Category Archives: News

Online Decolonial School January 10-14, 2022

From Januari 10-14, 2022, the Center of Study and Investigation for Decolonial Dialogues will organize an online international decolonial school: the South-South Decolonial Dialogues. The school aims to open a dialogue among different decolonial thinkers of the Global South. The school’s goal is to present different decolonial perspectives produced from the body-politics and geo-politics of knowledge of liberation struggles in the Global South. For this purpose, we have a group of decolonial intellectual/activists from different regions of the world that will participate as faculty of the decolonial school. They will cover different aspects of decoloniality with emphasis on their regional location.

Affiliated Faculty Members include: Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Houria Bouteldja, Ramón Grosfoguel, Faith Mkwesha, Sandew Hira, Ashraf Kunnummal, Dina Odessy.

Application: http://southsouthdialogues.dialogoglobal.com/

About the Center

Center of Study and Investigation for Decolonial Dialogues is a non-profit and non-governmental organization promoting research, knowledge-making, education (through seminars, workshops, exhibits, round-tables discussions, publications and video-making) and public policy to invent and work towards non-competitive horizons of life, of socio-economic organization and international relations. Non-profit and non-governmental organizations emerge from within civil and political society to address issues that are not supported or attended to by government and corporations. Their function is crucial in building futures that are beyond the regulations of States or the needs of the Corporations. In order for civil and political society to become relevant actors in social transformation and pointing out the limits of corporate values and state regulation, it is necessary to create institutions of knowledge-making not at the service of the state or corporations, but to the benefit of the civil society.

How the apartheid state of Israel might fall?

One/Two state solutions

The 2021 war of Israel against Palestine is a historic and game changing event. It opens the discussion about how apartheid will fall, not on if apartheid will fall. In many reflections on the apartheid state of Israel we tend to use the analogies of cases of historic injustice, notable the apartheid system in South Africa, to conclude that historical injustice always comes to an end, although we might not know how and when. In this war it became clear how the apartheid state of Israel might come to an end.

For a long time in the West there was the idea that there were two solutions for the occupation of Palestine: the two-state solution and the one-state solution. In the two-state solution a new independent state of Palestine would arise with East Jerusalem as its capital and a fragmented series of land pieces as the country of Palestine. It would co-exist with the state of Israel. From the very beginning this was an illusion, but for a long time many people believed that this might be a solution. The two-state solution was codified in the Oslo Accords. There is no document on the one-state solution that has been agreed upon, because it was not a serious issue for Israel and the West. The general idea of the one-state solution is that there would be a state where Israeli and Palestinians would live together in a secular state. The Jewish character of Israel would disappear. There are many problems with the one-state solution. The main problem is that there is no detailed concept of what this would mean. Would the Jews give back their homes to the Palestinians they stole it from? Would the police, intelligence and army consists of Palestinians and Israelis? Would the nuclear arsenal of Israel be jointly controlled by Israelis and Palestinians? Is there anyone in Israel willing to discuss these questions, let alone anyone in the West? Clearly the one-state solution is a non-starter. If neither the one-state and two-state solution are not viable, then what is left for the future of the Palestinians?

Armed struggle

The 2021 war showed the answer: armed struggle that reclaims all Palestinian land. After the Oslo Accords of 1993 this seemed an unrealistic option. Israel proved to be too strong to be defeated militarily. The phrase “Israel is the sixth mightiest military power in the world” conveyed the message that Israel could never be beaten militarily. There are two problems with this idea. First, history has proved that the first mightiest military power in the world can be beaten militarily. The Israeli 2021 war on Gaza lasted for 11 days. The US war on Vietnam lasted for 10,502 days, from August 5, 1964 till May 7, 1975. During this period the US and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II. It remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history with 360.000 plane missions. Yet, the US lost the war and had to withdrew all their forces from Vietnam in a humiliating way. They would never return to Vietnam, “even if we offered them candy”, as one Vietnamese leader remarked.

On October 7 2001, four weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the US and its allies launched their first aerial bombardment of Afghanistan. Twenty years later, on April 14 2021, president Biden announced the final departure of US troops from Afghan soil without any condition. They will not return, even if the Afghans offer them candy.

If the first mightiest military power can be defeated twice militarily, why it is impossible for the sixth mightiest military power to be defeated once in their existence? The answer is simple: it is not impossible. To understand the military defeat of Israel we must understand what war is. Carl von Clausewitz, a 19th century Prussian general, who wrote a classic book on war says “war is merely the continuation of politics with other means.” A military defeat can come after a political defeat as was the case of the US war in Vietnam.

The driving force of resistance: oppression of a people

In 1964, sixteen years after the foundation of the apartheid state of Israel in 1948 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established to further the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle. The PLO carried out many attacks, but the brutal response of Zionist drove the PLO into the defensive. They had to retreat from Israel, Jordan and Lebanon and moved to Tunisia, where even there they were bombarded by the Israeli’s in 1982. It eventually led to negotiations that were concluded in the Oslo Accords in 1993 with the two-state solution. It turned out to be a political defeat for the Palestinians. But it was not a final defeat, but just a defeat in a battle. It does not mean that they have lost the war.

The initiative to restart the resistance came from the masses. The driving force behind their actions is the daily oppression and humiliation of the Palestinians. In December 1987 the first intifada began with stones throwing Palestinians and eventually led to the formation of Hamas as a liberation movement dedicated to armed struggle. The Oslo Accords had led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 as an administrative entity for the future state of Palestine. It had limited administrative power over the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank.

In 2000 the second intifada started as a protest against the visit of butcher Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It developed into a large scale armed conflict that left 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israeli dead. It ended on February 8 2005 with an agreement between Israel and the PA on a cease fire and the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners. Meanwhile in Gaza 8,000 Jewish settlers living among one million Palestinians in 21 settlements were faced with armed attacks from the resistance. The PA was supposed to prevent this. They could not. In 2005 (from August to September) Israel was forced to relocate the settlers from Gaza, because they could not protect them anymore. The settlers received an average of more than US$ 200,000 in compensation per family. The Palestinians claimed their land, but they were controlled from the outside: a sea, air, and land blockade by the Israeli’s.

In 2006 Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election and took control of the government of Gaza. In December 2008 the first Israeli war on Gaza started (Operation Cast Lead) when Israel began with aerial bombardments of Gaza after being unable to stop rocket attacks by the resistance. On January 3 2009 Israel began a ground invasion of Gaza. On January 21 Israel withdrew its troops after a cease fire was reached under international pressure. In March 2012 Israel killed a leader of the Palestinian resistance which lead to retaliation and a full scale war with aerial bombardments and rocket attacks. In October of the same year a new round of confrontation began that lead to hundreds of Palestinian deaths. In 2014 the worst round of fighting was during a 50 day bombardment of Gaza leaving more than 2,000 Palestinian dead.

The conclusion of the resistance of the Palestinians in half a century is that the spirit of resistance is unbroken. Resistance come with a huge cost in human lives. The people of Vietnam had struggled against colonialism. They had their first war of liberation in the 20th century against the French between 1946 and 1954. Their second war of liberation was against the Americans. The cost in human life was enormous: 3,5 million deaths. Yet they defeated two military superpowers. The struggle of the Palestinian people also comes with a price in human suffering. But they have shown that they are willing to pay the price, because the alternative is an eternal life of suffering, humiliation and oppression for them, their children and grandchildren. If their leadership fails them, they generate new leadership. If they have a setback, they use their intelligence and creativity to overcome it and prepare for the next stage in the battle. The next round will draw important lessons from the last round of struggle.

A new era of struggle has begun: the pillars of a new strategy

The war disclosed the long term strategy of the resistance for the liberation of Palestine. Speeches by different leaders of the resistance show the pillars of their strategy.

The first pillar is the unity of the people of Palestine. Hamas Leader in Gaza Yahya Al-Sinwar praises deceased Fatah leader Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar), despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah frequently arrested Hamas members. He said: “All hail to the spirit of the eternal leader, Abu Ammar. On this occasion, and following this latest round of fighting, I say to him: Rest in peace, oh Abu Ammar! You died trying to strengthen our nation’s combat capabilities following the 2002 Karine A affair. Karine A was the famous ship, you all know about it… It was carrying some weapons – Grad rockets, some anti-tank missiles, and some short-range rockets, like 20km and 30km Grad rockets. Arafat was trying to strengthen our people’s ability to be steadfast in their confrontation. He turned to bringing in weapons, in order to create some change in the balance of power between the occupation and us. Rest in peace, Abu Ammar, along with all the martyrs, now that the resistance forces of your people, your sons at the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades and the other resistance factions, have obtained hundreds of rockets, and not just 20-kilometer-Grad rockets, but hundreds of rockets that in one salvo can crush the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.” By reaching out to Fatah he hopes that in the next confrontation the security forces of the PA “will attack Israelis at all the junctions and bypass roads“. There are half a million settlers in the West Bank in closed colonies guarded by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and three million Palestinians. During the war there were already attacks on settlers. The central committee of Fatah issued a statement on May 8 saying that “the continuation of the settler attacks on the holy places and the homes of Palestinian residents, their expulsion and expansion of settlements — will lead to an all-out conflict in all the Palestinian territories.” The unity between the rank-and-file of Fatah and Hamas was building up during the last war.

The greatest surprise was the reaction of the 1948 Arabs in Israel. The policy of turning Arab Israeli’s into law abiding citizens failed utterly. They took to the streets in Akka, Lod, Ramla, the Negev, Galilee, and Wadi Ara. Yahya Al-Sinwar: “From the bottom of the heart of everyone in Gaza, we salute the tough men of Haifa, the tough men of Jaffa, the tough men of Lod, the tough men of Ramla, the tough men of Acre, and our men and women in the ‘Triangle’ area, in the Galilee, and in the Negev, who proved that all the years that have gone by and all the Israelization campaigns – the attempts to turn them into Israeli citizens, rather than Arab-Palestinian citizens – and the so-called coexistence campaigns collapsed once and for all.” The unity of Palestinians now extends to the two million Palestinians living within the 708 km wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.

And finally the six million Palestinians in the Diaspora: they felt empowered by the rocket attacks of the resistance. Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan who is frequently in Western media described the impact of this war: “I hail from the Gaza strip. We were refugees there. My family came there from Ashdod. I sing twice when the rockets reached Ashdod. I was born in the so-called diaspora. By Allah, when the rockets reach Ashdod and I hear the sirens, it’s like music to me, like a Beethoven symphony. I have never heard such music. The second thing is that when we see those rockets hit Tel Aviv, and the settlers flee the beach in their bathing suits, to the nearest bomb shelter –  this is unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Zionist conflict.”

Unlike previous wars in which the sacrifice of human lives weight heavily on the morale of the people, this war boosted the morale. This was a political victory. Why? Because it achieved something that previous wars could not achieve: the unity of the Palestinian people to carve out another route for resistance instead of the two- or one-state solution.

The second pillar of the strategy that became clear from this war is the belief that a military victory over Israel is possible. That possibility became a real option with the information that the resistance provided. They have managed to built 500 km of tunnels in Gaza. Israel could destroy only a tiny fraction. Many rockets were built by Palestinian engineers. Al-Sinwar mentions Professor Jamal Zabeda: “Rest in peace, our martyrs in this last round of fighting. Rest in peace, distinguished Professor Jamal Zabeda. You could have remained a distinguished professor working for NASA, and the world would have celebrated you, but you insisted on coming to Gaza, and to take part in the development of the rockets that rock the Zionist entity.” The stock and quality of rockets of the resistance were so high that they could continue for months bombarding Israel with 150-200 rockets per day. And even if the Israel Iron Dome could intercept 90%, still 15-20 rockets per day were able to create havoc in the cities. But not only the cities were hit this time. The military bases of Hatzor, Hatzerim, Palmachim,  Rehovot, Nevatim, Tel Nof, and the southern army base of Ramon got hit by Gaza rockets. Israeli cities and the Ben Gurion Airport were closed. International flights were suspended. The war led to a loss of US 100 million per day for Israel.

The third pillar is the organization of an international military coalition against Israel. This round of fight with Israel was prepared by the Palestinians in close cooperation with Iran as a major anti-imperialist force in the region. The US government and Israel had worked hard for an alternative for the two-state solution: create a Israel-Sunni coalition against Iran, pour money into the West Bank and 1948 Arab communities and isolate Hams in Gaza. Then everybody will live happily ever after. The 2021 war shattered that illusion. This war was prepared by Sunni’s and Shi’tes. Isma’il Haniya, head of the political bureau of Hamas declared in May 2020: “Iran Has Never Hesitated To Support The Resistance And Assist It Financially, Militarily, And Technologically.” Haniya ‘s deputy Al-Arouri said in an interview in the same month: “Iran Has Given Hamas And The Resistance Movements All The Support And Weapons They Need.”He revealed that during the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza war, Iranian general Soleimani had been present in the Hamas military operations room in Damascus, and added that Soleimani’s successor Esmail Ghaani was maintaining the coordination and assistance to the Palestinian resistance.

Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary-general of Hizbullah, gave an interview after the May 21 ceasefire went into effect and explained the relationship between the resistance in Gaza and Lebanon: “We were in daily contact with the leaders of the resistance and the Palestinian jihadi fighters. Our position was that we would assist the Palestinian resistance in every way that we can and that we will do what we must do at the appropriate time and in the way that we choose… Today the Palestinians have a significant capability to produce weapons. I can reassure you that the smuggling of rockets into Palestine is continuing at full force. There are important Palestinian brains which are helping in the creation and establishment of the capabilities. They have trained and been in contact with the axis of resistance. The support will not cease but will only increase.”

There was even coordination with the resistance in Iraq. A drone from Iraq managed to get into Israeli airspace, photographed important military sites and transferred its coordinates to Gaza and returned safely to the place of its launch.

The last pillar is preparation for a new type of struggle: the struggle inside the occupied territories rather than just firing rockets from Gaza. Hamas leader Sinwar sketches the struggle inside Israel. Palestinian Authority security forces will attack Israelis at all the junctions and bypass roads in the West Bank. Palestinians within the 1948 borders of Israel will take to the streets and block the roads. There will be at least 10,000 “martyrdom-seekers” among them, who will carry out stabbing attacks, car-ramming attacks, throw Molotov cocktails, and set forests on fire. Sinwar added that “resistance forces in the region” would come in. Gaza launched 150 to 200 rockets per day in this war. The Lebanese Hezbollah has prepared to launch a thousand rockets and missiles every day. The Iron Dome will not be able to handle this amount of strikes.

The Saban Institute for Middle East Policy at Brookings published a report in 2011 about the next war between Israel and Hizbullah. The authors write: “With the support of Iran, Hizballah has made further advances in its signals intelligence (SIGINT) and communications capabilities. Hizbullah is expected to use these upgraded weapons and SIGINT capabilities to play an offensive role in a future conflict with Israel, attempting to seize the initiative, rather than adopting the reactive and defensive posture of 2006. Among the new battle plans being prepared by Hizbullah are land and seaborne insertions into Israel to carry out commando-style raids. Given the range of the missiles in Hizbullah possession, the battlespace in the next war will likely be larger than the traditional theater of southern Lebanon and northern Israel, encompassing large portions of both countries…. Israeli territory could become a front line for the first time since 1948.”

In June 2017 Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said: “The Israeli enemy must know that if an Israeli war is launched against Syria or Lebanon, it is not known that the fighting will remain Lebanese-Israeli, or Syrian-Israeli… This doesn’t mean there are states that might intervene directly. But this could open the way for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of fighters from all over the Arab and Islamic world to participate – from Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

If in any of the coming rounds of fight between Israel and the Palestinian resistance the Palestinians stand their ground and a prolonged war between Gaza and Israel is under way then international forces will come into play for the final battle which will cease to be an air battle. Rockets, drones, physical confrontation will determine the scene. Airfields, the Iron Dome and the stockpiles of weapons, including the nuclear arsenal, would be major targets of rocket attacks. In the West Bank the homes of the 700.000 settlers will be attacked in man-to-man fights to reclaim the land that they have occipied. With mounting Israeli casualties the question will be: how will the Israeli morale fare? Will Israel unite and will liberals and extreme right be willing to fight side by side or will there be disintegration with people want to fight with extreme measures and other fleeing the occupied land? Shall we see images like Vietnam? In 1974, one year before the final defeat of the Americans, the South Vietnamese army soldiers station in Danang got the order to assist in the rescue of women and children from the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who where steadily moving to Danang. Over 300 armed soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)rushed to the aircraft trampling many of the women and children in the process. One writer describes the scene: “The frightened pilot moved to make a quick take off but found the aircraft under attack by ARVN soldiers who had been unable to board. Under fire and damaged by a grenade burst the aircraft lumbered into the sky. Once in the air the pilot realized that he could not retract the landing gear because several ARVN soldiers had taken refuge in the wheel wells of the aircraft. During the 90-minute flight to Saigon several of these desperate men plunged to their deaths but an unknown number gained their freedom. In Saigon the ARVN soldiers who exited the aircraft were greeted with cheers. It was later discovered that only five women and children ever made it on board the flight.” Is this the type of scenes we will see when the final battle for the liberation of Palestine is there?

The next war: a regional war or a world war

What if Israel decides to strike Iran with an atomic bomb because it sees Iran as the main source of its problems? Then the struggle moves from a battle between liberation movements and a state to a battle between states? Israel has been threatening time and again to bomb Iran like they did in 1981 in Iraq when they bombed a nuclear reactor under construction under Saddam Hussein. But Iraq under Saddam Hussein is not Iran where a popular revolution brought an anti-imperialist movement to power. The anti-imperialist people of Iran were confronted with a wide coalition to bring down the 1979 revolution: Saddam Hussein, the US, the UK, France, the Soviet Union and many Arab countries joined to break the revolution. But Iran survived because of the popular support, like Vietnam. Forty years later, despite decades of economic boycott, Iran is able to develop an indigenous defense industry based on advanced technology. One thing is to send a plane to bomb Iran. Another thing is to expect the plane to return empty and Iran to beg for mercy. The most likely scenario is that a full scale war will develop in West Asia where the US has military basis in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. Israel will not act without permission of the US, but once they get the permission because of the idea of an existential threat, then American bases in the region will be bombed by Iran. The reaction of the population in the Middle East might be disturbing for their leaders. Many regimes might not survive if their population sense that the liberation of Palestine is connected to their liberation.

In 1981 The Soviet Union still existed. In 1989 it perished. Russia is now an ally of Iran. In 1981 China had a GDP per capita of US 197. Chinese earned on average $ 197 per year. In 2020 they earned $ 10,276 per year, 52 times the earnings of 1981. The world has changed dramatically. The US is in decline. China is on the rise and is now an ally of Iran. If the US gets into an all-out war in West Asia, then the new super power China might move to invade Taiwan and bring it back under the control of the motherland. The US will have to choose: engage in a new world war and fight in West and East Asia or back down and stop the road to World War III. Maybe it will not come to the stage and the outcome might be limited as in Vietnam. The fall of Tel Aviv might look like the fall of Saigon. In Vietnam the fall of Saigon was like this: “At noon on 30 April 1975 a group of tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace, the symbol of South Vietnamese authority. Inside, the last President of South Vietnam, General Minh, waited to surrender to the victors. The ranking NVA officer on the scene was Colonel Bui Tin – a reporter for the NVA newspaper. Surprised to find himself taking part in such momentous events Tin strode into the palace to accept the final surrender of the government of South Vietnam. When Tin entered the room Minh said, “I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you.” Tin answered by saying, “There is no question of your transferring power. Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you do not have.”

 

DIN

Sandew Hira

29-5-2021

 

Lamine Bangoura: the case of George Floyd in Belgium

Lamine Bangoura was a 27 years old Belgian Black man of Guinean descent, a professional soccer player, living in Roelers, Flanders. On May 7, 2018, he was killed at his home, surrounded by a group of eight police officers.

Last month, global public opinion breathed a sigh of relief, hearing that George Floyd’s murderer, officer Derek Chauvin, have been found guilty on all three charges. By contrast, on March 16, Belgian courts of justice decided not to prosecute the police officers involved in the death of Mr. Bangoura, dismissing any possibility of elucidating the case during a public audience.

As it is often the case with police killings of men of color, what strikes the most is the insignificant character of the reasons for this execution. The policemen came at Mr. Bangoura’s place with the mission of expelling him from the house due to rent arrears amounting to 1,500 euros ($1,800). Confronted to the tenant’s reluctance to be forced out of the home, the officers first applied a chokehold in order to incapacitate him and make him fall to the ground. Then, they resorted to a knee-to-neck restraint while he was handcuffed. The very technique that killed George Floyd had made another victim.

A video shot by an assistant bailiff shows Mr. Bangoura’s last moments: we hear groans, gasps of agony as we see him surrounded, overwhelmed and crushed by police officers. Half-heartedly, they ended up calling paramedics to his rescue. But he had already taken his last breath when they arrived on the scene.

The version of the events provided by the police officers is vague and contradictory. They obviously invoke self-defense, but nothing corroborates such an interpretation. The idea that a Black man is so dangerous and maleficent that even lying on the ground with tied hands and ankles, he could represent a vital threat to trained police agents seems credible to Belgian prosecutors. A different but equally aberrant interpretation is that Mr. Bangoura strangled himself, that his body self-destroyed.

Brutalized while living, victims of police killings are despised while dead. Belgian police decided to treat Mr. Bangoura’s body as its property, prohibiting his repatriation to Africa. As of today, the corpse is still stored in a morgue at the authorities’ demand and every single day it stays there adds a few dozen of euros to a staggering bill the family is ordered to pay to recover the right to bury their loved one. The state is treating Mr. Bangoura like a towed vehicle accumulating impound fees and uses it to blackmail a working-class family.

Mr. Bangoura lost his life in circumstances very similar to Mr. Floyd. But his torment sparked way less outrage and got way fewer domestic media coverage. Belgium–as well as other European civil societies–loves to consider police brutality and anti-Black violence as an American issue and turns a blind eye to its own deplorable history of atavistic negrophobia and penchant for racial dehumanization.

They want to ignore that throughout the whole world, the history of Belgian Congo has become the symbol of how far colonial unbridled ferocity can go. Insatiable thirst for profit, unchaining of murderous and sadistic pulsion were at the core of Léopold II’s genocidal, mutilator, and torturous regime. We are asked to believe that those obscene demons magically faded away with the celebration of Congolese independence. Cases such as Mr. Bangoura’s are proof that it is not so. Colonial anti-Blackness still supports Belgian narcissism and self-understanding.

That’s why, throughout the country, municipalities are still celebrating carnivals whose highlight consists in white actors parading in blackface, mimicking savage, crazy, exuberant and frightening Africans to entertain both residents and tourists. Under the disguise of an innocent game, party or theatrical performance, the inhuman caricatures inherited from the colonial past are retained and celebrated. Through them, the Belgian youth is socialized to consider Blacks as lesser beings.

Hostility toward Black people is systematic and institutional. Belgians from Burundian, Congolese, and Rwandese descent are statistically more educated that the average citizen. Nevertheless, their unemployment rate is four times the national average and more than a half of the Black workers hold a job below their qualifications[1].

Unlike George Floyd’s, Lamine Bangoura’s family has been allowed no financial compensation. Quite the opposite: the retention of the young man’s body threatens to plague them by debt. As of January 2021, the amount due was over 30,000 euros ($36,000). Nevertheless, if the profound change we aspire to is not for today, the sentencing of Derek Chauvin showed us how a popular political commitment can ignite justice and relief for the relatives of the victim. But let’s not kid ourselves: the immensity of the transnational protest over Mr. Floyd’s death contrasts with the smallness of the outcomes. Justice has been served, but our habituation to inequity is so profound that millions of Blacks all around the world jumped in surprise when the verdict was announced. This is how fragile and precarious our situation is.

Time has come to break the silence. Black Belgians and other Belgians of color need to know that they are not alone facing the inequities they are confronted to everyday. Diasporic, pan-African, and anticolonial consciousness is alive and real. As long there will be victims of state-sanctioned lynching; as long as Black people will be caricatured and vilified for the sake of white amusement; as long as they will be facing systematic discrimination, we will speak truth to power. For Lamine Bangoura, for his family, justice must prevail.

 

Norman Ajari, Villanova University

Tommy J. Curry, University of Edinburgh

George Ciccariello-Maher, Vassar College

Mohamed Amine Brahimi, Columbia University

Kelly Gillespie, University of the Western Cape

Michael Sawyer, University of Pittsburg

 

 

[1] Belga, “Un niveau d’éducation et un chômage élevés, la dure réalité des Afro-descendants”, https://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_un-niveau-d-education-et-un-chomage-eleves-la-dure-realite-des-afro-descendants?id=9769979

Speech Sandew Hira a decolonial view on climate change

On April 22 and 23 2021 President Biden has organized a video conference with world leaders on climate change. The Plurinational State of Bolivia has organized an alternative video conference on April 23, 2021. Sandew Hira was asked to make a contribution. See the text of his contribution here.

Sandew Hira is a decolonial intellectual
and activist and a board member
of the Decolonial International Network Foundation
The Hague, Holland, 22-4-2021

Dear president Luis Arce, vice-president David Chiquehuanca, respected members of the Bolivian government and other heads of states, brothers and sisters, comrades.

Thank you for the honor to address you on the issue of a decolonial view on climate change.

Last Monday, April 19 2021, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken gave a speech on climate change. I will present a decolonial critique of his speech and an alternative view on climate change.

The analysis of Blinken can be summarized in three points:

  1. The cause of climate change is warming temperatures caused by human activity.
  2. The solution for climate change is a technical solution (clean energy).
  3. Climate change has everything to do with the long term domination of the US.

Here is my decolonial critique of his analysis in six points:

  1. A wrong analysis can lead to wrong conclusions and wrong policies. Human civilizations with cities, agriculture and basic industries have been around for 7.000 years without impacting climate change. There is a clear responsibility for climate change. It is not human activity in general, because that absolves the real culprits who should be held accountable: industrial capitalism in Europe and North America and imperialism in the rest of the world that has laid the foundation of Western civilization. Private companies supported by state government are the ones who should be held accountable, not humans in general. Blinken’s analysis is a cover-up for the actions of these companies and states.
  2. Their actions are based on a key concept of western civilization about the relationship between humans and nature. The concept is that humans are superior to nature and are therefore entitled to control and manipulate nature. If humans can manipulate nature, then there is no brake on activities that changes nature in the disastrous way that we know today. That makes this concept problematic. As long as people like Blinken hold on to the Eurocentric concept of superior human begins that have the right to manipulate nature, all their solutions will be limited.
  3. Many other civilizations have developed a different view on the relationship between humans and nature. For example, in Islam the basic elements of nature – land, water, fire, forest, and light – belong to all living things, not just to human beings. The privilege to exploit natural resources was given by God, Allah, to mankind on the basis of custodianship (khalifa in Arabic). This means that humans are the custodians of nature, and must live in harmony with other creatures. They must pass on the entrusted property to the next generation in as pure a form as possible and promise not to destroy or damage it. According to the Holy Qur’an, environmental conservation is a religious duty and a social obligation. The exploitation of a particular natural resource is directly related to accountability and maintenance of the resource. Another example of a non-Eurocentric view on the relationship between humans and nature is to be found in Africa. In the African philosophy of Ubuntu humans are humans through the interaction with other human beings. That is how you achieve a society based on happiness. The following story illustrates this. A white anthropologist was studying an African village. He saw children playing. He took a basket full with delicious fruits and put it under a tree. He drew a line in the dirt, looked at the children, and said, “When I tell you to start, run to the tree and whoever gets there first will win the basket of the fruit.” When he told them to run, they all took each other’s hands and ran together to the tree. Then they sat together around the basket and enjoyed their treat as a group. The anthropologist was shocked. He asked why they would all go together when one of them could have won all the fruits for themselves?
    A young girl looked up at him and said, “How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?” Ubuntu is not limited to relationship between humans, but also bears on the relationship between humans and nature. Former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, explains this relationship when he spoke about his ‘Africanness’ in relation to the natural environment. He said: “I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the everchanging seasons that define the face of our native land.” Humans and nature are on the same level. He even made the following suggestion: “At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.”
  4. Because the imagination of Blinken is very limited, he cannot think that there is another view possible on the relationship between humans and nature. In his view the problem of climate change is a problem of technology, the solution for climate change can only be found in technology, which boils down to developing the industry of clean energy. Obviously that technology is very much needed, because the technology that Western civilization has used, has destroyed the environment. But that industry will be less effective if there is no change in the concept of the relationship between humans and nature. If you install solar panels, then, yes, you will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But if you don’t change your behavior and still think that humans have the right to manipulate nature, then sooner or later another problem will arise in the environment. It is like in the movie Jurassic Park. The park owner thinks that he can manipulate nature by creating an amusement park where dinosaurs have been recreated by genetic experiments. They control one aspect (the environment of the park), but suddenly other aspects they did not think about become dangerous when it appears that dinosaurs have a mind of their own.
  5. Blinken links climate change to geopolitical problems and thus makes climate change a political tool to maintain the hegemonic status of the US in the world. This strategy is detrimental to improving climate change. If you have a broken car, and your neighbor has a broken car, you can decide to work together and learn from each other experiences in fixing the cars. But if you have a quarrel with your neighbor about something else – say about the fence – then linking fixing the broken car to the problems of the fence will hinder fixing both cars. Blinken does exactly that. He says: “It’s difficult to imagine the United States winning the long-term strategic competition with China if we cannot lead the renewable energy revolution. Right now, we’re falling behind.” What he means is that climate change is now part of the political struggle that America wages against China and Russia. So instead of talking about how to fix our cars, he will start talking about the fence, the wife of his neighbor, the dog of his neighbor etc. In the coming years the American narrative about climate change will be mixed with stories about the Uyghurs in China or the problems of Ukraine and Russia. This is a very ineffective strategy in combating climate change. And the facts prove that. And Blinken provide the facts: “Natural disasters in 2020 cost the United States around $100 billion… We only have around 4 percent of the world’s population, but we contribute nearly 15 percent of global emissions.  That makes us the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases… Renewables are now the cheapest source of bulk electricity in countries that contain two-thirds of the world’s population.  And the global renewable energy market is projected to be $2.15 trillion by 2025.  That’s over 35 times the size of the current market for renewables in the United States… China is the largest producer and exporter of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles.  It holds nearly a third of the world’s renewable energy patents.  If we don’t catch up, America will miss the chance to shape the world’s climate future in a way that reflects our interests and values, and we’ll lose out on countless jobs for the American people.” Instead of working together on an equal basis with other countries, the USA has adopted an imperial attitude to climate change: it wants to dominate.

The need to dominate will lead to military conflicts with climate change as an argument for conflict. Blinken announces this in his speech: “Climate change can also create new theaters of conflict.  In February, a Russian gas tanker sailed through the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route for the first time ever.  Until recently, that route was only passable a few weeks each year.  But with the Arctic warming at twice the rate of the rest of the global average, that period is getting much longer.  Russia is exploiting this change to try to exert control over new spaces.  It is modernizing its bases in the Arctic and building new ones, including one just 300 miles from Alaska.  China is increasing its presence in the Arctic, too.” Conclusion: prepare for war in the name of climate change. The speech of Blinken is fraught with conceptual errors, problematic analysis and erroneous policies.

  1. What is the alternative for US policy? The alternative consists of three elements:
    1. The idea that climate change is not primarily about technological causes and technological solutions. There is a technological component in the causes and solutions for climate change. But there is an issue behind technology and that is in how we view the relationship between humans and nature. Social movements need to put this relationship in the center of the discussion on how to deal with climate change.
    2. A non-western view of the relationship between humans and nature starts with respect for nature. Based on this view social movements should embrace the idea that has been developed in Bolivia of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Just like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights such a declaration outlines the basic principles about how a society should organize the respect for nature. The government of countries around the world should be pressured by social movements to adopt such a declaration.
    3. The Western civilization and the global system of colonialism on which it is based have created a system of knowledge that has colonized our minds. It presents western analysis and solutions as the only possible ones. It has colonized our minds to such an extent that we cannot imagine other, better, analysis and solutions, not only on climate change but on many others problems that humanity faces. If the only tool you have to solve problems is a hammer, then every problem should be treated as a nail. That is the crazy logic of Western civilization and the operation of the colonized mind. If we want long term solutions, then social movements should link the discussions on climate change to the discussion of the role of Western civilization and the colonization of the mind in creating these problems. I am sure that then the value of knowledge produced by other civilizations will be appreciated and used in creating new policies in the ecological movements based on decolonizing the mind.

Thank you for your attention

A strategy for the struggle for reparations for colonialism

Introduction

The article takes up the arguments pro and contra reparations, links the discussion to the colonization of the mind, provides an economic model to calculate the amount that has to be paid to colonized countries for reparations and develops a strategy for the struggle for reparations. [1]

What are reparations?

There are two types of reparations. One type is about material (monetary) and immaterial compensation for historical injustice. That is how reparations are conceived in the current popular discourse. But there is another one which has the opposite meaning: imposing monetary payments on parties that were defeated in war; in many cases the wars were acts of historical injustice.

In the latter case the parties that are involved in reparations are states. Reparations are paid by the state that has lost the war to the state that has won the war. There are three rationales behind these reparations. The first is to repair of the damage caused by the war. The second is the punishment of the defeated state. The third is the amount due for the costs of keeping an occupying army and administration in the defeated state to ensure payment of reparations.

The rest of this article deals with the first form of reparations: compensation for historical injustice.

The arguments against reparations

Whenever victims of crimes of colonialism, especially the black communities, bring up the issue of reparations, there is a list of arguments produced by adversaries against reparations. This is more or less the list.

  1. There is no direct relationship between harm and compensation: the victims are already dead.
  2. A person cannot inherit the guilt of the perpetrators of a crime.
  3. Black people owe reparations to white people for the civilizing work of white people.
  4. Blacks should pay whites for reparation because whites abolished slavery.
  5. Africans should pay reparations to blacks in the Americas for their role in the trans-Atlantic slavery.
  6. The amount for reparations is so huge that it is not worth considering.
  7. There is no use in giving money to the former colonies because of corruption and inefficiency.
  8. There are more important issues in the world than reparations.
  9. Reparations should address modern day slavery and not the slavery of the past.
  10. It took place a long time ago: let us forget it.
  11. Let us forget the past and focus on the future.
  12. The issue of reparations creates divisions in society.
  13. A call for reparations is emotionally devastating because it raises false hopes that will never be fulfilled.
  14. Reparations have already been paid (in the case of the USA with the Civil Rights Act)
  15. The West has already been paying for reparations through decades of development aid programs so there is no need for a new program of reparations

These arguments were never invoked when reparations were paid to the perpetrators of historical injustice. Some examples:

  1. The Haitian revolution (1791-1804). The French never accepted the victory of the Haitian Revolution. In 1825, the French came with 14 warships and 528 cannons and presented Haiti with the choice: pay 150 million gold francs as reparations and get recognition of Haiti as a free nation by France and other European nations or face economic blockade, starvation, war and the reinstatement of slavery. The amount was equivalent to a whole year of Haiti´s revenues. Haiti accepted unwillingly. They were forced to borrow the amount from French banks who charged a 6% interest rate for their loans. Haiti finished paying reparations to France in 1947.
  2. The British, French and Dutch enslavers got reparations with the legal abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. In the UK it amounted to 20 million British pounds. The criminals got compensation for their so-called loss of property.
  3. Another case where criminals got compensation was the case of the Opium Wars in China. British drugs dealers with the help of the British state forced China in the Opium Wars (1839-1842/1856-1860) to import drugs and get millions of Chinese addicted. China had to pay for the costs of the wars: US$ 21 million.
  4. When Indonesia won their independence from the Dutch in 1949 after a bloody war in which the Dutch killed 150.000 Indonesians, the Indonesians under the pressure of the Americans had to pay NF 6,5 billion to the Dutch. Indonesia paid NF 4 billion between 1950 and 1956, which is more that the aid of the Marshall plan that the Dutch got from the United States after World War II.

Reparations and Decolonizing The Mind (DTM)

These cases of reparations are not brought up in the public debate whenever there is a passionate discussion about reparations. The facts are not well know. Why? It is a matter of the colonizing the mind.

Colonialism is a global system of oppression, exploitation and dehumanization in five dimensions: economic, social, political, cultural and geographical. The mechanisms for setting up and maintaining this system are diverse and vary from brutal violence, military occupation and repression to cultural and educational institutions that produce lies about inferiority and superiority of people along the line of race and culture. One mechanism in the colonization of the mind is the organization of amnesia for historical injustice committed by colonialism. Organizing amnesia means that historical injustices committed by the colonizer are intentionally pushed out of the public memory and replaced by discussions on either the benevolence of colonialism or on the ridiculousness of bringing historical injustice to the table. In the case of reparations the constant repetition of the arguments against reparations are combined with the intentional silence on cases where reparations have been paid to whites. It is also a form of intimidation by ridiculing the arguments for reparations for the crimes of colonialism.

The arguments for reparations

The DTM concept of historical injustice

There are two aspects to the DTM concept of historical injustice. The first is the aspect of injustice. There are crimes committed by one community or groups of communities (the perpetrators) that impacted other communities (the victims). A community can be a state or groups of states. It can also be a nation: an ethnic group with common historical, social, cultural and in some cases biological traits. The crime is not related to an individual as a perpetrator (Hitler) but a community or state as a perpetrator (Nazi Germany). The injustice is inflicted not upon individuals as individuals, but on a individuals as part of a community. The injustice was related to their community to which they belong.

The second aspect of the concept of historical injustice is the nature of the historical legacy of the crimes that have been committed. The legacy of the crime has different dimensions:

  • Economic dimension: the gravest crime is the theft of land. Since the start of colonialism (with 1492 as a marker) Western nations have occupied and stolen land of communities of colour all over the world. In many part of the world where land was stolen from the indigenous communities there are struggles going one to recover that land, in some cases with success. In Canada the indigenous people are called the First Nations. They are engaged in a long struggle to regain their land titles. In 1996, the Canadian government had received 745 claims. Some were settled by negotiation, some by litigation and some were rejected. Subsequently, First Nations and the Canadian government are still fighting on the issue. In 1999, the First Nations Land Management Act was enacted as a federal law. It transferred administration of land to First Nations. This includes the authority to enact laws with respect to land, the environment, and most resources. It was the first step for a First Nation to assume control over its reserve lands, resources and the environment. Its great value became clear when oil and gas companies wanted to build pipelines. They had to deal with the First Nations.
    In Africa many Africans have lost their land to white Europeans and are still in the process of reclaiming their land. In Zimbabwe a major land reform program in 2000-2002, distributed large tracks of land from white farmers to the local Black population.
  • Social dimension: The genocide committed in the Americas against the indigenous people changed the social structure of their society. Settler colonialism brought alien communities from Europe and constructed a racially hierarchy that exists till today. The kidnapping and forced migration of Africans during the trans-Atlantic slavery deprived Africa of its young labour force and contributed to the underdevelopment of this continent. In the America’s slavery and institutional racism have created communities of colour that are treated as second class citizens in the USA, Brazil and the rest of North and South America.
  • Political dimension: the political legacy of historical injustice is the use of instruments of control which exist until today such as disenfranchisement, police brutality and the prison industrial complex.
  • Cultural dimension: this is probably the most complex and most lasting legacy of historical injustice: the colonization of the mind. It impacts the mind of the communities of perpetrators and the communities of victims. It involves a broad range of aspects from the production of knowledge and lies to the dissemination of knowledge and lies through education, media and culture. There are mechanism in the colonization of the mind that are used in the arguments against reparations.

Evaluating the arguments against reparations

Let us evaluate the arguments against reparations with the DTM concept of historical injustice. Many arguments use mechanisms of the colonization of the mind.[2]

The following arguments uses the concept of an individual instead of a community.

  1. There is no direct relationship between harm and compensation: the victims are already dead.
  2. A person cannot inherit the guilt of the perpetrators of a crime.

From the DTM concept of historical justice reparations regards the living communities, not the dead individuals. There is a direct relationship between harm and compensation because the communities are not dead. A community can inherit the guilt of the perpetrators because the perpetrators are not individuals but economic, social, political and cultural institutions that still exist.

One mechanism of the colonization of the mind is the presentation of a crime as a benefit. Arguments 3 and 4 use this mechanism.

  1. Black people owe reparations to white people for the civilizing work of white people.
  2. Blacks should pay whites for reparation because whites abolished slavery.

The argument that colonialism was a civilizing mission of white Europeans and whites abolished slavery is a misrepresentation of historical facts. The abolition of slavery by Europeans was not an act of benevolence. It is like saying: “Thank you for not raping me anymore”.

The next argument uses the mechanism whereby the guilt of the collaborators of a crime is put on the shoulders of the victim.

  1. Africans should pay reparations to blacks in the Americas for their role in the trans-Atlantic slavery.

In the case of the trans-Atlantic slavery the perpetrators are white Europeans that have set up a system of kidnapping Africans for the plantations in the Americas. This system made use of African collaborators. During the Holocaust Jewish collaborators were used by the Nazi’s in organizing the arrest and transport of Jews in occupied Holland, France and Belgium to the killing fields in Eastern Europe. It would be shocking and immoral to argue that because of these collaborators Jews should pay reparations for other Jews.

Arguments 6 to 13 use the mechanism of shifting the focus from relevant to irrelevant topics.

  1. The amount for reparations is so huge that it is not worth considering.
  2. There is no use in giving money to the former colonies because of corruption and inefficiency.
  3. There are more important issues in the world than reparations.
  4. Reparations should address modern day slavery and not the slavery of the past.
  5. It took place a long time ago: let us forget it.
  6. Let us forget the past and focus on the future.
  7. The issue of reparations creates divisions in society.
  8. A call for reparations is emotionally devastating because it raises false hopes that will never be fulfilled.

The relevant topic is: how to deal with historical injustice. Argument 6 explicitly states why the focus should be shifted. Argument 7 uses a possible fear not as a means to discuss proper ways of paying reparations, but as an argument for not paying it at all. Arguments 8 to 13 just shift the focus without explaining why.

The last two arguments require a model for the calculation of material reparations:

  1. Reparations have already been paid (in the case of the USA with the Civil Rights Act)
  2. The West has already been paying for reparations through decades of development aid programs so there is no need for a new program of reparations

A model for calculation

How much should the Western states that were the perpetrators of the crimes of colonialism pay to the victims? I have developed an economic model to make a rough calculation.

This model can be used by the researchers supporting the communities of color to calculate the amount that a specific state has to pay to the communities they have colonized.

The calculation consists of five elements that everybody with common sense can agree upon:

  1. If you build an enterprise on land that is not yours, you should pay rent

You don’t set up a business  on a property in London, Paris or Amsterdam without asking permission  from the person owning the land and without negotiating about the rent you should pay. Colonization was the conquest of land that did not belong  to the Europeans. In our model we take the areas in km2 that the colonizer has occupied without paying for rent and specify the rent that should be paid per year.

  1. If you take goods that are not yours, you should pay for them

You don’t steal, you buy. This principle is vested in religion and morality of all civilizations, including the West. One of the ten commandments of the Bible is: “Thou shalt not steal.” We should draw up a list of commodities in the colonies that have been stolen or not properly paid for. We should make estimates about the volume, price and value per year of the amount that has been stolen or not properly paid for.

  1. If somebody performs labor on your behalf, you should pay a proper wage for his or her services

If a painter comes to paint your house, you give him of her a decent payment. What is decent is negotiable but the principle that labor is not free is generally accepted, even in the West. The colonizer has used forced labor in the colonies. Make an estimate per year of the number of people who had to perform forced labor in that year and the number of hours they had to work per day. Check what the average wage was in Europe for the type of labor that was performed and the averaged number of working hours per day. With these data you can calculate the amount of unpaid or underpaid wages that the colonizer owes to the people they have colonized.

  1. If you intentionally (or even unintentionally) cause injury to an individual or a community, you should pay financial compensation for the injury

In the case of an individual the injury can vary from emotional injury (stress from forced labor or kidnapping) to injury in property and body, and even death. In the case of a community, the injury consists in the annihilation of social institutions, the destruction of human dignity and the suppression of basic human rights. Under point three the data were collected on the number of people that were forced to perform forced or underpaid labor per year. We can add to these numbers the number of the total population they represent and make an estimate based on the number of persons per family. We have the total number of individuals per year that should receive compensation for injury. Look at the practice of the law in the colonizers country and take the court cases that paid financial compensation for injury. Make an estimate of what the colonizer has to pay per year for compensation for injury.

  1. If you have a debt, you should pay interest

This is an accepted principle in economics and morality in the West. If you are a Muslim, you might argue that interest is forbidden in Islam, so no interest can be charged. But the European states are Christians or atheists. In the case of reparations for Haiti the French used 6% as the interest rate.

Base on these assumptions I drew up the following economic model to calculate the amount of reparations.

(1) rRent(y) = (qRent(y) * pRent (y))*(1+i) ^(cyear-y)

(2) sRent= SUM(rRent(y))

(3) rGood(x,y) = (qGood(x,y) * pGood(x,y)) *(1+i) ^( cyear-y)

(4) sGood(x)= SUM(rGood(x,c))

(5) sGood = SUM(sGood(x)

(6) rWage(y) = (Wage(y) * wPerson(y))*(1+i) ^( cyear-y)

(7) rWage= SUM(rWage(y))

(8) rHumsuf(y) = (Humsuf(y) * hPerson(y))*(1+i) ^( pyear-cyear)

(9) rHumsuf= SUM(rHumsuf(y))

(10) rTotal(y) = rRent(y) + rGood(y) + rWage(y) + rHumSuf(y)

(11) rTotal = SUM(rTotal(y))

Explanation of the variables:

  • y = a particular year.
  • i = interest rate (%).
  • qRent(y): the surface in km2 in year y.
  • pRent(y): the price per km2 in US$ in year y.
  • cyear: the year of today (2020) to calculate the current value of the amount.
  • rRent(y): the rent that had to be paid in year y in the current value
  • sRent: the sum of the rent of all the years
  • qGood(x,y): the quantity of a good x that was stolen in year y.
  • pGood(x,y): the price of a good x that was stolen in year y.
  • sGood(x): the sum of the amount of good x for all the years in the current value.
  • sGood: the sum of the amount of all goods.
  • Wage(y): the annual wage that was not paid in year y per person per year.
  • wPerson(y): the number of persons that should have received the annual wage in that year.
  • rWage(y): the amount of wages that should have been paid to all persons in a year in the current value.
  • rWage: the sum of all unpaid wages in the current value.
  • Humsuf(y): the amount that should have been paid for human suffering to a person in one year.
  • hPerson(y): the number of persons in a year that should have received compensation for human suffering in the current value.
  • rHumsuf: the sum of the total amount for human suffering for all the years and all the persons
  • rTotal(y) = the total of the amount for rent, stolen goods, unpaid wages and human suffering in a year.
  • rTotal: the total amount that pas to be paid for reparations.

These formulas can be used in a spreadsheet or in a computer program. Whatever means we use, the resulting amount is astronomical.

I developed a computer program that used the following values for the variables:

  • Rent: for the rent of land and water I used US $ 10 per square km at the start of colonization and an increase of US $ 0.50 per year till the end of colonization. The periods of colonization differed per region.
  • Stolen good: for stolen goods I have only taken figures for gold and silver that were stolen from Latin America. The start production of gold was 8,000 kg per year with an annual increment of 2 kg, a starting price of US $ 3,000 per kg and an increment of US $ 10. For silver the starting quantity was 300,000 kg with an annual increment of 200 kg, a starting price of US$ 80 per kg and an annual increment of US $ 1.
  • Unpaid wages: for unpaid wages I used US $ 0,01 per hour for a working day of 10 hours and 313 working days in a year) at the start of colonization. That is US $ 31,30 for a whole year. The increase per year of the annual wage is US $ 0.01.
  • Human suffering: for the compensation for human suffering I have US $ 1,00 per person and an annual increase of US $ 0,01.
  • Interest: in one variant I used an interest rate of 0% (variant I). In another variant I use the interest rate of 3%, which is half of rate that France imposed on Haiti for reparations (variant II).

For the purpose of simulation the values of the variables can be chosen randomly. How would be the result of the calculation if put the value to X or Y? But the values can also be based on specific research, for example the goods that have been stolen or the demographic development of specific communities.

I have made a reference point to assess the amount that has to be paid by the colonizers: the total GDP of the colonizers countries in 2013, which was US $ 30,980,662,000,000 (US $ 30 trillion) for Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and USA.

The result is that in variant I (interest rate is 0%) the amount for reparations in 2013 was US $ 10,759,777,102,101 (10 trillion dollars); that is 0.3 times the total GDP of the colonizers in 2013. In variant II (interest rate is 3%) the debt grows exponentially to US $ 321,090,670,376,971,000 (US $ 321 quadrillion), that is 10,364 times the total colonizers GDP.

The significance of the simulation is twofold. First, it shows the inconceivable damage that colonization has caused upon the colonized communities and the unimaginable debt that rests on the shoulders of the colonizer as a legacy of colonialism. Second, some writers argue that colonialism was a burden rather than a profit for the colonizer. It does not take into account the crime of stealing land, products and labor and the compensation for human suffering. Our model shows that if colonizers would have acted as decent human beings rather than as criminals it would have been impossible to develop their wealth. The global world system would be radically different with the West ending up being poor and the rest would have developed their economy and society to a higher level.

Immaterial reparations

Reparations for historical injustice has an immaterial component. The damage that colonialism has inflicted on the colonized communities has to do with the quality of life that cannot be expressed in statistics. One example is the question of identity. In the African American community the issue was addressed by the Nation of Islam. They have rejected the enslaver’s names and replaced them with an X, the symbol for the unknown variable in mathematics. Malcolm X is a famous example. Eventually the “X” was replaced with an Arabic name that is more descriptive of a person’s personality and character. Malcolm X took the name El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. The process of reclaiming one’s African identity is a form of repairing the damage inflicted upon the identity of individuals from an community.

Colonialism has created a superiority complex in white people and inferiority complex in people of color. That has far reaching consequences in the economic, social, political and cultural dimensions of society. How do we repair the damage that was done in knowledge production where racist theories were propagated about the superiority of white people and the inferiority of people of color? How is racism expressed in education of public memory (statues) and what does reparation means? Bringing down the statues of superiority? Changing the text books in the educational system? Redesigning museums?

A strategy for reparations

Premises

I present an outline for a strategy in the struggle for reparations that is based on the following premises:

  1. The struggle is not a tea party where people chat cozily with each other. It is a process of confrontation with structure of power in all dimensions of society. How to deal with power structures is a crucial part of the strategy.
  2. The process of the struggle is more important that the goals. Obviously, it is very important to set goals, but at the end of the day the process of creating awareness and empowering communities of color is what the struggle for reparations is about.
  3. The struggle for reparations is part of a larger struggle, the fight for a new world civilization that effectively settles the legacy of colonialism.[3]

Goals

I define three main goals in the struggle for reparations:

  1. To force the colonizer states to pay material reparations for historical injustice. Obviously, the amount that should be paid is astronomical. The amount that will be paid will depend on how strong communities of color are in changing the relationship of power between the colonizer and the colonized.
  2. To create global awareness about the historical injustice inflicted by white European states and communities on communities of color that have been colonized in the past five centuries.
  3. To introduce the concept of a new world civilization. The basic tenet of this concept is that colonialism has created a global system of economic, social, political and cultural institutions that threatens life on planet earth, has brought death, misery and despair to the majority of the world population and is filled with in justice. The struggle for reparations is not only about repairing, but also about rebuilding a new world society based on the belief that another, better, world is possible in which the human community can live in peace, harmony, justice and welfare.

These three goals are interrelated.

I will develop a strategy for reparations based on my experience with communities of color in Venezuela. In 2019 I had the privilege to be invited to Caracas to give a course on decolonizing the mind and reparations. The ideas which I present here are a result of the discussions I had with the participants.

Statistics as a flag ship

The material component of reparations provides us with a flag ship in the struggle: a statistic. This is the outrageous amount that is on the table as a representation of the magnitude of the historical injustice that was committed by the West. Suppose that the indigenous and black communities of Venezuela make a calculation of reparations that Spain should be paying. Suppose that the calculation is based on work of historians that have collected the data for the economic model that I have explained above. Suppose that the resulting number is 100 times the GDP of Spain (US$ 1,5 trillion in 2018).

The figure of US$ 150 trillion will become the flagship of the struggle. The communities of color of Venezuela can put the demand on the table in the form of a request to the state of Spain to US$ 150 trillion as reparations for historical injustice. This number will become ingrained in public memory as the representation of the magnitude of the historical injustice that was committed by Spain during the colonization of Venezuela. Of course Spain cannot pay this amount, even if there is a willingness to pay at least some amount. So this request should be followed by an understanding that Spain will not be able to pay the whole amount, so it is now a matter of public negotiation. Spain has to make a move and state what amount it can and will pay.

One might argue that we should put a realistic number for a reparation claim, a number that can actually can be paid, which might be a few million dollars. This sounds reasonably if the primary goal is to get monetary payments. The downside of this argument is the acceptance that the amount that is actually paid is an accurate representation of the magnitude of the historical injustice that was committed. That would be really outrageous and go against the other goal of creating awareness about the nature of the crimes of colonialism.

Probably the most likely response from Spain will be to neglect the request and a refusal to discuss any claim.

Then other means of resistance will come in place.

Law fare

Law is an expression of the moral principles and power structures in a society. In 2006 the then prime-minister of Britain, Tony Blair, expressed his ignorance about this principle, when he declared the government’s position on the trans-Atlantic enslavement: “It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time.”[4] It is not hard to believe that a crime was legal if you concede that criminals can make laws. Law is not made by nature or gods, but by human beings. At that time criminals were in power in Europe as heads of state and in government administrations. These criminals had a different moral than their victims. So it is not a case of different morals in different times, but different morals at the same time for different human beings. If criminals get state power, naturally they will constitute a legal system that enables them to sustain their criminal acts and make it legal to kidnap, enslave, exploit and oppress people. In Europe it was illegal to enslave white people in Europe, yet at the same time it was perfectly legal to enslave Black people in their colonies.

Law can be an instrument of struggle and a form of warfare: lawfare. When the colonizer controls the judicial institution it uses them do deny justice to the victims of colonialism. However, the pretense that the judicial system is not biased, can sometimes create avenues to use the court as an instrument to put the struggle on the social and political agenda.

In the case of Venezuela the first actor to be brought to the court is the Spanish state. But because its monarchy was the head of the state and the monarchy still exists in Spain as well as in other colonizers country such as Britain, Holland and Belgium, it is logical to also bring the monarchy to the court.

The court case can start locally like the case of Israel’s former Defense minister Ariel Sharon in Belgian courts. Sharon led the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. On September 18, 1982, 2,000 – 6,000 Palestinians were systematically murdered in Sabra and Shatila by Lebanese extremists with the support of Israel. In 2001, 23 Lebanese and Palestinian survivors of the massacre filed a law suit against Ariel Sharon in Belgium. Under a Belgium law, Belgian courts could prosecute foreigners for certain offences committed abroad. The case looked promising, but then the USA stepped in to support Israel. They told the Belgian Government that if their legal authorities were planning to continue with the process, the NATO headquarters in Brussels would be moved out of Belgium. This shocked the Belgians. The Belgium parliament hastened to change the law. It adopted changes that created barriers for future plaintiffs, such as provisions that a plaintiff or victim should have lived in Belgium for a minimum of three years.

The whole process was a big distress for the Zionists, the imperialism powers and its advocates. That process was already a big gain for the social movements against the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

If the Spanish king is brought to court in a trial in Venezuela and the court would decide to rule in favor of the social movements, the conviction is a big distress, irrespective of the fact whether the king well ever go to prison.

Uniting the plantations

Much discussion on reparation was focused on the African-American community in the USA. It has a long history in that country. At the end of the Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman issued a famous military order to confiscate 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) of land along the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida and divide it into 40 acres (0.16 km2) parcels to 18,000 freed slave families and other Blacks living in those areas. The order could not be enforced because President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln after his assassination, revoked the order. The idea is known as forty acres and a mule.

In 1992, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) set up a body of eminent persons to explore the modalities and strategies of an African campaign for restitution similar to the compensation paid by Germany to Israel and to survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. The group’s work has not borne much fruit.

In 2004, the African Union adopted an Action Plan 2004-2005 with a recommendation on reparations to debate the issue of slavery in all African parliaments with the objective to declare slavery a crime against humanity and discuss the nature of reparations. In 2009, the then president of the African Union Muammar al-Qadhafi stated in a speech during the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, that Africa deserves reparations, which amounts to US$ 7.77 trillion for the resources and wealth stolen in the past. He also declared that colonization should be criminalized and that people should be compensated for the suffering endured during the reign of colonial powers.

In July 2013 the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) made a call for reparations as an integral element of the Community’s development strategy. The Commission declared that it seeks reparatory dialogue with the former slave-owning states of Europe, which were enriched by these crimes, with a view to seeking their support for the eradication of the legacy that serves to subvert the development efforts of national societies. And although the Commission states that this dialogue should be conducted in a diplomatic, conciliatory, and morally uplifting fashion, consistent with the reparatory search for social justice and human decency, they also have hired a British law firm Leigh Day to sue their former colonizers.

In 2015 Shashi Tharoor, an Indian member of parliament for the Indian National Congress, argued the case that Britain should pay reparations to India in The Oxford Union debate that was held on 28 May 2015. His argument received wide attention. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, declared in parliament on July 23 2015: “Tharoor’s speech reflected the feelings of patriotic Indians on the issue and showed what impression one can leave with effective arguments by saying the right things at the right place.”[5]

As the question of reparations is not limited to one part of the colonized world it is makes sense to connect these struggles. Europeans have set up plantations in the colonized world and kept the colonized communities divided. The struggle for reparations is a struggle to united the plantations. That is a core part of the strategy for reparations.

Historiography, consciousness and a new world civilization

The struggle for reparations is a struggle for redressing historical injustice. A big part of the struggle is about how the canon about colonialism is being written. Colonial historians have presented colonialism as the white man’s burden and an attempt of Europeans to civilize the uncivilized world. Colonialism was called modernity, a phase in which human civilization reached its apex thanks to the work of white Europeans and their role in the rise of science, technology and economic growth.

The decolonial movement that have risen during the last two decades across the world regards colonialism as the nadir of human civilization. Colonialism is the downfall of human civilization with genocide, occupation, enslavement and atrocities committed by white people. It transferred massive wealth from the colonies to the colonizer and create a world full of injustice, crime and the colonization of the mind.

Reparations is not only about repairing a world of injustice, but also about rebuilding a new world civilization. The historiography, the canon of history, will be radically different from the current canon that is taught in the educational system and is based on the lies that European historians and their coloured disciples have produced. It does away with amnesia. It celebrates the resistance against colonialism. It rebuilds a new decolonial knowledge and new economic, social, political and cultural institutions on a global level. This vision of a new world civilization is a crucial part of a strategy for reparations.

Organization

Finally, a strategy for reparations is not based on a single organizational framework. State institutions of the colonized countries can play a role. Social movements can play a role. Academics can play a role. A decolonial strategy should be based on encouraging all forms of organization and promote cooperation, debates and discussion among the peole and organizations fighting for reparations. As in all other social movement there is a general agreement to fight for something but many differences about specific goals, strategy and tactics. By working together in an atmosphere of dignity and respect it is possible to create a broad front in the struggle for reparations.

Sandew Hira

Secretary of the DIN Foundation

The Hague, 14-3-2021

[1] This article is based on the book that I have published on reparations. Sandew Hira: 20 Questions and Answers on Reparations for Colonialism. Amrit Publishers. The Hague, 2014. The arguments on Decolonizing The Mind is based on the forthcoming book: Sandew Hira: Decolonizing The Mind. Imagining a new world civilization. Amrit Publishers. The Hague, 2021.

[2] The mechanisms of the colonization of the mind are developed in the forthcoming publication Sandew Hira (2021).

[3] The concept of a new world civilization is elaborated upon in my forthcoming publication.

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/nov/26/race.immigrationpolicy. Accessed 18-10-2020.

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/24/indian-prime-minister-modi-endorses-britain-paying-damages-for-colonial-rule. Accessed 18-10-2020.

Police intimidation in Finland: the attack against Dr. Faith Mkwesha

Dr. Faith Mkwesha, Chief Executive Director and Founder of www.sahwira-africa.org, an anti-racist organization and partner of the Decolonial International Network, has been intimidated by the police in Finland. Her son, who is black was with his friend who is white, at the train station when the security service violently attacked her son. The Finnish friend took a video that Dr. Mkwesha shared on her own social media-  Facebook. Dr. Mkwesa started a campaign against the racist treatment of her son by police and security services on her own social media.

She was summoned  to appear before the police on Febraury 22 2021 for interrogation. She was accused of slunder of the police and security services. Mkwesha: “l see this as intimidation and harassment by the security and police to silence me as a mother and an active activist in Finland. I need support  to tell the police to stop that investigation on a victim of racism, racial violence and bullying. We call the Finnish government to stop racism, racial profiling and and protect immigrants, ant-black hate, racism to all people of colour and religions like Moslims.  Free speech and equality and human rights must be protected for all.”

The Decolonial International Network denounces the intimidation behavior of the police and security services. We call upon members of the Finnish parliament to defend freedom of speech. We will closely follow the proceedings against Dr. Mkwesha and will call for mobilization of democratic forces in Finland and internationally against repression of black people and their democratic rights.

Dr Mkwesha is seeking legal support to defend herself against these accusations. Help her with a donation: https://www.gofundme.com/f/solidarity-with-faith?member=9145618&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

Sandew Hira

Decolonial International Foundation

Come for one of us, come for us all!: Anticolonialist Jews to G.W. Goldnadel

It has come to our attention that the French-Israeli lawyer, G.W. Goldnadel, has threatened to take the decolonial activist Houria Bouteldja to court for having written ‘it is not possible to be innocently Israeli’ in a text condemning antisemitism and discussing how it is produced and spread. Some interpreted this as fallacious and others incorrectly deemed it to be essentialising. From the vantage point of the anticolonial literary and political tradition, the application of this expression to Israelis has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious essence but is produced by collective social and power relations. As anticolonialist Jews of different nationalities, including Israeli, we agree with Bouteldja’s words which speak for us as it did for several generations of anticolonialists before us. It is because one cannot be innocently Israeli that Avraham Burg requested that the record of his Jewish nationality be effaced from the national registry of the State of Israel after the passage of the Nation-State Law.[1] It is because one cannot be innocently Israeli that brave Israeli citizens struggle against the colonial politics of the state and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. It is because no one can innocently accept the reality of colonialism that sixty young Israelis have just refused to serve in the occupying army.[2] It is because it is impossible to be innocently Israeli that the human rights organisation, B’Tselem, recently denounced Israel’s ‘regime of Jewish supremacy’ and Apartheid.[3] As the Tunisian Jewish writer Albert Memmi wrote, ‘the colonial reality is not a pure idea: it is an ensemble of real-life conditions. Refusing to see this means either physically surrendering to these conditions or fighting to transform them.’ The responsibility of Israelis in Palestine in the face of this colonial reality is obvious to the anticolonial activists there who bear witness to the fact that neither it nor the murderous identities it produces can be overlooked. Committed to freedom, this responsibility paves the way to the dignity that each human being aspires to. In a world drifting ever further into more authoritarian and inequitable rule, the fight for dignity comes at an increasingly higher cost. The rancid atmosphere that has been created powerfully penetrates a growing number of political schools and media organisations. The campaigns of intimidation and defamation such as those targeting Houria Bouteldja should be alarming to anyone worried about the retreat of democracy. The tactics of censuring an activist they wish to silence and of isolating and discrediting her, both within and beyond the public sphere, reminds us of those of our antisemitic oppressors. These are the methods of those brown-shirted forces of tragic years past. The onslaughts they wage in the media leave no one out, including members of the French Union of Jews for Peace, who they call ‘shameful Jews’ and who they try to have excluded from public debate. We French, Israeli, Belgian, US-American, British, Australian, and North African Jews, walking in the footsteps of the warriors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, of the workers’ movement, of the European Resistance fighters, or of the struggle for anticolonial liberation reject these cabals who, in the name of defeating antisemitism, are in fact involved in obscuring its understanding as a form of racism. Instead they generate an antisemitic amalgamation of Jews and Israelis. It is because the decolonial movement takes the fight again antisemitism seriously, without disconnecting it from the anticolonial struggle, that it is denounced today by the biggest reactionaries in the French political sphere. But it is for this very reason that the decolonial movement is a part of our family and vice versa. We therefore demand that, if G.W. Goldnadel wish to pursue any legal proceedings against Houria Bouteldja that he come for us as well.

 

 

Gil Anidjar, professeur, Columbia University, New York / Etats-Unis

Simon Assoun, militant antiraciste, éducateur spécialisé / France

Ariella Azoulay, Professor of Modern Culture & Media and Comparative Literature / Etats-Unis

Rudi Barnet, metteur en scène, créateur de «Une Saison au Congo» de Aimé Césaire en 1967 et du festival “50ème Droits!” / Belgique

Haim Bresheeth, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London / Israélien, Royaume-Uni

Rivkah Brown, Vashti Media, London / Royaume-Uni

James Cohen, professeur d’université, /France

Laurent Cohen, Ijan / Espagne

Liliane Cordova Kaczerginski, Ijan / Espagne

Jordy Cummings, lecturer and Trade Unionist,  York University / Canada

Sonia Fayman, UJFP / France

Caroline Gay, comédienne / France

Henri Goldman / Belgique

Jean-Guy Greilsamer, UJFP, issu d’une famille victime des nazis et de la collaboration / France

Ramon Grosfoguel, professeur d’université / Etats-Unis

Georges Gumpel, Militant anticolonialiste, Partie Civile au procès de Klaus Barbie / France

Gabriel Hagai, Rabbin / Israélien, France

Aaron Jaffe, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Liberal Arts, The Juilliard School, New York / Etats-Unis

Sara Kershnar. Coordinatrice internationale de IJAN

David Landy, Trinity College Dublin / Irlande

Ronit Lentin, Trinity College Dublin (retired) / Israélienne, Irlande

Alana Lentin, universitaire / Australie

Zachary Levenson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina / Etats-Unis

Les Levidow, Senior Research Fellow, Open University / Royaume-Uni

Daniel Levyne, UJFP / France

Yosefa Loshitzky, SOAS University of London / Israélien, Royaume-Uni

Joëlle Marelli, traductrice / France

Anat Matar

Jean-Claude Meyer, Juif alsacien et antisioniste, dont le père a été fusillé par les nazis le 14 juillet 1944 et dont la famille a été déportée et tuée à Auschwitz, UJFP / France

Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, NYU / Etats-Unis

Dominique Natanson, animateur du site Mémoire Juive & Education / France

Atalia Omer, Senior Fellow, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School / Etats-Unis

Charles Post, City University of New York / Etats-Unis

Ben Ratskoff, Editor-in-Chief of PROTOCOLS / Etats-Unis

Michael Richmond, Jewish writer, London / Royaume-Uni

Brant Rosen, Rabbin, Tzedek Chicago / Etats-Unis

Simona Sharoni 

Richard Silverstein, journalist, Tikun Olam / Etats-Unis

Santiago Slabodsky, Jewish Studies Professor / Argentina / Etats-Unis

Stephen Suffern, avocat aux barreaux de Paris et de New York / France

Marianne Van Leeuw-Koplewicz, éditrice / Belgique

Michel Warschawski, militant anticolonialiste / Israël

[1] Https://www.francepalestine.org/Un-descendant-de-l-aristocratie-sioniste-veut-quitter-le-peuple-juif-Israel-le

[2] https://ujfp.org/nous-prenons-nos-responsabilitessoixante-jeunes-annoncent-leur-refus-de-servir-dans-larmee-israelienne/

[3] https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_e ng.pdf

 

A decolonial view on the storming of Capitol Hill

Sandew Hira,
January 8, 2021[*]

Introduction

The storming of Capitol Hill, the seat of the US government, on January 6 2021 by Trump supporters is a historical event that tells us a lot about where we stand in world history. Many analysts focus on the unprecedented nature of the action and the role of Donald Trump in sabotaging the American democratic system. Van Jones, a CNN political commentator, explained one of the techniques of sabotage in his TED talk titled What if a US presidential candidate refuses to concede after an election?. If Trump would decide not to concede, this might open the door to violence, which is what happened on January 6 2021.

Two months earlier, Ramon Grosfoguel and I, spent two sessions in our decolonial dialogues (session 4 and session 5) to put the 2020 presidential elections in a historical perspective. This article builds on that analysis.

In the dominant media the storming of Capitol Hill is narrated as a crazy action of extremist followers of a lunatic president. I will argue that this event is not an incident but a rational expression of a process of the rise of an extreme right-wing political class in the USA in the context of the decline of USA as an imperial power that is willing to risk extreme violent means to stop this decline. That class is not only located in the Republican Party, but is also there in Democratic Party. The storming of Capitol Hill is just a prelude of worst things that will follow in the coming decades.

The rise of the US empire

The US empire took off after the war with Spain in 1898, whereby America got control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. It dealt the final blow to the Spanish empire. But much the world was still controlled by the old empires: England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany with England and France as the main protagonists. After World War II these states lost their power to the USA and became subservient to the new master of the universe.

The American empire developed an enormous economic power based initially on agriculture and industry but later more on technology. Its multinationals roamed the world for raw materials and minerals. America became the largest economy in the world. It had the highest income per capita. It had the best institutes for research and development.

With its economic power came its military and cultural power. The empire established 800 military basis across the globe. The military industrial complex in cooperation with the tech-companies built the most advanced weapons systems and infrastructure for intelligence services. They engaged in wars and military coup to crush popular resistance against imperialism and ensure the establishment of loyal regimes.

Its cultural elite in cooperation with the cultural infrastructure of media and educational institutions were successful in colonizing the mind. American textbooks are used in all westernized universities in the whole world.  American fast food and cultural icons (music, art) have become global food and global icons.

It was all realized in less than a century and it lasted for less than a century. Because in the last quarter of the 20th century the decline of the American empire had began. Compared to other empires that lasted for hundreds or thousands of years the American empire is one of the shortest living empires.

The decline of the American empire

The decline of the American empire is manifested on four terrains:

  1. The relative decline of its economic and cultural power compared to other countries in the world, the rise of the rest notably China. China is rapidly surpassing as the largest economy in the world. American media are not the only media in the world. There CNN-type of media in all parts of the world. Scientific knowledge is produced outside of the West.
  2. The absolute decline of its economic and cultural power. American technology is now lagging behind Chinese technology. The educational of level of American students has declined in terms of their math and reading scores.
  3. The decline of its military power. Different countries were able to defy American military power for a sustainable period of time. The empire suffered its first loss in its backyard with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. In 1975 the national liberation movement of Vietnam chased the American army out of their country. In 1979 the Islamic movement under the leadership of Khomeini brought down America’s biggest client state down. In Venezuela the Chavistas took and hold power since 1999.
  4. The decline within the country of white power. The total population of the USA will grow from 323 million in 2016 to 355 million in 2030 till 404 million in 2060. The share of non-Hispanic whites (the descendant fro the European colonial powers) will decline from 61% to 44% in 2060. Within forty years whites will become a demographic minority in the USA! The fastest growing group are the Hispanics. Their will increase from 18% in 2016 to 27% in 2060, which is larger than the share of African Americans (from 13% to 15%). The demographic changes bring social and political changes that result in a decline of white power in the US.

An empire in decline create a crazy world

What happens when an empire goes into decline? Basically there are two scenario’s:

  1. The ruling class accepts the decline and thus accepts the authority of the new power that replaces the empire.
  2. The ruling class refuses to accept the decline and ultimately uses all means necessary to ensure its hegemony, even the most crazy means than can endanger life on the planet.

We are living in the second scenario. The rise of Trump should not be seen as the rise of an individual with crazy intentions. It is the rise of a section of the ruling class, a fascist section, that is willing to go where nobody else dared to go.

Currently there are four regions in the world where the US empire is engaged in a struggle to maintain its hegemony:

  1. China with the Chinese South Sea Island, Hongkong and Taiwan as areas of confrontation.
  2. West Asia (the so called Middle East) with Iran, Syria, Yemen and Israel as areas of confrontation
  3. Eastern Europe with Russia and Ukraine as areas of confrontation.
  4. Latin America with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia as areas of confrontation.

In all these area the US starts actions that set fires of confrontation. There is a logic behind these actions: if all regular means of control fail, then it is legitimate to use new means that were once beyond imagination. What goes for the struggle outside of the US, also goes for the struggle in the US. That section of the ruling class in the United States that has come to the conclusion that its hegemony cannot be maintained by regular means, is now prepared to take steps that defies common imagination.

They bring new elements into the confrontation. In Venezuela they used a new form of coup d’état. Guaido declare himself an unelected president and subsequently the US empire and it vassals acknowledge this man as president. This was unheard of. A ferocious economic boycott tries to bring down the elected government. The assets of the legitimate government were seized and brought under the control of the unelected president. In West Asia the US is provoking Iran to an all-out war by killing Iran’s most beloved general: Qasem Suleimani. The US wanted Iran to start an all-out war and hoped that the murder of Suleimani would achieve that. Given the status of Suleimani it seemed unthinkable that the US would ever try to actually assassinate him. And yet they did.

Inside the US Trump – as the most outspoken segment of the fascist section – is leading the struggle under the banner “Make America Great Again”. They took control of the Republican Party. In 2016 they succeeded in gaining state power. They set in motion a series of policies that linger on the border of all-out wars, but because of the war weariness in the American population they must be careful in how far they can go. In 2020 they lost control of the government and were prepared to go where no political force in the US dared to go: to bring the possibility of war, in this civil war, to the capital of the nation in order to regain control of state power.

The storming of Capitol Hill was an outcome of the logic of ultimate confrontation. It backfired for the fascist section of the ruling class, because it failed in its objection. But the logic is still there and the processes that have created this logic are still working.

That is why I predict that the storming of Capitol Hill is a prelude of things to come that we cannot image now. For the coming years maybe things might calm down under the presidency of Biden. It will create the illusion that normalcy has been regained. But watch the underlying processes at work in the decline of the US empire. Then you will not be surprised if events unfold which we would not dare to image.

[*] Sandew Hira is secretary of the DIN Foundation. This article is based on the last chapter of his forthcoming book: Decolonizing The Mind.