PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDINGS
Part 3
By Collectivist Action
In a document I wrote entitled, The Dialectical Rise of a White Nationalist State” ,(https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-dialectical-rise-of-white_13.html) I quote Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, from her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the
United States:
"When compared to other countries that carried out colonial conquests in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America, the United States was not exceptional in the sheer amount of violence it imposed to achieve sovereignty over territories it appropriated. . .What distinguishes the U.S. experiences is not the type of violence involved, but rather the historical narratives attached to that violence. . .From the first settlement, appropriating land from its stewards became a 'racialized' war, 'civilization' against 'savagery', and thereby was inherently genocidal"
According to historian Gerald Horne, approximately five million indigenous people were enslaved in what would be called the Americas, between the 15th and 19th centuries. As a result of harsh labor and violent confrontations with European colonialists, these populations declined in many places by as much as 90%. "The majority of the enslaved were women and children; an obvious precursor and trailblazer for the sex trafficking of today. But for the massive revolt of the indigenous in 1680 in what is now New Mexico, the toll might have been worse" (4)
Between 1629 and 1645, thousands of Puritans migrated from Britain to the British colonies. Even though many of these religious dissenters had endured persecution in Europe, once in the New World, they proceeded to impose tyranny on indigenous communities.
"The first Jamestown settlers lacked a supply line and proved unable, or unwilling, to grow crops or hunt for their own sustenance. They decided that they would force the farmers of the Powhatan Confederacy - some 30 polities - to provide them with food. Jamestown military leader John Smith threatened to kill all the women and children if the Powhatan leaders would not feed and clothe the settlers as well as provide them with land and labor. The leader of the Confederacy, Wahusonacock, entreated the invaders:
"Why should you take by force from us which you can have by love? Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food? What can you get by war? What is the cause of your jealousy? You see us unarmed, and willing to supply your wants, if you will come in a friendly manner, and not with swords and guns." (5)
“Unfortunately, Smith acted on his threat and initiated a war on the Powhatans in 1609. Moreover, the governor of the colony, Thomas Gage, enlisted forces led by George Percy (a mercenary who had previously fought in the Netherlands) to destroy the indigenous nation. In spite of the attacks the latter managed to not only protect their grain storage buildings, they were also able to force the Jamestown settlers to retreat to their colonial fortress.
After organizing a more powerful alliance of indigenous tribes, the Powhatans attacked all the English settlements along the James River, killing a third of the inhabitants. Subsequently, the colonists retaliated by systematically destroying all of the indigenous agricultural resources." (6)
Thus, genocide has characterized the general relationship of indigenous communities with, first, the European colonists, then to the U.S. nation state. . .a tale of horrendous violence and a trail of endless tears . .
In 1946, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed genocide as a crime under international law in Resolution 96, which stated that: “Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.”
On December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260A, or the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, deefined genocide as:
killing members of a group
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The U.S. ratified the Convention in 1980.
The creation of the U.S. state, in particular,* constitutes, imo, not only a crime against humanity but an ILLEGITIMATE POLITICAL/ECONOMIC FORMATION.
It needs to be, eventually, dismantled and reconstructed.
https://youtu.be/ratQlft_G5c?
. Of course, neither North, South nor Central America can be accurately described as ‘paradise’, in the past or present. Not unlike cultures on the other continents more than a few New World cultures were rife with contradictions, including human sacrifice, social inequality and warfare. However, most managed to maintain a relative, consistent, equilibrium
within and in relationship to the natural world.
Unlike the Old World cultures which invaded and eventually dominated them, they did not see themselves as separate from the world of valleys, mountains, rivers, oceans, plants and other animals habitating land and air. Alienation from the nonhuman world was rare if it existed at all.
On the other hand, as bell hooks informs us: “In white supremacist capitalist patriarchal Western culture neocolonial thinking sets the tone for many cultural practices. That thinking always focuses on who has conquered a territory, who has ownership and who has the right to rule.” (7)
The cultures which have dominated the Americas, North, South and Central - and much of the world, for that matter - have developed social systems which have now, objectively, brought Life on Earth to the brink of a 6th MASS EXTINCTION.
https://youtu.be/4yNxUYIEkuA?
References
*Along with many of the nation states which emerged in Central and
South America during and after colonial conquests.
4. The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, Gerald Horne, Pg. 11
5. Indigenous Peoples History. . ., Pg. 60
6. Ibid., Pg. 61
7.“Feminism is for Everyone”, bell hooks, Pg. 44
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