat. Africa is caught in a vicious cycle of unwittingly being the
largest aid donor to their former colonial and neocolonial overlords,
enriching them simultaneously with impoverishing themselves. One
event is a direct cause of the other.
Fear
is also a tacit acknowledgment of crimes perpetrated against the
vanquished. Bullying is founded on disparities in power and
perceptions of superiority, placing victims in the lower rungs of
humanity, an artificial construct of racist overriding power and
hegemony. There can be no escaping that the fear of equality is
cowardice. Noble sentiments on equality have no bearing on reality.
Since power is reflected in the appropriation of the last word on any
issue of import, taboos have been made out of issues in order to
delimit meaningful discussions on issues of concern to the subjugated
and their interminable struggle for justice, fairness, and equality.
In America especially, the false promotion of democracy, the rule of
law, and human rights, do not tally with realities at home or abroad.
Therein lie the reasons for the great absence of honest discussions
on systemic racism at home.
This
extends to yet another even more egregious taboo:
criminalizing any criticism of apartheid Zionist Israel a measure
spearheaded by America in her surrender to Zionist power. Academics
have been forced to walk on eggshells when it comes to speaking
obvious truths about Israel. Celebrity journalists who could easily
escape censure for criticizing their own country enjoy no such luck
criticizing Israeli firsters. Consider the mere mention of a proven
fact of the overrepresentation
of Jews
in the American media being totally off-limits. Worse yet, mention of
Palestinian rights is a no-go zone as Marc
Lamont Hill
was soon to find out. Anti-Zionist Jews themselves are not exempted
from this criminalization of criticism of Israel and support for
Palestinian rights, like
denial of tenure
for Norman Finkelstein, himself of Jewish extraction and son of a
holocaust survivor after publishing his book aptly labeled The
Holocaust Industry.
The anti-Semitism card has been and continues to be a highly
effective silencing tool employed in lockstep with the MSM, which
itself is largely controlled by Israel firsters. A convergence of
supremacist interests – White and Zionist, are on full display
in America.
The
craven fear of truth in imperial zones, bordering on psychopathic
dread has sustained systemic racism and hegemonic power domestically
and globally. China’s ascendancy in the global economic arena
may be a blessing even for those averse to any notions of hegemony.
This may, in the end, not become a question of alternative
hegemonies, but one of competing
hegemonies, and one that might – by default, ensure the safety
and relative well-being of those imperiled by a single, dominant
White Supremacist one.
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