5 Mistakes the Left Makes About Imperialism
- The U.S. is not the worst actor on the global stage when it comes to imperialism. That dubious award might go to France, or Belgium in the Congo. The pages of history in fact are bloodier with the actions of European nations in the name of colonizing and imperializing than are the Americans. That is not to say that America has not done hideous war crimes. But the systematic subjugation of foreign populations is a game where the most horrific awards go to his former European monarchies. The worst that was done to the People's of the continent of Africa, was done by Europeans; the worst down to South America was done by Spain; the worst done to the people of Vietnam was by the French. The most horrific imperialist crime in history may well have been the rape and plunder of the Congo by the Belgians. The United States of America plays at imperialism two, but has never mastered the feudal barbarism of European nations in making it as horrific as possible. US imperialism is genteel and suave in comparison. US imperialism is GenTeal and suave, in comparison even to the English. But the correct distinction to be made between US imperialism, which exists, in the European kind is that the US brand of imperialism is the worst corporate form of imperial capture. The genocide of the native Americans, the invasion of Cuba, and slavery, the Philippine war, and Vietnam and Iraq were all done in the name of corporate power and its expansion. The worst crimes of the East India Trading Companies pale in comparison to the corporate colonialism of the Americans. This is a worse form of colonialism, not for the victims, but for the journalists, who can't find the source to blame for it, and for anyone trying to fix it, because it is more hidden, and takes longer to root out. Blameworthiness no longer hides in castles, but in ledgers and receipts, contracts and dividends. It lasts longer because it hides better. This is the real increase in problematic difficulty about the American brand of colonialism: it simply takes longer to shut down. But it's not more bloody, it is just more tricky.
- Imperialism did not start with modern capitalism. Left activists are always too surprised when even a latest success against the ravages of capitalism does not shut down the ravages of imperialism. Too many people generally only see and care about one dimensionality of a struggle. Imperialism maybe corporate-driven, but it's riding in the saddle of wars and peaces. As long as there are nations with contentions, they will always have the capacity to fight each other. Leaving aside, treaties, and other global governance for now, it is the corporate power that anti-capitalist struggles caution against that causes small irritations between nations in order to exploit their military power into safeguarding or expanding corporate profits. When corporations threatened to "go elsewhere" if they lose some case to activists, and yet we still win, it is to the imperialists system of profit exploitation that they then go to; it is not to stop the activist against capitalist oppression that I say, that their activism also often causes imperialism, but only to clarify why they keep running in the same circular path. The solution is to know history all the way back to the earliest civilizations, and to know that imperialism has always been an issue of national politics, no matter the nation. It has also always been opposed by some who were vindicated by history. But the pattern is to see that the most effective strategy to take imperialism down a peg to where it belongs, is to defend, and not to attack. To defend the dignity of all people, even the enemy is your state wants to create out of some of its own citizens, is the surest-fire way to restore sanity, fair dealing and anti-imperialism to your nation-State. It's not the best way to do this to critique modernity, because then modernity will assume its corporate colonial form, and flee the jurisdiction, to perpetrate modernity in a violent colonial form on another region, where it can escape from the approbation of its fellow citizens. But every imperialism has its corollary closer to the seat of national power, and activists, must at least walk as with two feet and also be anti-imperialist "at home" as it were, and oppose capitalism's corporate excesses at the same time.
- Imperialism is not about militarism alone, but also about corporate power. In many ways, the antiwar movement is not always strictly anti-imperialist. Japan was an imperial power, and so was Nazi Germany. We too often forget that World War II was an anti-imperialist war. In the case of Japan, particularly, the rape of Nanjing, and its atrocities in east Asia - the bataan death march and on and on - are seared into my cultural memory of trauma. And China was an Allied power fighting against Japan. I am against even nuclear power, but, I can't, for instance, fully blame the US war effort for firebombing Tokyo, for instance. And now that you've got me on the subject of wars, let me state that my general sentiment about them is that they should be fought only to protect the subjects of this nation. To war against imperialist Japan was an absolute necessity. To war against Germany and its allies during their Nazi era was problematic, but also had to be done. Vietnam, though, was problematic, yet had not to be done. The US never should have there inherited the role of the French in Indochina. It was a role that we were unsuited for, and that shouldn't be a shameful thing. It should be looked at as a good thing that we, as a nation are bad at fighting colonial wars, and that shouldn't be a short coming that we tried to "rectify". It is only shameful that we tried to be good at that kind of geopolitics for a short time, no shameful that we failed. We should embrace our loss in the Vietnam war, because that shows that we can't fight when we are not in the right, and when we don't have Justice on our side. I've been to Vietnam, and the truth is that the French were the worst there, because the exploited the country. The Vietnamese had a grand old time kicking us to hell there [...] all this is to say, it gets complicated, and the analysis gets useless, when you conflate anti-imperialism with anti-militarism. [...] the true problem is the confluence of military force and corporate power, because that is when legitimate government abroad gets its power hollowed out, and the profit motive replaces legitimate policy; that is when "war becomes a racket," in the language of Smedley Butler. Imperialism is this: when foreign policy gets replaced by the corporate profit motive, cloaked in military force. Operation Iraqi "Liberation" was this: O.I.L.
- Nor Western intellectuals, nor the "local" intellectuals of a place under colonization or imperial control are best placed to speak on imperialism. Neither are activists, no matter what street they are on in whatever nation. The reason we have "made it so" in the press is because it is the press itself that is best placed to speak on it, especially the local progressive activist press, and they simply need sources for credibility. But it's the hyper up-to-date literate culture that speaks best about imperialism. Franz Fanon, after all, is a great example of this, and he was a newspaperman. It's a bit of a joke, too, about lawyers being so late to the game that they better catch up. But besides the local progressive press, it's also very weirdly positioned people who in my experience have been best able to speak on imperialism too - people often at a critical nexus of government and corporate power. It reminds me of people ancillary, but connected to US missions in sensitive diplomatic areas abroad, and also to PFC Wintergreen from Catch-22, the telephone operator and mailroom clerk, who constantly tells people at the military base in Italy, that what everyone is really doing there is "T.S. Eliot", then hangs up the phone. Sources on imperialism often hide in the cracks.
- Most shortly and most importantly, to critique imperialism is to do "opposition research" on other countries. The simple explanation, is that someone might say "what's so good about X country that we might invade that should stop us from invading it?" to which you as an anti-imperialist might have an answer. The sad fact is that countries and their men often go to war just to learn from their opponent. But the thing that shouldn't have to be said, yet bears repeating, is that America is uniquely situated to learn from other countries, and to avoid their perils and pitfalls, and, if you give "America" something to focus on so "they" don't have to take everything in in a war, "they" might learn from other countries as-is, instead of fighting and drilling it out with other countries in order to learn from them.
