University students across the country, facing mass arrests, suspensions, evictions and explusions are our last, best hope to halt the genocide in Gaza.
PRINCETON, N.J — Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.
She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.
She wonders where she will spend the night.
The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.
“I grabbed really random things,” she says. “I grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.”
Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage — many are facing suspension and expulsion — that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students — many of those protesting are Jewish — but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.
Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.
Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.
Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.
The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university’s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department. The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb, who founded and heads Princeton’s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as anti-semites, according to student activists.
As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”
The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza, ends university research “on weapons of war” funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
But if the students again attempt to erect tents – they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning – it seems certain they will all be arrested.
“It is far beyond what I expected to happen,” says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. “They started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.”
Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.
“Any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,” she wrote. “For students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.”
These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.
Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called “Ecological Marxism.”
“It was a bizarre moment,” she says. “I spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.”
She starts to cry.
A few minutes after 7 a.m, police distributed a leaflet to the students erecting tents with the headline “Princeton University Warning and No Trespass Notice.” The leaflet stated that the students were “engaged in conduct on Princeton University property that violates University rules and regulations, poses a threat to the safety and property of others, and disrupts the regular operations of the University: such conduct includes participating in an encampment and/or disrupting a University event.” The leaflet said those who engaged in the “prohibited conduct” would be considered a “Defiant Trespasser under New Jersey criminal law (N.J.S.A. 2C:18-3) and subject to immediate arrest.”
A few seconds later Sivalingam heard a police officer say “Get those two.”
Hassan Sayed, a doctoral student in economics who is of Pakistani descent, was working with Sivalingam to erect one of tents. He was handcuffed. Sivalingam was zip tied so tightly it cut off circulation to her hands. There are dark bruises circling her wrists.
“There was an initial warning from cops about ‘You are trespassing’ or something like that, ‘This is your first warning,’” Sayed says. “It was kind of loud. I didn’t hear too much. Suddenly, hands were thrust behind my back. As this happened, my right arm tensed a bit and they said ‘You are resisting arrest if you do that.’ They put the handcuffs on.”
He was asked by one of the arresting officers if he was a student. When he said he was, they immediately informed him that he was banned from campus.
“No mention of what charges are as far as I could hear,” he says. “I get taken to one car. They pat me down a bit. They ask for my student ID.”
Sayed was placed in the back of a campus police car with Sivalingam, who was in agony from the zip ties. He asked the police to loosen the zip ties on Sivalingam, a process that took several minutes as they had to remove her from the vehicle and the scissors were unable to cut through the plastic. They had to find wire cutters. They were taken to the university’s police station.
Sayed was stripped of his phone, keys, clothes, backpack and AirPods and placed in a holding cell. No one read him his Miranda rights.
He was again told he was banned from the campus.
“Is this an eviction?” he asked the campus police.
The police did not answer.
He asked to call a lawyer. He was told he could call a lawyer when the police were ready.
“They may have mentioned something about trespassing but I don’t remember clearly,” he says. “It certainly was not made salient to me.”
He was told to fill out forms about his mental health and if he was on medication. Then he was informed he was being charged with “defiant trespassing.”
“I say, ‘I’m a student, how is that trespassing? I attend school here,’” he says. “They really don’t seem to have a good answer. I reiterate, asking whether me being banned from campus constitutes eviction, because I live on campus. They just say, ‘ban from campus.’ I said something like that doesn’t answer the question. They say it will all be explained in the letter. I’m like, ‘Who is writing the letter?’ ‘Dean of grad school’ they respond.”
Sayed was driven to his campus housing. The campus police did not let him have his keys. He was given a few minutes to grab items like his phone charger. They locked his apartment door. He, too, is seeking shelter in the Small World Coffee shop.
Sivalingam often returned to Tamil Nadu in southern India, where she was born, for her summer vacations. The poverty and daily struggle of those around her, to survive, she says, was “sobering.”
“The disparity of my life and theirs, how to reconcile how those things exist in the same world,” she says, her voice quivering with emotion. “It was always very bizarre to me. I think that’s where a lot of my interest in addressing inequality, in being able to think about people outside of the United States as humans, as people who deserve lives and dignity, comes from.”
She must adjust now to being exiled from campus.
“I gotta find somewhere to sleep,” she says, “tell my parents, but that’s going to be a little bit of a conversation, and find ways to engage in jail support and communications because I can’t be there, but I can continue to mobilize.”
There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.
The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes.
History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.
Calls for excavation efforts at the site come in response to the detection of a minimum of nine suspicious anomalies through ground-penetrating radar scans.
A chilling revelation by The Guardian unmasked that multiple potential secret or hidden burial sites have been located at the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home, one of the most notorious and abusive institutions during the Stolen Generations era in New South Wales.
Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) experts have identified at least nine suspicious sites that may be graves. The New South Wales government was made aware of this discovery six months ago through a report that pointed out “high-priority anomalies” in the ground, resembling patterns associated with human burials and unexplained by other data sources. The report even suggested the potential use of cadaver dogs to locate buried human remains.
The report also mentioned the potential existence of graves in areas that haven’t been investigated yet and recommended conducting comprehensive physical searches across the entire property near Kempsey. If human remains are discovered in these areas, the report suggests that they would likely be clandestine burials rather than conventional Christian burials.
The authors of the report advise caution in interpreting the findings, as some of the anomalies could have both archaeological and forensic significance. In cases where the remains are determined to be forensic (less than 100 years old), it would necessitate involving the police. However, the authors emphasize that the only definitive way to ascertain the presence of buried bodies on the site is through excavation.
‘I’m hoping that there’s nothing there’
The Kinchela Boys’ Home Aboriginal Corporation (KBHAC), a group representing survivors, is urging both the New South Wales (NSW) and federal governments to promptly allocate funding for comprehensive searches across the entire property. They are also requesting excavation at the areas deemed high-priority to ascertain whether some of them could potentially contain the remains of children who died at Kinchela and were secretly buried.
“I’m hoping that there’s nothing there. Just as simple as that. But with the way that those people were and the way that they flogged us, it wouldn’t surprise me at all,” the KBHAC chairman, Uncle James Michael “Widdy” Welsh, said as quoted by The Guardian.
Punishment and abuse
Archaeologists working on behalf of the New South Wales (NSW) government prepared the report in response to a request from Kinchela survivors. These survivors have long asserted that Aboriginal boys at the institution may have died due to severe physical abuse, neglect, or even potentially under suspicious circumstances.
Kinchela Boys’ Home was administered by the Aborigines Protection Board, later known as the Aborigines Welfare Board, on behalf of the NSW government. It operated from 1924 until its closure in 1970. During this period, an estimated 400 to 600 Aboriginal boys, aged between five and 15, were forcibly separated from their families and detained at the institution, in accordance with the policies and laws of the Stolen Generations.
Survivors have vivid memories of being identified by numbers rather than their given names during their time at Kinchela Boys’ Home. They endured brutal punishments such as flogging or being tethered to trees overnight as a consequence of bedwetting. Additionally, they were repeatedly told that they were not of Aboriginal descent, that their families had abandoned them, or that their parents were no longer alive.
Uncle Roger Jarrett, among those who endured these hardships, recollected being subjected to the punitive practice of being chained to a tree overnight as a form of discipline.
“Over the back, there’s the fig tree. It had a six-foot chain on it. If a boy said something trivial, they’d cut sleeves out of an old sugar bag, put it on, and wet it. Take him out there, they chain him up, padlock them, and leave them there,” he said as quoted by The Guardian.
Uncle Vince Wenberg recalled a manager during the 1950s who was described as “sadistic” and employed a cat-o’-nine-tails as a form of punishment. Another manager was reported to engage in disturbing behavior, including indecent acts in front of the boys or taking them into his office.
Survivors expressed their frustration with the fact that the NSW government has possessed the report for half a year and has yet to provide an official response to their requests for additional investigative work on the site.
The report was delivered to Aboriginal Affairs NSW (AANSW) in March 2023, and at that time, Kinchela survivors, local Dunghutti families, and traditional owners were briefed about its contents. However, since then, the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home survivors asserted that there has been no further progress.
No progress
In late June, the board of KBHAC wrote to the NSW government, informing it of its unanimous preference for immediate excavation and other archaeological investigations to commence at the site. According to the letter, which was reviewed by The Guardian, the KBHAC board expressed the desire for excavations to cover all high-priority areas and requested the necessary approvals from the Heritage Council of NSW to proceed with this work.
Additionally, the letter asked AANSW to facilitate a presentation during the KBHAC board’s meeting on July 20, where Kinchela survivors (referred to as the Uncles) could engage in discussions regarding this sensitive matter with the Heritage Council of NSW and the archaeological consultants.
The New York Times publishes a piece explaining that democracy cannot exist in an ethnocracy, thus making “Israel” a non-democracy from inception until today regardless of intra-Israeli differences.
IOF soldier restraining a scared Palestinian boy in Ramallah, Palestine August 28, 2015 (Reuters).
The New York Times published a piece by Peter Beinart, a professor of journalism and political science, titled “You Can’t Save Democracy in a Jewish State” in which the writer explained why “Israel” is not a democracy despite continuous claims by its officials on the importance of “saving democracy”.
Beinart discussed the topic following an era of unprecedented chaos in “Israel”, where Israeli demonstrators claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government has imperiled efforts to “preserve ‘Israel’ as a Jewish and democratic state.“
Former Prime Ministers Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett and former minister Benny Gantz have also voiced their concerns on “saving democracy” in recent days. However, Beinart marked a significant difference in what is happening in “Israel”, which has been likened to anti-populist demonstrations elsewhere in the world.
“The people most threatened by Mr. Netanyahu’s authoritarianism aren’t part of the movement against it,” said Beinart and explained that very few Palestinians have joined the ongoing demonstrations.
According to the professor, the anti-Netanyahu movement is “a movement to preserve the political system that existed before Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition took power, which was not, for Palestinians, a genuine liberal democracy in the first place.” More clearly, the NYT report argued, “It’s a movement to save liberal democracy for Jews.”
Beinart further made the argument to depict “how illiberal the liberal Zionism” can be. He used one example from the Lapid era, where he argued that then-PM Lapid “implored the Knesset to renew a law that denies Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who are married to Palestinian citizens the right to live with their spouses” inside the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
In a more blunt approach, the professor explained, “For most of the Palestinians under Israeli control — those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—’Israel’ is not a democracy,” adding, “It’s not a democracy because Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can’t vote for the government that dominates their lives.”
Beinart also made reference to Gaza being an open-air prison and the Palestinian Authority being “a subcontractor, not a state.”
Significantly, the Jewish professor re-examined a 2018 incident wherein a number of Palestinian legislators presented legislation “to anchor in constitutional law the principle of equal citizenship.” At the time, Beinart said the speaker of the Knesset refused to even discuss the topic because it would “gnaw at the foundations of the state.”
The country “belongs to Jews like me, who don’t live there” the professor said, adding “but not to the Palestinians who live under its control, even the lucky few who hold Israeli citizenship.” This is a reality from long before the Netanyahu coalition came to power, the NYT piece highlighted before concluding that “this is the vibrant liberal democracy that liberal Zionists want to save.”
Democracy in time of domicide
To further double down on the contradictive rhetoric of democracy in a Jewish-led occupation state, it is worth putting into context the incidents.
The protests in “Tel Aviv” and Al-Quds have occurred without any connection to the Israeli occupation’s security cabinet approval the “legalization” of nine illegal Israeli settlement outposts and the advance of nearly 10,000 “settlement units” in the occupied West Bank, which were established by settlers without the approval of Israeli governments.
The United Nations Security Council, shortly after, on February 16, considered a draft resolution that would demand “Israel” to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory,” Reuters reported.
According to Reuters, the text “reaffirms that the establishment by ‘Israel’ of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”
The draft resolution also condemns moves toward the further seizure of land by the Israeli occupation, including the “legalization” of settlement outposts.
However, On February 20, it was reported that according to multiple diplomats familiar with the situation, the US was successful in delaying the resolution proposed by the Palestinians and their supporters.
The UN diplomats said that in order to avoid having to use its veto to block the resolution, Washington has encouraged Palestine and its allies in the UNSC to consider drafting “a more symbolic” joint statement condemning the Israeli cabinet’s announcements.
Democracy in time of genocide
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) raided, on January 26, the Jenin camp in Occupied Palestine’s West Bank using force the camp had not seen in years. The raid left residents and popular resistance groups with no choice but to defend themselves and confront the occupation forces. This raid was happening in parallel to intra-Israeli divisions.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the martyrdom of 10 Palestinians during the genocidal raid on Jenin. It is also worth noting that as part of the raid that was launched against Palestinians, the IOF prevented ambulance crews from entering the region.
Democracy in time of apartheid
Amnesty International released a report last year in February that asserted once and for all that the Israeli regime is forcing a system of apartheid on Palestinians.
Amnesty said the Israeli system is founded on “segregation, dispossession and exclusion”, which amount to crimes against humanity, and its findings were documented in a report that shows the Israeli seizure of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcibly displacing people, and denying them citizenship.
This is the second report by an international rights group to accuse “Israel” of enforcing an apartheid system, the first being Human Rights Watch whose report was released in April 2021. As per Israeli custom, it accused Amnesty of anti-semitism.
The organization further said that “Israel” was enforcing a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians in all areas under its control “in Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories], and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.”
The measures employed by the Israeli regime against Palestinians include: restrictions on Palestinian movement in occupied territories, underinvestment in Palestinian communities in pre-1967 occupied territories, preventing the return of Palestinian refugees.
Even more so, “Israel” forcibly displaces Palestinians, and tortures and kills them extrajudicially in order to maintain a system of “oppression and domination”, which constitutes “the crime against humanity of apartheid”.
“Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.”
“Israel is not a democracy”
In an interview with Foreign Policy, the former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry Alon Liel, made brazen statements that sharply cut through arguments that the Israeli establishment continues to push; Liel openly stated “Israel” is not a democracy.
“‘Israel’ always says it’s a democracy. The government always says we are the only democracy in the Middle East and we are part of the West. But in real terms, we are not a democracy with the occupation, and we are only part of the West when it suits us,” Liel argued.
Democracy devoid of rights
The Palestinian Prisoners Information Office confirmed on February 16 “that the occupation prison administration is tightening the screws even more on ‘Megiddo’, ‘Gilboa’, ‘Nafha’, ‘Ramon’, and the ‘Negev’ prisoners, by imposing new punitive measures that affect their daily lives.”
#Palestinian female prisoners cried for help in an audio message sent from behind the bars of Israeli "Damon" prison. They demanded the Palestinian people to stand and defend their rights. This comes after Israeli forces violently beat and abused the prisoners yesterday. pic.twitter.com/vXhDUfBx3y
Israeli media talked about the decision of extremist Israeli Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who ordered showering time to be reduced to four minutes per prisoner.
On February 4, Palestinian prisoners sent a message from inside the Israeli occupation prisons asking their citizens to prepare to wage a major battle against the oppression of Ben-Gvir. The prisoners later announced the beginning of the “days of rage”, which will culminate in a hunger strike that will begin in the month of Ramadan, to continue until they are liberated from their captivity.
An artificially-imposed union in unnatural borders is known as ‘a construct’. Constructs are artificial, as they are populated by different peoples, who speak different languages and have different cultures, and who would prefer to live in their own common nation-state because of those differences. For these reasons constructs are always imposed top-down for ‘reasons of State’ and rejected by those who are oppressed by them at the grassroots. Constructs are only ever popular among the elites which invent them and make money from them. They rarely achieve more than 50% popularity, usually far less. They are always rejected by the people at the bottom of the pile. This is why constructs never last.
1. The USA as a Construct
For instance, the USA, founded on exploitation, gun-law, slavery and the genocide of its native peoples, is a construct. Its straight-line borders are artificial, the result of wars and treaties, forced on others by historical circumstances or illegal occupations, for example as in Alaska and Hawaii. Much of its southern territory is Spanish-named and was stolen from Mexico and is now – such is the justice of history and the reward of patience – being reoccupied by Spanish speakers.
As for the northern border, that was fixed because basically the lands northwards were cold and uninviting. The vast majority of them, except for a very narrow strip close to the US border, spread up to the Arctic and were uninhabitable. Thus, the US elite left them to the unwanted whom they called ‘Canadians’, who presented no threat to them.
As regards its ‘United’ States, they are the result of an incredibly bloody Civil War, leaving as many as one million dead, the equivalent of ten million today. It was directed by an industrial elite in the North-East and the result, enforced by genocide, was by many never accepted. That elite was Zionist (not Jewish, though many of its financiers were Jews) in its proclamation that it was exceptional and that its ‘manifest destiny’ (i.e. manifest only to themselves) was to spread ‘from sea to shining sea’.
2. Europe and its Constructs
Europe (meaning by etymology ‘the west’) is also a construct, its identity going back to an ancient Greek myth. For the Romans 2,000 years ago, it did not exist separately from Asia and Africa. Indeed, it is artificially separated from Asia (meaning by etymology ‘the east’), from where its peoples emigrated. There is no natural border between the European peninsula and Asia: its eastern border is purely political and for the moment fixed in the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus.
Moreover, nearly all of its languages are ‘Indo-European’ and have their origins in a language spoken in today’s Turkey (Asia Minor) or even further east, well over 5,000 years ago. The historically recent contempt of ‘Europe’ for anything ‘Asian’, contemptuously termed ‘Asiatic’ or ‘barbarian’, is simply a rejection of its own origins and a self-justification for its artificial state of separation.
In the early 90s the then French President, Chirac, called on all: ‘Creeons l’Europe, Faisons l’Europe, il faut construire l’Europe’ (Let us create Europe, Let us make Europe, We must build Europe’). This was simply an open admission that Europe did not exist. It does not.
Within contemporary Europe the EU, the UK and the Ukraine are obviously constructs. The EU goes back only to 1993, the Ukraine to 1992, and the UK to 1922. In other words, they are all temporary inventions of the twentieth century. Now we are in the twenty-first century, we can see that they will not last much longer.
a. The EU
Taking the most recent construct first, we can see that many of the now 27 countries of the EU, which the UK left after 47 turbulent years, experiencing it and its predecessors as a straitjacket, are constructs. We would make exceptions only for some small countries: Portugal, the Czech Lands, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Malta and the five sparsely-populated Nordics: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, the latter both Non-EU. (The total population of the five Nordics is just 27 million, 40% of the population of France or the UK).
Spain is a construct, Catalans and Basques reject it. France is a construct, Basques, Bretons, Occitans, Corsicans and Alsaciens reject it. Belgium, Italy and Germany are constructs that go back no further than the nineteenth century and Germany has been reinvented radically over that time, as the Second Reich of 1871 disappeared in 1918 and the Third Reich of 1933 lasted only twelve years, after which the borders of Germany changed radically.
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were constructs. Czechoslovakia split into its two natural entities, but the fate of the far more complex Yugoslavia is far from resolved. Yugoslavia disintegrated into a number of states, most of which have unnatural borders, not unlike several other European countries, for example, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. And here we do not even mention the unresolved problem of occupied Cyprus. Obviously, those who claim to be in favour of self-determination are not.
The EU elite comes from the borderlands of Latin-Germanic/Protestant-Catholic Europe. These run through Belgium, Luxembourg and eastern France (the Brussels-Luxembourg-Strasbourg axis). This elite was US-formed, like Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer. As the former President of France, Giscard d’Estaing, stated, the Common Market (predecessor of the EU) was until the 1970s little more than a ‘Neo-Carolingian Empire’. In other words, it was a recreation of the ‘Empire’ of Charlemagne, who was not a French leader or founder of the French educational system, as French State schoolbooks claim. He was a vicious and illiterate German barbarian who spoke no French and was tall, so called Karl the Tall, disguised by the French name ‘Charlemagne’.
His EU ‘Empire’ with its violent warrior class of Franks was recreated a millennium later by other Fascistic tyrants, Napoleon and Hitler; hardly a recommendation for the EU, though EU membership and territory are almost identical to their blood-soaked Empires. Moreover, both those Empires failed because they too tried to invade Russian territory. Although it is not necessary or inevitable, history does in fact repeat itself, simply because of the greatest human stupidity – not to learn the lessons of history. And so it goes on and today the earth of the Ukraine is soaked in blood again.
b. The Ukraine
Although the word ‘Ukraine’, meaning borderland, is ancient, the concept of a country called ‘the Ukraine’, like its Austrian flag, goes back only to the Austro-Hungarian Imperialism of the late nineteenth-century. The Ukraine as a nation-state is an even more recent construct.
The Ukraine was invented largely by Non-Russian Communist dictators for political reasons, in 1922, 1939 and 1954, and has existed as a separate state only for thirty years. It has never been an independent state, having been completely dependent on a Jewish oligarchic elite over its thirty years of existence. And since 2014 it has been a US conquest-state and so vassal.
Constructs are dangerous things (1). Just as the construct of ‘Belgium’ (the southern Netherlands and part of northern France) was used as a pretext for World War I in 1914, the construct of ‘Poland’ (then consisting of Poland and large and oppressed parts of Belarus and Galicia) was used as a pretext for World War II in 1939, so the Ukraine was used as a pretext for what we call World War III (2014 – present).
From 2014 on, for eight years, a huge Ukrainian force, over 500,000 strong, was gathered, trained, dug in and armed by NATO in order to invade Russia from the eastern Ukraine. This is the origin of the present Third World War, which is now in its ninth year and slaughtered nearly seven million in its biological warfare (covid) phase alone. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians is now on the hands of the USA, its vassals and their foreign financiers.
c. The UK
The UK in its present form, England, Scotland, Wales and an occupied piece of north-eastern Ireland, was founded in the same year as the Soviet Ukraine – 1922. However, its origins go way back to the violence of a Viking-Norman elite, financed by Jewish merchants from Rouen. (Until 1066 there were no Jews in any of the Four Nations, England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland).
Those Normans are nothing to do with contemporary Normandy and Norman people. Those ‘Normans’ (= Northmen) were a cosmopolitan, French-speaking Viking elite, temporarily based in north-western France. They marauded all over Europe, notably in Sicily, Southern Italy and England, wherever, in fact, as conquistadors they could see opportunities for power and gold. The ships they used to invade were in fact Viking drakkar, dragon-ships, as can be seen from pictures of them in the eleventh-century English-made Tapestry, at present in Bayeux in Normandy.
In 1066 and after, the Normans, led by William the Bastard/Conquistador, conquered England by genocide, though most of his mercenary force consisted of Flemings and Bretons, the bandit scum of north-western Europe. In other words, only the leadership elite were ‘Normans’. Their alliance of pillaging bandits went on to conquer Wales, Scotland and, in the twelfth century, Ireland, where they were known as ‘Anglo-Normans’.
Then they created a ‘Hundred Years War’ with France and intervened in other interminable wars on mainland Europe. However, their much later racial and ideological descendants and adepts, of all nationalities, went on to conquer worldwide territories in what became known as ‘The British Empire’. In fact, this was ‘The Norman Empire’. Noted for its ‘raiding and trading’, that is, pillaging and looting, it was the ultimate Viking enterprise, violent warriors replaced by ruthless traders, battle-axes by trade monopolies, excommunications by trade sanctions.
The Constructing Elites
The elites who have imposed these constructs all have something in common – their intolerance. We would call them ‘Exceptionalists’ to describe that unique intolerance, because that is how they consider themselves and they actually use their imagined ‘exceptionalism’ to justify the darkest of deeds. According to them, all who are different have to be destroyed – ‘cancelled’. ‘We are best, and therefore…’. This is only the racism of Hitler: ‘We are Aryans, and therefore…’. They call themselves ‘Judeo-Christians’. The Saker very aptly calls them Anglo-Zionists. Again we repeat that here we must distinguish between Jews and Zionists. Many Jews are anti-Zionist and many Zionists are not at all Jews (2). Let us give two examples.
I remember talking many years ago to an Englishman, then aged 102, a true Victorian, who told me that he was convinced that God was English. And he was serious. I told him that after the US provocation of Pearl Harbour in December 1941 (when American infamy entered a new phase), surely his god had changed nationalities and become American. He replied to me that English and Americans were the same anyway. He was a Zionist, but he was not a Jew. Then about twenty years ago an 80 year-old Dutchman from Alkmaar told me that: ‘After the War (= 1945) the world’s policeman was no longer English, but American’. (He never explained to me why the world needed a policeman and who had chosen him). He too was a Zionist, but not a Jew.
All of this of course is known as ‘cultural prejudice’ or, more simply, ignorance and bigotry. Thus: ‘We want to steal Iraq’s oil and gas. Because we are Americans, we are exceptional and we have the right to do this. This is the international rules-based order which we have established’. These people are Zionists, but they are not necessarily Jews.
Conclusion: Reconstruction
It is a spiritual law (also known as ‘common sense’) that you do not destroy anything, until you have something better to replace it with. In other words, you do not deconstruct, if you are not first ready to reconstruct. What exactly the future of the USA is I could not say, though I would say that it will fall back into its natural components, for that is the destiny of all constructs – they de-compose, as artifice is always taken over by nature – like a corpse in the grave. All constructs become corpses, some quite rapidly, as in today’s deeply tragic Ukraine.
Europe’s destiny is to rejoin Asia, which is its origin in every sense, including the origin of Christianity. For Christianity is not by origin European. The defection of Western Europe from Christian Tradition almost exactly 1,000 years ago (3) and its construct of ‘Catholicism’ (4), which 500 years later split into a myriad of State-moulded sects (5), which have lasted another 500 years and are now rapidly dying out, signified its schism from Asia. It was only from the eleventh century on that the word ‘Europe’ began to be used to define a geographical entity, being firmly established only by 1300 (6).
Western Europe even began to call the old Christian Capital of New Rome/Constantinople on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, symbolised therefore by a double-headed eagle, ‘Byzantium’. It even invented the word ‘Byzantine’ to describe its own labyrinthine bureaucracy and convoluted hypocrisy. (There is nothing so ‘Byzantine’ as perfidious Albion). Then, in 1204, the new Judeo-Christian ‘Catholics’ sacked the Christian Capital, weakening it and so enabling it to be conquered by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453.
Now comes the, as yet faint, possibility of Europe’s return to its roots after its thousand-years of captivity. In order to do this, Europe has to free itself from the dictatorship of the atheist elite, now based in the USA, but with important offshoots in Western Europe, especially in post-Protestant north-western Europe.
Europe has to recognise the Four Asian Civilisations, founded on religion and rooted in history, which have given Asia and the world its history. Chronologically, these are: the Hindu world of the Subcontinent (Hindustan), the Confucian-Buddhist-Taoist Chinese world, the Orthodox Christian world (today based in Russia, but which spreads southwards to its origin in Jerusalem and beyond) and the Muslim world of Asia and North Africa. They represent three-quarters of the world. You will never get away from them. Stop fighting among yourselves and fighting against them and learn to live with them.
9 November 2022
Notes:
1. We also have the example of the construct of Kuwait, artificially divided from artificial Iraq, designed with its straight lines by British cunning and greed. It was the pretext for the First Genocide in Iraq in 1990-1991.
3. The Pope of Rome whose name was permanently removed from the lists (‘diptychs’) of Orthodox Christian leaders in Rome by the Orthodox Christian Patriarch of Constantinople was the Germanising Benedict VIII (1012-1024). Since him no further Popes of Rome have been recognised and commemorated as Orthodox Christians in the Orthodox world.
4. Today’s ailing Roman Catholic leader, Pope Francis, is said to be the last Pope. This is according to the Prophecies of St Malachy, though that document is much disputed and considered by many to be pure fiction.
5. As one English writer, writing of his own country, put it nearly a century ago: ‘Religion (in the late sixteenth century) was not about conversing with the Eternal, but keeping people quiet in the Eternal’s name’. And: ‘Religion then was not building churches, it was preparing to smash churches and put up conventicles where one could hate one’s neighbour as oneself’.
6. See ‘The Europeanization of Europe’, Pp. 269-291 in The Making of Europe by Robert Bartlett (1993).
Canada’s pointless prime minister is a vacuous, self-aggrandising, borderline despot incapable of even keeping up the pretence he cares a jot about the people unfortunate enough to be governed by the privileged charlatan.
Just weeks post federal elections, the muppet PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has given up all pretense of being a serious politician and instead returned to his norm of idiocy, offensive gaffs, scandals, and increasing the authoritarianism Canadians have endured the past 18+ months (but which Trudeau and other leaders have flouted).
On September 30, the day of Canada’s newly-established National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, instead of himself abiding by the words of his (clearly-scripted and hollow) statement, Trudeau skipped off West to hit the waves and walk on the beach with his wife and kids.
The statement included Trudeau inviting Canadians, “to reflect on the painful and lasting impacts of residential schools in Canada, and to honour survivors, their families, and their communities,” and, “to remember the many children who never returned home.”
This he did by ignoring requests of Indigenous communities to visit, instead opting for family fun time in Tofino, a holiday town on Vancouver Island.
Global News caught up with Justin Trudeau, who was vacationing in Tofino on Canada's first National Truth and Reconciliation Day.
His official itinerary placed him in "private meetings" in Ottawa.
This is hardly surprising, given he is merely the face of the government of Canada, the same government which has paid lip service to caring about Indigenous peoples, but continues to allow many communities to boil contaminated water rather than solving the dangerous health issue.
Trudeau’s choice to go surfing on the very day of the first year of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, was, in my opinion, him revealing how little he cares for the issues he feigns concern over.
A week later, he donned his pretend-sincere face and uttered the empty words, “Travelling on the 30th was a mistake and I regret it.”
Nah. He doesn’t regret it, he regrets getting caught. Or as a survivor of the genocidal ‘residential school’ system said, “this just shows us survivors that he doesn’t actually want to meet with us. He’s just hoping that we will just disappear into the sunset.”
Last July I wrote of the sudden media attention regarding the horrific issue of the Canada-wide ‘residential schools’, where starvation, torture, and sexual, physical and mental abuse were rife.
In a follow up article, I cited an interview I conducted with Roland Chrisjohn, a PhD-educated clinical psychologist and head of the Native Studies department at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, who spoke of Canada’s long history of covering up the crimes against Indigenous children imprisoned in the ‘schools’.
Trudeau’s latest failure to show any semblance of genuine remorse over these crimes was noted in the backlash on social media, including in response to his virtue-signalling tweet after the fact.
You have no right to lecture us on Indigenous reconciliation while building a pipeline through treaty land. Until you #StopLine3 your words mean nothing. https://t.co/ZQRE5vR8Iy
More recently, Trudeau took to Twitter tweeting about “lighting candles to honour Indigenous women, girls,” and adding his own version of inclusivity, 2SLGBTQQIA, that left even the wokest confused, and many mocking his idiocy.
Only the 2SLGBTQQIA+? What about the F##^*#>€PKSDFNNM+¥*+? Their lived experiences matter too. Please be more inclusive.
[You truly are a caricature of the worst woke stereotype. Void of any profundity.]
The 2SL of that Trudeauism apparently referred to ‘Two-spirit’, or “a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit and is used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe their sexual identity.”
Although Team Trudeau thought they were ahead of the woke game, he instead, once again, looked like an idiot in a suit pretending to be a leader. One whose Twitter settings should include parental guidance, for his own good.
Trudeau’s authoritarianism
While the PM might garner a tad of sympathy from charitably-minded people who perhaps, mistakenly, think the guy has his heart in the right place but keeps mucking up with his idiotic gaffes, many Canadians are rightly pissed off by his, and Canada’s, authoritarian streak over the past two years.
Ontario has had one of the longest and most brutal lockdowns in the world – though the tyranny in Australia has superseded that of Ontario.
Earlier this year, Canada decided to re-invent science and declare that natural immunity to Covid-19 isn’t acceptable, only the fast-tracked Big Pharma jabs, meaning that many Canadians, myself-included, cannot return to Canada.
In the leadup to the rushed election, Trudeau said unvaccinated citizens should be banned from planes, trains & buses, and called on the populace to shame and condemn the anti-vaxxers as a “danger.”
This week, Trudeau announced Canadians aged 12 and up will be forced to be jabbed in order to travel.
And Trudeau’s government will tighten the noose further, implementing prison-state rules about travel by the end of November: only fully vaccinated Canadians can travel.
This is unsurprising to those who have followed Canada’s not so subtle slide towards tyranny. Nor is it surprising after over a year of Covid-19-related psychological operations against the Canadian people, with the intent of “shaping and exploiting” information, discouraging civil disobedience, and boosting confidence in the government’s narratives on matters pandemic.
Although I believe that whoever the muppet leader of Canada is, the policies would largely be the same, the Trudeau brand is truly repugnant.
Canadians are doomed with years more fake, woke and authoritarian non-leadership, with no imminent solution in sight other than mass civil disobedience. But sadly, the combination of idiotic and distracting identity politics and the media fear mongering will ensure that this does not happen.
Whose Apartheid is/was the worst? This analysis will focus on the severity of South Africa’s Apartheid and will touch on other forms of Apartheid too. This article is motivated by The Saker’s call for action in seeking out the Truth, in his recent article: “Woke insanity: why is there so little pushback?!”
Before we proceed to South Africa, the following question is posed: What is/was the level of “Apartheid” (if any) in the following states/countries? Israel and Palestine (current/ongoing conflict); Ireland (Catholic and Protestant divisions in Northern Ireland); India (caste system); China (problems with ethnic minorities); Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador (Quality of life and education for indigenous peoples versus that for Europeans), Middle East (Sunni and Shia divisions); the formation and breakup of Yugoslavia; “Safe Spaces” for Woke?
Bearing that in mind, we now turn our attention to the Apartheid of South Africa (then and now).
The claim is often made that South Africa’s Apartheid was uniquely evil under the Afrikaners/Boers and that nobody could hold a candle to them (except perhaps Israel). First, we need to look at the definition of Apartheid. There are two definitions for it. When people refer to Apartheid, the first definition [below] is the one they usually refer to:
1. The term “Apartheid” was officially named a crime against humanity in 1966 by the United Nations General Assembly. The U.N. defined Apartheid as “inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over persons of another racial group and systematically oppressing them.” The National Security Council adopted a stance against Apartheid in 1984 as a criminal act (Resource 1).
2. The Afrikaner government who were the originators of the term “Apartheid”, defined it differently. For them it was based on the parallel (separate) development of the different nations within South Africa:
“My point is this that, if mixed development is to be the policy of the future of South Africa, it will lead to the most terrific clash of interests imaginable. The endeavors and desires of the Bantu and the endeavors and objectives of all Europeans will be antagonistic. Such a clash can only bring unhappiness and misery to both. Both Bantu and European must, therefore, consider in good time how this misery can be averted from themselves and from their descendants.
They must find a plan to provide the two population groups with opportunities for the full development of their respective powers and ambitions without coming into conflict. The only possible way out is the second alternative, namely, that both adopt a development divorced from each other. That is all that the word apartheid means.”
– Speech of the Minister of Native Affairs, 5 December 1950, South Africa
It is often stated that Afrikaner leaders were the architects of Apartheid, but about 80% of the segregation laws for the Apartheid policy were already in place (in some form or another) before Apartheid was created (Resource 2). Those foundational segregation laws were promulgated by the Dutch and British colonial powers prior to the Afrikaners coming into power in 1948 (Resource 14).
The Apartheid policy (its reasons and objectives), as it developed, was openly and transparently communicated to local and international audiences by way of press releases, newsreels (Resource 3), and documents made available by South African foreign missions abroad. Here is an excerpt from one such document, a booklet titled, ‘Progress Through Separate Development – South Africa in Peaceful Transition’:
“Cannot you understand us fighting to death for our existence? And yet we do not only seek and fight for a solution which will mean our survival but seek one which will grant survival and full development, politically and economically to each of the other racial groups as well, and we are even prepared to pay a high price out of our earnings for their future.” “We prefer each of our population groups to be controlled and governed by themselves, as nations are. Then they can cooperate as in a commonwealth or in an economic association of nations where necessary. Where is the evil in this?” (Resource 4)
Two sentences in the above statement stand out, namely (1) “… us fighting to death for our existence” and (2) “…we are even prepared to pay a high price out of our earnings for their future.” For context both of these need to be interrogated:
1. “Cannot you understand us fighting to death for our existence?”
This sentence stands out because South Africa was not at war at that time, so it must have meant something else:
The Afrikaners/Boers were drastically seeking a solution that would guarantee and secure their survival as a nation at the foot of the African continent – for several reasons:
During the Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1902) just 46 years prior to them getting into power in 1948, the Boers had lost virtually everything through a scorched earth policy enacted by the British. Their farms (30,000 were burned down), and their independence was lost, and very many of their women and children (26,000) died in concentration camps (22,000 were children under the age of 16). (Resource 5).
The Boers had lost their internationally recognized Boer Republics as a result of the Anglo-Boer War, so they couldn’t draw borders around themselves for protection. Post-war they were incorporated into a union of nations (the Union of South Africa) by the Imperial British government in 1910. In 1948 the Afrikaners came into power and inherited this Union of South Africa, along with responsibility for all the nations within the Union.
Demographic growth: The Afrikaners/Boers’ numbers and birthrates would have been much higher had they not lost so many females during the Anglo-Boer War. Moreover, their birthrates have always been much lower than African groups within South Africa (Resource 6).
The European colonies in other African countries were systematically being disbanded through a process of decolonization which was fully supported (and initiated in some case) by European countries. At the same time Western and Eastern nations were vying with each other, and among themselves, for favor (access to resources) among newly decolonized and decolonizing African leaderships by supporting Pan-Africanism against the local whites in Africa (Resource 7).
Afrikaners/Boers had no right of return to Europe, whereas whites in the other African nations did have that right (mainly British, French, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese and German passport holders). Afrikaners held only South African passports. As a side-note, there were no Boer Republic passports, because the Boer Republics didn’t exist anymore after the Anglo-Boer War.
A common misconception is that Afrikaners/Boers are Dutch and can/should “go back to Europe”. Afrikaners are genetically, according to 2020 research, 34% to 37% Dutch, 27% to 34% German, 13% to 26% French and 6% to 12% non-European (mainly Asian and Khoisan). (Resource 8).
The Afrikaners have no right of return to the Netherlands because in 1814 the Netherlands sold its temporary Dutch colony at the Cape (including all the Afrikaners/Boers) to the British for 3 million pounds sterling, with no right for them to return to the Netherlands. In other words, the Afrikaners were “sold lock stock and barrel”. To this day the Dutch do not recognize Afrikaners as Dutch, or that they have a right of return (Resource 9).
The Afrikaners have no right of return to Germany, because the Germans who went to South Africa were single men, tradesmen, and artisans who migrated to South Africa for work and assimilated into the Afrikaner nation.
The Afrikaners have no right of return to France because the French immigrants that went to South Africa were Protestant refugees escaping religious persecution in France after Protestantism was outlawed in the 1680’s. No right of return to France exists for Huguenots to this day.
The ‘no right of return’ concept is not something that is so out-of-the-ordinary. The same would apply for many/most Chileans, Argentinians and Uruguayans because they are descendants from several European nations with a blended heritage, for example from Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Poland.
Where would/could the Afrikaners go/have gone to? In their minds, they were/are already home (they consider/ed themselves to be White Africans), but after they gained power in 1948 they were also between a rock and hard place (no more Boer Republics). They decided to continue on with the segregation policies already put in place. At that time forms of segregation were also still in place in several other nations, such as USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The new objective with segregation (now called Apartheid) was for the devolution of the already existing traditional ethnic tribal Homelands into autonomous self-ruling ‘state-lets’ within greater South Africa. This devolution and self-rule would then pave the way for complete independence for each of the Homelands. In the interim, and even after independence, economic support would be available from the Apartheid state (Resource 4),
What was the reasoning behind that approach? The lack of industrialization in the Homelands caused an influx of migrant workers out of the Homelands to cities and towns in wider South Africa. This created the formation of townships (‘shantytowns’) on the outskirts of cities and towns by migrant workers (with resulting social issues). It has often been claimed that the Apartheid state “created” such townships, but they formed naturally because of that economic migration from the underdeveloped Homelands.
The populations of the tribal Homelands were becoming increasingly dependent on jobs far away, while not much modern development was happening naturally inside of them. The Apartheid state’s solution was to finance Homeland development (with state finances, i.e. white tax payers money, because black South Africans were exempted from taxes), so that there would be sufficient job creation and infrastructure development within the Homelands and their border areas, to reduce the economic migration. It was hoped such an aproach would result in reducing the informal settlement/squatter camp (and related) issues and would be the impetus for the long-term natural development of the Homelands.
2. “…we are even prepared to pay a high price out of our earnings for their future.”
Between 1964 and 1973 the Homeland of Transkei alone had already received $152-million (USD) from the Apartheid government (Resource 10).
By 1966 the equivalent of more or less (at the exhange rate at the time) $420-million (USD) had been invested in the development of border area industries neat to the Homelands and by that time 100,000 jobs had been created. (Resource 11).
Between 1962 and 1972 the UN paid out $298 Million USD to underdeveloped countries. In that same period it is estimated that South Africa (the Apartheid government) spent $558 Million USD on the development of the traditional tribal homelands for Self Rule (Resource 12).
The above figures are rather significant, even by today’s standards. Should the be adjusted for inflation to the equivalent in today’s terms these sums become even more impressive. Could it be that the white Apartheid government invested more in the development of indigenous peoples’ regions, within a short period of time than any other Western nation in history? This would have to be verified through research, but that seems to be a distinct possibility.
It has frequently been stated by activists that the Apartheid government created the Bantustans (Homelands) and dumped black South Africans in them against their will and that these areas were the least habitable and least desirable parts of the country – that they are desolate places resembling the Gaza strip … But, what are the facts?
The Homeland areas were originally inhabited by the Bantu African tribes during their migration into Southern Africa from the Great Lakes/Central and West Africa region (Resource 13). Clearly, Bantustans/Homelands were not created by the Apartheid government. Moreover, the outlines of the Homelands had already been confirmed by colonial administrations prior to Afrikaners coming into power in 1948 (Resource 14).
The Eastern part of South Africa, where the Homelands are situated, is actually the most fertile part of the country with the best agricultural potential, not the worst, and this can easily be observed and verified by looking at maps and also by looking at rainfall figures and soil quality (Resource 15).
Were human rights abuses committed in the process of implementing Separate Development, which was one of the components of Apartheid? Was this policy implemented explicitly “… for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over persons of another racial group and systematically oppressing them”?
Separate development for Self Rule, which was the original South African meaning of Apartheid, does not seem to fit very well into the U.N.’s definition of Apartheid. That said, Apartheid had other components to it. In the rest of South Africa, outside of the Homelands, there were various segregation laws already in place that were inherited by the Afrikaners when they came into power. Those laws resembled the Jim Crow laws of the United States.
After 1948, the state increased the levels of segregation through Apartheid policies and in some cases removed some rights that had already been in place, like the voting rights for Brown people in the Cape Provence for example. Worse than that, it mandated that in some cases families had to be separated from each other when their members were of mixed ethnicity. Those were clearly human rights abuses and some of the most shameful excesses of the Apartheid regime.
If the worst excesses of South African Apartheid are considered as a benchmark for some of the worst human rights abuses of the nineteenth century, as has been claimed (Resource 16), then where would, for example, the caste system in India fall within the spectrum of worst human rights abuses? Or, for example, the forceful removal of aboriginal children from their families in Australia (the Stolen Generations) for assimilation into white families:
“Official government estimates are that in certain regions between one in ten and one in three Indigenous Australian children were forcibly taken from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970” (Resource 17)
Further on this subject, how were indigenous peoples treated in South America and Central America during the Spanish conquest and Portuguese colonialism, and how would that compare to the policy of separate development and/or Apartheid in general, in South Africa? The same questions could be posed about North American countries’ treatment of the indigenous peoples.
The point of the examples above is not to “embarrass anyone”, it is to make the point that the severity of South African Apartheid should be evaluated alongside all past and present segregation policies around the world where similar circumstances applied. Only through side-by-side analysis can an objective analysis be made. That’s the scientific method. Such a study has to date never been done. That’s perhaps for obvious reasons because the vast majority of people in the anti-Apartheid movements were/are from nations that would not escape scrutiny, should such an analysis ever be done honestly.
Why is such an analysis important? Because of the level of disinformation about what really happened during Apartheid. For example, in the document titled ‘Comparing South African Apartheid to Israeli Apartheid’ (Resource 1) the following claims are made about South African Apartheid:
Claim: The Apartheid regime created the Bantustans. (Incorrect: They already existed in some form).
Claim: Black citizens were made involuntary citizens of those Homelands. (Incorrect: Homelands were settled by Bantu tribes when they migrated into South Africa, although it’s true that not all people originally from Homelands wanted to return there against their will. There was strong support for Self-Rule among the leaders of the Homelands (sources available).
Claim: The objective of the “creation” of the Homelands was for the demographic majority of whites in South Africa to be preserved. (Incorrect: The objective of industrializing and developing the Homelands and border areas was to draw Homeland inhabitants back to the Homelands in order to reduce the problems associated with migrant labor, such as informal settlements. In addition, much higher birth rates among African demographic groups presented numerous future challenges related to infrastructure development (carrying capacity) and water resources as well as the future of social and cultural cohesion. The separate development project of the Apartheid government was meant to deal with some of those problems in advance, while – as stated before – the policy would also preserve the survival of Afrikaners/Whites in South Africa. That objective was honestly stated in communiques by the Apartheid government.
Claim: Apartheid was about keeping the best parts of the country for the whites and sending the black population to the least habitable, least desirable parts of the country. (Incorrect: The Homelands were and are the most fertile regions of the country).
Claim: Blacks were forcibly removed and relocated to black homelands and much of their land seized during Apartheid. (Facts: It is true that many blacks were forcibly removed and relocated to Homelands, but in the majority of cases compensation was involved (Resource 18). White people were also forcefully removed – the Apartheid government forced whites out of the Homelands back into greater South Africa).
A common claim that is made about Apartheid (and/or Afrikaners/Boers) is that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of black people were killed during Apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report spearheaded by Rev Desmond Tutu (among other prominent black human rights activists), concluded that around 700 such deaths occurred in 46 years:
“Then there are people who argue that apartheid was a policy in terms of which huge numbers of black people were killed by the apartheid government. It is indeed true that black people were killed by the apartheid government, but the correct figures will come as a surprise to many people. The Human Rights Committee and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that roughly 21 000 people died in political violence between 1948 and 1994. Of those 21 000 people, roughly 100 were killed by white rightists and roughly 600 by members of the security forces. Roughly 19 000 people died following the ANC’s launch of the people’s war against competing black [black against black] institutions and organizations.” (Resource 19)
Finally, it would only be fair to evaluate what’s happening in South Africa today, as opposed to South Africa under Apartheid. How do South Africa’s racial policies in 2021 compare to the original Apartheid policies?
By the year 2017, there had been no less than 1700 farm murders (many seem to be politically motivated) and 12 245 farm attacks according to the statistics of the South African police. Only a small number of farmers murdered are black farmers (Resource 20)
Today there are more race-based laws in South Africa that discriminate against white people after 27 years of democracy than there were under 48 years of Apartheid and 38 years of British colonialism combined:
“The real problem, inadvertently highlighted by the controversy, is that such a large part of the media, civil society, and the DA do not see the ANC’s race laws as a problem. In fact, they are barely conscious that they exist at all. And yet it is simply impossible to understand South Africa’s predicament without reference to the ANC’s racial project, the plunder that this enabled, and the institutional and economic destruction that resulted.” (Resource 21).
For a few precious years in the early to mid-1990s South Africa was, for the first and last time, a country without operative racial laws. Over the past 26 years the ANC has put in place a web of binding racial requirements through constitutional provisions, legislation, white papers, regulations, charters, and party resolutions; as it has sought to advance through the different stages of the revolution, towards the goal of pure racial proportionality, everywhere. This article has documented some eighty of these, but this is not a complete list. It lists only a handful of regulations. By one count the ANC has incorporated racial requirements into ninety acts of parliament, excluding the Constitution, though many of these relate to the application of the “representivity” principle to the boards of statutory bodies. In addition, there are a number of judgments issued by the Constitutional Court, bending the interpretation of the Constitution in favor of the national revolution. ” (Resource 21).
Somehow the BDS movement has not picked up on these developments, but the question must be posed: “Does South Africa in 2021 (with its multitude of race laws, more than under the old Apartheid) qualify as “an Apartheid state” according to the U.N.’s definition of Apartheid?
The U.N. defined Apartheid as “inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over persons of another racial group and systematically oppressing them”.
When they came into power in 1948 the Afrikaner government wanted to secure a future for the Afrikaners/Boers within South Africa, because they had lost their Homelands (the Boer Republics), which were their cultural heartlands. They, therefore, assumed that the policy of separate development (self-determination through self-rule for everyone) would be welcomed.
They also believed that the only way to secure a future for themselves would be to at the same time also secure a future for all the other nations within the artificially created country known as South Africa. They believed that if they did not do that, their future within South Africa would not be guaranteed. In other words, they acted from a position of self-preservation, which is the most basic human instinct.
Were they just being paranoid?
The following policies among others are currently in development in South Africa, or are already being implemented:
A land confiscation policy known as “Expropriation without compensation” is on the cards in South Africa. If this is passed it would be much worse than the Apartheid government’s forced removals to the Homelands and its resettlement policy in general because there will be no compensation. In other words, Afrikaners/Boers stand to lose everything, notwithstanding their historical developmental, economic, or financial contributions to the country or to black people in particular. (Resource 22).
The Afrikaans language, the language of the Afrikaners and also the first language of many Brown people in the Western Cape, has been deemed “non-indigenous” to South Africa in a new language policy by the current South African government. Universities in South Africa are already implementing this new policy and the Afrikaans language has been removed as a main form of instruction. English has been installed in its place. (Resource 23).
Affirmative action policies are in place that are formulated according to racial demographics. Higher birth rates for African groups mean higher growth numbers for them, meaning that whites are increasingly squeezed out of the economy for access to jobs, access to education, and access to government services. To an extent also applies to the private sector. (Resource 21).
Covid relief funds in some sectors have been made available only to Black Empowerment beneficiaries, while white people did not qualify for financial relief. (Resource 24).
Radical politicians in South Africa regularly call on their members to commit acts of violence with regards to farmers, with devastating consequences. Such actions (or worse) hardly ever make it into mainstream media coverage. (Resource 25).
The roots of all the current “wokeness” in the world are to be found in the selective blindness of the anti-Apartheid movements. Wokeness equals selective outrage and double standards with the objective to scapegoat. Most people have supported anti-Apartheid movements, but few are prepared to publicly denounce glaringly obvious discriminatory race policies against white people in South Africa in the present day.
Closing comments:
Some “experts in metaphysics” have claimed that Afrikaners/Boers “deserve” their current circumstances, because of “bad karma”. Apparently, according to them, it’s “just desserts” for their implementation of Apartheid policies in the past. If that is how Karma works (As ye sow, so ye shall reap), it would be interesting to see what the future holds for groups/individuals that have done or are doing, much worse things than were done by/under apartheid. How Karma really works is more likely based upon not bringing bad Karma upon oneself by wishing bad Karma upon others. Today we can see that a lot of South Africa’s problems regarding race issues have arrived in Western Nations too, while “the woke” are demanding their own apartheid: “safe spaces”.
Book: Segregeer of Sterf (‘Segregate or Die)’ ) by HJJM van der Merwe (1961).
Resource 8:
Book: Huguenots at the Cape by Philippa van Aardt & Elaine Ridge (2020), P247. ISBN 978-0-620-85911-0.
Resource 9:
Book: AmaBhulu – The Birth and Death of the Second America by Harry Booyens (2014).P99. ISBN 978-0-9921590-1-6.
Resource 10:
Book: Progress Through Separate Development – South Africa in Peaceful Transition (1963 – Fourth Edition), P68.
Resource 11:
Book: Apartheid en Partnership by N.J. Rhoodie (1968/1971). P337.
Resource 12:
“… it is estimated that South Africa (the Apartheid government) spent $558 Million USD on the development of the traditional tribal homelands for Self Rule”.
“If the worst excesses of South African Apartheid are considered as a benchmark for some of the worst human rights abuses of the nineteenth century – as has been claimed on occasion”:
The remains of more than 200 indigenous children have been discovered at the site of a former residential school in Canada. Some of the children were as young as three years old. This discovery has opened old wounds for Indigenous people across Canada and is yet another instance of the country’s historical anti-indigenous campaign.
Last week, civilians in several towns on Lebanon’s southern border were faced with illumination flares and phosphorus munitions fired by the “Israeli” army into Lebanese territory.
The “Israeli” regime initially spoke of a “security incident” and later announced it was conducting strikes on “Hezbollah posts” without presenting any evidence.
Numerous international media outlets adopted official “Israeli” statements as headlines. It became breaking news that “Israel” took action “in response” to fire coming from Hezbollah. Lebanese narratives remain absent, as does “Israel’s” structural aggression.
But Tuesday’s incident and the reactions to it are part of a familiar pattern.
While international media focuses on the tense situation at the border every once in a while, “Israeli” incursions into Lebanon are neither new nor accidental. “Israel” violates Lebanese sovereignty several times a day, as the “Israeli” military infiltrates Lebanon by land, sea, and air.
Within the first five months of 2020, the Lebanese government registered over 1,000 “Israeli” violations of Lebanese sovereignty by land, sea, and air. The “Israeli” army has also repeatedly used Lebanese airspace to launch airstrikes on Syria.
“Israeli” military jets and spy drones are omnipresent. In fact, they have become part of the landscape in the south of Lebanon and are often heard and felt in Beirut as well. “Israeli” incursions include mock raids and reconnaissance flights.
Whether “Israel” intends to scare or intimidate civilians, collect intelligence, or provoke a reaction from Hezbollah, “Israeli” violations of Lebanese sovereignty are a form of state violence that affects millions of people daily – in particular the country’s south with its majority Shia population.
Lebanon has, on several occasions filed complaints at the United Nations, to no avail. Lebanon’s Supreme Defense Council condemned the latest Israeli assault and announced it would bring the issue again to the UN.
“Israeli” violations of Lebanese sovereignty and international law are a continuous component of “Israel’s” structural aggression towards Lebanon. This aggression needs to be viewed within the colonial and expansionist nature of the “Israeli” regime in Palestine and its role as a US proxy whose supremacy is guaranteed by its Western allies.
“Israeli”-Lebanese tensions precede the formation of Hezbollah by more than three decades. Lebanon and “Israel” have been officially at war since 1948 when the Zionist movement proclaimed the “state of ‘Israel’” in Palestine and forcefully expelled the majority of Palestinians into neighboring countries.
“Israel” has had a destabilizing and destructive impact on Lebanon and played a significant role in the Lebanese Civil War. “Israel” kept South Lebanon under military occupation until the year 2000, with help from its local proxies. In 2006, “Israel” launched another war against Lebanon, targeting civilians and the country’s infrastructure.
Hezbollah, which in the 1980s emerged as a resistance and liberation movement against the “Israeli” occupation and “Israeli” proxies in south Lebanon, has naturally been labelled a “terrorist organization” by “Israel” and its allies.
The “Israeli” threats continue today. Genocidal provocations accompany “Israeli” military jets in Lebanese skies. In the past years, some “Israeli” officials have threatened to destroy Lebanon altogether and bomb Lebanon back to the Middle Ages or the Stone Age.
On social media, “Israeli government-linked accounts continue to ridicule Lebanese in general, and the country’s Shia population, in particular. Israel made clear it would target all of Lebanon – not only Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, several Western journalists and correspondents in Beirut rarely address this issue in detail. While the daily incursions of the “Israeli” military in Lebanon are nearly entirely absent from foreign media coverage, there seems to be a significant emphasis on Hezbollah’s reactions.
When Hezbollah shot down an “Israeli” drone that was illegally infiltrating South Lebanon last week, there was some “breaking news.” But, like with Tuesday’s incident, there is a tendency among many Western media outlets to base their headlines on official “Israeli” statements.
This is in line with “Israel’s” colonial tactic of dehumanizing indigenous peoples, which is shared by “Israel’s” Western allies.
Tel Aviv usually presents any “Israeli” attack against Lebanon as a necessary self-defense against “terrorism.” This is not different from “Israel’s” violence in Gaza or the West Bank, where every Palestinian victim is either in advance or posthumously rhetorically converted into a terrorist, i.e., a legitimate target. Resistance is terrorism, and civilian homes are terrorist strongholds.
In Lebanon, those that “Israel” warplanes target are rarely presented as human beings, civilians, as survivors of previous “Israeli” violence, but rather as part of terrorist infrastructure. Sometimes even their indigeneity in Lebanon and loyalty to the country is questioned, as supporters of Hezbollah are referred to as “Iranian” agents.
There is of course, also a strategic component to “Israel’s” ongoing violations of Lebanese sovereignty. Hezbollah remains “Israel’s” nearest threat. Tel Aviv has, along with other US proxies and partners, aggressively pushed for a broader conflict against Hezbollah, Iran, and their allies.
The “Israeli” army has also seemed nervous about a potential retaliation by Hezbollah, ever since the IOF [“Israeli” Occupation Forces] killed Hezbollah member Ali Kamel Mohsen through an airstrike in Syria in July.
Following the assassination, the IOF has shown increased activity at the Lebanese border. On several occasions, “Israeli” residents have been ordered to stay indoors, and roads have been closed heightening fear that there may be an escalation.
We also have to pay attention to the ongoing protests against “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption. An increasingly desperate Netanyahu keen on presenting himself as a hero defending “Israel” may well like to see a skirmish with Hezbollah or increase violations of Lebanese sovereignty to sure up his beleaguered position at home.
One thing is for sure the so-called Hezbollah threat is a potential lifeline for Netanyahu one that he is likely to grasp firmly with grave consequences for Lebanon.
لم يكد بريق الذهب يخطف عيني كريستوفر كولومبس في معابد “الهنود” وبيوتهم وزينة نسائهم حتى باح في يومياته (1492) عن رغبته في أن ينكبّ الإسبان 3 سنوات كاملة ومن ثم ميليشيا المستوطنين الانجلو ساكسون من بعدهم برعاية ملكتهم إيزابيلا ومعها البابا في حينه… على حصاد ذهب العالم الجديد… ليكون ضمن العدّة والعتاد اللازم إنفاقها في سبيل تحرير اورشليم، كما يوثق لنا الكاتب والمؤرخ والمحقق السوري الكبير البروفيسور منير العكش في كتابه – تلمود العم سام – عن أميركا المكتشفة صدفة من قبل كريستوفر…!
هذه هي أميركا التي ينتفض ضدها اليوم مواطنوها الجدد وهم من كل الأعراق والألوان والانتماءات تقريباً (عدا البيض الانجلو ساكسون) وهم يصوّبون معاول هدمهم ضدّ تماثيل الرموز المؤسّسة!
فقد جاء في الأخبار في الساعات المنصرمة ما يلي:
قام متظاهرون في مدينة بالتيمور في ولاية ماريلاند الأميركية، برمي تمثال لكريستوفر كولومبوس من قاعدته، وبعد ذلك قاموا بدحرجته إلى الخليج ورموه في مياه المحيط الأطلسي.
حدث ذلك على خلفية إطلاق الألعاب النارية في المدينة، بمناسبة عيد الاستقلال. ويُعدّ هذا التمثال، أحد تماثيل كولومبوس الثلاثة في المدينة.
حدث هذا الأمر بشكل متكرّر في أكثر من مدينة أميركية مع هذا الرمز المقدس لدى الجيل المؤسس لأميركا لكنه الرمز الذي بات مثيراً للجدل إن لم يكن مثيراً للاشمئزاز أيضاً لدى فئة واسعة من الأميركيين، وهو تحوّل مهمّ في العقيدة الوطنية الأميركية..!
وفي واشنطن بالقرب من البيت الأبيض أحرق متظاهرون علم الولايات المتحدة بعد خطاب احتفالي للرئيس دونالد ترامب.
وأظهرت شبكة “إن بي سي” المتظاهرين قرب البيت الأبيض، وهم يحرقون العلم ويردّدون هتافات ضدّ “العبودية والإبادة الجماعية والحرب”…
وأميركا “لم تعد عظيمة على الإطلاق…”!
هذان الخبران ينبغي ان يجعلانا نتنبه لأمر هام ونوعي بدأ يتدحرج كالمدحلة في اللاوعي والوعي الأميركي لا بد من مراقبته بدقة خطوة خطوة…
وهو ما دفع علماء الاجتماع في أميركا والعالم يجمعون بان أميركا القوة العظمى بدأت مسيرة الأفول التاريخية لها رغم كل مظاهر قوتها الشكلية التي لا زالت تحتفظ بها…
نعم أميركا ليست على وشك السقوط قريباً وبسرعة البرق، لكنها لم تعد أميركا التي عرفناها سابقاً أو عرّفت هي عن نفسها، كيف…!؟
يقول الفيلسوف الأميركي الياباني الأصل فوكوياما وهو صاحب مقولة وكتاب نهاية التاريخ التي اشتهرت قبل نحو عقد ونيف من الزمان، وخلاصتها أن تجربة الديمقراطية البشرية تنتهي عند التجربة الأميركية.
باعتبارها نهاية الإنجاز والنبوغ البشريّ وبعدها لا يمكن للعالم أن يقدّم ما هو افضل…!
عاد فوكوياما هذا نفسه، بعد الحوادث الأخيرة في أميركا (التي أعقبت جورج فلويد) ليقول:
إن كل قوة في العالم تعتمد على ثلاثة إمكانات لاستمرار بقائها
الأول نظام الدولة وهو ما سقط بشكل كامل في بلادنا (أميركا) مقابل تحدي فيروس كورونا على عكس ما حصل في دول مثل اليابان وايران والصين التي صمدت دولها أمام هذا التحدّي وقدّمت نموذجا مشجعاً، والكلام لفوكوياما…..!
الإمكانية الثانية وهي الثقة الشعبية وهو ما ظهر أنه يكاد ينعدم وينتهي عند الشعب الأميركي كما حصل في مواجهة حادثة جورج فلويد…!
الإمكانية الثالثة وهي القيادة والهيمنة، فالولايات المتحدة الأميركية فقدت سيطرتها وهيمنتها وقيادتها للعالم على كل الأصعدة اقتصادياً وسياسياً وأمنياً وعسكرياً ومعنوياً…!
انتهى كلام فوكوياما…
من يتابع التحولات الأميركية الاّخيرة بكل المستويات سيلاحظ التالي:
1- أن الشعب الأميركي المنتفض لا يهاجم الشرطة ولا الجيش ولا مؤسسات الدولة إلا ما ندر جداً، لكنه يجمع على مهاجمة الرموز التي صنعت وخلقت وصورت لنا أميركا التي كنا نراها ونعيشها، وآخر المؤشرات على ذلك هو الخبر أعلاه…
أي تماثيل كولومبس والعلم الأميركي وقبل ذلك جورج واشنطن وووو…
أي العبودية والزيف والخداع والحرب والاستكبار والشيطان الذي في داخل “اسرائيل” الأولى أي أميركا…
2- لقد فشل النظام الأميركي من الناحية البنيوية خلال السبعين سنة الماضية التي أعقبت الحرب العالمية الثانية ان يقدم نموذجاً حضارياً اجتماعياً يمكن المراهنة عليه دفاعاً عن طبقات المجتمع المختلفة بعدما حطّم الطبقة الأميركية الوسطى تحطيماً كاملاً وتحوّل الى نظام أقلوي تحكمه الطبقة الأنجلوساكسونية البيضاء الثرية والمتسلطة على ما يزيد على نحو 70 في المئة من السكان المنتمين لأعراق ومجموعات اجتماعية لا تنتمي للعرق الانجلو ساكسوني الابيض، حتى باتت شبه معدمة بالمقارنة مع الثراء الفاحش المتكدس بيد الأقلية الأوليغارشية..
على عكس الصين الشعبية التي نجحت في إعلاء شأن او رفع مستوى نحو 800 مليون مواطن صيني من الفقر لتضعهم على مستوى الطبقة الوسطى..!
3- على مستوى الحضور الأميركي في الموازين الدولية فأميركا ولأول مرة لم تعد الاقتصاد الاول في العالم ولا حتى من الاقتصادات النموذجية التي يشار اليها بالبنان…
لقد بدأت تبيع خاماتها النفطية بطريقة تنافسية متهافتة لتعديل إيراداتها؛ وهو ما ظهر بشكل خاص في زيادة ما مقداره اكثر من 3 ملايين برميل يومياً في محاولة للحاق بالصين وسائر الدول المنافسة لها في الأسواق العالمية…
4- لقد فقدت أميركا نضارتها وحيويتها السياسية كنظام وقدرتها على العطاء او تقديم أي شيء جديد حتى في المثل الديمقراطية التي ظلت تتغنى بها لعقود طويلة…
ان نظرة فاحصة لما يجري مما يمكن تسميته بالطائفية الحزبية مثلاً بين الحزبين الحاكمين يمكننا القول إن النظام السياسي الحاكم لم يعد قادراً حتى ان يتخيل سباقات حزبية ومنافسات سلسة وقانونية معتبرة بين الحزبين الجمهوري والديمقراطي بشكل طبيعي ناهيك عن سماحه أو إتاحته الفرصة لبروز او تبلور تيار او حزب او مرشح ثالث…!
النظام الأميركي اذن بدأ يتآكل ويتصدع في بنيته الاساسية التي بنى عليها كل أوهامه وأطماعه..
نعم قد لا يسقط أمامنا سريعاً..
لكن رحلة أفوله بدأت بالفعل وباعتراف وإجماع كل علماء الاجتماع السياسي العالمي..
أميركا التي عرفناها وهي تتغذّى وترضع من حليب الحروب التي تخوضها بقواتها المقتحمة للأراضي والبحار لم تعد تقوى على الحروب، لقد ودعت الحرب بعد أن فقدت كل أنواع المناعات التي تؤهلها لخوض أي حرب جديدة…
النظام السياسي الأميركي الذي عرفناه حتى الآن بات في عين التحدي والعاصفة داخلياً وخارجياً…
ستنخره “الأرضة” التي نخرت عصا سليمان من الداخل…
هذا هو حال أميركا في هذه اللحظة التاريخيّة…
على مدى أربعة قرون ظلت “فكرة أميركا” تخطف روح كل الشرائع وتطوّعها لأهدافها الامبراطورية الثلاثة التي ورثتها لقاعدتها المتقدّمة “إسرائيل” ألا وهي:
1- اجتياح أرض الغير( الغزو).
2- استبدال سكان الأرض المحتلة بسكان جدد.
3- استبدال ثقافة وتاريخ تلك البلدان بثقافة المحتلين الغرباء وتاريخهم.
هذه الفكرة الأميركية وصلت الى محطتها الأخيرة على ما يبدو، اي الى طريق مسدود وبدأت تفقد بريقها في الداخل قبل الخارج كما يقول فوكوياما.
لذلك كان من الطبيعي أن تظهر بدايات انتفاضة شعبية ضد الرموز وفي مقدمتهم اولئك الذين طمعوا بذهب السكان الأصليين وذهب العالم..
أي كريستوفر كولومبس.
وهذا ما يتوقع ان يمتد قريباً إلى قاعدة أميركا المتقدّمة أي “اسرائيل” الثانية الصغيرة التي زرعوها على يابستنا ومياهنا الفلسطينية العربية…
We live in tumultuous days… one could say “the end of an era”.
It is clear that there is a storm coming, however, the question is will it be the sort of storm that provides sustenance and relief to drought-stricken and barren lands, or will it be the sort of storm that destroys indiscriminately and leaves nothing recognizable in its wake?
There is such a heavy tension in the air, the buildup we are told of centuries of injustice, oppression and murder. It feels like the entire world’s burden has laid itself upon one culprit and that it is high time that that villain pay for past blood spilled.
That villain is the United States.
It is common to hear that this nation was created under the hubristic banner of “Freedom from Empire”, while it brutally owned slaves and committed genocide on the indigenous people. That the “Declaration of Independence” and the “U.S. Constitution” are despicable displays of the highest degree of grotesque hypocrisy, and that in reality the U.S. was to replace one system of empire with another and far worse.
These are weighty charges indeed, and nobody can deny that great crimes against humanity have been committed. However, it is important that we review this history in full, for if we lose sight of the forest, we will be losing sight of an ongoing battle that is still waging.
We will have abandoned the work of past heroes that has been left unfinished and will have replaced it with the false idol of anarchy, mistaking its ‘empty-promises of liberty’ as a mark of what constitutes a ‘true freedom’.
How can we avoid such ‘empty-promises’ and strive for ‘true freedom’?
There is no better account in addressing such a question as that of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), a former slave who would become an advisor to Abraham Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War and the Consul General to Haiti in his elder years.
A through-and-through TRUE American hero (1).
From Slavery to Freedom
Frederick Douglass was born in Talbot County, in the State of Maryland. Though it was impossible to know his exact date of birth, he gathers that the month of February 1817 is as accurate as possible. The name given to him by his dear mother was, in the words of Douglass “no less pretentious and long” than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (Frederick’s mother was believed to be the only slave in the region who knew how to read).
Frederick recalls that in his youth
“I was just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery, when nine years old, as I am now. Without any appeals to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, to regard God as ‘Our Father’ condemned slavery as a crime.”
Already, by the age of nine, Frederick had set himself upon not only the idea of escape from this destitution, but was always mindful to an education wherever he could find it.
Luckily, in this unhappy state his only adult friend Miss Lucretia, (daughter of Captain Anthony the slaveholder of Frederick), arranged for Frederick, at the age of ten, to be sent away from the plantations to live in Baltimore with her husband’s brother Hugh Auld.
It was in Baltimore that Frederick would learn how to read.
Years go by and at around the age of fifteen or sixteen, Frederick is sent back to the plantations (over a family squabble), and not surprisingly is found to be wholly unfit for a life of hard-labour as an obedient slave. He is thus promptly sent to “Covey, The Negro Breaker” to lodge with for a period of one year.
For six months, Frederick was whipped and beaten on a regular basis. From the dawn of day till the complete darkness in the evening, he was kept hard at work in the fields, and was worked up to the point of his powers of endurance.
Until one day he decides finally that it is better to resist and risk the consequences than continue to live such a contemptible life as a mere brute. He decides one day to simply refuse to be treated as an animal, not to strike back but to oppose the striking.
As Frederick states
“A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. He only can understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has himself incurred something, or hazarded something, in repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant and a cowardly one withal. After resisting him, I felt as I had never felt before. It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward, trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of independence. I had reached the point at which I was not afraid to die. This spirit made me a freeman in fact, though I still remained a slave in form. When a slave cannot be flogged, he is more than half free. He has a domain as broad as his own manly heart to defend, and he is really ‘a power on earth’. From this time until my escape from slavery, I was never fairly whipped. Several attempts were made, but they were always unsuccessful. Bruised I did get, but the instance I have described was the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.”
The Abolitionist Cause in Light of the Preservation of the Union
“…that the fathers of the Republic neither intended the extension nor the perpetuity of slavery and that liberty is national and slavery is sectional.” – Frederick Douglass
To make a long story short, Frederick would successfully escape the South and on September 3rd 1838, arriving in New York at the age of 21, he would finally embark on a life as a free man.
It would be only four or five months living in New Bedford before Douglass would meet William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most prominent leaders of the Abolitionist movement. It did not take long for Douglass to be invited along their speaking tours to recount his story as a runaway slave from the South.
Though Douglass would owe much of his future as a great orator and writer in thanks to his Abolitionist friends who gave him a strong start in this direction and introduced him to many important figures, Douglass would eventually distance himself from the Abolitionist “scripture”.
“After a time, a careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that there was no necessity for dissolving the union between the northern and southern states, that to seek this dissolution was not part of my duty as an abolitionist, that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery, and that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit an antislavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land.”
During this time, Douglass would start his own anti-slavery newspaper called “The North Star”. Along with this new editorial responsibility, Douglass would no longer leave it to the “good advice” of his “more learned” Abolitionist friends, but would take the responsibility upon himself to seek out and come to know whether such assertions by the Abolitionists on the nature of the Republic were true.
“My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to study with some care not only the just and proper rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers, and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States – inaugurated to ‘form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty’ – could not well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief…the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state of the Union…being convinced of the fact, my duty upon this point in the further conduct of my paper [The North Star] was plain.”
Abraham Lincoln would be elected as the President of the United States on March 4th, 1861. To which Douglass stated of the occasion:
“It was Mr. Lincoln who told the American people at this crisis that the ‘Union could not long endure half slave and half free; that they must be all one or the other, and that the public mind could find no resting place but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery.’ These were not the words of an abolitionist – branded a fanatic, and carried away by an enthusiastic devotion to the Negro – but the calm cool, deliberate utterance of a statesman, comprehensive enough to take in the welfare of the whole country…In a few simple words he had embodied the thought of the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the country amid perils present and to come.”
On Meeting Lincoln
“I still believed, and spoke as I believed, all over the North, that the mission of the war was the liberation of the slave, as well as the salvation of the Union…” – Frederick Douglass
With this newly discovered orientation, Douglass not only put the preservation of the Union as something necessary and expedient but, most importantly, something that could not be sacrificed in striving for the Abolitionist cause.
Douglass would be one of the first to encourage the recruitment, through his paper “The North Star”, of black soldiers to join the Union’s war against the Confederate South. The thought was that by these men joining the war, they would prove their mettle in the cause for emancipation.
These were hard days, since black soldiers were not given equal treatment nor protection in the Union army. They also risked, if captured by the South, being enslaved, a sentence in Douglass’ words “worse than death”. Douglass had been assured that equal treatment would eventually occur, but it was too slow moving in his eyes and he refused to continue recruiting black soldiers into the Union army.
It was at this point that Douglass was invited to meet with President Lincoln to discuss his concerns over the matter.
Douglass describes his first meeting with Lincoln:
“I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man than in that of Abraham Lincoln…Long lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln’s brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned…I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man – one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt.”
One of the points of concern Douglass discussed with the President, was on the unfair treatment of black soldiers as POWs and suggested that the North should retaliate and commit the same treatment on their Southern POWs to dissuade this unequal treatment, to which Lincoln responded,
“Retaliation was a terrible remedy, and one which it was very difficult to apply – that, if once begun, there was no telling where it would end – that if he could get hold of the Confederate soldiers who had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons he could easily retaliate, but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by others was revolting to his feelings…Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views, I was so well satisfied with the man and with the educating tendency of the conflict I determined to go on with the recruiting.”
Douglass reflects on his decision:
“It was a great thing to achieve American independence when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions. He alone of all our presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery, and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as chattels and numbered with the beasts of the field.”
The Emancipation Proclamation
“Since William the Silent, who was the soul of the mighty war for religious liberty against Spain and the Spanish Inquisition, no leader of men has been loved and trusted in such generous measures as was Abraham Lincoln.”
– Frederick Douglass
During the third year of the sanguinary Civil War, January 1st 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Douglass states of the occasion: “the formal and solemn announcement was made that thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation…It must be the end of all compromises with slavery – a declaration that thereafter the war was to be conducted on a new principle, with a new aim.”
It was at this point that Lincoln received criticism for extending the war unnecessarily. The South was ready to make certain concessions and the North was eager to end the war. By Lincoln announcing the Emancipation Proclamation, it was thought by many to be a reckless provocation making any possibility of peace fruitless.
On this subject, Douglass would meet with Lincoln for the last time, before he would be assassinated.
“The main subject on which he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel states to come within the deferral lines. The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace…He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object and failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels [the South]…He saw the danger of premature peace…I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states, beyond the lines of our armies, and to carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.
…I refer to this conversation because I think that, on Mr. Lincoln’s part, it is evidence conclusive that the proclamation, so far at least as he was concerned, was not effected merely as a [political] ‘necessity’.”
President Lincoln would be selected to continue a second term and was inaugurated on March 4th, 1865. About one month after the official end of the Civil War. Lincoln would be assassinated just a mere 41 days after his second inauguration.
Douglass writes, “His first inauguration arrested the fall of the Republic, and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations.” The fact that Lincoln’s leadership was savagely cut short was a tragedy for all who understood that the true foundation of the Republic was built upon the principle “liberty for all”.
In that sad moment, when the country heard of the death of their leader who was to bring them closer to this goal, Douglass states,
“We shared in common a terrible calamity, and this ‘touch of nature made us’ more than countrymen, it made us ‘kin’.”
Reflections on the Past
It is an utmost testament to the grace and nobility of Frederick Douglass’ character that an soon as the law and spirit of slavery had been broken, he made a point to no longer harbour hate and resentment for the past wrongs committed upon himself. He recognised that humanity was indeed inherently good and would ultimately strive towards goodness if left to its natural tendency… that to punish the children of those who committed crimes before them would destroy any good that ever existed in the world.
Douglass recounts,
“If any reader of this part of my life shall see in it the evidence of a want of manly resentment for wrongs inflicted by slavery upon myself and race, and by the ancestors of…[those who once owned slaves], so it must be. No man can be stronger than nature, one touch of which, we are told, makes all the world akin. I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their father.”
I will end here with an account of Douglass when he revisits the place where he was born a “slave” and sees his former “master” Captain Auld, upon his request on his deathbed, after his escape to the North over 25 years ago:
“But now that slavery was destroyed, and the slave and the master stood upon equal ground, I was not only willing to meet him, but was very glad to do so…He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom.
Our courses had been determined for us, not by us. We had both been flung, by powers that did not ask our consent, upon a mighty current of life, which we could neither resist, nor control. By this current he was a master, and I a slave, but now our lives were verging towards a point where differences disappear, where even the constancy of hate breaks down and where the clouds of pride, passion, and selfishness vanish before the brightness of infinite light.”
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Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada).
Note
(1) This paper has used Douglass’ account of American history from his writings in his autobiography “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, for which the full pdf version can be found here.
George Floyd’s brutal killing was like a stone thrown into the pond, causing a non-stop ripple effect. For the first time in modern history, people across the United States and Europe sound their disgust and unease towards the racist policies carried out by the US administration and the systems across the Western part of the world.
It started with protests and riots, and so far has not come to an end. One interesting scene is how the streets began to fill up with people despite police violence and statues started to fall down; these are not any statues but are in fact statues of racism and white supremacy.
In the United States, more than a dozen statues have been toppled, including several Confederate figures. To begin with, a few statues of Christopher Columbus who is depicted as “THE hero” began to fall down. Rarely do educational texts or reports refer to Columbus’s true image.
Bartolemé de las Casas, who was said to have known Columbus in person, decried the brutality in his “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552”. He described how Columbus and the conquistadors disfigured Native slaves and fed them alive to dogs.
A statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded in Boston. A Columbus statue was also destroyed and dragged into a lake earlier in the week in Richmond, Virginia. After the figure was removed from its pedestal by protesters using several ropes in Richmond, a sign that reads, “Columbus represents genocide” was placed on the spray-painted foundation that once held the statue. In Camden, a New Jersey city near Philadelphia, protestors took down a statue of Christopher Columbus, joining others across the country.
A 10-foot bronze sculpture of Columbus was also toppled in Minnesota after a group of protests tied ropes around the neck of the statue and yanked it from its pedestal.
Theodor Roosevelt’s statue at NY museum of natural history was reported to be removed soon for its symbolism of the Native American man and the African man who stands beside him.
In Belgium’s Antwerp, thousands of protesters marching for Black Lives Matter filled the streets and demanded the removal of statues of King Léopold II, a brutal colonial ruler. The Belgian king statue who brutalized Congo was burned and ultimately removed.
It was the statue of King Léopold; infamous for genocide with his orchestration of mass violence against the people in the Congo, a large portion of which he considered his personal territory for cultivating and exporting rubber and ivory.
In Britain, a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by protesters and dumped into the very same waters of the Bristol Harbor that launched slave ships centuries ago.
Protesters have also made threats against statues of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the architect of colonial policies that lead to the mass starvation of some four million Indians, the torture of Kenyans, and was in favor of using poisoned gas against “uncivilized” tribes.
Shamelessly, the British government sealed Churchill’s statue inside a protective steel barrier ahead of the massive London race protest which Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed has been “hijacked” by extremists. In this context, it is not surprising to hear the racist language of Johnson and his claims that the protests are hijacked.
At the University of Oxford, protesters have stepped up their longtime push to remove a statue of Rhodes, the Victorian imperialist who served as prime minister of the Cape Colony in southern Africa. He made a fortune from gold and diamonds on the backs of miners who labored in brutal conditions.
Also in London, the statue of 18th Century slave trader Robert Milligan has been pulled down from outside the Museum of London Docklands after campaigners vowed to protest every day until it was removed.
New Zealand’s fourth-largest city removed a bronze statue of the British naval officer Capt. John Hamilton after a Maori tribe asked for the statue to be taken down and one Maori elder threatened to tear it down himself. The city of Hamilton said it was clear the statue of the man accused of killing indigenous Maori people in the 1860s would be vandalized.
The statues and monuments that have long honored racist figures are being boxed up, beheaded and sprayed in paint. It is not only because black lives matter, it is because the racist and white supremacist discrimination cannot be tolerated any longer. The New York Times reported that in dozens more cities across the US, statues that still stand have been marked with graffiti, challenged anew with petitions and protests, or scheduled for removal.
Among these statues, a “living statue” named Donald Trump must also be removed in order to preserve human dignity and freedom and end racism. White supremacists and other hateful actors attack immigrants, communities of color, and religious minorities with impunity — all under the Trump administration’s watch.
Tragedies during the Trump time have taken place across the US, targeting African Americans, immigrants and minorities, and these were encouraged by the same force of white supremacy. White supremacists including president Trump and his loyalists deploy disruptive rhetoric and enact racist policies like the Muslim Ban, family separation, attempts silence voters of color. At the end of the day, policies of violence and hate produce acts of violence and hate. The people of America, Europe and the world are rising in face of imperialism and white supremacy, it is no longer a time when the US administration can manipulate the free people of the world.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 
