The hypocrisy and confusion on the issue of race and white supremacy revealed itself once again in the United States with a governor dressed in blackface and a decision by the Trump administration and supported by the European Union to execute a coup against the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
And while Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was outed as a racist when photos surfaced from his yearbook as a medical student in the 1980s that depicted him in either blackface or in a KKK outfit, the assumption that the U.S. and European Union had the right to determine the leadership of a nation in the global South escaped the same condemnation as a racist act of white supremacist power.
The liberal chattering class was quick to condemn this obvious expression of racism and call for Northam’s resignation. But as journalist Greg Palast points out, the attempts by the oligarchy in Venezuela to undermine the government is “at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor. Which means that the intervention by the U.S. is an intervention in support of white power.
Yet liberals who pretended to be outraged by the racism of Northam and had lambasted Trump as a liar and incompetent who colluded with the Russians to influence the U.S. elections, gave their vocal and enthusiastic support for the Trump administration’s illegal intervention.
How can this be explained? What lesson must the colonized in the global South and the oppressed peoples and classes trapped in the nations of the North take from this unity of purpose between the neocons and liberal interventionists, the liberal bourgeoisie in the U.S. and Europe and even the general public?
The answer lies in the Eurocentric, white supremacist cultural discourses that have conditioned the collective consciousness of Westerners. The cultural affliction of Eurocentric, white supremacist ideology that has permeated all forms of cultural and ideological expression. It is not even a point of contention among the academic and non-academic population, both left and right, that “liberal” capitalist Europe represents a significant development in the history of human civilizations, if not the apex of human development.
This perspective, from Marxism that sees the capitalist phase as a necessary and inevitable stage (albeit with contradictions) to neoliberal globalists, represents a “commonsense” position embedded in all Western social institutions that simultaneously normalizes and invisibilizes behavior informed by the assumptions of white privilege and prerogatives.
Therefore, why shouldn’t Trump and the Democrats intervene in Venezuela to determine its leadership, especially when the racial element of that action is apparently beyond comprehension?
For the public in the U.S., Gov. Northam and Donald Trump represent the easy and crude examples of racism that is universally condemned. But the assumption that the white West has the right and responsibility to determine the leadership and way of life of peoples in the global South doesn’t even register as a debatable issue within discourse on white supremacy.
It is accepted as normal by the corporate media, most of the intelligencia and the public that the U.S. and Europe, without any authorization from any foundational source such as international law or the United Nations Charter, has the right and indeed the responsibility to police the world.
The lack of debate on this issue and the cavalier attitude that most have in the West to the real possibilities of yet another military engagement with a global South nation that will likely result in the deaths of thousands of human beings reaffirms once again that the value of human life is stratified; the more distant that life is from Europeans – geographically, culturally and ethnically – the less value it has.
Consequently, the people of the colonized global South fighting for authentic de-colonization and national self-determination along with the nationally oppressed peoples and classes in the North must be equally clear. The European Union Parliament’s decision to recognize the puppet government being imposed on the people of Venezuela is another reminder that there is a common enemy in the U.S./EU/NATO “axis of domination.”
The constituent elements of this contemporary axis of domination was established and is sustained as part of what the late Rod Bush referred to as the Pan-European Project – the white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy – that began with the invasion of the “Americas” by Europe in 1492.
That invasion provided the material basis for Europe moving from a backwater region of no significance to the various world orders to the predominant powers on the planet for the last 500 years.
It is important to understand, therefore, that the critique of white supremacy is not limited just to an idealization principle but has a structural reality. This is what differentiates this analysis from the simple rejection of racialism or white supremacy advanced by reform liberals.
The analytical and theoretical framework employed here centers and grounds the relationship between the institutions and structures of global white supremacy – the IMF, World Bank, WTO, international financial institutions and dollar hegemony, NATO – and the ideological expressions of white supremacy such as the belief in the cultural superiority of Europe, “humanitarian interventions” and the so-called responsibility to protect.
There can be no confusion – despite the sectoral fights inside the capitalist class that are currently playing out in the intra-class struggle against Trump – that the oligarchy is united when it comes to projecting the dominance of the Pan-European imperialist project in relationship to the global South. The bipartisan support for the imperialist agenda was in full display during the State of the Union speech by Trump when he proudly mentioned U.S. efforts to subvert the Bolivarian process and in the absence of any opposition to this policy by Stacy Abrams (and, by extension, Democrats) during her rebuttal.
What Must Be the Position of Black Radical Internationalists
Venezuela is just the latest expression of that bipartisan unity of interests and actions in support of the Pan-European imperialist project now led by the U.S.
In the case of Venezuela, we know what will happen if a U.S.-led military intervention takes place. It will be a replay of the 1989 invasion of Panama, where U.S forces turned the Black community of El Chorrillo into a “free fire zone,” resulting in the complete destruction of the community and the deaths of over 3,000 Panamanians.
The people of Venezuela have made a choice. We will not debate the merits of their process, its contradictions or problems. Our responsibility as citizens/captors of empire is to put a brake on the U.S. state’s ability to foist death and destruction on the peoples of the world.
However, as it is has been stated in other places, it is imperative that the Black working class is separated from this naked imperialist move on Venezuela and all imperialist assaults. African/Black people must be clear on the issue of U.S. and European capitalist/imperialist interventions. The war and militarism being waged against Africans/Black people in the U.S. by the domestic military we call “the police” – embodied by mass incarceration – is part of the global Pan-European axis of domination that is now conspiring against the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela.
Opposition to U.S. imperialism cannot be left up to the so-called progressives in the Democrat party or even the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). The CBC has consistently backed the white ruling class agenda of subversion and military intervention, from its support for the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) to its failure to oppose the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, responsible for transferring millions of dollars-worth of military equipment to local police forces that are then deployed against poor working class black and brown communities.
Representing the “new” Black managerial/administrative/professional petit-bourgeoisie that is now physically and psychologically disconnected from the Black masses, the CBC has completely thrown in its lot with the owners of capital – white power.
That is why the position of the Black Alliance for Peace should be embraced. BAP says, “not one drop of blood from working class and poor to defend the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.”
All rational human beings want peace. But there is no peace without justice. Real social justice, which requires radical structural change, cannot be realized without struggle. And there can be no effective social change without clearly identifying the enemy—the source of our oppression—and being able to imagine an alternative.
The revolutionary Black working class is clear and building our forces for the fight that must be waged against the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination. The only question is, who will be our allies.
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