Sukant Chandan tells of his dehumanizing experience, encourages actual anti-racism organizing:
“Yesterday evening in a supermarket in Farringdon a middle aged middle class white man started an argument with me in which the second opening line was “what country do you think this is?!” After which I demanded from him to elaborate and clarify that comment while standing in front of him and his trolley. He called the police saying he was being “attacked” by me after bashing his trolley into my legs half a dozen of times. The supermarket staff were relatively reasonable and balanced and calmed the situation down. The policeman arrived and ended up attacking me saying I may have mental health and substance abuse issues, amongst other insulting and offensive comments. A middle class white woman came up to me saying I should forgive and forget, she said nothing to the racist man. Another middle class middle aged white man shouts at me that I am wasting police time and I should do some charity work. What a shitty dehumanising experience, important to develop real collective struggles to push back white supremacy and the system of neocolonialism and imperialism that creates it, and more importantly to support the global struggle of our peoples, countries, states and regional and global bodies which are actually achieving many things, sacrificing as well as achieving a lot in that framework, and are winning the struggle to contract and eradicate the entire ‘western’ system. If anti racism in the west does not prioritise our Global South peoples and struggles it is merely Eurocentric moaning, which is what all this neo-colonial identity politics around us is exactly about.”
“I keep things in perspective and my/our people are throughout the homelands being lynched, abducted, mutilated, sexually enslaved, and much more by neo-colonial death squads while the west bombs, sanctions and continues with its global project of war and domination. If our comparatively smaller struggles in the ‘west’ are not led by and married to our global struggle then we are just replicating the very same colonial project. All Humanity is one, with the burden or oppression and resistance falling overwhelmingly on the majority of our peoples in the ‘Global South’….I would rather trade the solidarity and sympathy for motivating and encouraging our people to build organisations against the common enemy in unity with our global forces.”
“…despite there being many Black n Asian people shopping in the store, NO ONE said ANYTHING in sympathy or in support. A Black African brother who was security in the store kept telling me to ‘calm down and take some deep breaths’, which was kinda weird cos I was hardly out of my mind, and the racist was much more louder and ‘crazy’ than I was. I replied to the brother in a non hostile but challenging manner: ‘I am calm, but perhaps you want to say the same to the racist guy?’.
It’s interesting how these relatively small racist incidents in public create such fear and silence on the one hand and white supremacist solidarity on the other hand. But this dynamic is at play in much bigger oppressive dynamics and also profound and complex forms of hostility to actual Resistance in the world.”
Chandan in an earlier post:
“It’s a great shame that Black n Brown and working class people in England have basically no functioning organisations and movements to take them forward strategically, instead what we have is an english left that is profoundly steeped in neo-colonial conceit, hostile to learning anything from anyone but their own self defeating delusions, as such they are wholly unfit for purpose and a liability to themselves and those they claim to be fighting for. New radical movements have to be built that are loyal to the tradition and continuity of anti-imperialist and socialist global struggles, ideologies, movements and countries, and can learn from the best traditions on these islands which is the Irish struggle more than any other. Until then, these useless embarrassing fools are going to continue to spin every idiotic mistake and delusion as something good: cognitive dissonance in hyper drive.“Filed under: Syria