European Holocaust had roots in Africa, now Namibia is suing Germany
Without understanding what happened to the Herero and Nama people, it is impossible to understand what occurred right before and during World War II
Andre Vltchek
In 2014, after I published my report about Namibia, exposing the German ‘semi-denial’ that it had committed a Holocaust in its former Southwest African colony; a renowned German university sent me a letter. I paraphrase here, but the essence of the letter is kept intact:
Dear Professor Vltchek, we are impressed by your research and your conclusions, and we would like to translate and publish your groundbreaking analyses in German language. Unfortunately, we cannot afford any payment…”
It was one of the major universities in the country, with tremendous budgets and an international reputation.
I replied, asking why, with all those scholars and academics, with PhDs and experts, they had never sent a team of experts to Namibia, to investigate one of the most horrid crimes committed in the 20th Century? I wanted to know, why they would suddenly want to rely on the work of a foreigner, an outsider, an internationalist who refuses to call himself an academic (for me it is now a totally discredited term)? Murdering the Herero and Nama people in Southwest Africa by Germans was, after all, the key for comprehending what happened several decades later, in Europe itself, during the Holocaust that Germany went on to commit against the Jewish and Roma people.
The university never replied. I suppose they sensed that I was ‘dragging them’ into some extremely dangerous waters. They did not want to ‘be there’; they preferred the safe, calm waters, where some foreign left-wing intellectual writes something, they translate and publish it, putting a disclaimer that this doesn’t necessarily reflects the position of their respected journal and the university. As far as they were concerned, taboos should remain taboos, and the dunes of Namibia should be stirred just a little bit, for a limited intellectual discussion only. No storm, please!
*
It doesn’t take rocket science to discover what I did in Namibia. There, I met common people, in slums and universities. I met UN experts and Namibian government officials. I undusted various archive documents. I consulted scholars in neighboring South Africa.
In Africa, Namibian history is no secret. Nothing is taboo. This is what is common knowledge in Windhoek or in Cape Town in neighboring South Africa:
The Germans drove into the desert, and then exterminated, over 80% of the entire nation – the Herero. The Nama people lost around 50% of its population. The concentration and extermination camps were built; monstrous medical experiments on human beings were perpetrated. German ‘doctors’including those who were working on ‘the pure race doctrine’ in Namibia (the doctrine later used by the Nazis in Europe), subsequently ‘educated’ many German racist physicians, including the notorious ‘Angel of Death’ – Mengele. The most notorious doctor, who experimented on human beings in Africa, was Eugen Fischer.
Not surprisingly, the first German governor of the colony was the father of Hitler’s deputy, Herman Goering.
The holocaust in Africa is directly connected to the holocaust in Europe.
Almost the official, and a thousand times repeated lie related to the birth of German Nazism, a lie that is even taught in many European schools, would easily collapse like a house of cards if Namibian history were to get closely examined. The lie, in different variations, sounds like this:
Germany, deeply humiliated after WWI, facing terrible economic crises, suddenly went amok, got radicalized and ended up bringing extreme-right nationalist bigots to power.”
Do you recall the official Western line about a ‘peaceful Germany, a land of scholars and philosophers; a nation which shocked itself and the world, by suddenly turning to extreme violence and mass murder, abandoning its noble traditions?’ Such reasoning would stand only if the Others (non-white, non-Europeans), were not considered as human beings.
The Namibian holocaust (but also to some extent, the mass murder that Germany committed against the people of today’s Tanzania) shows that Germany clearly has a history of genocidal behavior, and that it committed, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, on its own continent, precisely what it had been doing much earlier, in Africa.
Obviously, all that was not just about Nazism (there were no Nazis yet, during the holocaust in Africa), but about the entire culture and mindset of the German people.
Fortunately, the silence has not been complete. Two monstrous events have been compared and linked together. Sporadically, the truth about the Namibian horror past has been appearing, even in the mainstream press.
On 21 October 2012, the Canadian daily newspaper, The Globe and Mail, reported:
In the bush and scrub of central Namibia, the descendants of the surviving Herero live in squalid shacks and tiny plots of land. Next door, the descendants of German settlers still own vast properties of 20,000 hectares or more. It’s a contrast that infuriates many Herero, fuelling a new radicalism here.
Every year the Herero hold solemn ceremonies to remember the first genocide of history’s bloodiest century, when German troops drove them into the desert to die, annihilating 80 percent of their population through starvation, thirst, and slave labor in concentration camps. The Nama, a smaller ethnic group, lost half of their population from the same persecution.
New research suggests that the German racial genocide in Namibia from 1904 to 1908 was a significant influence on the Nazis in the Second World War. Many of the key elements of Nazi ideology – from racial science and eugenics, to the theory of Lebensraum (creating ‘living space’ through colonization) – were promoted by German military veterans and scientists who had begun their careers in South-West Africa, now Namibia, during the genocide…”
In Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, a European expert working for the UN, a friend of mine, spoke to me, like almost everyone there, passionately, but without daring to reveal her name:
The first concentration camps on earth were built in this part of Africa… They were built by the British Empire in South Africa and by Germans here, in Namibia. Shark Island on the coast was the first concentration camp in Namibia, used to murder the Nama people, but now it is just a tourist destination – you would never guess that there were people exterminated there. Here in the center of Windhoek, there was another extermination camp…”
Acknowledging its crimes against the Jews (but not always against the Roma people), Germany maintains as monuments, all former concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Dachau. But there is absolutely nothing it does to honor the memory of its victims in other parts of the world, particularly Africa.
Racism is one of the essential characteristics of Nazism. Isn’t it a clear expression of racism to treat the victims of the same crime differently, simply because of the color of their skin?
*
Now the Namibian people are suing Germany in a court in New York City.
It appears they have had enough. Enough of waiting, of humiliation. For years there has been no compensation to the families of the victims, and no serious compensation to the nation.
For years, the Namibian government has been negotiating at least for the return of all skulls of the local people, which were used in German laboratories and by German scientists to prove the superiority of the white race, as well as ‘sub-humanness’ of other races, including the blacks. German colonialists decapitated countless Herero and Nama people, and at least 300 heads were transported to German laboratories for ‘scientific research’. Many were later ‘discovered’ in the Medical History Museum of the Charite hospital in Berlin, and at Freiburg University.
Insults were added to injury. Until now, the German settlers enjoy a repulsively lavish lifestyle on land that was stolen from the Herero and Nama people. Many descendants of the victims of the Southwest African holocaust are now living in overcrowded slums.
German and other Central European tourists are ‘in love with Namibia’; for its dunes, spectacular and pristine coast, as well as for the white German enclaves. I asked several of them about the past. Most of them did not know and seemed not to be interested to learn.
But the world may ‘discover’ the Namibian past, very soon, as Western imperialism is crumbling and oppressed people are rising to their feet.
Demands for compensation and acknowledgements of the horrific colonialist past are now flowing from Pakistan, India and other countries that were devastated by European racism and imperialism. The Namibian case may set the entire planet into motion, as it is almost the entire world that had been devastated by European colonialism.
The US courts may not resolve much, but what is happening there is symbolic, and just a beginning.
AFP reported on July 31st:
US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain presided over the one-hour hearing in a New York federal court but concluded the session by saying that she would not rule immediately. She also did not set a date for a decision.
The German government wants the lawsuit thrown out on the grounds of state immunity from prosecution. The Herero and Nama groups are seeking reparations for the genocide of their peoples under German colonial rule…
The Herero and Nama people brought the class-action lawsuit last year, seeking reparations over the tens of thousands killed in the massacres.”
There will be no easy victory for the Herero and Nama people. They have no lobby in the United States, and even back in Namibia, they are poor. They own no international media, no international banks or corporations.
But they are right in demanding justice!
The renowned Canadian international lawyer, Christopher Black, declared for this essay:
The European colonial powers imposed their dominance over other peoples through war and terror and committed violence on a vast scale. Their actions constitute the war crime of aggression and crimes against humanity, murder assault and slavery. Many of those nations are still trying to escape and recover from the occupation and destruction imposed on them and should be compensated by those colonial powers for the damage done. Meaningless apologies are not enough. There is legal precedent for the requirement that the colonial powers pay reparations to those peoples as Germany had to do regarding its genocide against the Jews. The determination of the amount and in what form it should be paid would be a contentious issue but the victims of colonialism have a moral and legal right to compensation for the crimes committed against them and the lasting damage done.”
Percentage-wise, the Herero and Nama nations lost more people than any other race, nation or ethnic group, during the entire 20th Century.
Without understanding what they suffered, what was done to them, there is no way to understand what took place right before and during World War II.
The entire anti-imperialist world has a clear obligation to support the cause of the Herero and Nama people in their quest for justice. Enough of ‘broken links’ and outright lies. Justice has to be the same for all. Nations that were, or are victims of Western genocides, massacres and colonialist plunder, should unite and declare loudly and clearly: “Never again!”
Originally published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
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The Namibia genocide is part of a general phenomena of European colonialism whose foundation was the holocaust of 100m native Americans. Lebenstraum was the same reasoning as the English colonists for their growing population back home. Hitler himself took cue from “the nordics of North America”, and his ravings sound eerily similar to those of Theodore Roosevelt concerning the native unterminsch.
As an afterthought, for those who advocate the West v East schema inherent in Andre’s thought: if an idea can be judged by its publishers relationship with hedge funds …it is worth checking out the authorship of the BRIC concept itself (the ‘S’ was added later). Jim O’Neill was Chairman of the asset management division of the most rapacious hedge fund/asset managers Goldman $uchs, when he came up with the BRIC strategy in to re-invigorate neoliberal globalisation 2001. Since then, he has been a Tory minister (for Cameron and ‘Private Dancer’ May (check out her wooden moves in coverage of her Africa trip!)); has become a Life Peer (Baron O’Neill of Gatley); and, as of recently, is Chairman of Chatham House. In 2010, he was named chairman of Goldman Sachs’s Division of Asset Management, a newly created position in which O’Neill managed over $800 billion in assets by “leverag[ing]” his… Read more »
Yes, indeed!
And then, oh, I don’t know, but I sense that reading something like this should make the anti-imperialist wishful thinkers sit up and take notice: China’s Yuan Just Joined An Elite Club Of International Monetary Fund Reserve Currencies China’s yuan joins the International Monetary Fund’s basket of reserve currencies on Saturday in a milestone for the government’s campaign for recognition as a global economic power. The yuan joins the U.S. dollar, the euro, the yen and British pound in the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) basket, which determines currencies that countries can receive as part of IMF loans. It marks the first time a new currency has been added since the euro was launched in 1999.The IMF is adding the yuan, also known as the renminbi, or “people’s money”, on the same day that the Communist Party celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. “The inclusion… Read more »
P.S. Everything from “China’s yuan joins the International Monetary Fund’s . . .” to “. . .the People’s Bank of China said in a statement,” is being quoted.
Zhou Xiaochuan’s drive to get the yuan into the SDR basket is intriguing: not least that it destroys any anti-imperialist pretensions. To become accepted: the PBOC had to ‘internationalise’ and ‘liberalise’ the currency: Lagarde said “Jump!”; China answered “How high?” So why would ‘communist’ China jump through hoops to become part of the IMF reserve basket? The SDR is effectively a ‘dead reserve’: largely inactive since the 70s. That’s a lot of trouble to go to (and a lot of sovereignty to give up) if you do not later plan to commercialise the SDR as a liquid reserve alternative to the dollar: which was exactly the plan Zhou Xiaochuan revealed at the G-20 in 2009 …to create a “super-sovereign” reserve. A super-sovereign reserve: wouldn’t that make the IMF a centralised lender of last resort? The central bank’s central bank? And who controls the IMF? This fellow has long seemed quite… Read more »
Two small nuggets from British rule in southern Africa:
1) Kipling’s ‘If’ was written about Jameson of the false flag Jameson Raid 1895/6.
2) The opening lines of ‘I am the Walrus’ bear a striking resemblance to the song ‘Marching to Pretoria’. (The line “see how they run likes pigs from a gun” also makes sense as a pun of Boers/boars/pigs).
Here’s a skeleton from the French colonial closet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voulet%E2%80%93Chanoine_Mission
“Nations that were, or are victims of Western genocides, massacres and colonialist plunder, should unite and declare loudly and clearly: “Never again!”” There are no nations, Andre. There is no “West” and “East” and “Third World.” There are networks of organized elites who declare everything within parts of the regions they control to be “their” nation or national home base, regarding everything within the geographic boundaries of the territories they control to be “their own,” regardless of whether the territories lie within their so-called “nation’s” boundaries or extend to the colonial territories under their imperial administrative control, although today the colonial side of the equation isn’t so blatant as only recently it was, but hidden behind a facade of ‘international trade deals’ between ostensibly independent “nations.” It’s not anything peculiar about the “West” in general that sets it against the “East” in general, or the “West” in general against the… Read more »
Excellent post Norman.
If only people like you and Harry Stottle were our National Educators, I would feel far more confident about my Grandchildren’s future.
The ‘Never Again’ is beginning to grow throughout the world, thanks to the internet.. That is why those who are in control are so desperate to restrict the information being shared.
Vltchek’s article seems to be using two definitions of “nation”: one definition being the usual one of “nation” as sovereign state with clearly defined borders and institutions labelled with the name of the “nation”; and another definition of “nation” in the sense that is understood when people speak of First Nations, as in communities or linked groups of people who share a language or speak related dialects, and who also might share belief systems, kinship systems or culture or cultural elements in common. Until Vltchek explains what he means when he talks of “nation” or “nations’, we can’t presume that he is always referring to Namibia or any other country or set of countries when he could be referring to an ethnic group or a group of related peoples. The lawsuit in New York appears to be a class action filed by the leaders of organisations representing the Nama and… Read more »
If you read the article again, in the light of Norm’s comment, you may see it as infused with its own subtle subliminal racism? Take these key linking passages: Acknowledging its crimes against the Jews (but not always against the Roma people), Germany maintains as monuments, all former concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Dachau. But there is absolutely nothing it does to honor the memory of its victims in other parts of the world, particularly Africa. Racism is one of the essential characteristics of Nazism. Isn’t it a clear expression of racism to treat the victims of the same crime differently, simply because of the color of their skin? He links racism as an essential of Nazism: and racism as treating victims differentially: having already established the differential treatment of victims. Ergo ‘Germany’ (a metonym for the Germans) is racist and Nazi – follows as a subtly inferred conclusion. After… Read more »
True, Vltchek says racism is essential to Nazism but where does he say that Nazism is essential to racism?
I live in a country that was once notorious for having an official government policy of selecting immigrants according to their race (the White Australia policy) and for its appalling treatment of indigenous non-white people and kidnapped Pacific Islanders forced to work on sugar plantations here – but I would not say the country ever embraced Nazism or elements of Nazi belief.
As for the German and other European tourists, they seem like Japanese tourists unfortunate enough to come to Australia and who are asked questions about their history and the nature of Japan’s involvement in World War II. They know nothing because they’re not taught that history or are given a whitewashed version of it at school and university (if they choose to study history).
So, if I understand you correctly, the brothers and sisters in the so-called East or the Third World who have or might ever set upon their brothers and sisters would never have done so, or in the future do so, but for the conniving influences of Westerner imperialists? Among Eastern capitalists, the thought of branching out their businesses around the globe, would never occur to them, and such expansion would never bring them into conflict with other national capitalist factions, whether in the West or the East or the South? The kinds of conflicts potentially involving armies and navies and air forces? Because unlike the West, there is nothing about their capitalism that could be described as predatory and imperialistic? So the problem isn’t profit seeking, but something to do with a cultural zeitgeist or something like that? Someone recommended Dan Glazebrook to me only a day or so ago,… Read more »
1) Unfortunately we live in a world where all societies have been interconnected since the mid-1800s. So all continents bear the imprint – psychological as well as physical – of what originally was a colonial / imperial structure (with its own ideology and economy) of European / Christian origin. The result is that (to take one example) Japanese imperialism has been as predatory as its European and American counterparts, and often more so, in East and SE Asia. This applies as much now as it did back in the 1930s – 40s. The problem may very well be a cultural zeitgeist inherent in a particular ideology of or about capitalism that was selected and promoted by the countries where capitalism and industrialisation first developed, in a way similar to how Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was seized upon by others to develop Social Darwinism which they then used to justify… Read more »
History tends to be told as if nothing else could have happened. Perhaps as part of the idea that nothing else could be happening and thus a passive acquiescence to the current narrative presumptions and assertions. I recommend an enjoyable and informative book called ‘Lies my teacher told me’ by James W. Loewen. Not just because it expands and corrects the record in selected events but as a general insight into the way and the why of its distortion. Adam Smith coined the ‘Invisible hand’ of an alignment of mutual self interest – but it no less applies to the alignment of corrupted self interest operating underneath the presentation – for the most part. Corruption of true currency is an adulteration with the false. I am not meaning to use corruption as a pejorative so much as a blind and blinding condition of ignorance and arrogance to be corrected. Moral… Read more »
There’s every reason to conceptualise a transnational superclass as the main tributary benefactors of imperialism. Lakshmi Mittal and Carlos Slim aren’t Western. Most of the transnational capital flows are unregulated and are routed through secrecy jurisdictions “offshore”. The greatest source of FDI into India comes from imperial Mauritius. Analysis by nation state or hemisphere (North; South; East; West) misses much of the transnational character of modern capital flows. There’s also every reason to conceptualise a neoliberal World System, as did Samir Amin. Below the Trilateral imperialist core, the BRICS form a semi-periphery of sub-imperial regional agents. Turkey, Iran and possibly Australia would also fit the semi-periphery. Below would be the peripheral neo-colonies and full dependencies. http://roape.net/2018/04/18/towards-a-broader-theory-of-imperialism/ Other than media chatter and misguided internet memes, I can find nothing to support the idea that there is an “Eastern” anti-imperial bloc emerging. To the contrary, every BRICS Declaration is a tributary genuflect… Read more »
Thank you for that link. Bookmarked for reading, either later this evening or tomorrow morning.
I should have made clear I was talking of the BRICS elite. There is plenty of resistance to globalism, North and South. Our recent discussion of Iran, or Colin Todhunter’s articles about India, for instance. The term is “BRICS from below” for authentic anti-capitalist resistance. The elite want global governance with a centralised commercialised SDR to replace the dollar. A further layer is the link up of global cities under a global Parliament of Mayors (like Sadiq Khan). These become concentrated hyper-capitalist cancers causing enforced pauperisation and unequal development. Not to mention the ecological drain on resources caused by urbanisation. Or the social dehumanisation and degradation. Or pollution. All people everywhere should join in solidarity to resist the globalised death of human scale community by linking with our comrades in the South: not cheering on our globalised oppression. In the light of this, comrade Vltchek’s Marxist-lyte crypto-capitalism is not only… Read more »
“In the light of this, comrade Vltchek’s Marxist-lyte crypto-capitalism is not only disingenuous, it’s dangerous. He should stick to travel writing and chronicling the global effects of cannibalistic capitalism: at which he excells.”
Yes.
Um, yeah: Quote begins: “To take the example of Mozambique, Carlos Castel-Branco shows how its rulers aimed for “maximisation of inflows of foreign capital – FDI or commercial loans – without political conditionality” (much of which came from the BRICS as well as Portugal) [Norm’s emphasis] in a super-exploitative context: “the reproduction of a labour system in which the workforce is remunerated at below its social cost of subsistence and families have to bear the responsibility for maintaining (especially feeding) the wage-earning workers by complementing their wages,” a common phenomenon across the continent. While there may occasionally be an exception,[19] consider a few of the most egregious examples involving the BRICS: Brazil’s major subimperial construction firm Odebrecht admitted paying bribes of $51 million to officials in Angola and Mozambique (but the actual amounts are likely to be much higher), and both Odebrecht and the world’s second-largest mining company, Rio-based Vale,… Read more »
Odd … a journal called Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) has an Editorial Working Group made up mostly of people working in British universities including the London School of Economics. The journal’s HQ is in London and it is published by Taylor and Francis, themselves owned by Informa PLC.
Informa PLC’s investors include Janus Henderson Investors.
https://informa.com/investors/shareholder-centre/major-shareholders/
Janus Henderson Investors is a shareholder in Thruvision, a British company that holds the contract to install body scanners in Los Angeles’ underground metro system.
http://thruvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/180606-Shares-in-Issue-Major-Shareholders-23-May-18.pdf
Professor Bond publishes far and wide: including Global Research and Counterpunch. It’s no refutation to his academic research unless it his sole outlet. He also publishes peer reviewed academic articles: and in journals such as Third World Quarterly at Tandfonline and Springer for instance – but they are expensive or subscription only.
Is what you are trying to say that a firm related to a firm is related to firm that has an immoral connection negates his research? Is the quality of the article to be judged by those who pick up the article: or by its own merit?
There are other academics recasting Samir Amins World Systems and dependency theories in a similar light. William I Robinson and Andrew Robinson (who also writes at Ceasefire magazine) are two I am acquainted with. The quality of the argument is in the research …not necessarily in who published it?
I just find curious that a paper critical of neoliberal economic policies pursued by BRICS countries or corporations headquartered in BRICS countries appears in a journal published by a subsidiary of a company whose shareholders seem to be mostly hedge funds. I’d come across the name of Janus Henderson Investors before and tried to remember where I’d seen mention of it.
Bond was wiring a critique of the John Smith v David Harvey debate, which they also published in full …is that negated too? The debate is wider than this one publisher, I was trying to find a source that was not paywalled. It is an important debate, because the limited definition of military imperialism obscures the broader picture of corporate credit imperialism …which keeps most of the world in poverty. Not only to end up just as dead as by bomb or bullet, entire nations and peoples cannot develop their human potential due to malnutrition and deliberately imposed developmental sub-intelligence …which keeps them docile – or dead. Or dependent on aid – or dead. Focusing on the ‘West’s’ military imperialisms reveals only a selected part of the picture. Resisting the West is easy to identify, but what about the wider effects of credit imperialism? Are we really effecting a transformative… Read more »
A “subsidiary of a company whose shareholders seem to be mostly hedge funds,” eh? It’s almost as if the hedge funds really want to know what is really going on, to be in possession of ‘actionable information.’ Now that is curious, isn’t it. Personally, I don’t care where the information is from, as long as it’s substantive, is verifiable in terms of referencing matters of fact in the public record, makes sense to me, is more encompassing in terms of what it explains, and doesn’t enter into contradiction with what I’m virtually certain to be the case. But here’s another thought:: capitalists are every bit as much as everyone else interested in getting at the truth about social, economic and political issues. This doesn’t mean they want the truth to get out among the public at large, but they certainly want to know and understand the reality in which they… Read more »
@ BigB: No need to mind me. You can refer to ROAPE as a source as often as you like. I wasn’t critical of the article you linked to or of the author. It’s just my custom to check out a site by clicking on the “About …” tab and following my hunches.
In an ideal world, academic journals would be self-financing or at least be able to rely on sources of funding other than private companies owned by investment funds, banks and other financial institutions with their fingers in several pies. Ah well, roll on that day …
In an ideal world, Jen, knowledge would be an open source, freely available, freely reproducible and where applicable, modifiable (valorisable) public good. Intellectual property rights are theft! Ah well, roll on that day … 🙂
So, ‘evidence’ is to be discounted because of where it is sourced? Have I got that right? My approach is, yes, to pay heed to the source of anything I read, not as the ultimate criteria by which I will decide to accept or reject a set of given purports, but for the initial degree of skepticism I will bring to bear on the ‘revelations,’ so that if the source is to my mind questionable, or is telling a story different from the one to which I am accustomed and with which I feel comfortable, then I’ll do more digging. But if the source is an institution or someone that time and again has proven in my limited experience to be reliable, then I’m more apt to forgo the additional search for corroborating testimony. Universities, and in particular, “Western” universities, while prone to the same ideological biases and loyalties that… Read more »
In case you missed it, I’ll throw another one back your way:
Is Imperialism still Imperialist? A Response to Patrick Bond — Walter Daum
Not that it gives much traction to Bevin’s and Vltcheck’s standpoint, but there are differences between Bond and Daum, and for the moment I’m rather leaning a bit in Daum’s direction on the issue of whether “. . . the East-to-West flow of wealth and value has not just been modified by the rise of China especially but has been reversed,” i.e., as David Harvey contends . . .
Just nuances. Nothing fundamental.
And THIS by Esteban Mora is even better, in my opinion.
“The issue is only and always “Western” imperialism. Get rid of that, and capitalism will really come into its own in the East and deliver on its promises by, I presume, magically transforming itself into the ‘socialism’ that it already is.” Does anyone actually say this? In reality capitalism and imperialism are inextricably linked and have been since they emerged in the sixteenth century. It is impossible for any part of the international system to escape from the domination of the empire. And the empire, which, at risk of lapsing into banality, is the centre of imperialism is also a state. Currently the empire state is the USA. Get rid of the USA’s Empire and there will be no Empire. There may be states competing for the chance to become the imperial power but that is a different thing: the difference between the vague ambition for power and hegemony. The… Read more »
“Does anyone actually say this?” It depends what you mean by “actually.” If you mean it as I sometimes, albeit not always, do, then yes — and then no . . . Really it’s implied. Quite clearly. Very, very strongly. So much so that you might as well say it’s been said. But permit me to make my case: Over the course of more than a few pieces written by Vltchek, you glean the definite impression that, on one side, you have “Western” imperialism (which is, as everyone knows, capitalist, fascist, racist and other things), and, on the other side, everything and everyone else not Western, capitalist, fascist, racist and other things, and something very much like an axis of resistance, somewhere over there, in the East (and the South), states that are objectively in the service of capital, but described by Vltchek as ‘socialist’ because just as you find… Read more »
P.S. You should also follow up the link provide by BigB, to a piece by Patrick Bond, titled, “Towards a Broader Theory of Imperialism” — advice being offered on the assumption, of course, that you might not yet have arisen to an actual and complete certainty about the non-imperialist nature of the anti-imperialist bloc. I do recall something that someone recently wrote about how you can’t be other than you actually are, but can believe that you are. Wise words. Everyone should heed them. Including the guy who wrote them.
Truth cannot be other than it is – but we can believe what is not true and suffer it with all the force we give the wish made real. The power of the mind is unlimited – but for what it has already given power to. That is, given a predicate, all else follows logically until the predicate is changed from its status as fact.
So the attempt to enforce or defend a narrative identity is as real as our investment in it. Many choose to kill themselves rather than lose face. Or indeed kill or deny others to save it. Was it it that demands sacrifice but an iDoll?
“What is it that demands sacrifice but an idoll?”
The suffering of my children? Of another’s children? Of men and women everywhere who are unjustly and neddlessly made to bear the violence of profit seeking? Surely these things are worthy of a little sacrificing?
But they are what IS being sacrificed??
I do not regard my willingness to give as sacrifice, but I understand the world sees love as demanding sacrifice (of private self possession and control) and so a ‘feared love’ is substituted for, by private possession and control that joins – but only in order to protect the separation. The ‘power’ to maintain this as ‘real’ demands sacrifice of who you truly are, and so of your true appreciation of another.
A self image – or the agencies of the support of a self image – may be believed – but you are not an image of yourself. Insofar as we identify in image as if true, we reject all that does not support it and sacrifice ourself in maintaining control and possession. Where then is the basis for recognizing and appreciating the true of another?
There is no self beyond your ‘self-image’ even if that image of ‘yourself’ objectively overstates or understates both your virtues and vices as you conceptualize them or estimate them to be, that is to say, in your created ‘images’ of your virtues and vices. A person is a split being: s/he exists in the tension between consciousness and bodily existence. S/he is, in fact, two things at once: a ‘being in the world’ and ‘an object of referential consciousness’ that consciousness can never truly grasp in all of its entirety, in terms of every detail of that object’s unity in interiority/exteriority, and in all of its dynamic and constantly changing relations with the world. Consequently, although your ‘self-image’ is not your self, and though that image is a representational ‘attempt’ at grasping in consciousness all aspects of your self, and as an ‘attempt’ is in some respects ‘successful,’ because it… Read more »
There is no self beyond self image? A High and Mighty Proclamation Norman! Is such a belief not also the basis from which a death-cult Lords it over the living? Because to such a belief – there is no love but only the Narcissus of its own fantasy gratification and a sense of dissonant interference to be shut out – and no Creation but what power MAKES so, and thus no joy extending as the reflected meaning of All That Is. So what is that which sees self image? It IS no object. Nor in truth is it subject and so is truly Sovereign. there is no ‘other’ because the extensions of God are one in all and all in one. Lies may seem to add to reality – but who would say that what they add is true but the wish to live what they give. Indeed you cannot… Read more »
You haven’t read Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness,” have you? If you get the chance, my metaphysics and ontology are akin to his. The ‘self’ is no thing, metaphysically speaking, though your conditioning is certainly inscribed in neural networks, which create the ‘appearance’ of the person or you ‘substance.’ The ‘self’ as being is really an illusion, albeit a ‘real’ illusion, ‘being’ being but a fevered projection of a brain generated awareness that sees in and behind all of its pattern recognitions ‘things’ or ‘substances.’ People are ‘real,’ but they are not ‘things,’ and even ‘things’ as we take them to be, as we designate them, are also not ‘things.’ People like to speak of matter as if they know of what ‘substance’ they speak, but they don’t. No one does. But if you truly heed those aspects of reality which seem to be disclosed to us in our perceptions, I… Read more »
How extraordinary to call Sartre to bolster an argument. The non existence of the self as a thing-in-itsef is not merely an idea to believe but a direct realisation that cannot be meaningfully described as it is pure experience and not ‘happening to anyone’ and so it is not an experience of anything else. Far from being an absence or lack of self, it is extension of self – even as idea is extension of mind through which self-awareness is – but not ‘separate’ thoughts’ to a ‘separate or split off self-sense’ The separate self sense or self imaged identity confusion is (the basis of) the capacity to conceive and perceive separated things and beings as if conflicting forces and meanings. But the capacity to believe and perceive something is not the establishing of its truth so much as telling a story and living in it. Truth is already true… Read more »
How extraordinary it is to call it extraordinary to call Sartre to bolster an argument. What? One cannot suggest a reading of a text written by someone else, a text that one fancies does a better job than one could in expounding one’s worldview, or at least a good approximation to it.? As for the rest of what you write, I see things one way, you see them another. You think you are closer to the truth of the metaphysics of the matter, I think I am. Whatever shall we do? The self is an illusion . . . says who? Well, you know that I do. You know that Sam Harris does, also. Sartre, I am certain, is also another. When I and these other two claim the ‘self’ to be illusory, we mean that metaphysically speaking. Nobody questions the experience of ‘selfhood.’ But it is illusory in the… Read more »
Norman, are you taking personally what is – as far as I am concerned a shared considering of ideas that either find merit or not. They do not have to claim exclusive personal rights! I see a blatant self contradiction in your assertion of self in the asserting that it is only an illusion – albeit ‘supported by ‘authorities’. And I see it not as an invalidation of you but as an illumination of how the world works – or rather fails to work – and by design of a plausible deniability. My interest is not in being the one to call another a self illusion so much as attracting and sharing ideas that reflect the nature of directly observed experience and recognition. This is my desire (hence the attraction) – but it need not be anyone else’s. Words can be used to mean almost anything in different contexts and… Read more »
“Norman, are you taking personally what is – as far as I am concerned a shared considering of ideas that either find merit or not. They do not have to claim exclusive personal rights!” No. Nothing personal beyond pointing out that our views on the matter being discussed are different and irreconcilable. “I see a blatant self contradiction in your assertion of self in the asserting that it is only an illusion – albeit ‘supported by ‘authorities’.” There is no contradiction in what I assert: it is an illusion in “METAPHYSICAL” terms only, in the sense that, as far as I can tell, matters most to you. You assert the existence of a ‘soul,’ as evidenced by your assertions that consciousness is not “in the world.” I say consciousness is “in the world, of the world, and by the world.” It is also a part of the inner qualitative experience… Read more »
Ok I read your response. ‘My’ self says and that it. End of communication. My Dad used to have that sort of idea of a discussion. I would say something and after a bit he would say his bit and then shut down – and no actual communication was allowed beyond that. I hold that what we are has and is the capacity to accept beliefs of self definition relative to any other idea, quality of existence or symbolic modelling of world, by acting as if they are true and having a the experience of self reinforcement resulting from that ‘choice’. But having done what we accept will determine our experience until we change our mind. This does not have to be via death. The beliefs we accept about our mind can in effect lock us into an incapacity to see or know anything outside the chosen limitations of a… Read more »
Binra,
Have I misconstrued your metaphysics? Do you believe, yes or no, in a fundamental difference between corporeality and spirituality? Do you believe that you have or are a ‘soul?’ If not, then there has been no communication between us. If so, I’ve heard and grasped at least the broad outline of your position. You believe in what you believe, and that’s fine with me. Must I convert to your viewpoint so that you come to accept that I’ve heard you? Or is it possible that we’ve had an actual exchange of viewpoints that remain other than one another, that you see no merit in my standing, and I in yours, each of us for his/her reasons?
P.S. I am not your Dad, whatever ideas he may have had about the give and take of dialogue.
Hello Norman – I went to reply to your last one and the page didn’t offer any options to reply so I thought you’d been assigned the final judgement 😉 I cant need anyone else to accept anything they are not already open or opening to. Nor can I need not to be misunderstood . It goes with the territory (human experience). I don’t have the option to believe the physical version of existence that you operate under. Nor the right or the power or the wish to change anyone’s mind – although of course in a world of change everything is already changing (even if to replicate itself to seem the same). The difference is you posit consciousness in the body as an effect of the body and I hold the body to be a stepped down translation consciousness through physical symbol – that is backed by extreme emotional… Read more »
Reading what you just wrote leads me to believe you either haven’t read or grasped the meaning of what I have said. And so you frame your summary in terms of what I believe as the predicate for sharing of minds. I don’t require you to believe anything you are not already believing to share with you. But if you believe that someone has to share your viewpoint to be able to communicate then you will have that reward. Because I can articulate in linear verbal concepts doesn’t mean that what I seek to share IS concepts. When you look into another’s eyes and recognize them as of the same life, you are releasing the framing in the physical to a spiritual communication. Life is alive and not conceptually coded into maps of meanings that may be as far from Meaning as money is from true currency. When you look… Read more »
So . . . you believe in God. Check. I don’t. You believe that I don’t have a Soul, but am a Soul. Check. I don’t. I believe that I am a flesh and blood human endowed with a continuously changing consciousness, one that is in its movement, or qualities, or patterns of activity, determined or shaped by matters of inheritance (i.e., biological replication, you know, that I had parents and that I am their offspring and that much about my person derives from that) and the social contexts of my upbringing and current living, as well as by my personal strivings or intentions Question: what is the status of the human body or ‘material’ world in relation to both the Soul and God? Does the one depend upon the other for its existence? Is there something like a separation of realms? Are they to some degree independent from one… Read more »
Norman, you twist my words – and I am open to using those words to signify meaning. From what you have said you believe that your capacity to believe or not believe anything is either a biologically created illusion or a result of acquired and inherited ‘knowledge’ (of which you confess you can never be certain). I accept that belief operates in whatever the truth and nature that Mind Is. There is no where else for belief to operate. You believe that your beliefs are your private possession and defend them as your self reinforcing experience. Even when expressed as what you do NOT believe – and so your beliefs illuminate the predicate themes of who you are accepting and experiencing yourself to be. Unconscious beliefs are presumed reality but consciously accepted truth transforms and aligns our ‘belief structure’ of thought word and deed to open to communication rather than… Read more »
You twist and turn and evade, Binra. Belief informs experience, and it does. And belief can lead astray, can be in its very inception astray on the basis of its founding premises or metaphors. We both agree. But you assert the existence of God, Whom you are not and Who created and creates the whole of ‘reality’ as it discloses itself to human awareness, to your awareness, a whole not embraceable in all of its myriad and concrete details by a mind circumscribed in ‘perspectives of beliefs’ and in the midst of which such a mind struggles to maintain itself in existence, but a whole which is nevertheless ascertained by a process of deduction to exist. So either you affirm God’s existence as a unitary being, or you do not. There is no in between: it’s ‘yes,’ He exists, and is a reality onto Himself and apart from the object… Read more »
Your concept of ‘a god’ is not mine, Norman. I do not recognize it. And concepts leave you outside and apart from awareness of existence as it is. But despite that this ‘something apart’ is available in concept as an experience, is is not true that you can be outside and apart from the awareness of existence and so are experiencing what is not true as a private or subjective (and collectively private) version of only truth. No blame or fault intended in this but I call this to illustrate that Human in his/her model of self existence is not IN the model. A proxy is part of the model. The model is IN and OF the mind of its creator – who is IN and OF Mind/Creator that is in no way separated or apart from all that is. Thoughts DO NOt leave the mind of the thinker –… Read more »
“So we agree, then, after all, that the ‘self,’ as an in-itself, as an object, as a ‘thing,’ is in reality no such ‘thing,’ but as such, as ‘experienced,’ is an ‘illusion?’” All experience is ‘illusion’ but illusions can reflect the extension of true or the blocking of the extension of true. Experience can be incoherent and dissonant or transparent to its source and nature – for underneath every experience is the definitional context of which it is an effect or result. An awareness of thought at any level is witness to the creative nature OF thought as our own. We are no less ‘thought’ than our own creations. We are not self-existing awareness somehow encapsulated in a non-thinking universe, world or body. But a sense of private or hidden thought is implicitly part of generating such a hiding place. An illusion is not a thing-in-itself but the result of… Read more »
No reply option box to your Ted Authority Norman. The self is an illusion … says who? Listens who? Why should I listen to an illusion telling me it are not real. I have a tv for that 😉 I am not at all unfamiliar with a range of cultural perspectives on ‘self’. All intellectualisation is the unfolding of a core premise. And if that premise does not truly embrace you, it can only unfold a heartless world – regardless the seeming gift it offers. The great ills unfolding on humanity are a direct result of the thinking that ‘self’ is dead (doesnt exist). Welcome to post truth technocratic system control. If you are a self – stand up and find your true will, because it is being engineered out of your range of permitted thought and experience. Illusions are either extended reflections of formless truth, or the freedom to… Read more »
[I have no idea where this reply will go. It is not meant as an interjection into the debate of binra and Norm: it’s my take on the Sam Harris and Bruce Hood videos posted.] Hood ends with the injunction “Humanity is a super-social species that needs the self”: Harris ends with “When you lose your experience of unitary consciousness, it brings you into a closer experience of how we (neuroscientists) think things are” (both paraphrased). What Harris does not say, yet can be strongly inferred, is that experience is epistemically, metaphysically and ontologically nondual. For me, these dispositions (of Hood and Harris) encapsulate the broader post-Kuhnian debate that cognititive neuroscience is forced to consider …that brings the very objective epistemological (logico-empirical) grounds of science into question. This, for me, begs the question: are scientists, philosophers, and psychologists – who, as elitist vested interest groups are monolithically Cartesian materialists –… Read more »
“That we may be condemned to retain a self we no longer have an evolutionary utility for: and we ‘scientifically’ know is an imaginal illusion is illogical. Just as it is illogical for the Cartesian materialist ‘scientist’ to undermine their entire training and embrace the logic of freedom.” Indeed. Although in qualitative terms, we may be unable to substantially modify the pre-conceptual aspects of perception, that is, the manner of integrated sense perceptions as such, which may be, so to speak, hard wired into us, nevertheless, the cultural reflexive overlay that also and indubitably conditions the seeming ‘transparency’ of what appears to us to be the “direct revelation of reality” inherent to our perceptions can certainly be changed and deliberately so, as psycho-linguistic interpretation is accessible to ‘relfection’ and ‘critique’ and, therefore, to intentional cultural modification. In other words, self-consciousness, the experience of “me” and “I,” as “we” experience it… Read more »
And this:
The idea of unity has been centred upon a self set over and against not only others, but as a narrative continuity over its own minority reports. I refer to the rhyme of Humpty Dumpty as the idea of kings putting order over chaos. That the identification of such a self set in reaction against a feared or unrecognised ‘otherself’ is already the loss of unified awareness to an attempt to unify an experience of chaos FROM unrecognised result of identifying in the illusion of power, and thereby forgetting the power of illusion. The always already true is hidden by programming of reactions that operate so automatically as to seem beyond our power to challenge. Such a mapped out sense of ‘self’ survival becomes the human condition. Only the insane would question it… except the result of such ‘self-survival’ programming is an insane and insanely destructive world – that likewise… Read more »
Sorry Norm: I did post a longer reply, but it hasn’t shown up. I’ll try again tomorrow, if not, we’ll have to pick up the thread later. 🙁
[This comment was previously posted 01/09/18: this is a reply to Norm]. Thomas Metzinger frames the key question: “Will we be able to navigate through this, between cynical materialism and fundamentalism?” In the earlier video, he frames another key question: “Whose will is it anyway?” His conceptual thinking seems to come from very much inside the authoritarian Cartesian materialist ‘box’ …a ‘box’ or ‘container’ (conceptual structural framework) that a more radical interpretation of the same data set evaporates away. He mentions Buddhism, but is clearly not a Buddhist: yet neither are the core teachings of Buddhism the sole intellectual property of the Buddha and Buddhists [that is a Western Cartesian capitalist ‘property rights’ categorisation] – they constitute and contribute to a universal humanitarian knowledge that cannot be ‘boxed’, still less ‘contained’ …or even less ‘controlled’. They offer a radically altered conceptual structural framework to interpret the same data set …from… Read more »
A lot to unpack and to think about and with which to familiarize myself in terms of the literature and authors to which you refer. Consequently, I can’t respond to all of the points and relevant implications you broach. Pertaining to Metzinger, only a recent find for me, I agree — I think — with all of your contentions. I certainly also perceive him to be part of what your refer to as the scientific “elitist vested interest groups who are monolithically Cartesian materialists [and, on account of their Cartesianism, implicit authoratarians].’ My reason for posting his ‘findings’ is that the results of the investigations he discusses confront us with strong reasons for accepting the thesis of the inseperabality of mind and body, for discarding both the Cartesian duality of the mind and body, and its crass materialism, which, by the way, also happens to be the same (billiard-ball) materialism… Read more »
Descartes said “I think therefore I am.” I hold this wide open to misinterpretation. Because any who think they are thinking take it as a witness to their existence – while they are effectively blanking their mind of any true presence to maintain a sense of private self – at odds with others and set against the whole. Is this thinking of is it mind-capture by deceit? It is the surface currency of society as illusions of joining that never actually do. Identities of belonging that are framed by what is excluded or focused in exclusive terms. What is the ‘I’ that believes it ‘thinks’? Is it in any sense whatsoever separable from the thought? What is the nature of such ‘thinking’? Is it in fact a cause of anything or a reinforcing after effect. Did I type this or am I claiming a power that I do not in… Read more »
Norm: We both agree that Thomas Metzinger inadvertently finds himself the victim of his Cartesian machine-age training. His schema is of a “transparent avatar (Self-Model) that you find yourself looking through, and that is how you appropriate acts of will”. That is about as diffuse as you can rationalise the Cartesian will, without it actually disappearing …into an immaterial substanceless essence that is neither fully embodied or disembodied, or both (he is ambiguous on this point: at one point suggesting that the audience are not really in touch with their bodies [around the 18:20 mark], they are aware of the model of the body: before going on to talk about “Cardio Visual Signalling” (?) and being grounded in interoception?) He is even willing to contemplate of his Self-Model as an analogous computer-age ‘soul’. Such is his thinking is grounded in the Western, so called, ‘ontotheological’ tradition: because each time we… Read more »
Bevin: if getting rid of ‘America’ would end Empire, fine. But globalisation means ‘Empire’ went offshore and transnational years ago. We can infer a transnational superclass. That superclass are not really resident anywhere, they are largely non-doms for tax …you know, a transnational jet-set to give them an old fashioned name. Their TNCs operate in maybe 60 countries, so where are they situated? Creative accounting and offshoring among the group means little or no tax is paid anywhere, let alone ‘Head Office’. Its not just tax, they are not subject to any nation state laws, operating in Free Trade or Special Economic Zones …that are also effectively offshore. They are bigger than many national economies and can influence or buy governments, they effectively have a supra-national sovereignty. Towards a broader theory of imperialism seeks to recognise the super-exploitation of corporate credit imperialism, which is not only limited to the military.… Read more »
Aye and Aye!
Norm: if you haven’t already, check out Nick Shaxson’s “Treasure Islands”. He charts the rise of the ‘Euromarkets’ centred on the City of London (Corporation). This is an effectively de-regulated ‘offshore’ trade in ‘Eurodollars’ (and other currencies); and later ‘Eurobonds’ (‘Bearer Bonds’ like the bad guys use in movies …only in real life!) …which has become the biggest pool of (invisible) liquid capital in the world. From its rise in the 50s (it burgeoned out of the hiding of illicit Soviet dollars – hence ‘Londongrad’), it was the progenitor of of the de-regulationary neoliberalism. The Euromarkets function as a virtual plebiscite on national laws: bring in capital restrictions and your trade will disappear offshore. It skews analysis of trade wars etc – as capital can be re-routed (through ‘secrecy jurisdictions’) into and out of Iran, for instance, via Asia. I’d like to tell you more, only it is deliberately impossible… Read more »
Got it. Will read it. (As if I hadn’t enough to read already! But now that I’ve promised . . . It’s on the list . . .)
Many thanks.
“Virtually no analyst has built this into a World Systems theory.”
Excepting those who design and run it.
What else is globalism but a system of control run on the basis of scientific developments applied to humans as units in a system of energy flow?
Once the system is set up – all energy exchange will be monitored in ‘real time’.
To set it up is any and every means employed.
“that part of London (700 sq acres) that are designated ‘offshore’”
The 700 acres are “designated” as an administrative county in England. It is only the politico-economic superstructure of conniving shits and their City of London Corporation, squatting on the land, that have floated themselves offshore. And, after a century of persistent Labour party efforts to float (or sink) the conniving shits themselves offshore too, it was only Tony “Shitlicking” Blair, Disenfranchiser of the Left and Committed Scourge of Socialism, who legislated that international corporations be accorded equal voting rights, based on the size of their UK-resident workforces, along with the natural persons and small business owners previously comprising the, even so, businees-skewed City Corporation electorate.
Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Goldman, Deloitte, etc have the only public lobbyist in Parliament – the ‘Remembrancer’ – who sits behind Bercow …and voting rights in a UK election, I believe? Part of the “votes for carpet squares” scandal if I remember correctly?
BTW:
Compare:
““The issue is only and always “Western” imperialism. Get rid of that, and capitalism will really come into its own in the East and deliver on its promises by, I presume, magically transforming itself into the ‘socialism’ that it already is.”
With:
“And that is why we talk of western imperialism. Get rid of it and the possibility of renewing the world will exist.Do nothing and it will continue to expand, devouring all in its way.”
Is there a substantial difference between the two? So,remind me again of your initial objection . . .
As for hand wringing, while I implore a complete break with capital, aren’t you the one counselling an alliance?
Who, then, one might wonder, between you and me, is the one making excuses on the grounds that, “evil as the enemy is?”
Oh, poor Jews and Romas. Oh yeah, and f… Polish people, because they’re white…
And the 20 million Chinese, they never get a mention either. The Japanese proved themselves to be every bit as brutal as the Germans.
That was after US terrorism hit Japan’s shores in the form of Commodore Perry’s black ships. USAmericans are the gold standard for brutality.
Interesting documentary on the colonisation of Namibia including the brutal and extreme methods employed by German occupiers when doing so.
Needless to say the German press did their bit to support imperialism – some things never change (from 16:20)
More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide
‘… Do you recall the official Western line about a ‘peaceful Germany, a land of scholars and philosophers; a nation which shocked itself and the world, by suddenly turning to extreme violence and mass murder, abandoning its noble traditions?’ Such reasoning would stand only if the Others (non-white, non-Europeans), were not considered as human beings … Part of the answer as to why Germany, long considered a land of culture and philosophy, became a barbaric country in the late 1890s / early 1900s and then later during Adolf Hitler’s years of rule is actually here in this sentence and in the excerpt from Andre Vltchek’s post above. It was scientists, academics, philosophers (or, in the case of Friedrich Nietzsche, his sister who gained control of his writings after his mental breakdown) and other people considered to be cultural leaders who led the way in propagating and disseminating the notion that… Read more »
Did you write this to provoce people, genocide and ethnic cleansing prognomes, yeah, and of course, Germany, yeah, why dont we talk about lets say South Africa, and the ones claiming the rights to the land, the Bantus, and again do enlighten me if I am wrong, they have no more rights to the region than Boers, the Only indiginous people is the Pygmees, witch is to day slowly wiped out, and is confined to an desert region. The Maoris cleansing of the native NZ isnt widely known is it. I could go on for f… days. Yeah. I wounder, when some writes like that, why did this happen and whom made this possible, morons, it was what was considered as Science those days, yeah, science, you call it racism, to day, yes, but this days, as you looooove to refere every God dammed thing on the Germans, makes one… Read more »
You make some valid points but your main complaint as to why focus on Germany’s cleansing rather than that inflicted upon your people is “what about me?”
Both cleansings are wrong. All cleansing is wrong. The reason this one is being written on about now is that a court case came up in New York.
Thanks for bringing your views and history to our attention, it would help your case if you elaborated your specific point about your ethnic group more fully and calmly.
Why for a moment would you call the killing or expulsion of peoples from their homes ‘cleansing’? Until we wake up to know the word and meaning that we share de we blindly support the doublethink of deceit? Whoever ‘started it’ someone else retaliated to fuel it. It has been going on now since the god-kings – as a rule-bound mind. I see that the excluded are not in fact excluded but are denied to light of acceptance to a split off sense of self that is centred around the idea of control. The unseen power of denial is that of the undermining, sabotage or blocking of fulfilment or joy in being. This is not recognized for what it is but is projected out upon the world and attacked. Running away from our own shadow is effectively being ruled by it and of course it includes all of whom you… Read more »
When it comes to a pissing up the wall contest as to which western colonial state committed the worst atrocities, there are plenty of candidates, including ‘plucky little’ Belgium in the Congo, the Dutch Boers, the British in South Africa, India and elsewhere, the Opium Wars with China, the ethnic cleansing of natives in America – North and South, Australia, New Zealand. I can also imagine the Swedes didn’t treat the Finns or Russians with kid gloves on their foreign adventures. But ultimately, a pissing up the wall contest is futile. The entire history of western colonialism everywhere was and is evil. No need to single out any one offender as the worst. they should all be condemned and made to pay compensation. Compensation not to be paid by the man in the street, who gained little benefit from these atrocities. No, compensation should be paid by the likes of… Read more »
I like the peace part!And, yes, poor white people, nobody stands up to defend them!
It’s overwhelming when we contemplate deeply, the staggering scale of the murdering and pillaging by the rapacious spirit which lives in the depths of the dark human psyche. Compensation should be offered as a sincere token of acknowledgement to these tribes in Namibia… But how to even begin to communicate with the Europeans who have inherrited the vast wealth and massive estates there, so as to get them to understand and accept what their privledge is founded upon, so that they may pause and then offer to share what they have inherritted with the indigenous people of the land, and to begin the healing within the relationships, so they can co-exist with respect and reverence for each other, beyond superficial difference.. I can only hold that as a vision of hope. It’s also true in what has been mentioned on this thread, that so many nations have engaged in genocidal… Read more »
Then there is the genocide and concentration camps in what is western Ukraine today, perpetrated by the Austro-Hungarians and the anti-Russians, against the Russian-speaking people and the Russophiles there. I don’t have the numbers of victims and I cannot find the short article I copied years ago from a Facebook page that stated them. If I do find it, I’ll post it hear. There were cases of people locked into Russian Orthodox churches which were then set on fire, as I remember. This happened at the very beginning of the 20th century.
One predictable consequence of highlighting any of the many genocides in the last century or so is the inevitable attempt by some to claim that their own disaster was somehow more egregious, more numerous, move heinous than all the others. Any comment section of the NYT, even if tangential to the article, illustrates this. It is time not to compete on perceived or promoted heinousness but to recognise all of these have much in common and understanding them is best viewed in their more general context.
American television always has at least two channels which are “Nazi” channels, sometimes more. How exactly these channels like the Smithsonian, the History channel, AHL, all get shanghaied into one monothematic focus is beyond me but surely it would be more productive to make the focus on genocide in general.
@ George Cornel
”American television always has at least two channels which are “Nazi” channels, sometimes more. How exactly these channels like the Smithsonian, the History channel, AHL, all get shanghaied into one monothematic focus is beyond me but surely it would be more productive to make the focus on genocide in general.”
Not only in America but in England too. The reason being that ALL media is owned by Jews who have a vested interest in keeping the ”Holocaust” at the forefront of every agenda.
Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire media mogul behind News Corp and 21st Century Fox isn’t Jewish.
He should change the name to 5th Century Fox, more in line with his ethos.
Indeed he isn’t, however he does have potentially very lucrative business interests (oil in the Golan Heights) that coincide with Israel’s ambitions in that area. What serves Israel, also serves Murdoch (not to mention a pack of the predictable US gangsters).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_Energy
As long as we use our suffering to get something we (think we) want – so long will it persist. And to the degree or intensity of our wanting – so will it be fed. This can also use the suffering of others as a proxy. Or the taking of offence as the basis for the right to behave offensively under guise of vindication. The mind can be a deceiver to the wish that truth be different than it is- or that untruth be true. (These are two sides of one coin). Technological superiority (not least a result of war-driven plunder) coupled with the masking in ‘divine right’ as a manipulative identity (followed by scientific discoveries used to validate eugenics), all structure the logical outcome of dissociated thinking given acceptance and allegiance. Natives have not found the way to deal with an alien agenda – and I mean this firstly… Read more »
The third channel is not AHL but AHC, which stands for American Heroes Channel. One could imagine who started it, who runs it and what its aims are or visit its website and get a feel.bRemarkable similarity to the “History” channel, and how the Smithsonian, a publicly funded institution has its name behind a transparent propaganda effort is worthy of some investigation.
Here, not hear. What is wrong with me? 😀
Yes, they deserve some compensation but where do we stop? Do we sue Norway and Sweden for the Vikings? How about Italy for the Romans or Greece for Alexander? Sad but true the strongest wins – by fair or foul means. Perhaps we’d do better stopping wars today in Yemen, Syria etc.etc.?
@ Philip,
I think the point is that compensation is sought for surviving VICTIMS and their immediate families.
So the American Indian and the Aboriginal people should definitely be compensated.
They are still non people in their own land.
And yes.. make way for all the claims from Iraq/Afghanistan/ Syria and Yemen. And rightfully so.
The Military Industrial Complex believes itself to be above the law, and it is time they were made to face their crimes.. all in the name of profit for a few.
“To draw the line in the sand”. Then work from there.
Sounds like a lot more anti european bashing to me. Nothing about Belgium tho…barely anything about England….
Baaaad old “nazi’s”. Pfffft. Whatever.
Africans trying to scam something else out of Europe because they cant do a damn thing for themselves.
The ONLY advances Africans have made in the last 1000 years have been due to outside influence. Most of that being European. Bless their hearts. Still think they can cure aids by screwing a virgin.
With Jews and their bolshevik progeny running New York, they might win this court case.
I once asked a group of national scientific representatives of a dozen West African countries why no continental leader had emerged from Africa. Their answer? Because every time one begins to emerge, the CIA bumps him off. They started with Lumumba and rattled off a dozen more , none of which were familiar. I find your post offensive and I am surely not alone.
George Cornell – Gaddafi as leader of what was at the time the most prosperous nation in Africa serves as the most recent example of what you reference. His plan for a pan-African currency based upon some massive gold reserves would have allowed African nations some bit of respite from the clutches of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Those reserves are referenced in Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails, and the pan-African currency plan was of course an important reason for his assassination by the Western supported jihadists.
True Intergenerationaltrauma,
And where is that gold now?
”Sidney Blumenthal, in his email to Hillary Clinton confirmed, “Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli.”
He went on to say the gold and silver was valued at $7 billion and was one of the reasons Nicolas Sarkozy embarked on a French attack of Libya.”
https://www.africanexponent.com/post/new-evidence-the-real-reason-gaddafi-was-killed-2706
For further insight into the vilification and demonising of Gadaffi, read here:
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_7886.shtml
How would Blumenthal have known?
@ George Cornell,
Not forgetting Nelson Mandela who they hoped would die in prison, and Gadaffi, who was elected head of the African Union two years before they assassinated him. GADAFFI was embarked on a programme to create the United States of Africa and proposed using their own currency, of which they have billions, in Gold dinars. This would have cut the Vampire Bankers and their cronies out of the picture… so he had to go. And now we have leaders installed who are paid by the CIA and MI6 to keep their people sick and subjugated to open the gates to robbers and thieves, called ‘investors.’
The Bush family being the prime example with their Barrick Gold Mine????
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/bushgold.htm
Certainly not forgetting Mandela who was more of a world leader than a continental one, in my opinion. Gaddafi fits the mold well.
George Cornell – you certainly are not alone – I share your repulsion of the perverted views of others who care not for the dignity of human life.
Why not correct the ignorance rather than engage in moral superiority? Educate – whilst being firm. You are right – I feel – to dissociate yourself from what you hold untrue and destructive. But this is undermined by resorting to taking offence as if you are a perfected one calling down penalty on the unworthy and invalid. Their view may of course be unworthy of them as well as of oters and so is in need of correction – not support. But the person is a being capable of learning given the conditions for learning. That hatred brings forth a like reaction is not to say that that is its correction – even if all such ‘haters’ were put in camps and killed. I am not suggesting that that is your intent – but I see how the ‘liberal’ movement has lost itself in a bubble of self-entitlement that has… Read more »
The same was done to Iraqi academics, scientists and engineers in the years following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
http://www.iraqsolidaridad.org/2013/docs/List_of_Iraqi_academics_assassinated_abr_2013.pdf
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have the same problem: as soon as a person gifted with leadership qualities appears among them, that unfortunate gets picked off by the Israelis in an arrest or a targeted assassination.
Kaiser Mike – “Sounds like a lot more anti european bashing to me.” “The ONLY advances Africans have made in the last 1000 years have been due to outside influence. Most of that being European.” – your comments. said the man sitting on 500+ years of pillage from around the entire planet. Between the British Empire and its successor the current American empire the poor non-white populations of planet earth have had little if any respite from our rapacious pillage. The mayhem has been non-stop. Of course brief lights like a Lumumba had to be assassinated as quickly as possible, should they dare challenge your (and West’s in general) self-deluded notions of racial superiority. Vltchek speaks the historical truths quite unpalatable in the West by simply reflecting upon our history. The white world is appalled by the Nazi’s not because of genocide, but because that genocide was of fellow “white… Read more »
Mike, nobody cares what the alt-right thinks about anything. Stay in your mom’s basement and keep wanking to Tomi Lahren.
@kaiser mike i think i you typed the wrong letters into your address bar and arrived here by accident
it’s M-A-I-L-O-N-L-I-N-E.C-O-M
you’re welcome
@ Kaiser Mike
What a bigoted, ignorant, porcine cretin we have here..
Clearly you have never read a book or you would know that from the inception of the British Empire, and even before, Africa has been plundered from coast to coast and it’s people murdered, for it’s resources.
Try reading one book ”The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins” and see how primitive countries are plundered, and why.
.
Several informative points. Don’t forget the Congo and Leopold where the death toll (in the 12 million range) was easily double that of the WWII Holocaust not to mention systematic mutilation, and competitive with the number of slaves sent to the US by mainly English slavers, many of whom were “owned” by the Church of England. And Lord Kitchener was viewed as a hero in England.
One of the great ironies in all of this was Kitchener’s inaugural concentration camps for Boer women and children did not impede the renaming of Berlin Ontario to Kitchener, a name it bizarrely retains today.
So Kitchener murdered black AND white: not a racist but a totalitarian mass killer of civilians as well as armed opponents (be it spears against machine guns). Quite a hero….
More info at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide
I understand that there were events in the Sudan during Kitchener’s time there, (late 1890’s) that are still secret and the files stored at the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices. Considering his reputation is well known, it’s hard to imagine what other horrors might be contained in those secret files.
The groundbreaking contribution of the English to human villainy ones not end with concentration camps and slavery. I paste below the initiation if not invention of biological warfare from Lord Jeffrey Amherst’s wiki entry but one which is not as well known as it should be. <One of the most infamous and well documented issues during Pontiac’s War was the use of biological warfare against the Native Americans. The suggestion was posed by Amherst himself in letters to Colonel Henry Bouquet.[24] Amherst, having learned that smallpox had broken out among the garrison at Fort Pitt, and after learning of the loss of his forts at Venango, Le Boeuf and Presqu’Isle, wrote to Colonel Bouquet:[25] Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. Bouquet, who was already marching to… Read more »
Does that give you pause when considering global medical interventions as healthcare? Do you notice that a large number of humans have been normalised to regard human beings as a virus on the Planet? The forms change shape the intent masks in new guises. My personal appreciation of ‘eugenics’ is not in regard to other beings but in regard to the thought I permit to be acted from, shared and thus strengthened. Evil thought or rather false thinking that makes evil or destructive perception is the condition out of and upon which evil agenda finds support. I understand it is possible to hate human existence but I also understand that this reinforces hate rather than heals. Getting is a misidentification. Giving and receiving is the nature of reality. So watch the meanings YOU give for you cannot escape them. There may be no limit to our capacity for ignorance and… Read more »