The essential recommendation of close reading and critical reflection concerning history is one of those kinds of advice which is regularly given but infrequently followed. Indeed, we are taught by mind-molding media, contemporary concepts of mindfulness, and the relentless force of current events to focus on the here and now and to rid ourselves of worries and wondering inspired and informed by the past and future. But the past is always present and the future is shaped not only by what we do in the present, but also by what we’ve done in the past and how we learn and use its lessons rightfully and productively or try to erase it and pretend a past cleared of all its problematic content and concerns as oppressors wish and want.
Speaking of the gansta government and neo-imperialism of the Trump regime at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, lamented what he called the end of an era, an era, he said, of the rule of law, mutual respect and mutual benefit. What he was talking about was not the world, but rather Whites, Europeans, continental and diasporan. It is obvious, then, that the cause of this lamented ending was not the Trump’s piracy and murder on the high seas, his invasion and kidnaping the Venezuelan President and his wife and killing of civilians and soldiers, the bombing attack on Iran and resultant casualties and destruction, nor the continuing acts and threats against Cuba and Mexico.
And certainly it was not caused by the arming, facilitating, funding and depraved attempts to defend and justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza against the people of Palestine. For although the US government was and is Israel’s chief crime partner, almost all of Europe participated in the genocide in various ways and still supports its continuation under different names and strategies. What is different about Trump, as Nana Aimé Césaire said about Hitler, is not that he is doing something Europe had not been perpetrating in the rest of the colonized and enslaved world. It is that he dared apply to Europe and fellow Europeans, continental and diasporan, the warmongering threats and imperial practices once used principally, if not exclusively, against the dark peoples of the world, now called, with some adjustments, the Global South.
Carney conceded that the Europeans, the Whites, “knew the story of this international rules-based order was partially false” even in terms of how it played among Whites. And this was demonstrated by the fact that “the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were asymmetrical…and international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or victim”. It was a “pleasant and useful fiction”, he confessed, and a beneficial one, and so they all went along with it. And for those not in the upper classes, like the comforting racial self-pacifier of poor Whites, at least they were White and were not treated like the dominated peoples. And also, those countries and classes who wished and were able were allowed to have and exploit their own colonies and Indigenous peoples and incorporate them in society and the ruling system as they determined.
But here comes Trump and his crime partners ready to disrupt the system and make a Mafia offer Europe could not refuse, and with an infantile excitement about his power, he likes to brandish his big guns, literally and figuratively. He tells Europe’s previously compliant and cooperative leaders that he’s going to take over a European country, Greenland, the hard or easy way. And he talks to the European leaders as if they are less equal and worthy than they had assumed, and announces that he’s the alpha male in the board room and billionaire rulers’ realm, and they either fall in line or be disrespected, disinvited and penalized like any other less-than person, people or power. Here they seem, at least for now, to draw the line and stand some ground. But this in no way signaled a new world and way forward for the rest of the world.
There are several problems with Carney’s and his colleagues’ interpretation of the unfolding events in this historical moment. First, he does not seem to see and thus does not concede that he is talking from a Eurocentric point of view. His world order is the world order of European peoples, continental and diasporan. Thus, the rupture he is talking about, though important, is not a rupture for the oppressed, neither in time or place, for their oppression continues without even a discussion of relief or removal. The occupation and savaging of Haiti was not discussed, nor their role in it. Nor was discussed the strengthening of the UN or the freedom of Sudan, of the Democratic Republic of Congo and of other peoples and countries from European, continental and diasporan, manipulation, exploitation and domination by them and their compliant proxies.
If we are talking about rupture in the world order in any comprehensive sense, it is the era of European colonialism, enslavement and imperialism that fractured the human community in many and varied ways. Colonial America was a rupture in Native American life and history from which they are still recovering. And the rupture of African history and lives remain an ongoing problem which only genuine, resumed and continuing liberation struggles can heal and seal and open up new ways and futures for African peoples and the world. And of course, the same is true for South America, the Islands of the Sea, Asia and every place that suffers these continuing ruptures in their histories and lives, and especially Palestine and the Palestinian people whose attempted genocidal erasure stands out as the defining morally monstrous atrocity of our times.
We speak here also of a historical hypocrisy, a well-established and enduring fiction of human freedom, justice and inequality for all that has now come home to haunt Europe, both continental and diasporan. Once they declared that all men were created equal and endowed with natural and God-given rights, but excluded the majority of the world from this category and began colonizing and enslaving them, taking their lives, lands and resources in holocaust causing ways. And the voice and power of profit, racist hatred and hostility rose above forces of good will from every community, and these voices, as now, were silenced and suppressed until they reached a critical mass and a turning point in history characterized by the liberation struggles in this country and around the world.
Clearly, we are at a point now in history where all the life-crushing hypocrisy has come home to roost and ravage its own citizenry. We speak here of government and police practices implemented and supported against other vulnerable peoples in the world which are now being used in this country to suppress free speech and assembly and human rights and to penalize and punish those who resist; and even to kill citizens in broad daylight with a sense of impunity that they give their favored allies around the world. Minnesota is mourning the brutal killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two activists, consumed by the militarization of American life under a regime committed to weaponizing antisemitism, anti-immigrationism, anti-Blackism, and other evils grafted from historical, ongoing and AI generated anti-human claims and contentions.
And we who also mourn the cold-blooded killing of Keith Porter, Philando Castile, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all the other Black people and other vulnerable people who were killed along this same path of police and state violence must commit to a new rupture in history. We mean here, a rupture of resistance; a rupture that achieves a radical reconception and reconstruction of this society and ultimately the world. It will be a society that is not depraved enough to penalize and fine Azeez Al-Shaair, an African American Muslim athlete, for daring to display on his nose tag a deeply human and compassionate message, “Stop the Genocide”. And it will be, as we have advocated and fought for the whole of our history in this land, the achievement of an inclusive and shared African and human good and the sustained well-being of the world and all in it.
