Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Zero-Sum in Brussels: The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World
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Zero-Sum in Brussels: The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World
By Chris Floyd [1] / CounterPunch [2]
March 22, 2016
The atrocities in Brussels-and they are horrific, criminal atrocities-are
not occurring in a vacuum. They are not springing from some unfathomable
abyss of motiveless malevolence. They are a response, in kind, to the
atrocious violence being committed by Western powers on a regular basis in
many countries around the world. And just as there is no justification for
the acts of carnage in Brussels (and Paris and Turkey and elsewhere), there
is likewise no justification for the much larger and more murderous acts of
carnage being carried out by the most powerful and prosperous nations on
earth, day after day, year after year.
The Western powers know this. For many years, their own intelligence
agencies-in study after study-have confirmed that the leading cause of
violent "radicalization" among a small number of Muslims is the violent
Western intervention in Muslim lands. These interventions are carried out
for the purpose of securing the economic and political domination of Western
interests over lands rich with energy resources, as well as their strategic
surroundings. That they have not even the slightest connection to
"liberating" people from religious or political persecution, or making the
world "safer," is glaringly transparent. They are about domination, pure and
simple.
Indeed, this point is scarcely disputed, although champions of domination
claim it is a good thing. For decades, one has heard the argument from
American exceptionalists that "if we don't do it"-that is, if we don't
dominate the world militarily and economically-"then somebody else will."
The implication, of course, is that such a "somebody else" will be far worse
than our own divinely blessed, goodhearted selves.
There is a fiercely primitive worldview underlying this philosophy (which is
held almost universally across the American political spectrum, and in those
countries who cling to the coattails of American dominance). It says that
violent domination is the only reality in human affairs: one must dominate,
or be dominated. One must eat or be eaten. One must kill or be killed. There
is no alternative. If "we" don't dominate-by force if necessary, doing
"whatever it takes"-then it is a given that some other power will do so.
Domination and power are all that exists; the only question is how they are
distributed, and who controls that distribution. And there is no price too
high to pay in order to gain-or maintain-that control.
You can see how this primitive belief plays out in domestic politics, too.
More and more, politics across the Western democracies (and other nations as
well) are revolving around the question of who should dominate in a
society-or more specifically, who feels their domination over society is
being threatened. This dynamic is driving nationalist movements across the
board. In the United States, it is expressed in the panic and dismay felt by
an increasing number of white people-especially but by no means exclusively
white males-that their "natural" domination of American society is slipping
away. They want to "take our country back," or else they'll be
overwhelmed-dominated-by a flood of unworthy others: African-Americans,
Mexicans, Muslims, homosexuals, women, etc. This self-pitying fear has been
rife in right-wing discourse for decades, and has now burst into the open,
and into the mainstream, with the likely nomination of Donald Trump as
presidential candidate of a major party.
Again, the dynamic of domination is key: since nothing exists outside this
dynamic, since there is no other way, then one group MUST dominate the
others. The idea of equal citizens working, living, and sharing together is
a fantasy in this worldview. If blacks or immigrants or women or gays are
perceived to have gained a small share in the national life, then that share
must have been "taken" from the dominant group. And since, in this view,
domination is the goal of all groups, since it is the organizing principle
of human life, then those upstart groups are not just seeking a fair share
of society's bounty and freedoms and opportunities; no, they are actually
aiming to subjugate the dominant group. In this extremely limited worldview,
life is always a zero-sum game. To give someone else more opportunity means
less for yourself, and your kind. The freer someone else is, the less free
you are. There is only so much to go around. You will find more
sophisticated and empathetic worldviews on grade-school playgrounds, or in
wolf packs.
And so we come to the foreign policies of Western nations today. They are
all, without exception, built on the goal of securing effective control (in
whatever form) of economic and strategic resources for the benefit of their
own power structures. Again, it is beyond dispute that these policies do NOT
involve trying to make the world a better, safer place so that their own
citizens might pursue their lives in peace. These policies manifestly do NOT
involve trying to achieve "security" for their own people. Those who advance
these policies knowingly and deliberately accept the fact that they will
invariably cause destruction abroad and "blowback" at home. They know and
accept that these policies will destabilize the world, that they will
radicalize some of those who suffer from them, that they will lead to less
security at home, that they will drain public treasuries and leave their own
people to sink in broken communities with decaying infrastructure, mounting
debt, shrinking opportunities, bleak futures and despairing lives.
They know all of this is true-not only because they can see it happening
with their own eyes, as we all can, but also because their own experts tell
them, time and time again, that this is so. But they accept all this as the
price that must be paid to advance and maintain their dominance. In the
words of Madeline Albright, when she was confronted with the fact that the
US/UK sanctions on Iraq had at that time killed at least 500,000 children,
our leaders believe this price "is worth it."
In private, they no doubt tell themselves that it is the domination of their
good and "special" nation, or the domination of the worthy "values" of
"Western civilization" that they are trying to secure with their policies,
by doing "whatever it takes." But in practice, of course, the chief
beneficiaries of these policies are invariably the ruling classes of the
nations involved. This has become much more brazenly evident in recent
years, as the conditions and prospects of even the middle classes are so
clearly deteriorating. There is little room left to pretend that the "rising
tide" of militarized hyper-capitalism is "lifting all boats" when even those
who once benefitted from expanding opportunity (in the post-war boom) are
now sinking. (The poor, of course, have almost always been invisible.)
The people in Brussels-like the people in Paris, and like the far greater
multitude of victims in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, etc-are, yes,
"reaping the whirlwind" of Western foreign policy. The criminals who carried
out the most recent attacks have adopted the mindset of our Western elites,
who teach the world, day after day, that the destruction of innocent lives
is an acceptable price to pay in order to achieve your objectives. You can
and must do "whatever it takes"-even if whatever it takes is, say, the death
of half a million innocent children. Or a war of aggression that leaves a
million innocent people dead. Or drone-bombing a wedding party. Or sending
missiles into a hospital. Or sitting in the Oval Office-your Peace Prize
gleaming on the mantelpiece-while you tick off the names of victims on your
weekly "Kill List."
We wonder how these terrorists can commit such barbarous atrocities as we
see in Brusselsa-even while most of us happily countenance, even celebrate,
far more extensive and continuous atrocities committed by our leaders in
pursuit of domination. Then we pretend that the former has no connection to
the latter. Yet the targets of these foreign policies live through a hundred
Brussels attacks, a dozen 9/11s every year. We teach violence to the
world-brutal destruction of individual lives, of societies and communities,
of entire nations-yet are shocked when the world responds in kind.
I will say it again: there is absolutely no justification for the murder of
innocent people such as we saw in Brussels today. None. But crimes of equal
horror-killing innocent people, disrupting the lives of millions of others,
and filling them with fear-are being carried out, routinely, and on a much
larger scale, by the leaders of our Western nations and their allies. This
is too is equally unjustifiable, and is worthy of the same level of
rejection and outrage we rightly apply to the Brussels atrocity.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for CounterPunch Magazine. His blog, Empire
Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com [3].
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [4]
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/world/zero-sum-brussels-savage-vision-driving-terror
-ridden-world
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/chris-floyd
[2] http://www.counterpunch.org/
[3] http://www.chris-floyd.com/
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Zero-Sum in Brussels:
The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Zero-Sum in Brussels: The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World
Zero-Sum in Brussels: The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World
By Chris Floyd [1] / CounterPunch [2]
March 22, 2016
The atrocities in Brussels-and they are horrific, criminal atrocities-are
not occurring in a vacuum. They are not springing from some unfathomable
abyss of motiveless malevolence. They are a response, in kind, to the
atrocious violence being committed by Western powers on a regular basis in
many countries around the world. And just as there is no justification for
the acts of carnage in Brussels (and Paris and Turkey and elsewhere), there
is likewise no justification for the much larger and more murderous acts of
carnage being carried out by the most powerful and prosperous nations on
earth, day after day, year after year.
The Western powers know this. For many years, their own intelligence
agencies-in study after study-have confirmed that the leading cause of
violent "radicalization" among a small number of Muslims is the violent
Western intervention in Muslim lands. These interventions are carried out
for the purpose of securing the economic and political domination of Western
interests over lands rich with energy resources, as well as their strategic
surroundings. That they have not even the slightest connection to
"liberating" people from religious or political persecution, or making the
world "safer," is glaringly transparent. They are about domination, pure and
simple.
Indeed, this point is scarcely disputed, although champions of domination
claim it is a good thing. For decades, one has heard the argument from
American exceptionalists that "if we don't do it"-that is, if we don't
dominate the world militarily and economically-"then somebody else will."
The implication, of course, is that such a "somebody else" will be far worse
than our own divinely blessed, goodhearted selves.
There is a fiercely primitive worldview underlying this philosophy (which is
held almost universally across the American political spectrum, and in those
countries who cling to the coattails of American dominance). It says that
violent domination is the only reality in human affairs: one must dominate,
or be dominated. One must eat or be eaten. One must kill or be killed. There
is no alternative. If "we" don't dominate-by force if necessary, doing
"whatever it takes"-then it is a given that some other power will do so.
Domination and power are all that exists; the only question is how they are
distributed, and who controls that distribution. And there is no price too
high to pay in order to gain-or maintain-that control.
You can see how this primitive belief plays out in domestic politics, too.
More and more, politics across the Western democracies (and other nations as
well) are revolving around the question of who should dominate in a
society-or more specifically, who feels their domination over society is
being threatened. This dynamic is driving nationalist movements across the
board. In the United States, it is expressed in the panic and dismay felt by
an increasing number of white people-especially but by no means exclusively
white males-that their "natural" domination of American society is slipping
away. They want to "take our country back," or else they'll be
overwhelmed-dominated-by a flood of unworthy others: African-Americans,
Mexicans, Muslims, homosexuals, women, etc. This self-pitying fear has been
rife in right-wing discourse for decades, and has now burst into the open,
and into the mainstream, with the likely nomination of Donald Trump as
presidential candidate of a major party.
Again, the dynamic of domination is key: since nothing exists outside this
dynamic, since there is no other way, then one group MUST dominate the
others. The idea of equal citizens working, living, and sharing together is
a fantasy in this worldview. If blacks or immigrants or women or gays are
perceived to have gained a small share in the national life, then that share
must have been "taken" from the dominant group. And since, in this view,
domination is the goal of all groups, since it is the organizing principle
of human life, then those upstart groups are not just seeking a fair share
of society's bounty and freedoms and opportunities; no, they are actually
aiming to subjugate the dominant group. In this extremely limited worldview,
life is always a zero-sum game. To give someone else more opportunity means
less for yourself, and your kind. The freer someone else is, the less free
you are. There is only so much to go around. You will find more
sophisticated and empathetic worldviews on grade-school playgrounds, or in
wolf packs.
And so we come to the foreign policies of Western nations today. They are
all, without exception, built on the goal of securing effective control (in
whatever form) of economic and strategic resources for the benefit of their
own power structures. Again, it is beyond dispute that these policies do NOT
involve trying to make the world a better, safer place so that their own
citizens might pursue their lives in peace. These policies manifestly do NOT
involve trying to achieve "security" for their own people. Those who advance
these policies knowingly and deliberately accept the fact that they will
invariably cause destruction abroad and "blowback" at home. They know and
accept that these policies will destabilize the world, that they will
radicalize some of those who suffer from them, that they will lead to less
security at home, that they will drain public treasuries and leave their own
people to sink in broken communities with decaying infrastructure, mounting
debt, shrinking opportunities, bleak futures and despairing lives.
They know all of this is true-not only because they can see it happening
with their own eyes, as we all can, but also because their own experts tell
them, time and time again, that this is so. But they accept all this as the
price that must be paid to advance and maintain their dominance. In the
words of Madeline Albright, when she was confronted with the fact that the
US/UK sanctions on Iraq had at that time killed at least 500,000 children,
our leaders believe this price "is worth it."
In private, they no doubt tell themselves that it is the domination of their
good and "special" nation, or the domination of the worthy "values" of
"Western civilization" that they are trying to secure with their policies,
by doing "whatever it takes." But in practice, of course, the chief
beneficiaries of these policies are invariably the ruling classes of the
nations involved. This has become much more brazenly evident in recent
years, as the conditions and prospects of even the middle classes are so
clearly deteriorating. There is little room left to pretend that the "rising
tide" of militarized hyper-capitalism is "lifting all boats" when even those
who once benefitted from expanding opportunity (in the post-war boom) are
now sinking. (The poor, of course, have almost always been invisible.)
The people in Brussels-like the people in Paris, and like the far greater
multitude of victims in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, etc-are, yes,
"reaping the whirlwind" of Western foreign policy. The criminals who carried
out the most recent attacks have adopted the mindset of our Western elites,
who teach the world, day after day, that the destruction of innocent lives
is an acceptable price to pay in order to achieve your objectives. You can
and must do "whatever it takes"-even if whatever it takes is, say, the death
of half a million innocent children. Or a war of aggression that leaves a
million innocent people dead. Or drone-bombing a wedding party. Or sending
missiles into a hospital. Or sitting in the Oval Office-your Peace Prize
gleaming on the mantelpiece-while you tick off the names of victims on your
weekly "Kill List."
We wonder how these terrorists can commit such barbarous atrocities as we
see in Brusselsa-even while most of us happily countenance, even celebrate,
far more extensive and continuous atrocities committed by our leaders in
pursuit of domination. Then we pretend that the former has no connection to
the latter. Yet the targets of these foreign policies live through a hundred
Brussels attacks, a dozen 9/11s every year. We teach violence to the
world-brutal destruction of individual lives, of societies and communities,
of entire nations-yet are shocked when the world responds in kind.
I will say it again: there is absolutely no justification for the murder of
innocent people such as we saw in Brussels today. None. But crimes of equal
horror-killing innocent people, disrupting the lives of millions of others,
and filling them with fear-are being carried out, routinely, and on a much
larger scale, by the leaders of our Western nations and their allies. This
is too is equally unjustifiable, and is worthy of the same level of
rejection and outrage we rightly apply to the Brussels atrocity.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for CounterPunch Magazine. His blog, Empire
Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com [3].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [4]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[5]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/world/zero-sum-brussels-savage-vision-driving-terror
-ridden-world
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/chris-floyd
[2] http://www.counterpunch.org/
[3] http://www.chris-floyd.com/
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Zero-Sum in Brussels:
The Savage Vision Driving a Terror-Ridden World
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
