Colonialism and Capitalism as Determinants of Modern Health

By Cory Bhowmik

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is an ideal we try to espouse, but the field of medicine can be rightly accused of not telling “the whole truth” on many occasions throughout history. The Tuskegee syphilis study [1] and the involuntary sterilization of Native American women [2] are a couple examples. A particularly damning example is when we invoke “social determinants of health” upon encountering disparities healthcare that are based on race, sexuality, gender, etc. This invocation—though a statement of fact—is not “the whole truth”, as it doesn’t identify the reason why social determinants of health exist. In fact, the term “social determinants of health” is a placid moniker for the violent systems that have resulted in today’s healthcare disparities.

The advent of colonialism and capitalism

When we start a family, we make appropriate accommodations to ensure everyone is fed, housed, and taken care of. Even non-human animals do the same. So, it isn’t surprising that many societies throughout history have been based in community, with communal systems of food distribution, housing, and education. [3] Of course, there have been empires and kingdoms that have invaded other peoples and sequestered wealth—but not as pervasively as in today’s society. [4]

Today’s shift away from communal society is attributed to the system, originating in western Europe in the 16th century, wherein a small group of the elite can rule over a lower class. Upon the creation of a system in which there were virtually no bounds on individual profit, European merchants began a violent race for spices, minerals, and other goods—including people. And so western Europe began to plunder civilizations around the world, instituting hierarchies that forced indigenous people into the lower class—thus beginning the brutal era of colonialism. [5,6]

Colonialism was made possible by the economic system of exploitation that is capitalism. Capitalism, by definition, requires the existence of a lower class. [7] That fact, regardless of any other, should allow us to abolish it. But, of course, capitalism continues to be promoted by the promise of innovation, even though innovation has since been shown to occur at similar rates in socialist societies. [8] It should be noted that another key piece of propaganda in the promulgation of colonialism and capitalism is God. Colonialism was justified by branding indigenous people as uncivilized and unChristian. For example, the pursuit of religious freedom for western Europeans was used to justify their original settlement into the 13 colonies of the United States. [9] And “manifest destiny” was used to justify their westward expansion and continued genocide of Native American people. [10]

For capitalism to thrive, it requires a source of people to serve as the lower class. And so, it is not surprising that western Europeans invented the concept of race science, which led them to enslave millions of people from Africa. [11] Indigenous people in other colonies were also seen as less-than-human, resulting in indentured servitude and isolation from resources. This concept of racism and capitalism being mutually beneficial for the purpose of exploitation is called racial capitalism, and it has been vital to the violence of colonialism. [12]

Unfortunately, there is a system that can rival the violence of colonialism—and that is settler colonialism: a brutal form of colonialism that involves settlers taking land and establishing residence in the occupied society, with the goal of expulsion and/or alienation of the occupied indigenous people. Examples of settler colonies include the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. [13]

Resultant Impact on Health

Descriptions—mere definitions, even—of colonialism, setter colonialism, capitalism, and racial capitalism should instill in anyone feelings of disgust, and it should be obvious how these violent systems result in adverse health outcomes, but let’s lay it out with some examples:

During the height of colonialism, many famines were levied onto colonized people. One example is the Bengal famine of 1943 in India (along with tens of other famines across South Asia), which resulted in adaptations of the body to a state of starvation. Today, this adaptation—within a mere 1-2 generations—has resulted in increased rates of cardiovascular disease in South Asian populations. Studies have shown that the presence of a famine in one generation doubles the subsequent generation’s risk of diabetes and obesity. [14,15] So, is this just a social determinant of health, or is this better described as a violent result of colonialism and capitalism?

In the settler colonies of Australia (where the Aboriginal people have been displaced) and New Zealand (where the Māori people have been displaced), both groups of indigenous people have less access to land, higher rates of discrimination, and higher rates of mental health related disease. [16,17] Is this just a social determinant of health, or is this a result of colonialism and capitalism?

In the settler colony of the United States, millions of enslaved people from Africa have been under brutal physical and mental stress for hundreds of years. Today, evidence shows that there are increased levels of stress in descendants of enslaved people, likely originating from the stress of oppression and slavery via a harrowing phenomenon called Post-Traumatic Slavery Syndrome (PTSS). [18,19] Is this just a social determinant of health, or is this a result of colonialism and capitalism?

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In the United States government, the Indian Health Service (IHS) exists to provide healthcare services for Native Americans. (Pause, for a moment, to consider how dystopian it is for the Indian Health Service to exist. This makes it seem as though it is a special service, for a people who are indigenous to this land.) In the 1970s, the IHS was responsible for the nonconsensual sterilization of more than 25% of Native American women of childbearing age. And in 2020, Native Americans had some of the highest COVID rates, partially due to the underfunding of federal reservations. [20] And so, is this just a social determinant of health, or is this a result of colonialism and capitalism?

What does this mean?

Food insecurity in predominantly Black areas, increased disease rates in prisons (which incarcerate 4 times as many Black people as are in the general population [21]), increased work hours to maximize profit, lower quality of healthcare due to insurance, and the creation of “third-world” countries secondary to resource extraction and servitude—it would not be a stretch to say that these phenomena, along with the above examples, and almost all “social determinants of health” are secondary to colonialism and capitalism.

Of greatest import, these systems have not disappeared. There are colonial (and neocolonial [22]) powers even today, and capitalism continues to perpetuate violent healthcare disparities. If we are to eliminate healthcare disparities—as medical school curriculum advocates—then colonialism and capitalism must go. Any lesser solution is mere symptom management.

References

1.       Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022). The untreated syphilis study at Tuskegee – Timeline. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm

2.       Blakemore, E (2019). The little-known history of the forced sterilization of Native American women. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/the-little-known-history-of-the-forced-sterilization-of-native-american-women/

3.       Taylor, I (2018). Pre-colonial political systems and colonialism. African Politics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198806578.003.0002

4.       Khilnani, S (2022). The British empire was much worse than you realize. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence

5.       PBS NewsHour (2015). How the West got rich and modern capitalism was born. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/west-got-rich-modern-capitalism-born

6.       DuBois, WEB (1976). The world and Africa: An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history. Kraus Reprint Co.

7.       Marx, K (1991). Capital: A critique of political economy. London Penguin Books in Association with New Left Review.

8.       Rodney, W (1972). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso.

9.       Foster, J, Taylor, M, Boecklin, D, Tanner, M, & Luyken, J (1998). America as a religious refuge: The seventeenth century, Part 1 - Religion and the founding of the American republic. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html#:~:text=Beginning%20in%201630%20as%20many,far%20as%20the%20West%20Indies.

10.   Getchell, M (2023). Manifest Destiny. Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/age-of-jackson/a/manifest-destiny#:~:text=Manifest%20Destiny%20was%20the%20idea

11.   ‌Harvard University (2022). Scientific Racism. Harvard Library. https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/scientific-racism

12.   Laster Pirtle, WN (2020). Racial capitalism: A fundamental cause of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic inequities in the United States. Health Educ Behav. 2020 Aug;47(4):504-508. doi: 10.1177/1090198120922942.

13.   Wolfe, P (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research. 8:4,387-409. doi: 10.1080/14623520601056240

14.   Bakar, F (2022). How history still weighs heavy on South Asian bodies today. HuffPost UK. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/south-asian-health-colonial-history_uk_620e74fee4b055057aac0e9f

15.   Brown University (2016). Famine alters metabolism for successive generations. (n.d.). Brown University. https://www.brown.edu/news/2016-12-12/famine

16.   McGlade, H (2023). First Person: Aboriginal Australians suffer from “violent history” and ongoing “institutional racism”. UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/04/1135827

17.   ‌ Harris, RB, Cormack, DM, & Stanley, J (2013). The relationship between socially-assigned ethnicity, health and experience of racial discrimination for Māori: Analysis of the 2006/07 New Zealand Health Survey. BMC Public Health, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-844

18.   ‌ Scott-Jones G & Kamara MR (2020). The traumatic impact of structural racism on African Americans. Dela J Public Health. 2020 Nov 7;6(5):80-82. doi: 10.32481/djph.2020.11.019.

19.   Halloran, MJ (2019). African American health and posttraumatic slave syndrome: A terror management theory account. Journal of Black Studies, 50(1), 45-65. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934718803737

20.   Williams, R (2021). Native American deaths from COVID-19 highest among racial groups. Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. https://spia.princeton.edu/news/native-american-deaths-covid-19-highest-among-racial-groups#:~:text=After%20adjusting%20their%20data%20for‌

21.   Wertheimer, J (2023). Racial disparities persist in many U.S. jails. Pew. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2023/05/racial-disparities-persist-in-many-us-jails

22.   Halperin, S (2020). Neocolonialism. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism

How Israel Copied the USA

By Youhanna Haddad

Though Zionism has found a home in Palestine, the movement didn’t originate there. It was an exported ideology and only gained a foothold in the Middle East thanks to British patronage. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, was a secular Austrian Jew who didn’t use theology to argue for his colonial ambitions. Rather, he argued that Jews couldn’t live freely in Gentile nations and needed their own state to escape antisemitism. 

Herzl’s magnum opus, Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), repeats frequently that the establishment of this state is a colonial endeavor. His colonial strategy revolved around the idea of a “Jewish chartered company,” similar to the infamous East India Company that plundered trillions of dollars from South Asia for the benefit of English capitalists. 

Herzl did not mince words. He used “colony” and “colonist” to describe his ambitions over 10 times in Der Judenstaat. He said the poorest Jewish settlers would become the “most vigorous conquerors, because a little despair is indispensable to the formation of a great undertaking,”. Herzl even believed European Jews would not come to Palestine without the guarantee that they would be legally superior to the indigenous Arab population:

“Immigration is consequently futile unless based on assured supremacy.”

Herzl also directly compared Zionist settlements to the “occupation of newly opened territory” in the United States. There are also uncanny rhetorical analogies. Both Zionists and Euro-American settlers claim supremacy to justify the conquering, displacement, and elimination of natives. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, for example, justified Israel’s violent West Bank settlement campaign in supremacist terms:

“Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue. #settlementsrock”

Shapiro’s rhetoric mirrors that of Enlightenment thinker John Locke, who believed God created land only for “the industrious and rational.” Euro-American settlers cited Locke to justify their own violent displacement of natives. This violence is inseparable from colonialism.

Zionists could not build their state without subjugating the Palestinians. And Palestinians could not maintain their sovereignty and cultural identity under the boot of a Zionist state. So began Palestine’s struggle for national liberation, and the steady loss of Palestinian land has continued to this day.

Every nation has a right to self-determination and freedom from imperialist aggression. The Zionist entity is one of the last standing apartheid states in the world, fully backed by Western Imperialist liberal democracies. Israel and its allies are more than willing to use violence to enforce their will in the region. We therefore cannot be blinded by the fantasy of a pure, perfectly nonviolent path to self-determination for the Palestinian people. 

As Malcolm X explained, “concerning nonviolence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.” Who could he be speaking to if not the Palestinians? There is no moral equivalence between the colonial violence of the Zionist state and the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves. The oppressed have an undeniable right to resist those who openly seek to destroy them. Just as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto valiantly resisted the Nazis hellbent on eliminating them, the Palestinians are resisting the Zionist forces that seek their elimination.

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Like the Zionists of today, American leaders have a long tradition of slandering indigenous resistance. The supposedly progressive president Theodore Roosevelt proudly spewed such lies to justify his conquest of the American West, saying:

“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.” 

Clearly, Roosevelt had little regard for the original inhabitants of the United States. When he spoke on the United States military’s unprovoked slaughter of Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children at Sandy Creek, he proclaimed it was “as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.” In his book The Winning of the West, Roosevelt ridiculed any sort of sympathy for victims of indigenous genocide:

‘‘All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes…The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages … American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori — in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people.” 

It is no surprise that Roosevelt was a staunch Zionist. His belief in white people’s inherent right to violently expropriate colored lands fits perfectly with the Zionist mission. Israel’s founders held no illusions over what was necessary to create their ethnostate: total elimination of the Arab population. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, did not accuse Arab states of acting irrationally against the Zionist project. He knew the Zionist mission was directly at odds with Palestinian and Arab survival in the region: 

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”

While modern Zionists blame “far too many Palestinians… intent on massacring Jews” for resistance against Zionism, Ben-Gurion didn’t entertain this delusion: 

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but… [o]ur God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Ben-Gurion’s own words shatter the lie that Israel-Palestine is “complicated.” It’s theft and genocide — plain and simple. And Zionists justify these crimes by dehumanizing the victims — much like Euro-American colonists dehumanized Native Americans. Zionism is thus undoubtedly a settler-colonial and racially supremacist ideology. We must reject it.

While corporate media continues to pump out tropes of the “Arab barbarian,” we cannot forget that all indigenous liberation movements throughout history have been smeared in the same fashion. For the moment, the establishment will smear those who stand with Palestine as antisemites and terrorist sympathizers. But history will remember us fondly, once the Zionist chapter is far behind us. 

Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism.

Decolonisation Isn't Pretty Or Complicated: When Violence Is Humanising

By Derek Ford

The first pro-Palestine demonstration called after the latest counterattack by a host of Palestinian forces on October 7, endorsed by Students for Justice in Palestine, the ANSWER Coalition and others, put matters very plainly:

Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total return and liberation to Palestine is near. Catching the enemy completely by surprise, the Palestinian resistance has captured over a dozen settlements surrounding Gaza, along with many occupation soldiers and military vehicles. This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies but armed confrontation with the oppressors.

Of course, the colonisers do not want to hear such realities and hypocritically condemn them as ‘violent’ and ‘terrorist.’ In Indianapolis, we had to keep our coalition together in the face of the fear-mongering by both Democrat and Republican politicians. Unfortunately, many on the academic ‘left’ – already predisposed to conciliatory readjustments – continue echoing the same talking points as the State Department.

Henry Giroux, for example, contends that ‘The reach of violence and death in Israel by Hamas is shocking in its depravity and has been well-publicised in the mainstream media and in other cultural apparatuses.’ For a ‘critical’ scholar, it should instinctively raise questions when one finds truth in the pro-Zionist media and cultural outlets and remains merely satisfied with noting the ‘one-sidedness’ of such coverage. Giroux goes further still, calling us to do more than ‘exclusively condemn Hamas’s atrocious violence as a violation of human rights’ and to hold Israel’s apparently asymmetrical violence to equal condemnation. ‘Refusing to hold all sides in this war to the standards of international law is a violation of human dignity, justice and democratic principles,’ Giroux proclaims.

Palestinian resistance: Armed love

I recommend revisiting Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he unequivocally denounces such false equivalences. ‘Never in history,’ he writes, ‘has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators if they themselves are the result of violence?’ It is rather the oppressors who trigger violence and ‘not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror.’ Furthermore, the counter-insurgency of the oppressed, the ‘violence’ or ‘terror’ they wield, is in reality ‘a gesture of love.’

For Giroux, however, Hamas’s heroic attack on October 7 is ‘brutal and heinous’ and ‘horrific.’ To be fair, he acknowledges that Israeli Occupation Forces have murdered more children than ‘Hamas.’ Yet he swiftly returns to the equation, arguing that both Israel and Hama are united by ‘the violence done against children,’ which is apparently ‘used simply as a prop to legitimate and continue the war and the ongoing death and suffering of children, women, and civilians.’

Simultaneously, in the article titled ‘Killing Children: The Burdens of Conscience and the Israel-Hamas War,’ Giroux commands us not to equate Hamas with Palestine. Fair enough; no single entity represents an entire people. Yet Hamas is one of many resistance forces operating under a united front, along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Resistance Committees, the Al-Quds Brigades and countless others. This is beside the point: those of us in the US have absolutely no business telling the colonised how to resist colonisation, nor what armed groups should resist and on what grounds!

One wonders what such academics would have written about Nat Turner’s historic 1831 rebellion in Virginia. In August of that year, Turner led a group of six slaves to freedom. They killed their slaver, Joseph Travis and his family before traversing plantations to free more enslaved Africans by force. Along the way, ‘free’ Blacks joined their army of about 70 people.

They took money, supplies and weapons as they moved and eliminated over 55 white slave owners and their families. Their violence was not altogether indiscriminate, and, in fact, Turner ordered his troops to leave the homes of poor white people alone. Still, they killed children in their march towards freedom.

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Should we remember this remarkable uprising as a tragedy to be condemned, albeit less so than the violence of the slavers? No! We celebrate Turner’s rebellion as we do all revolts of the oppressed worldwide throughout history!

Their violence was humanising, a necessary measure to prevent them from enslaving others and part of a long tradition of insurrection that ultimately overthrew chattel slavery in the US.

No demonisation of the oppressed

After an amazingly long chase, once the slavers found and killed Turner, the white supremacist papers condemned him and his motley crew for their barbaric violence. How would you respond? ‘Yes, it was terrible, but slavery is worse?’

Things are different today. All imperialist wars are for ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’ So it was with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria, you name it. In each instance, the propaganda is quickly absorbed by our critical intellectuals. I remember Noam Chomsky endorsing UN Resolution 1973, put forward by the ‘saviours’ of humanity like Italy and the United States on March 17, 2011, imposing a ‘No-Fly Zone’ over Libya. Of course, this only applied to the Libyan air force, not to the US and its NATO allies.

There was relentless propaganda about an ‘impending massacre’ in Benghazi when, in reality, the small armed uprising was on the verge of defeat by the massively popular (and, it goes without saying, flawed) Jamahiriya government of Moammar Gaddafi. It turns out there was no impending massacre, nor was there any validity to the accusations of ‘mass rape.’

The same is true of October 7, 2023. As it turns out, the Israelis massacred their own people. The air force admitted one commander ‘instructed the other fighters in the air to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence, and at a certain point also attacked an IDF station with trapped soldiers in order to help the fighters of Navy commando unit 13 attack it and liberate it.’ Yasmin Porat confirmed the Israeli army massacred civilians after the courageous Hamas counterattack and, moreover, said Palestinian resistance forces who ‘kidnapped’ her did not treat her inhumanely and did not intend to murder her.

For those with a cursory knowledge of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, this is not surprising.

No purity in the fight against oppression

Let’s imagine that the lies told by the State Department and distributed by their stenographers in the media were all true. Even then, why would anyone in the US or any imperialist nation that is currently sponsoring the Israeli genocide feel any need to ‘condemn’ or even denounce the heroism of those fighting back?

The answer is simple: standing up to the demonisation campaign is difficult, especially early on. Yet how many have heard the endless outrageous lies used to dehumanise primarily Black and Brown heads of state, governments, militaries, and populations? The real question is: how many of us have heard the retractions? How many of us have questioned our national chauvinism and privilege? Why would anyone entertain the notion that Hamas wants Israel to continue bombing its people and infrastructure?

It goes without saying that I don’t share a political allegiance to Hamas, and neither do the myriad forces uniting with them to defend their people – and the people of the region and world – from the genocidal apartheid regime of Israel!

Moral purity is an idealism only those cloistered in their academic offices can afford. Still, it’s a waste of money. I guess, at the very least, it shows us what critical academics are willing to criticise the oppressors and not the oppressed. Me? I’m unequivocally and proudly on the side of the oppressed.

The Syli in the Room: Reviving Ahmed Sékou Touré

By Kevin McCleish

Afro-pessimism in its original iteration found use as a medium to explain the phenomenon of perpetual underdevelopment in Africa. As Mahmoud Mamdani notes, Afro-pessimists suggest Africa cannot rejuvenate itself from within due to the persistence of traditional culture. Kevin Ochieng Okoth describes how Afro-pessimism grew from incessant negative depictions of Africa in Western media, which portray an utterly hopeless continent.

In the face of post-independence failing states, raging epidemics, genocide, and worsening inequality, Afro-pessimism resonated with a global audience because it seemed to justify the interventions of actors ranging from saviorist NGOs [1] to agents of structural adjustment programs like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. If Africans proved incapable of solving their problems, a host of others appeared who claimed they could.

Emerging from the academy, what Ochieng calls Afro-pessimism (AP) 2.0 differs from its predecessor by focusing intently on the experience of black Americans and how, as Adolph Reed Jr. often and sarcastically puts it, “nothing has changed” since 1865. Reed describes AP 2.0 as an approach which…

“... postulates that much of, if not all, the history of the world has been propelled by a universal ‘anti-blackness.’ Adherents of the Afropessimist critique, and other race-reductive thinkers, posit a commitment to a transhistorical white supremacy as the cornerstone and motive force of the history, and prehistory, of the United States, as well as the imperialist and colonialist subjugation in other areas of the world.”

AP 2.0 proponents believe the uniqueness of anti-black oppression prevents collaboration with other oppressed peoples due to fundamental racial antagonism “condemning them to a life of social death.” AP 2.0 therefore hinders the development of the broad, class-conscious coalitions needed to overcome the hegemonic power of capital. This also renders it impotent against imperialism.

Ahmed Sékou Touré, the first post-colonial president of Guinea (1958–1984), understood that fighting imperialism requires collective action across racial and ethnic lines. Touré is best remembered for organizing an electoral rejection of a new French constitution on September 28th, 1958, which prompted immediate political independence for Guinea. Though the referendum was held in France and across all overseas departments and territories, Guinea had the impressive distinction of being the only political unit to vote “no” on the constitution and colonization. Through his organizing efforts, Touré achieved 85% voter turnout with 95% voting against the colonial arrangement.

After becoming president in October 1958, Touré quickly realized that political sovereignty meant little without economic sovereignty. So Touré adopted what he called a “non-capitalist” path of development in recognition that “the anti-imperialist struggle is the climax of class struggle.” Following this path was made all the more difficult by repeated attempts of international sabotage and economic isolation.

A committed pan-Africanist and fierce proponent of nonalignment during the Cold War, Touré played an immense and overlooked role during arguably the most critical juncture in human history: the Cuban Missile Crisis. When President John F. Kennedy directed a naval “quarantine” of Cuba after intelligence showed the construction of nuclear missile sites on the island in response to the American placement of missiles within striking distance of Moscow, the Soviets immediately began planning an airlift of critical military supplies to circumvent the naval blockade. To do so, however, Soviet jets would need to land and refuel prior to reaching the island.

In the fall of 1962, only the five West African countries of Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, and Morocco had airstrips long enough to accommodate jet traffic. To stop an airlift before it ever got off the ground, American officials lobbied African leaders to refuse Soviet air traffic. Though each country had its own set of diplomatic challenges, Washington was most concerned about Guinea.

Touré had just accepted Soviet assistance to improve Conakry’s airport runaways months prior. Coincidentally, though, Touré had also just returned from a state visit to Washington where he and Kennedy made good impressions on one another. Recognizing that the Guinean people had nothing to benefit by obliging the Soviet request, Touré, with his trademark independence, refused. His commitment to what he termed “positive neutrality” gave him the diplomatic flexibility to exercise an inordinate amount of influence during the Cold War. 

Unfortunately, readers unfamiliar with the “Grand Syli” (Touré’s nickname; literally “Big Elephant”), are likely to see his revolutionary contributions as a dead end rather than a point of departure. Often overlooked in the Anglophone world, Touré’s radical pedigree, honed from the mass politics of labor organizing, shows how today’s leftists can use labor organizing to facilitate the formation of broad-based coalitions capable of agitating for radical political transformation. Such strategies are a welcome antidote to the alternative approach of AP 2.0, which does not challenge the foundations of the current political economy. 

Radical Roots Sprout a Labor Leader

Touré’s propensity for mass politics came from his poor peasant origins in Faranah, Guinea. As Saidou Mohamed N’Daou recounts, Touré’s social consciousness developed at an early age as he witnessed his deaf mother suffer abuse. His father died early, and mistreatment drove his mother to suicide shortly after. Orphaned at age seven, Touré found loving refuge in his uncle’s family. Touré entered primary school and showed great intellectual promise and an affinity for anti-colonial agitation — from challenging colonial curriculum to organizing protests against a headmaster who forced students to toil in his garden without compensation (the headmaster refused to take responsibility for a student who died of a snakebite whilst laboring in the garden) [2], to leading a food strike, which resulted in his expulsion as a teenager. 

Though his rebelliousness ultimately derailed a promising academic trajectory, Touré’s anti-colonial intransigence ensured he avoided becoming one of the évolués (Africans “civilized” through European education and assimilation) he later came to despise. Had Touré instead complied and wound up in the academy as another “misguided intellectual,” he may have turned out much like his rival and Négritude proponent Leopold Senghor. Touré took issue with Négritude, which — like AP 2.0 — had essentialist foundations.  He dismissed Négritude as a reflection of bourgeois class ideology that merely masked Western cultural imperialism. Touré held that African culture could not be disassociated from political, social, and economic contexts asserting:

“[T]here is no black culture, nor white culture, nor yellow culture…Négritude is thus a false concept, an irrational weapon encouraging…racial discrimination, arbitrarily exercised upon the peoples of Africa, Asia, and upon men of color in America and Europe.”

Rather than ascend to the ivory tower training the colonizer’s comprador class, Touré’s path through vocational school kept him grounded with ordinary Guineans ensuring his exposure and involvement in radical politics.

After several apprenticeships and a year as a clerk in the French Company of Western Africa, Touré passed examinations qualifying him to work in the Post and Telecommunications Department in 1941. Denied the ability to continue his scholarly endeavors through official channels, he continued his studies via correspondence education and took a “Red” turn by devouring the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Despite the French Communist Party’s (PCF) refusal to enroll local members in West Africa (in adherence to the orthodox view that Africa undergo a bourgeois revolution to precede a genuine anti-capitalist revolution), Touré became a founding member of the PCF’s first Guinean study group, Groupes d’Études Communistes, three years later in Conakry. Contemporaries remember the PCF “not being progressive enough” for Touré. But he found them useful to learn organizing methods from.

Not content with merely discussing theories of Marxist revolution, Touré’s political praxis led him to organize the first union in French-controlled Guinea, the Post, Telegram, and Telephone Workers’ Union (PTT), in 1945. The PTT, an affiliate of the PCF-connected French General Confederation of Labor (CGT), flexed its muscle in various labor actions under Touré’s leadership which landed him in jail, but also gave him the credentials necessary to organize the United Trade Union of Guinean Workers (USCG). Under this umbrella union, all CGT affiliates in Guinea consolidated just a year later in 1946. Recognizing “unionism is…a calling…to transform any given economic or social regime, always in search of the beautiful and just,” Touré became the most influential labor leader in French West Africa just five years after forming the first Guinean labor union.

Occurring simultaneously with his ascent in the labor movement, Touré’s reputation as an organizer enabled him to quickly climb the ranks of anti-imperialist political organizations operating in French West Africa, such as the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA). Formed in 1946 at the Bamako Conference, the RDA, in cooperation with the PCF, attempted to coordinate the efforts of regional anti-imperialist leaders throughout French-occupied Africa. 

While the RDA formed with PCF support, it is mistaken to assume the leaders were all committed to a vision of “Red Africa.”

As it were, the PCF was one of few European political forces committed to anti-imperialism, which forced many associations of convenience. As Elizabeth Schmidt details, under Touré’s direction, the Guinean RDA chapter, later named the Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG) in 1950, certainly remained committed to the PCF and CGT far longer than its regional peers who feared anti-communist repression when the PCF lost governing power in 1947 France. Although the RDA officially broke from the PCF in 1950, Touré dubiously followed the RDA line in his political activities and continued cooperating with the CGT in his union work. Unlike the RDA in other regions whose membership was comprised of planters and chiefs, the PDG’s core membership were civil servants and trade unionists reluctant to sever ties with communist organizations.

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72-Day Strike and Electoral Victories

Touré soon integrated his labor and political acumen after becoming the secretary-general of the PDG in 1952. From that point forward, his labor and anti-colonial political activities converged into one indivisible force. The French administration felt the power of the peoples’ solidarity during the 72-Day General Strike of 1953, which set the stage for the famous 1958 independence referendum.

Both Schmidt and N’Daou produce excellent accounts of the 72-Day Strike, the impetus of which was a reduction of the workweek from 48 to 40 hours. Though a work reduction is typically welcome, pay fell proportionally by 17%. Guineans, who were already poor,  protested. But French management was unwilling to compromise. So Guinean labor leaders voted to begin a general strike on September 7th, 1953.

As he had done his entire labor career, Touré gave neighborhood speeches to thousands and continued education programs throughout the strike, urging workers to eschew ethnic strife and embrace their common bonds as workers. Composed of various ethnic groups — principally but not exclusively Malinke, Susu, and Peul — Guinea’s ethnic tensions proved more salient in the rural rather than urban areas due to the coercive power of the colonial canton chieftaincies. In the more cosmopolitan Conakry, calls to transcend significant social divisions using an eclectic mix of themes, found in the language of Marxist class antagonism, French liberal ideals, and selected African beliefs of honor, dignity, and racial pride united workers along class lines.

Like any effective organizer, Touré understood that the value of an idea is measured by its social utility. While some critique the “third way socialism” of Touré, it is unlikely Marxist-Leninist proselytization would have had the same impact on participants as his pragmatic ideological flexibility. By December 1953, workers won their wage increase with 80% of Conakry’s workers participating in the labor action. Trade union membership exploded, from 4,600 in the beginning of the strike to 44,000 by 1955. 

Touré’s foundation in and amongst the people is what made him successful. His effective organization of workers and their corresponding communities laid the groundwork for his coming electoral success and the resounding campaign to dismiss colonialism on September 28th, 1958. Touré’s broad-based coalition strategy became apparent leading up to the independence vote, when he campaigned throughout Guinea on behalf of the RDA/PDG, asserting that “the RDA is not a knife that divides, but a needle that sews [together].” Knowing that any anti-colonial coalition could not survive identitarian fragmentation, Touré relied on public pedagogy to elevate the political consciousness of the masses, declaring:

“We are against racial and ethnic prejudice. We are for qualified people whether they be European, Senegalese, Peul, or Bambara. Some of you say you will not vote for the RDA ticket…because a European is on it. This reasoning is stupid.”

Ethnic divisions proved more salient in the rural areas, where colonial-approved chieftains exercised coercive power over taxation, corvée labor [3], and — even though it had been outlawed in 1905 — slavery primarily made up of Dialonka people serving Peul-aristocratic chiefs in the region of Futa Jallon. It is estimated that 25% of the Futa Jallon region’s population were composed of slaves or their descendants in 1955. Residue from the colonizer’s imported Hamitic Hypothesis still plagued many amongst the Peul aristocrats, who believed they were of superior racial stock compared to non-Peul Guineans.

This second-class population divided by class and ethnicity were organized electorally by Touré and the PDG by referencing their exploitation at the hands of the colonial-connected chieftaincy and appealing to Islamic egalitarian principles. Ever pragmatic, Touré omitted Marxist references and spoke plainly about the exploitative conditions enforced by canton chiefs. Doing so, however, he carefully distinguished between their material and ethnic differences to ensure his broad-based coalition remained inclusive to all Guineans.

Communicating his message to overwhelmingly illiterate rural populations elsewhere, he continued in comprehensible terms:

“Man is like water, equal and alike at the beginning. Then some are heated and some are frozen so they become different. Just change the conditions, heat or freeze, and the original equality is again clear.”

Facing historic and manufactured social divisions proved no easy task. But Touré’s inclusive organizing paid off, as demonstrated by the electoral results from 1954 to 1957 where the PDG dominated municipal, regional, and territorial elections. Though the French initially managed to stem the tide of Touré through electoral manipulation, after 1954, the colonizers recognized that continuing to engage in obvious fraud would lead to backlash. It was clear who ruled the streets.

With his newfound legislative and executive authority, Touré set out to destroy the colonial chieftaincy through a parallel power structure of democratically elected PDG local committees who effectively replaced the hated colonial canton chiefs by 1957 and assumed their duties of tax collection and administering justice. After years of power-structure analysis, Touré knew their destruction would be necessary to remove the vestiges of colonial authority.

As president, Touré continued to combat ethnic and religious differences by moving bureaucrats outside of their home regions, banning groups organized on the basis of race, religion, or ethnicity, surrounding himself with ethnically diverse advisers, and continuing to communicate in various indigenous languages. In such a brief spell of political activity, the man who cut his teeth as an organizer engineered the only electoral rejection of French colonialism and fought against all odds to achieve genuine political and economic sovereignty.

Whose Touré is This?

Although violent resistance against capitalism is often fetishized, any Marxist worth their salt should be able to organize resistance at the point of production. Through his organizing career, the man who not only read Marx’s Capital but had, as Bill Haywood put it, “the marks of capital all over [his] body” from his time on the shop floor, transcended social divisions and united Guineans of all stripes against their colonizer. Recipient of the 1961 Lenin Peace Prize, Touré’s experience should not only be included in the tradition of “Red Africa,” but serve to illustrate the revolutionary possibilities of labor organizing as an alternative to AP 2.0. 

Touré’s ability to unite a diverse population on the basis of class antagonisms proves his mantra that content rather than form supersedes all concerns for those committed to overthrowing capitalism. By focusing on the common denominators and rejecting essentialist obstacles, Touré’s lifelong commitment to construct a better world is instructive. He unequivocally rejected the notion that black people could not exercise political agency, that cooperation amongst demographically diverse groups is impossible, and that a history of slavery precludes meaningful participation in civic life. Rather than accept condemnation to a “life of social death,” Touré instead embodied the words of Frantz Fanon, believing that:

“Man is a yes…Yes to life. Yes to Love. Yes to generosity. But man is also a no. No to the scorn of man. No to the degradation of man. No to the exploitation of man. No to the butchery of what is most human in man: freedom.”

Kevin McCleish is a high school social science teacher and labor organizer from Illinois. His best work is found on the shop floor.

Footnotes

[1] Examples include George Clooney’s Not on Our Watch, which intervened in Darfur, and Invisible Children — the group behind Kony 2012.

[2] Touré does not indicate the headmaster’s race in his recollection. The omission is, perhaps, indicative of his position that imperialism does not operate exclusively along strict racial lines. The colonial education system functioned to maintain existing power relations using white Europeans, black Antilleans, and Africans of the comprador class. Resistance to the system was inherently anti-colonial.

[3] Corvée labor is a system wherein people must work unpaid for a feudal lord for a period.

Force Breeds Counterforce: On the Legitimacy of Resistance and its Methods

By Youssef Shawky

The widespread saying “to throw Israel into the sea” resonates with critics before advocates, and despite its unreasonableness in light of the current circumstances and arrangements, it carries within it a legitimate and logical right because Israel, since it has been invented, has been the one who always wants to throw the Palestinians into the sea. It seizes their land by implementing a depopulatory/substitutionary settler colonialism supported by a racist, religious ideology. As a result, resistance with a religious inclination is not only legitimate, but also a necessity in light of the cultural and historical characteristics of the Arab peoples and the ideological methods used by the occupation.

There is no escape from ideology; As it is the standard that classifies things and gives them different definitions and meanings. Humans, throughout their lives, indirectly interact with “reality,” resulting in a world of their own. That world is not the real world, but rather a world within which two types of relationships merge: imaginary relationships and real ones. If the individual is the first party in those relationships, the second party is the real material conditions of existence, which in turn consist of forces and relations of production, class, political and national power balances, etc. Thus, ideology is the expression of the relationship between the individual and her “world.”

Louis Althusser wrote that ideology is an imaginary representation of the imaginary relationships that a person gets into with the real conditions of her existence. Ideology is not an illusion, or a negative false consciousness, rather it effectively engages with real conditions.

This affirms that each conflicting party in any society formulates its own ideology in a way that serves the interests of the party in its conflict with the rest of the parties. The capitalists have their ideology, just as the proletariat has its ideology… and the two are in contradiction with each other. The same applies to the relationship of the colonizer with the colonized.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza and the explicit call for the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, or as the Zionist Finance Minister called, “dispersing them throughout the world,” has reminded many Arab writers of the term “depopulatory settler colonialism,” a colonialism which does not aim to exploit the local population in a system that appropriates surplus value and natural resources, as happened in South Africa and Algeria. Rather, it aims to seize the land of the indigenous people and displace or exterminate them to make space for settlers. Through this path, Zionist colonialism and the emergence of the State of Israel are similar to the emergence of the United States of America, with a clear historical difference that is not just several centuries separating the two events, but that Zionist colonialism occurred during the rise of national liberation movements, the awareness of the oppressed peoples about their rights including the Palestinian people, and the solidarity of the peoples of the Third World with them, especially the Arab peoples, who always emphasize the unity of their fate (and also their structural problems) with the fate of the Palestinian people. All of this created a strong ground for resistance, with which it is impossible for the fate of the Palestinians to be similar to that of native americans.

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The substitutionary nature of Zionist colonialism is the general framework within which the occupation operates from its beginning until now. It is the method that appears clearly in the defining moments in the history of the occupation. The first, of course, is the beginning of the Zionist gangs immigrating to Palestine and planning to gradually acquire the lands before eventually launching a war to establish a colonial state on 78% of Palestinian land. In 1967, the occupation adopted the method of displacement in the West Bank and the canal cities in Sinai and the Syrian Golan and, over the years, has gradually been fragmenting the West Bank with new settlements, aiming to finally annex it to the Jewish state.

This is what is happening today after the real threat that the occupation faced on October 7th. It is now trying to pressure the Palestinians of Gaza to migrate to Sinai or face the risk of genocide.

This does not cancel other frameworks of occupation that depend on the historical stage and the strategic goals implemented by the occupation towards the Palestinians and Arabs. There is an apartheid system within the occupied land of 1948, where the so-called “Israeli Arabs” are exploited and deprived of land and professional and social opportunities. There are also neo-colonial relations that include exploiting the natural resources of neighboring Arab countries and forcing them to open up to Israeli goods in a process of Unequal exchange through unfair economic agreements signed by local compradors.

As colonial methods diversify, ideologies accompanying them also diversify; from neoliberal ideology to pacification ones. This makes us wonder about the general ideology governing the course of occupation. Based on its depopulationary nature, this ideology is supposed to reject the existence of the Other, fundamentally. It does not just claim that the Other is less important or that she does not have the same rights, or is less intelligent, strong, civilized or beautiful...etc. All of this justifies subjecting the Other, exploiting her and denying her rights, but it does not stipulate the annihilation of the other or ending her existence. Rather, the “substitutionary ideology” necessarily rejects the existence of the Other because her existence constitutes a threat to the depopulationary entity.

The greatest representative of this tendency is the racist religious ideology that the Jewish state has espoused since its invention and is evident in all of its internal and external practices, laws, demographics, popular literature, daily conversations, and colonial ambitions, even in the state’s name, flag, and national anthem.

In fact, when Zionists kill Palestinians, they do not consciously believe that they are doing these actions “because they are substitutionary colonizers,” as this thought would reflect objective, concrete reality. They believe in something like: “We are defending our land, which is our right, based on the divine promise,” or “We are expanding our possession of more lands based on the same promise,” or “We must depopulate these Muslim Arabs who hate us so that we can protect ourselves” or that “we are God’s chosen people” and other religious racist ideas that are not just illusions but illusions that transform zionists into depopulatory colonizers.

While the diversification of colonial methods induce a parallel diversification in resistance methods, an armed resistance with military planning will always remain the most important and influential resistance. The other forms integrate with it, support it, and increase its strength and influence. When the general form of occupation is the genocidal substitutionary form that always and forever seeks displacement, settlement, and even mass murder, the only effective form of resistance to it is the military form.

Regarding the ideology of resistance, any party or group does not create its own ideology consciously and freely or choose from many alternatives. Rather, the ideology is formed simultaneously with the formation of the group. The nature and content of the ideology emerge due to several factors, the most important of which are the goals of the group, its cultural and social history, and the ideologies, goals, and strategies adopted by the surrounding groups (maybe conflicting ones). 

On this basis, we can understand why global Zionism has adopted Jewish racism as an ideological façade, and we can also understand the ideological nature of the resistance and its religious component. Just as substitutionary colonialism has a racist, religious face, it is not strange for the resistance to have a religious  “national liberation” face. This is not identity politics, as the religious aspect of the resistance did not discourage it from its liberation tasks, but rather an increased commitment to the tasks. The success of national liberation relies on formulating an ideology stemming from the characteristics and way of thinking of the resisting masses, and not in a condescending manner with imposing ideas on them, but rather by discovering the “special/local” way for the masses to be liberated so we, or they, can discover their own path of modernity.

This does not negate the attempts of islamists (originated from Al-Qaeda terrorist organization supported by US) to empty the Palestinian cause of its liberation content through the use of religion… but these attempts have so-far failed. The resistance axes, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, have engaged in armed conflicts with such Takfiri terrorists (ISIS, Al-Nusra Front, and Islamic State – Sinai Province). Hamas has officially separated from the Muslim Brotherhood since 2017 according to its charter, and much evidence supports that the religious-faced resistance has no relationship with political islamism, whatever its form.

Thus, the arab liberal intellectuals and some arab leftists who do not support the resistance under the pretext of its religious tendency suffer from a lack of understanding of the historical characteristics of their people, the way they think and feel, the time and manner of their movement and revolution, and the time of their latency and indifference. In doing so, many of them, who resemblr elitists rather than revolutionaries, play the role of cultural compradors hindering the organization of the Arab masses to liberate themselves from colonial and neo-colonial powers.

What Would A Just Peace In Palestine Look Like?

By Chris Richards

A meme on Twitter has been asking "Where do the Israeli Jews go?" as if this is the supreme gotcha and this question completely invalidates all discussion of Palestinian liberation, as if Palestinian self-determination automatically means rendering the entire population of Israel homeless and stateless. This ignores the fact that the mere creation of Israel resulted in 750,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians becoming homeless refugees. This also ignores the fact that, unless they have been naturalized as citizens in another country or are recognized as citizens of Israel, all Palestinians are stateless and have been for generations. The idea that justice for Palestinians automatically results in massive injustice for Israelis ignores that fact that restorative justice is in fact, not injustice at all. People whose homes were actually stolen when they were terrorized into abandoning them deserve their homes back.

The ethical gotcha behind "Where do the Israeli Jews go?" is that it would be unjust to put Israeli settlers in the same circumstances in which the Palestinians find themselves. This renders the vast injustice done to the Palestinians as a fait accompli that cannot be undone because it would cause even more harm. This would automatically eliminate the two state solution that American idealists and Israeli moderates have somewhat unrealistically clung to despite the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the unwillingness of any Israeli prime minsters who succeeded Rabin to risk the same fate. US President Joe Biden has been brandishing a two state solution as the ultimate and necessary solution to the "war" between the settlers and the Palestinians. Unfortunately for Joe Biden, if it is ethically beyond the pale to displace Israelis in the name of Palestinian liberation then any Palestinian state formed will be hopelessly undermined by hostile communities of settlers who will still see themselves as Israelis and reject Palestinian sovereignty over their communities. 

Let me repeat, as I said above, restorative justice is not injustice. This is not a question of generational guilt or punishing people today for crimes committed generations ago. The crime is still being committed. The crime is ongoing. The children of the thieves are not only living in stolen homes, but declaring their right to those homes and supporting the displacement or killing of more Palestinians so that more settlers can have homes. Former Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett is the son of Americans from San Francisco who settled in Haifa after the Six Day War. It is not a coincidence that he advocates strongly for military expansionism. He was raised on a narrative of conquest and Israeli triumphalism. Well before the Nakba, Haifa was the scene of intense settlement by the Jewish Agency. A city that had 20,000 residents (of whom 6,000 were Jewish) in 1922 had a population of over 97,000 in 1948 ,and that larger population was 96% Jewish. The replacement of the Palestinian population with settlers didn't start during the Nakba. Ethnic cleansing is much older.

When this historical context is correctly understood then the following becomes clear: the two state solution requires an understanding that the Palestinians will not seek restorative justice past a certain point. The scope of justice allowed must be set by the party that did the harm and must commit to making restoration for justice to be possible. This is a dangerous situation that requires a maintained relationship of settler dominance and Palestinian acquiescence. If Palestinians do not acquiesce then their refusal to acquiesce puts us back in the same circumstances in which we began. The settler movement would have us believe that this is something for which the Palestinians, and not the settlers, are to blame. This is objectively false in the context of Palestinian history. The Palestinians are defending themselves from ethnic cleansing. Only sustained self-defense has prevented ethnic cleansing and population replacement at a faster rate.

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There is, of course, another obstacle to the practicality of a two-state solution separate from the question of its justice. This is the Israelis themselves.

The alleged centrist who succeeded Naftali Bennett as Prime Minister as part of a bizarre power sharing agreement between the Israeli far right and the so-called "moderates" called for a two-state solution at the United Nations. To Yair Lapid, a two-state solution depends on a "peaceful Palestinian state that does not threaten Israel."  This has generally been interpreted in policy terms by the so-called Middle East experts as a "demilitarized Palestinian state."  This means that the proposed two-state  solution proposed by many experts is one that is unacceptable to Palestinians because they would still have the IDF as a neighbor and a significant population of settlers, with no means to defend themselves. How is this fundamentally different than the existing occupation of the West Bank and containment of Gaza? Yet the Israeli state has the power to set the terms of the existence of the Palestinian state and the Palestinian people are supposed to accept this as established fact. If they do not, it is their fault.

Once more, with feeling: restorative justice is not injustice.

A real two-state solution, with a Palestine equipped to defend itself, is a surrender to the settler fait accompli in the first place. It requires an act of acquiescence to happen. If the Palestinians are unwilling to acquiesce to only partial justice then it is impossible. These are objective facts. When the settler movement is so powerful that the Israeli state cannot even propose a true two-state solution, but must instead add impossible demands that only make Palestinian acceptance less likely then we must accept that the Israeli state is not serious about a two-state solution. A serious effort would involve every possible concession that would make acquiescence more acceptable to the Palestinians. The Israeli state has never engaged in such a peace process.

This brings us to the question I ask in the headline. What does a just peace look like?

It also brings us to the question of the meme and the settler movement. Where do the Israeli Jews go?

Only the Palestinians can answer the first question. I am a white American, which makes me a settler myself. I can't tell Palestinians what a just peace in Palestine looks like anymore than I can tell the Modoc what a just peace with the US government would really look like. That's why I support the land back movement and believe that the United States should be legally forced to honor its treaties with Indigenous nations. We should reject the arrogance that might lead us to suggest or force a solution to the question of Palestinian liberation. We should instead support the Palestinians in their struggle against the settler movement. Only the Palestinians can determine what a just peace would look like and what they are willing to acquiesce to short of "from the river to the sea." If they're not, only they can make that decision. We should still support them.

Once again, restorative justice is not injustice.

The settler movement's question remains. Where do the Israeli Jews go?

Only the Israeli Jews can answer that question, and their answer has no authority to determine whether or not the Palestinians should acquiesce to anything less than their full liberation. Most white Rhodesians chose to go to the UK, Australia, South Africa or Latin America when the Bush War ended and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Most white Kenyans stayed in Kenya after Kenyan independence, at one point the Black Kenyan government made white man Richard Leakey the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service. Most white South Africans remained in South Africa after the legal end of apartheid and the institution of formal legal equality and liberal democracy within the South African state. Far too many Israelis will choose to fight for the Israeli state, at least in the near future. What they do when the Palestinian struggle is won is up to them. If they commit crimes against the Palestinians that make them unwelcome, whose responsibility is that?

I still believe peace in the Middle East requires justice in the Middle East.

Palestinian Resistance and the Crisis of Liberal Humanism

By Yanis Iqbal

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was a huge blow to the settler-colonial state of Israel: Al-Qassam Brigades captured 20 settlements and 11 military sites in merely a few hours. The attacks on Israeli civilian and military outposts destroyed the narcissistic sense of security associated with the carefully orchestrated narratives of Zionist dominance, surveillance and intelligence. In the words of Saree Makdisi, the breakout “smashed, hopefully once and for all, the very idea that the Palestinians can just be ignored, talked to, or talked about rather than talking for and representing themselves, their interests and their rights.” Earlier, it was Palestinians who had to explain their presence and prove their humanity. Now, it is they are setting the contours of the narrative. That’s why Zionists are terrified.

Unqualified solidarity with the anti-colonial violence of the Palestinian resistance has been hindered by liberal humanism, a bourgeois ideology that uses abstract slogans of peace to accelerate the genocide of Palestinians. There are two components in this ideology. First, the supreme value of human life is proclaimed as an unproblematic moral statement, which everyone has to support. While liberal humanists may admit that the Israeli occupation has given rise to Palestinian violence, they remain adamant that the death of individuals can never be justified. Judith Butler, for instance, criticizes those who blame Zionist apartheid for contemporary violence, saying that “nothing should exonerate Hamas from responsibility for the hideous killings they have perpetrated”.

In the above conception, violence is conceived as an infringement of the individual human body, whose sanctity is guaranteed by an unquestionable morality. The physiological and juridical body is innately exposed to physical, psychological and moral persecution. This kind of body has no positive project; it is entirely defined by its vulnerability to attacks, which requires protection. Christopher Caudwell traces this ethical ideology to the systemic logic of the capitalist economy. In the struggle against feudal fetters, the bourgeoisie saw freedom as the abolition of social organization, as the ability of every individual to pursue his own affairs and interests. This is articulated “in the absolute character of bourgeois property together with its complete alienability.”

On the ideological terrain, this gives rise to the “bourgeois dream – freedom as the absolute elimination of social relations,” by which is meant the absence of any restraint on the ownership, acquisition and alienation of private property. Here, private property isn’t considered as a social restraint that should be abolished, as the bourgeois project is inevitably bound to its particularistic interests. When assembled into ethics, the bourgeois dream translates into ultra-individualist pacifism, wherein the purity of the soul has to be guarded from the “heinous guilt” of the “sin” that is violence. Caudwell calls this “spiritual laissez-faire,” which uses the commercial mentality of capitalists – its concern with economic status – to proclaim the right of remaining preoccupied with one’s own soul.

When liberal humanists talk about mushy-mushy sentiments of individual human life, it is crucial to ask whether such an abstraction even exists in the horrors of Israeli barbarism. On one side, we have settlers, whose material security is guaranteed by an authoritarian state apparatus. On the other side, we have natives, whose wretchedness is maintained through incessant violence. In this scenario, I ask you: where is the pristine divinity that you label as “human life”? I can only see the all-too onerous divides constructed by Zionist settler-colonialism. Preaching a higher moral reconciliation beyond these divides, trying to organize a peaceful dialogue between two completely antagonistic camps, is a pathetic attempt that is bound to fail. In the open-air concentration camp that is Gaza, it is criminal to think that there is an ever-present and ready-at-hand reserve of morality that can calm the clamor of reality. We have to dive into reality, into its thundering materiality, if we want to shoulder the global responsibility of solidarity that has been forced upon us by the Palestinian resistance.

When an interviewer told Ghassan Kanafani that it would be better for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) “to stop the war to stop the death,” Kanafani said, “Maybe to you, not to us. To us, to liberate our country, to have dignity, to have respect, to have our mere human rights; these are something as essential as life itself.” By absolutizing life, liberal humanists ignore how such a life doesn’t exist in a settler-colonial society. The boundary between life and death is not clear-cut. Huey P. Newton said, “I tell the comrades you can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.” Liberal humanists ignore how death already walks among the Palestinians. This allows them to construe life as a personal capacity, as a possibility, that can be realized through a dialogue between the colonizer and the colonized. For the colonized, life is never a possibility. Colonialism is the violent closure of possibilities for the colonized. In the words of Mehdi Amel: “It…became impossible to define the structure of the colonized countries’ specific trajectories of becoming except within the colonial relation. What was possible before this relation became impossible after. This is what is novel in the structure of these countries’ history.”

Kanafani dispels the naive hope of humanistic possibility in the colonial context, starkly portraying the inhuman impossibility of peace talks between Israel and Palestine as “a conversation between the sword and the neck”. There is no mention here of the personal, biographical details of an abstract human life; they are replaced by impersonal metaphors. Why so? Because the liberal focus on human life conveys an ambience of integrity and security in a situation that is marked by disorder and destruction. By preserving the edifice of individual, non-violent agency, liberal humanism says that violence is optional, it is a matter of condonation or denunciation. Kanafani explodes this pious optimism by depicting Zionism as a structurally violent tool that is indifferent to our subjective feelings. Between the sword and the neck, there lies no other possibility than death.

The elision of the historical depth of Zionist violence is a core component of liberal humanism. Slavoj Žižek denounced the “barbarism” of Hamas by writing that the choice is not between Palestinian anti-colonial violence and Zionist settler-colonial violence but “between fundamentalists and all those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful coexistence”. The ruse of humanist possibility allows him to frame violence as a simplistic choice, whereas the toothless policy of dialogue comes off as the superior, more complex option. According to Joseph Stalin: “the Communists regard the substitution of one social system for another, not simply as a spontaneous and peaceful process, but as a complicated, long and violent process.” Here, the order of valuation is reversed. It is violence which is accorded the dignity of historical complexity. It is liberal humanism which is faulted for uncritically regarding the peacefulness of human life as an immediate, incontrovertible fact.

Reading Žižek, one is reminded of people whom Vladimir Lenin called the “spineless hangers-on of the bourgeoisie with intellectualist pretensions”. These “tyrannized, shocked and scared” intellectuals “have been flung into consternation at the sight of this unprecedentedly acute class struggle, have burst into tears, forgotten all their premises and demand that we perform the impossible, that we socialists achieve complete victory without fighting against the exploiters and without suppressing their resistance.” Decolonization is imagined as a peaceful project that can be “introduced” into the settler-colonial society. Liberal humanists forget how decolonization is forged in the intensity of national liberation, in “the struggles, the exploiters’ gnashing of teeth, or their diverse attempts to preserve the old order, or smuggle it back through the window”. What accounts for this ignorance? It can be traced to the liberal humanist delusion that a higher unity might emerge from the Zionist machine, that there is an element that might immediately unify the colonial compartments, that there is a humanist sensibility that lies hidden beneath colonialism. There is no such sensibility. Colonial violence has to be broken.

Instead of framing resistance in terms of the individual metric of human life, we have to take recourse to discourses that stress the concrete realities of colonized society. By inflating human life into a mythical capacity, liberal humanism paradoxically reveals a fundamental disregard for the human realities present in concrete societies. In order to avoid this extra-human concept, we must begin from the anti-colonial struggle. Liberal humanists begin with spiritual wishes for peace, attempting to convince people of an ideal method of resistance that will involve the least amount of death and suffering. Marxism doesn’t have any place for such a higher level of reconciliation. Lenin notes that Marxists appraise resistance “according to the class antagonisms and the class struggle which find expression in millions of facts of daily life.” Freedom is not a ready-made skill that can be invoked “in an atmosphere of cajoling and persuasion, in a school of mealy sermons or didactic declamations”. Rather, it is formed in the “school of life and struggle,” wherein the interests of the colonizers are exposed to the counter-interests of the colonized. Lenin puts it expressively:

“The proletariat must do its learning in the struggle, and stubborn, desperate struggle in earnest is the only real teacher. The greater the extremes of the exploiters’ resistance, the more vigorously, firmly, ruthlessly and successfully will they be suppressed by the exploited. The more varied the exploiters’ attempts to uphold the old, the sooner will the proletariat learn to ferret out its enemies from their last nook and corner, to pull up the roots of their domination, and cut the very ground which could (and had to) breed wage-slavery, mass poverty and the profiteering and effrontery of the money-bags.”

In a colonial situation, resistance is evaluated not according to the ethical ideology of human life but according to the contribution it makes to the opening of historical possibilities. Amilcar Cabral notes, “Resistance is the following: to destroy one thing for the sake of constructing another thing.” This terse statement is instructive because liberal humanists think of colonialism as a malleable arrangement that can be re-jigged to allow for a better outcome. Cabral brooks none of this. He identifies the inertia of colonialism that has to be destroyed, not merely reformed, to emancipate the colonized. It is because liberal humanists think that the possibility for life remains intact under colonialism that they are unable to appreciate the fight for such a life waged by the colonized. That’s why it is so clarifying to read Cabral’s searing words on the objective of national liberation:

“At the end of the day, we want the following: concrete and equal possibilities for any child of our land, man or woman, to advance as a human being, to give all of his or her capacity, to develop his or her body and spirit, in order to be a man or a woman at the height of his or her actual ability. We have to destroy everything that would be against this in our land, comrades. Step by step, one by one if it be necessary – but we have to destroy in order to construct a new life…our work is to destroy, in our resistance, whatever makes dogs of our people – men or women – so as to allow us to advance, to grow, to rise up like the flowers of our land, whatever can make our people valued human beings.”

The Pogrom, Indians, and Genealogies of the Israeli Settler-Vigilante

By Gary Fields

Republished from Monthly Review.

On February 26th of this year, the world witnessed an outbreak of untold savagery in the Palestinian town of Huwara perpetrated against town residents by vigilantes from nearby Israeli settlements. During this mayhem, settlers set fire to cars, businesses, and homes of Huwara residents, and killed one resident by gunfire as Israeli soldiers looked on and even assisted the perpetrators in committing these crimes. So depraved was this settler rampage that the Israeli military commander in the West Bank, Yehuda Fuchs described it as a “pogrom.”

The choice of the term, “pogrom” to label the carnage committed by these Jewish settlers was poignant. History is replete with examples of such mayhem committed against Jews by anti-Semitic European Christians, but the irony of Jews animated by similar kinds of racist animus toward the Palestinian “other,” and enlisting the same types of brutality against innocent Palestinian civilians, was particularly jarring. Sadly, it is no secret that Israeli settler violence against Palestinians has become routine in the Palestinian West Bank, especially in rural areas where groups of settlers target Palestinian farmers, often at gunpoint, while uprooting and setting fire to Palestinian croplands, especially olive trees (Fields, 2012).

At the time of events in Huwara, Israeli settler violence, was already on the rise, emboldened if not encouraged outright by the most settler-friendly, and arguably fascist government in Israel’s history. Trending at three attacks per day in February, settler violence is now averaging 7-9 daily attacks as documented by the Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din—with nary a condemnation by Israeli officials, and virtually no effort by Israeli authorities to prevent and punish this criminality.

Currently, as this settler regime continues its vengeful bombardment of Gaza, settlers in the West Bank have become even more brazen in their brutality—with Huwara as a model. Palestinian houses and cars are now being routinely targeted, vandalized, and set ablaze, Palestinian croplands ripped up and burned, and bodily attacks against Palestinians, above all olive harvesters, appear daily on the inventory of settler misdeeds.

In just one of countless incidents since October 7th, settlers in the West Bank town of Qusra near Nablus, shot and killed three Palestinians, and the following day attacked the funeral murdering another two men, ramming their cars into the funeral procession before stopping and opening fire on the procession. It is now the olive harvest in Palestine and in town after town, olive harvesters seeking to pick the crop confront setters with guns who threaten these Palestinians and order them off their own lands. Arguably the most revealing of this vigilantism in terms of motivation, however, occurred in the small Bedouin village of Wadi Seeq 10 kilometers East of Ramallah where settlers succeeded in terrorizing the residents so completely that the latter abandoned the village, fearing for their safety and leaving behind houses, livestock, and crops. Settlers have now taken possession of the village in what is surely a signal of the end game in this sinister activity.

It is tempting to view this settler violence as something so macabre and sinister as to be unique. There is, however, quite another way of understanding the Israeli settler-vigilante. This actor is actually the modern-day mirror image of a certain settler counterpart from the American colonial past. This genealogy not only imbues the Israeli settler with an identity as an historical actor. It enables a different kind of question to be posed about Israel settler violence: In what way is the vigilantism of the Israeli settler embedded in past colonial settler societies, and who is the Israeli setter-vigilante as an historical actor?

The Israeli Settler as Colonial Actor

In most major media accounts of settler terror against Palestinians, Israeli settler-vigilantes invariably escape critical categorization beyond the moniker of “extremist.” Portrayals of these perpetrators of violence invariably focus on the theme of fanaticism while presenting these figures as unsavory if misguided fringe elements in Israeli society. Such characterizations are naïve and incomplete.

The Israeli settler is the modern-day counterpart of a recurrent figure in settler societies worldwide but one specific example from American colonial history stands out in connecting the colonial past to present day.

In the early 19th century, in the American Southeast, most notably in Georgia, groups of settlers, believing themselves to be the deserving inheritors of American bounty and the rightful stewards of land in America, took it upon themselves to rid the landscape of those who would stand in their way. Their mission was to evict from the land those already anchored to the landscape whom these settlers believed to be impediments to their imagined vision of themselves and their rightfully dominant place on the landscape as ordained by God. Their target was none other than the Indigenous inhabitants of the American Southeast.

Motivated by theories of entitlement to land in the tradition of John Locke, and sentiments of superiority deriving from destiny and God’s will, these 19th century brethren of today’s Israeli setters squatted on Indian lands, burned Indian homes and croplands, stole Indian livestock and horses, and harassed and even killed Indians who failed to vacate their properties. These settlers, however, did not spring to life from any spontaneous impulses of self-organization.

For years, federal and state government officials along with voices from the white intelligentsia had been advocating publicly for the removal of Indians from the land contributing to a formidable “removal discourse” in American political, legal, and cultural life. These voices not only tolerated, but applauded acts of vigilantism against Indian groups as a useful instrument for helping accomplish what they were ultimately seeking through politics and the law—the removal of Indians from the landscape. Settler violence was a complement to this political, legal, and cultural climate. There was, in effect, a groundswell of support for Indian removal from the land, and the transfer of this group across the Mississippi to lands in the West. Settler violence was destined to play an integral role. What were the drivers of this project of removal and its complement of settler vigilantism in evicting Indians from their land?

Land Grab, Slavery, and Indian Removal

In the wake of the victorious Revolution against England, American colonial settlers were poised to be free of restrictions on acquisition of Indian lands that the English Crown had imposed on them. Nevertheless, administrations from George Washington through John Quincy Adams retained similar prohibitions on private acquisition of Indian land. Settlers who had expected freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the Revolution were furious at what they perceived as this betrayal.

Those in Georgia pressured the State into a “Compact” (1802) with the Federal Government in which the latter agreed to extinguish Indian title to lands in the State and reallocate the Indian lands to settlers. In the years that followed, settlers and state officials in Georgia, including the Georgia Congressional delegation as well as politicians from other federal and state jurisdictions, clamored for the Federal Government to act more decisively in extinguishing Indian title to land and evicting Indians from the landscape. Settlers, believed that they could hasten this process of displacement, and reap the bounties they believed themselves entitled to, by direct action on the land. What made conflict on the land seemingly more inevitable, however, and what elevated the role of settler violence against Indians in this conflict was an economy poised to transform not only the American South but the world economy as well.

In the early decades of the 1800s, following refinements in the cotton gin and newly developed hybrid strains of cotton, settlers, especially in Georgia, saw untold opportunities for cotton-growing with slave labor on plantations. Plantation agriculture, however, required land but much of the land in Georgia coveted by these would-be cotton growers was held by Creeks and Cherokees. Although the federal government was indeed securing land in Georgia from these tribes and reallocating it to settlers in the spirit of the Georgia Compact, settlers and politicians alike from the State demanded that the Government hasten the pace of these acquisitions and evict Indians from their lands. Finally, in 1828, settlers found a sympathetic voice in a fiery populist whose presidential campaign focused on a single issue—Indian removal. The candidate was Andrew Jackson.

A decorated army General who made a name for himself from campaigns against Indians, Jackson the populist also championed “states’ rights” when it came to Indian affairs. Following his election, Jackson in 1829 emphasized that if states themselves voted to extend their own laws over Indians, he would not enlist the power of the federal government to prevent it (Cave, 2003: 1332). Jackson was thus prepared to use both states’ rights and the federal government to remove Indians from their lands and transfer them to lands West of the Mississippi River.

Equally critical, Jackson was also amenable to direct action by settlers as a complement to an already well-established climate of fear associated with the campaign to remove Indians from their land and did not conceal his support for such efforts. In 1829, he famously signaled his advocacy of settler violence as a component of Indian removal when he suggested to a Congressman from Georgia who was irate at delays in extinguishing Indian title to land from the Georgia Compact: “Build a fire under them [Indians]. When it gets hot enough, they’ll move” (from Cave, 2003: 1339). Settlers who would build these fires had little reason to fear retribution from either federal or state authorities for their criminal actions.

In 1830, Jackson signed the legislation that defined his presidency and became the law of the land, the Indian Removal Act. Even before the Act became law, however, Cherokee and Creek Indians in Georgia, aware of the incendiary removal discourse within the halls of government and among the colonial population, alongside the violence being committed by settlers on Indian lands, began “voluntarily” removing themselves to lands in the West. In this sense, setter violence and intimidation was successful as a complement to the Law. One Cherokee chief, wrote to Andrew Jackson to complain that white settlers had invaded Indian country to “steal our property” and that federal soldiers in the area not only refused to help the Indians, but aided the vigilantes in hunting down and shooting Indians who resisted “as if…they had been so many wild dogs” (Cave, 2003: 1340).

The parallels with the actions of Israeli settlers are unmistakable. A highly charged legal and political climate, complemented by settler rampages on Indian lands in which authorities did nothing to stop these activities had rendered life impossible for Indians. The latter believed that they had little choice but to transfer themselves West and escape the violence.

Final Solution: Vigilantism and Transferring Populations

If settler violence prior to passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was critical in creating splits among Creeks and Cherokees and compelling large numbers of these tribes to move West voluntarily, a vast array of vigilante groups, emboldened by passage of the Removal Law, emerged after 1830 to finish the task of evicting Indians from their lands. From horse thieves known as “The Pony Club,” to various paramilitary formations engaged in burning homes and crops and terrorizing Indians populations, settler vigilantism became even more widespread in the aftermath of the Removal Act as a weapon against tribespeople who tried to resist the Law and remain in their lands.

By 1838, even Cherokee who had resisted the Indian Removal Act and remained steadfast in their homes, conceded that the incessant settler rampages against them, along with inaction by the authorities, left them no choice but to accept removal and move West. What ensued under the auspices of the Federal Government was one of the sorriest criminal events in American history, the death march of 60,000 Indians from the Southeast to Oklahoma known as “Trail of Tears.”

In effect, settler violence had become an unofficial but acceptable expedient for carrying out a policy of forcing Indians from their land and insuring the promise of economic opportunity for Georgia’s white citizen-settlers (Pratt, 2022). In many ways, settler vigilantes in the West Bank are staking out a similar role for themselves in the model of Huwara and Wadi Seeq. These vigilantes are involved in an unmistakable effort to make life for Palestinians so unbearable that the latter imitate their Indian brethren from the American Southeast and leave their lands.

In the end, settler violence in the service of Indian Removal in Georgia reveals an unsettling resonance with the Israeli settler-vigilante of today. The pogrom in Huwara and the countless incidents of Israeli settler vigilantism, both urban and rural, are essentially historical mirror images of the White man’s vision in the American Southeast, differing in time and place but aligned in their mutual determination to drive the Indigenous from their lands. This symmetry emphasizes once again that Palestine is not alone in its encounter with settler colonialism and its impulses of dispossession and ethnic cleansing. From the West Bank and Gaza, these impulses to subdue and subjugate Indigenous people through the most hideous kinds of carnage are on full display for the world. It is incumbent upon the world to wake up to this lesson of history and stop the madness that is now fully transparent for all to see.

References

Cave, Alfred A. (2003). “Abuse of Power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830.” The Historian. Vol. 65 (6): 1333-1353.

Fields, Gary (2012). “This is Our Land’: Collective Violence, Property Law, and Imagining the Geography of Palestine.” Journal of Cultural Geography. Vol 29 (3): 267-91.

Pratt, Adam J. (2022). Toward Cherokee Removal: Land, Violence, and the White Man’s Chance. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

Settler-Colonial Theology: From Lāhainā to Palestine

By Kieran McKenzie Clark

From grandstanding in the rubble after our fire in Lāhainā to posing on top of a tank in Palestine, Harvest pastor Greg Laurie is the poster boy for white Christianity in occupied lands. I went to Kumulani Chapel for over a decade (through its transition to Harvest). I got my undergraduate degree in religious studies... let me tell you something: this is what settler-colonial theology looks like. The corporate religion espoused by Harvest is performative and littered with internal contradictions; it is quite explicitly a demonstration of Plato's “Allegory of the Cave”. As a friend of mine noted, Laurie “was one of the early Trojan horse pastors that dressed Christofascist bullshit in a hip new package”. His church serves as a superstructure to reproduce Settler-Colonial/Capitalist society.

Harvest Pastor Greg Laurie walks among the rubble in Lāhainā

According to the four accounts of Jesus’ life held by Christians as Scripture, Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was here (on Earth) right now. It’s what Jesus is recorded to speak on the most. According to the authors of these gospels, Jesus teaches that this Kingdom lives within us (Luke 17.21) and is expressed through our actions and social relation to one another. The preachings on such a kingdom include an active identification and critique of coercive relations of power as well as the call to an alternative community based on a kind of interconnected care and service - a horizontal society of group messiahship. In other words, the gospel of the Kingdom is prefigurative and rooted in material reality; including love of enemies and the subversion of leadership through mutual service. A summary of such teachings is known as the "Sermon on the Mount”.

The gospel of Harvest looks different; their theology is the extraction of souls for the expansion of "heaven". This is because they have inherited the legacy and refinement of imperial theologies from settler-colonialists. It is a theology that is about empire, security, accumulation, and fame. This is why they are anti-intellectual; they have to be. They need to push theologies made up a couple hundred years ago like “The Rapture” because they need the escapism. They need to focus on the amassing of souls for God in relation to the damned to rationalize the inaction they take toward material reality. It is seated in the Capitalist delusion and game of infinite growth. This shows face blatantly. The "Greg Laurie" Bible - all the commodities with his name on it, the grandstands, the movies, the events, the shows, the endless multi-industry marketing; it is not for Jesus, because that's not what Jesus was about.

For Harvest, whether they are playing their imaginary heavenly infinite growth game or wealth-building game, it is about profiteering, growth, and security; and it serves to conceal inaction towards the material conditions of human beings. This is why Harvest at Kumulani will have a Hula show on Sunday morning but will never mutter a word on the diaspora or plight of the Kānaka Maoli. The decline of health, land, population, culture, and language of indigenous populations are of absolutely no importance to them. The motive of their evangelizing is simply the accumulation of imaginary numbers and the assimilation of those willing to conform. Because their theology serves to reproduce a particular kind of society: settler-colonialism. This is why their politics are based on American culture wars and U.S. foreign interests.

Laurie posing on top of a tank in Palestine.

Pastor Greg Laurie, despite frequently bringing up the topic of the state of Israel, has not a muttering word for the Palestinians and the abhorrent treatment they suffer under the Israeli government - not on the apartheid, expulsions, ethnic cleansing, illegal settlements, occupation, and (now accelerated) genocide. He is in unwavering support of Israel, attending nationalistic rallies and endorsing Zionism. Atrocities at the hands of Israel are outshined by a pretend eschatology. Laurie preaches novel dispensationalist theologies of a “rapture” in which there will be a time when Christian believers will literally rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” A sign of the times for this rapture in Laurie’s words is “the regathering of the nation Israel in their homeland”. Laurie conflates, which obscures, which conceals. He conflates the modern nation-state of Israel with ancient Israel, and he conflates the modern nation-state of Israel with the Jewish people. Thus, creating the illusion that if someone is an anti-imperialist or an outspoken critic of Israel, they must be antisemitic. This tactic produces and maintains the conditions for Zionism. The irony of course is that the kind of conflating being done by Laurie is anti-Semitic. It is in blatant disregard of Jewish anti-Zionists willing to condemn and illuminate the injustices perpetrated by the Israeli state and their policies towards Palestinians.

This theology (along with the normative social influence of the congregation) acts as a reciprocal and circular pattern in reinforcing and perpetuating settler-colonialism. This is why Harvest Riverside or other locations of the Harvest franchise import settlers to Maui from California to preserve their institution. Consequently, contributing to the reproduction of Capitalist structures in Hawai’i, which reinforces occupation, which continues the process of settler-colonialism. Between the 9th and 15th centuries, Christianity serviced feudalism by validating its power structures. The Catholic Church produced the theology of the “divine right of kings'', ultimately maintaining feudalism. Pastors like Greg Laurie and church franchises like Harvest fill this role today as the ideological apparatus supporting Capitalism. The internal structure of Harvest from their theology to leadership is a reflection of the dominant economic-power structures. They commodified religion to sell white culture. Within this business model, they paint their brand's image with the American dream: Greg Laurie. From being Trump's spiritual advisor, to leading tours in Israel, to slapping his name on the Holy Bible and selling it. He is the poster child of American settler-colonial theology.

The United States empire as a settler-colonial project moved from 13 colonies to 50 states by imperial expansion; through ethnic cleansing, indigenous erasure, and the enclosement of lands into private property. The last territory to become a state was Hawai’i. Hawai’i became a territory through a joint resolution in Congress in 1900 prompted by the reactionary forces of nationalism during the Spanish-American War. There was no treaty of annexation because in 1893 the United States conducted an illegal military coup of the internationally recognized sovereign government of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. This overthrow of the constitutional monarchy installed a provisional government that was facilitated by American missionaries and businessmen.

The violence of settler-colonialism that amalgamates the United States and Israel as they both seek to replicate, capture, and preserve structures of Capitalism is what informs Harvest's unwavering support of Israel and their mute dismissal of the material conditions of Kānaka

Maoli. Lāhainā town burnt to the ground on August 8th, 2023; Harvest at Kumulani is less than 10 miles away from the burn zone. While the U.S. occupation secured and maintained the conditions that made the devastation possible, Laurie co-opted the event to rewind his end-times business pitch of escapist eschatologies. As Israel commits war crime after war crime– targeting and bombing churches, mosques, hospitals, shelters, markets, and refugee camps– Harvest has only cranked up the volume on this sales pitch; effectively aiding in the manufacturing of consent for the genocide of Palestinians. They will never speak for the oppressed, not in Lāhainā, not in Palestine. They lavish themselves in the privilege and luxury of being white landowners in the imperial core of expanding empire. They rake in capital and 10s of millions of dollars and give tokens back. It is a scam. Unless you're buying enclosed patches of stolen land as private property from the money of people in your scheme, then it is profit.

Matthew 25.40-45 absolutely applies to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians - and the people supporting their regime. Luke 18.25 absolutely applies to Greg Laurie and his constituents. The Jesus of the gospel of Matthew is recorded to say, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” At the time of my writing this, since October 7th, Israel has killed 1 child in Gaza every 15 minutes. It is the position and belief of Harvest that if these beloved children and families are of the Islamic faith (or anything “other” than Christian), they are getting blown straight to hell. In mid-October, posting about the fulfillment of “biblical prophecies”, Greg Laurie uploaded a photo onto Instagram asking “Are you watching for Christ's return?”. Their theological anthropology projects God as the white man. They would nail Jesus back to the cross if he “came back”.

Educators Must Help Defeat the New Racist and Imperialist 'Red Scare'

By Derek R. Ford

Originally published on PESA Agora

Introduction: Racism and imperialism unite ‘both sides of the aisle’

Responding to criticism of the political system of the newly-independent Tanzania, the great African teacher, revolutionary, and theorist Julius Nyerere responded, observing ‘the United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.’ He was and is right. Rhetorical differences and popular presentation aside, the two ruling-class parties effectively function as a dictatorship domestically and globally. For concrete and contemporary evidence, look no further than the New McCarthyism and Red Scare promoted by media outlets and politicians on ‘both sides of the aisle,’ from Fox News and Marco Rubio to The New York Times and Chuck Schumer.

On August 5, The New York Times released a report that, in essence, boldly and baselessly suggests groups and other organisations advocating for peace with China are part of an international conspiracy by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Despite the absence of any substantive proof, politicians are already using it as ammunition in their broader ‘new McCarthyism’ agenda, which could potentially have devastating consequences for the globe. Fortunately, a variety of institutions and networks are already mobilising against it by building a fight-back movement in which education plays a key role, and you can too.

Their presentation opens with the racist logic guiding their investigation as they try to discredit the multitude of spontaneous global actions against anti-Asian racism in 2021. They narrate a single action in London where a scuffle broke out, they contend, after activists with No Cold War (one of the event’s organisers) ‘attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong.’ They offer only two words to back up this narrative: ‘witnesses said.’

No Cold War is dedicated to promoting peaceful relations between the US and China, organising in-person and virtual events to advance the global peace movement. Having spoken on their panels and attended others, I can confirm they are educational, generative and productive intellectually and politically. They include a range of perspectives, given they are working toward peace. This principle is unacceptable for the Times and the New McCarthyites, however, as the journalists ‘reveal’ that No Cold War is merely ‘part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda.’ So too, it seems, is any group advocating for peace.

The investigators construct an international conspiracy centred on Neville Roy Singham, a millionaire sympathetic to peace and socialism who donates his millions to left-wing non-profits who, in turn, help finance very active and crucial anti-war, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist organisations. This is where the most dangerous suggestion emerges, one upon which pro-war forces quickly seized: that groups receiving funding from Singham could be agents of the Chinese Communist Party and thus in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

These suggestions are completely unfounded. The only ‘evidence’ presented are statements made by a handful of former employees and members of some organisations partly funded and supported directly or indirectly by Singham, including the Nkrumah School, the media outlet New Frame, and the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party in South Africa. Then, of course, there is the fact that Singham supported Hugo Chávez, has relationships with some of the million members of the Chinese Communist Party, is pictured at a CCP meeting (excuse me, ‘propaganda forum’) taking notes in a book ‘adorned with a red hammer and sickle.’ And I almost forgot the nail in the hammer: a plaque of Xi Jinping hanging in Singham’s office.

Fox News and other right-wing outlets and politicians are at the helm of the bandwagon as well. For years they promoted propaganda alleging China is influencing US schools and universities as a method of attacking freedom of inquiry and speech in the US, including in my state of Indiana. In August 2021, Indiana’s Attorney General Todd Rokita (whom most Hoosiers don’t support) threatened to investigate the Confucius Institute at a small college, Valparaiso University, saying it operates ‘to spread propaganda and circulate the mantra of the CCP at both the university and in several K-12 schools in Indiana.’ The University closed the Institute but, importantly, maintained Rokita was lying about its function, which is to promote cross-cultural understanding and dialogue. Unfortunately, almost all such institutes have shuttered.

Old or new, ‘McCarthyism’ is reality, not hyperbole

On August 9, Senator Marco Rubio officially called on the Department of Justice to investigate a range of progressive organisations in the US for violating FARA and acting as unregistered Chinese agents. Rubio’s evidence? The Times ‘investigation.’ Rubio includes but adds to the groups smeared in the Times article. The strategy is to discredit anti-war groups, grassroots movement hubs, and anti-imperialist and anti-racist organisations as CCP operatives, thereby silencing opposition to their foreign policy strategy, part of which includes funding separatist movements in places like Hong Kong. In their opening, the Times journalists neglect to mention that most people in that region of China actually oppose the ‘freedom movement,’ partly because of its political character, exemplified by its leaders such as Joshua Wong, a close collaborator of Rubio, who led the charge to nominate Wong for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rubio’s letter to the Biden Administration’s Attorney General names nine entities, including the anti-war group Code Pink, the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, and The People’s Forum, amongst others. This list will likely expand to include numerous others who either didn’t respond to the journalists’ red-baiting or who maintain some connection to the groups identified.

Already serious, it could potentially be devastating. I don’t know a peace or social justice activist, let alone an anti-imperialist or anti-racist revolutionary organisation, with a substantial base, membership, or level of activity, that isn’t somehow related to one of these organisations and networks. The People’s Forum should be of particular concern for educators, as it is the most active and pedagogically innovative popular education institute in the US. Academic journals and publishers work with them to host events and book launches, and a range of professors, including myself, teach classes for them (without getting a paycheck, let alone a ‘lavish’ one, I should add).

There are several continuities between the anti-communist and anti-Black witch-hunts of the 1940s-50s and the new McCarthyism. In both cases, the same ruling-class parties united as outlets like The New York Times recklessly promoted their campaign, slandering heroic Black figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston, Hughes and Paul Robeson. Newspaper headlines alone facilitated this work, such as the 1949 Times headline calling Robeson a ‘Black Stalin’ who “Suffered ‘Delusions of Grandeur.”’ This continued with the Civil Rights Era and was a major factor stalling its militancy and has again resurfaced. They never apologised for their role in spreading such racist propaganda.

Imperialism and white supremacy: More than and predating McCarthy

Labeling this wide historical period and its complex political configurations as ‘McCarthyism’ is useful in speaking popularly, but educators should note it can be misleading. The anti-Black and anti-communist/radical crusade preceded Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Historian Gerald Horne cogently locates the foundations of contemporary racist US capitalism in the imbrication of white supremacy and anti-communism insofar as it

‘is undergirded by the fact that slave property was expropriated without compensation.… [O]ne of the largest uncompensated expropriations before 1917 took place in this nation: African-Americans are living reminders of lost fortunes.’

Similarly, Charisse Burden-Stelly’s concept of modern US racial capitalism specifically designates a ‘political economy constituting war and militarism, imperialist accumulation, expropriation by domination and labour superexploitation.’ Like Horne, the system ‘is rooted in the imbrication of anti-Blackness and antiradicalism.’

History proves their theses correct. For one example, take Benjamin J. Davis, the first Black communist ever elected to public office in the US. He served as a New York City Councilman from 1943 until 1949, when he and other Communist Party leaders were arrested under the Smith Act. In Davis’ set of ‘autobiographical notes’ penned while captive in an apartheid federal prison in Terre Haute, an hour’s drive from where I’m writing, the Black Party leader recounts how, following the end of the US’s alliance with the Soviet Union, ‘the pro-fascist, Negro-hating forces which had been held in check during the war, began to break loose.’ The Republicans, Democrats, FBI, and other state elements sat idly by as racist attacks, including a mass lynching in Atlanta by the Klan, intensified.

Communists, on the other hand, responded immediately, with the Party’s Black leadership uniting and mobilising broad sectors of society. It was only then that the state responded, and not to the racist lynching but to those fighting them. In other words, while the US state passively accepted racist and fascist groups in the US, they turned to active repression when Black people and their supporters and comrades fought back.

The 1949 conviction and imprisonment of Davis and other Party leaders for violating the anti-communist Smith Act was an example of this repression. The US imprisoned and suppressed hundreds of communist leaders and fellow travelers, with countless others driven underground, blacklisted, and deported.

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It was not only their organising that threatened the state; it was also their ideology. Thus, prison administrators prevented the publication of Davis’s book for a decade after he was released. Physically and ideologically repressing communism was part of a project to exterminate the revolutionary, internationalist, and Black Liberation movements and traditions just as a new wave of US imperialist aggression was kicking into high gear.

Decolonisation and anti-colonialist struggle: A matter of survival, not academic fodder

This leads to one other glaring connection between the Red Scare of today and then, one that demonstrates the historical and ideological continuity of racist US imperialism, helps define the current conjuncture, and might convince academics we don’t need new words and more language but action: the US war against the Korean national liberation and socialist struggle.

Seventy years ago, on July 27, the resistance of the Korean masses forced the US to sign an armistice agreement, ceasing the US’s horrendous violence against the peninsula. Despite their military might, new chemical and biological weapons, and bombs that even the Air Force admits inflicted ‘greater damage than German and Japanese cities firebombed during World War II,’ they couldn’t defeat the freedom fighters in the Korean People’s Army (many of whom were from the south).

Before the armistice signing on February 2, Trinidadian-born Black communist Claudia Jones, who at 37 years of age was a high-ranking Party member and leading organiser and theorist, stood before Judge Edward J. Dimrock in a New York courtroom along with a dozen other Party leaders They were all convicted of several charges, including conspiring to overthrow the US government. The pre-sentencing statement is generally used to plea for leniency, but, as a revolutionary communist, Jones saw another opportunity to agitate and raise consciousness.

Jones opened by making it clear it wasn’t meant for the Judge or the state. No, Jones addressed the real power in the world: the global revolutionary movement. ‘If what I say here,’ she began, ‘serves even one whit to further dedicate growing millions of Americans to fight for peace and to repel the fascist drive on free speech and thought in our country, I shall consider my rising to speak worthwhile indeed.’

Overall, this and other trials that persecuted communists and progressives weren’t about specific articles or actions, although, as Denise Lynn notes, in 1947, J. Edgar Hoover directed the FBI to surveil ‘her every speech, radio interview, mention in the Daily Worker, and all of her written work as well as party functions she attended or hosted.’

The prosecution, Jones highlighted, introduced her articles as evidence but did not read them; actually, they could not read them aloud because, in the first place, doing so would affirm ‘that Negro women can think and speak and write!’

Jones then called attention to the second piece of evidence they could not read: her historic speech delivered at an International Women’s Day rally and published in Political Affairs under the title ‘Women in the Struggle for Peace and Security’ in March 1950, the same year the state obtained her deportation order.

In that speech, delivered months before the ‘barbaric’ war against Korea, as she called it, Jones proposed that ‘a fundamental condition for rallying the masses of American women into the peace camp is to free them from the influence of the agents of imperialism’ by linking them with the new phenomenon of a global anti-imperialist women’s movement spanning 80 countries. This would ‘inspire the growing struggles of American women and heighten their consciousness of the need for militant united-front campaigns around the burning demands of the day.’ Thus, the prosecution could not read it aloud because

‘it urges American mothers, Negro women and white, to emulate the peace struggles of their anti-fascist sisters in Latin America, in the new European democracies, in the Soviet Union, in Asia and Africa to end the bestial Korean war … to reject the militarist threat to embroil us in a war with China, so that their children should not suffer the fate of the Korean babies murdered by napalm bombs of B-29s, or the fate of Hiroshima.’

How terrifyingly presciently Jones’s words resonate with us here today, 70 years on. We face ongoing imperialist aggression against the Korean people and their struggle for peace, national liberation, and reunification, the ramping up of US militarism as they prepare for a war against China, and the accompanying ‘Red Scare’ to produce consent, silence dissent and inhibit solidarity efforts.

The US is a … Pacific power?

The US’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ dates at least back to 1898 when they waged a war against and occupied the Philippine Republic, but its current iteration emerged in November 2011, when then-President Barack Obama told the Australian Parliament ‘The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.’ That month, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, published an article in Foreign Policy (the unofficial organ of the US State Department) articulating the US’s new line, that first and foremost entailed ‘a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise – in the Asia-Pacific region.’

We all know what Clinton meant by ‘otherwise,’ as did the Chinese people, government, and governing Party. For some context, recall that this came out one month earlier Clinton erupted in joy during a CBS interview after hearing of African revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal assassination by reactionary forces (whose campaign was based on disproven propaganda and racism against migrant workers from the southern part of the continent). ‘We came, we saw, he died,’ she said laughingly after destroying an independent African nation and its widely popular government.

As the US was waging dozens of wars, occupations, covert military operations, and more, China followed the CCP’s line of a ‘peaceful rise.’ They did so as long as they could, and when it was clear the US wasn’t stopping, both China and Russia finally stood up to the US.

Especially since the election of Xi Jinping to the position of General Secretary of the CCP, China has made a sharp shift to the left and now, after decades, finally offers an alternative pole for the world order so the people of the world can finally be freed from the colonial rule of the US through military occupations and other mechanisms like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. This is why the Belt and Road initiative is critical to formerly colonised states, and why it is falsely labeled ‘colonialist’ by ruling-class figures from Steve Bannon to Clinton.

What would you do then? Do it now! Resisting intimidation is the path to victory

Rubio ended his letter to the DOJ by proclaiming: ‘The CCP is our greatest adversary, and we cannot allow it to abuse our open system to promote its malign influence any longer.’ The threat of war is not rhetoric. The Department of Defence’s new military doctrine is explicitly guided by ‘Great Power Rivalry, a euphemism for an all-out war to recolonise and redivide China.

As US imperialist occupations expand, as they continue conducting military exercises in the South China Sea, China remains remarkably restrained. Can you imagine what the US would do if, say, China sent nuclear-armed submarines to the shores of California, patrolled the Atlantic waters off the coast of New York City, or stationed military bases throughout Mexico and Canada?

It is irrelevant wherever one stands on China, its political system, or any issue or policy. In terms of internationalist solidarity, the least that educators in the imperialist core can do is restrain our government. Even if one of your colleagues supports US imperialism, however, they will hopefully at least stand against attempts to intimidate and silence opposition and free speech. As the petition against the New McCarthyism states:

‘This attack isn’t only on the left but against everyone who exercises their free speech and democratic rights. We must firmly resist this racist, anti-communist witch hunt and remain committed to building an international peace movement. In the face of adversity, we say NO to xenophobic witch hunts and YES to peace.’

Read, sign and, share the petition now. Don’t be intimidated. The heroic freedom fighters we teach and write about, the ones we admire, never gave in despite their extraordinary oppression and unthinkable suffering.

For those of us committed to ending white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, or at the very least, to protecting the freedom of speech and dissent, one small thing to do now is to talk with everyone about it, to sign this petition and affirm that you won’t be silenced or intimidated. Let’s follow the words and deeds of Jones, not Marco Rubio.

Our enemies aren’t in Russia or China, North Korea or Cuba. They are right here in the US, from the Pentagon and Wall Street to the cops who routinely murder and harass the exploited and oppressed. What the police do here, the US military does across the globe. Together, we can defeat them.

Full Citation Information:

Ford, D. R. (2023). Educators must help defeat the new racist and imperialist ‘Red Scare.’ PESA Agora. https://pesaagora.com/columns/educators-must-help-defeat-the-new-racist-and-imperialist-red-scare/