Prashad is sounding like Chris Hedges.
Miriam
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > From India to France, Millions Are Rising Up Against the Effects of
Western Domination That Still Plague Our Earth
________________________________________
From India to France, Millions Are Rising Up Against the Effects of Western
Domination That Still Plague Our Earth
By Vijay Prashad [1] / AlterNet [2]
August 30, 2016
Colonialism made us feel backward. It was always Europe that was advanced
and enlightened, and it was always the East that was backward and wretched.
Rather than honestly say that they had come to plunder, the colonial rulers
said that they had come to school the East it needed to be civilized.
Every European colonizer used the phrase the French called it mission
civilisatrice, the Portuguese called it missão civilizadora and the English
called it liberalism.
It took an immense effort of political will in the colonies to craft
powerful movements against the colonizer. Different cultures of rule and
resistance marked the battlefields, with some engaged in armed struggle
while others were able to build resistance through non-violent mass action.
But what united all these movements was the deep desire for freedom for a
break from the experience of backwardness.
The deep desire for freedom amongst the masses came in a register that
appeared narrow. In his brilliant book The Wretched of the Earth Frantz
Fanon wrote that the people take their stand from the start on the broad
and inclusive positions of bread and the land: how can we obtain the land,
and bread to eat? The masses make a concrete demand for dignity through
their call for land and for food this is their obstinate point of view,
writes Fanon.
Such a concrete form of dignity had to be denied to the masses. Such a
demand would spell socialism. Any movement that took that position in the
1950s and 1960s had to be cut down. They were fought from Cape Verde to
Malaysia crushed with the full force of colonial violence. Fifty years
ago, the fighters from around the Third World gathered in Cuba to inaugurate
the Tricontinental. They wanted to break the wall built around their
aspirations. None of their movements with the exception of Cuba would
remain intact. Between CIA coups and financial terrorism, their dreams began
to die. What was allowed was flag independence freedom from direct
colonial rule, but what was not allowed was full independence. Backwardness
had to remain intact.
Fanon considers the problem of backwardness as it re-emerges after
independence. The masses victory does not come with the sensation of a new
beginning. They have thrown out the colonizers, but they now find that they
have been robbed of all these things that modernity had promised them
running water, surely, but also freedom of political action. Two or three
years after independence, Fanon writes, the people begin to feel that it
wasnt worth while to fight the colonizers, and that nothing could really
change. Fanon sees this resentment. It marks his text. The enlightened
observer takes note, writes Fanon, of the existence of a kind of
burnt-down house after the fire has been put out, which still threatens to
burst into flames again.
Independence from colonial rule opened a new continent for the darker
nations but it was not enough. It did not give them freedom to craft their
own social and economic agenda. Tentacles controlled from the capitals of
capitalism suffocated their options. Coups and corruption dampened the
enthusiasm to create a new world. It was enough to reduce oneself to a
subcontractor for the former now distantly located colonizer. Old
colonial terms such as comprador, which the Portuguese used in China
defined the subordinated bourgeoisie of the new nations. Their degeneration
was marked by their subservience.
This narrowness was experienced as well in the civil rights movements inside
Europe and North America. Civic rights could be delivered, but political
power and social justice had to be kept off the table. Little wonder then
that the Left in Europe and North America fell prey to the siren of
revolutionary terrorism. So little was allowed inside the structure that
they falsely thought that the answer lay through armed action. They would
also be crushed.
Fanon spots a problem for the racist. During colonial times, the native was
called lazy and slow. But with independence, the masses want change to come
quickly. Now they are disparaged for being impatience, for wanting to move
history too fast. The racist shrugs off the criticism. The racist still has
power over the narrative: the story can change when the racist changes the
story. The masses want to walk on the stage of history, to refuse the term
native. It is this desire that is most wantonly denied.
What are the masses to do? They dream for a while of a Third World Project,
but even that is killed before it can get off the ground. Communism is
denied. Religion is an outlet, and it is indeed where many take refuge. But
even religion is not sufficient. It has its cruelties, its insistence on
narrow social agendas and fatalism. But it is something to grasp in the
desert of human possibilities. Religion is, as a very young Marx wrote, the
soul of soulless conditions. Religious suffering is, at one and the same
time, noted Marx, the expression of real suffering and a protest against
real suffering. When the critique of capitalism from a socialist standpoint
is denied them, it is through religion that the masses find their voice
against suffering in this sense, it is an expression of real suffering.
But because religion does not offer an alternative to the experience of
backwardness, it is also a protest, a scream in the dark, the search for a
hallucination of reality. What is Heaven if not the real longing for an
alternative?
The colonial gaze descends upon women in burkhas or burkinis or in anything
that resembles as far as the colonizer is concerned backwardness. Real
backwardness poverty, disease, illiteracy is set aside. It is the false
backwardness backward religions that must be condemned. This colonizer
sees in the woman a threat to his civilization. He wants to tell her what to
do. She cannot make up her own mind. Not long ago the colonial patriarch
told white women not to wear bikinis. Now the colonial patriarch tells women
to wear bikinis. It is always the colonial patriarch who must decide. He is
the only voice of freedom. It is his mission civilisatrice.
Anger in the banlieues, where the natives live inside France, rises because
real backwardness is unaddressed, but also because the false backwardness is
disrespected. Dignity is more expensive to win than one imagines. Workers go
on strike, and their first demand is often treat us with more dignity. But
the boss does not know what this means. The boss thinks that this is a cheap
demand and nods, yes. But the boss does not realize that dignity is the
hardest of all demands to meet. To meet the demand for dignity requires that
the boss change the conditions of real backwardness. This is not possible
without the boss being erased from history.
In the slums of Athens (Greece) and in the slums of Ferguson (United States)
resentment grows against lives of indignity and suffering. The bosses do not
know how to manage the situation. They turn to the gun. It is easier to hire
more police than to provide enough jobs to erase human misery. The police
stand in for a broken system. They are the dying canaries in the coalmines
of capitalism. Repression becomes normal. The masses respond but only here
and there. The Movement for Black Lives represents the inherent hopefulness
of the United States, while the Spains Juventud Sin Futuro, youth with no
future, suggests the fatality in the Old World. Such forces are united
beneath these differences of temperament by their refusal to accept the
terms of the bosses.
On September 2, one hundred and fifty million Indian workers will go on
strike. The hashtag for this general strike called by most of the
countrys trade unions is #strikehard. It is a powerful symbol of the
resilience of the workers. Twenty-five years of neo-liberalism has pushed
them into a corner less worker rights, a smaller share of the wealth their
labor has produced. Every corner of India will experience this strike. It is
a demand against backwardness.
Chilean students go out on the streets. A woman with her face painted white
like a mime carries a sign that reads No Nos Callarán (We Will Not Be
Silenced). This is the mood. It is a refusal to accept the condition of
backwardness.
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of
the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of
the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns
appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
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Millions Are Rising Up Against the Effects of Western Domination That Still
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Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > From India to France, Millions Are Rising Up Against the Effects of
Western Domination That Still Plague Our Earth
From India to France, Millions Are Rising Up Against the Effects of Western
Domination That Still Plague Our Earth
By Vijay Prashad [1] / AlterNet [2]
August 30, 2016
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Colonialism made us feel backward. It was always Europe that was advanced
and enlightened, and it was always the East that was backward and wretched.
Rather than honestly say that they had come to plunder, the colonial rulers
said that they had come to school the East it needed to be civilized.
Every European colonizer used the phrase the French called it mission
civilisatrice, the Portuguese called it missão civilizadora and the English
called it liberalism.
It took an immense effort of political will in the colonies to craft
powerful movements against the colonizer. Different cultures of rule and
resistance marked the battlefields, with some engaged in armed struggle
while others were able to build resistance through non-violent mass action.
But what united all these movements was the deep desire for freedom for a
break from the experience of backwardness.
The deep desire for freedom amongst the masses came in a register that
appeared narrow. In his brilliant book The Wretched of the Earth Frantz
Fanon wrote that the people take their stand from the start on the broad
and inclusive positions of bread and the land: how can we obtain the land,
and bread to eat? The masses make a concrete demand for dignity through
their call for land and for food this is their obstinate point of view,
writes Fanon.
Such a concrete form of dignity had to be denied to the masses. Such a
demand would spell socialism. Any movement that took that position in the
1950s and 1960s had to be cut down. They were fought from Cape Verde to
Malaysia crushed with the full force of colonial violence. Fifty years
ago, the fighters from around the Third World gathered in Cuba to inaugurate
the Tricontinental. They wanted to break the wall built around their
aspirations. None of their movements with the exception of Cuba would
remain intact. Between CIA coups and financial terrorism, their dreams began
to die. What was allowed was flag independence freedom from direct
colonial rule, but what was not allowed was full independence. Backwardness
had to remain intact.
Fanon considers the problem of backwardness as it re-emerges after
independence. The masses victory does not come with the sensation of a new
beginning. They have thrown out the colonizers, but they now find that they
have been robbed of all these things that modernity had promised them
running water, surely, but also freedom of political action. Two or three
years after independence, Fanon writes, the people begin to feel that it
wasnt worth while to fight the colonizers, and that nothing could really
change. Fanon sees this resentment. It marks his text. The enlightened
observer takes note, writes Fanon, of the existence of a kind of
burnt-down house after the fire has been put out, which still threatens to
burst into flames again.
Independence from colonial rule opened a new continent for the darker
nations but it was not enough. It did not give them freedom to craft their
own social and economic agenda. Tentacles controlled from the capitals of
capitalism suffocated their options. Coups and corruption dampened the
enthusiasm to create a new world. It was enough to reduce oneself to a
subcontractor for the former now distantly located colonizer. Old
colonial terms such as comprador, which the Portuguese used in China
defined the subordinated bourgeoisie of the new nations. Their degeneration
was marked by their subservience.
This narrowness was experienced as well in the civil rights movements inside
Europe and North America. Civic rights could be delivered, but political
power and social justice had to be kept off the table. Little wonder then
that the Left in Europe and North America fell prey to the siren of
revolutionary terrorism. So little was allowed inside the structure that
they falsely thought that the answer lay through armed action. They would
also be crushed.
Fanon spots a problem for the racist. During colonial times, the native was
called lazy and slow. But with independence, the masses want change to come
quickly. Now they are disparaged for being impatience, for wanting to move
history too fast. The racist shrugs off the criticism. The racist still has
power over the narrative: the story can change when the racist changes the
story. The masses want to walk on the stage of history, to refuse the term
native. It is this desire that is most wantonly denied.
What are the masses to do? They dream for a while of a Third World Project,
but even that is killed before it can get off the ground. Communism is
denied. Religion is an outlet, and it is indeed where many take refuge. But
even religion is not sufficient. It has its cruelties, its insistence on
narrow social agendas and fatalism. But it is something to grasp in the
desert of human possibilities. Religion is, as a very young Marx wrote, the
soul of soulless conditions. Religious suffering is, at one and the same
time, noted Marx, the expression of real suffering and a protest against
real suffering. When the critique of capitalism from a socialist standpoint
is denied them, it is through religion that the masses find their voice
against suffering in this sense, it is an expression of real suffering.
But because religion does not offer an alternative to the experience of
backwardness, it is also a protest, a scream in the dark, the search for a
hallucination of reality. What is Heaven if not the real longing for an
alternative?
The colonial gaze descends upon women in burkhas or burkinis or in anything
that resembles as far as the colonizer is concerned backwardness. Real
backwardness poverty, disease, illiteracy is set aside. It is the false
backwardness backward religions that must be condemned. This colonizer
sees in the woman a threat to his civilization. He wants to tell her what to
do. She cannot make up her own mind. Not long ago the colonial patriarch
told white women not to wear bikinis. Now the colonial patriarch tells women
to wear bikinis. It is always the colonial patriarch who must decide. He is
the only voice of freedom. It is his mission civilisatrice.
Anger in the banlieues, where the natives live inside France, rises because
real backwardness is unaddressed, but also because the false backwardness is
disrespected. Dignity is more expensive to win than one imagines. Workers go
on strike, and their first demand is often treat us with more dignity. But
the boss does not know what this means. The boss thinks that this is a cheap
demand and nods, yes. But the boss does not realize that dignity is the
hardest of all demands to meet. To meet the demand for dignity requires that
the boss change the conditions of real backwardness. This is not possible
without the boss being erased from history.
In the slums of Athens (Greece) and in the slums of Ferguson (United States)
resentment grows against lives of indignity and suffering. The bosses do not
know how to manage the situation. They turn to the gun. It is easier to hire
more police than to provide enough jobs to erase human misery. The police
stand in for a broken system. They are the dying canaries in the coalmines
of capitalism. Repression becomes normal. The masses respond but only here
and there. The Movement for Black Lives represents the inherent hopefulness
of the United States, while the Spains Juventud Sin Futuro, youth with no
future, suggests the fatality in the Old World. Such forces are united
beneath these differences of temperament by their refusal to accept the
terms of the bosses.
On September 2, one hundred and fifty million Indian workers will go on
strike. The hashtag for this general strike called by most of the
countrys trade unions is #strikehard. It is a powerful symbol of the
resilience of the workers. Twenty-five years of neo-liberalism has pushed
them into a corner less worker rights, a smaller share of the wealth their
labor has produced. Every corner of India will experience this strike. It is
a demand against backwardness.
Chilean students go out on the streets. A woman with her face painted white
like a mime carries a sign that reads No Nos Callarán (We Will Not Be
Silenced). This is the mood. It is a refusal to accept the condition of
backwardness.
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of
the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of
the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns
appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
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[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/vijay-prashad
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on From India to France,
Millions Are Rising Up Against the Effects of Western Domination That Still
Plague Our Earth
[4] http://www.alternet.org/
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
