#but that is NOT AT ALL on the same level of what cecil rhodes did

[mxtxfanatic]

Hi! If you don't mind me asking:

What does mxtx says about jc's character? Like some jc stans claim that she has said he has a knife tounge and tofu heart, (I don't believe it still) is it true? I don't know where to find her interviews, so I asked you instead:)

Thank you 💕

MXTX speaks on Jiang Cheng’s character in two places that I know: the old version of the postscript of the novel (absent from the official 7seas release) and an interview from before she left socials.

In the postscript, she only has this to say about Jiang Cheng:

Everyone should know what Jiang Cheng’s keyword is without me saying it. In the beginning, I thought with with XY’s [Xue Yang] existence, Jiang Cheng’s negative energy would definitely seem skimpy. Who knew he became the ultimate superstar of the comment section? Compared to him, XY was almost a poor, has-been idol. Only now and then would someone decide to drag him out again. Of course, in the end, under the combined PDA attacks of WWX and LWJ, the past and present superstars were obliterated.

And in this interview, she goes more in-depth. Sidenote: while I appreciate the interview for what it, I do not appreciate the ways in which they insert their own opinions about how they think MXTX should feel about Jiang Cheng into the actual interview commentary, and it shows how much of a bias even the interviewer had towards his character to have asked so many leading questions in an attempt to get a positive response out of her about him.

Anyways, here's some expansion by @jiangwanyinscatmom on the nuance of what mxtx meant by “not heinous/evil” that was lost in translation here and some more re-translation (still of the same interview as above):

墨香铜臭：本性不是特别坏，但是有人要讨厌他的话，那也没办法。因为你讨不讨厌一个人，也是……也是自己的问题。

He is not a 坏 (basically spoiled broken, corrupt) person by nature, but if someone wants to dislike him, there is nothing I can do about it. Because whether you dislike someone or not is also... your own choice.

MXTX's answer about why Jiang Cheng never could marry and how she sees him as a character (parenthesis section for jiangwanyinscatmom's own translation notes):

墨香铜臭：就性格比较差劲吧，谈了几个，吹了。 (He just has an 差劲 (average/lame/disappointing, let down) temperament, he dated several times but they were all failures) 墨香铜臭：我眼中的江澄……我眼中的江澄，就……其实没怎么样，我写文还是比较客观的。我看他……我看他就、就像是在看一个作品。 女主持：如果让大大本人来介绍江澄这个人的话，你会怎么介绍他？ 墨香铜臭：我觉得他是一个负能量比较……重……的人。 女主持：这么简单吗？ 墨香铜臭：对，负能量比较重，但是也不是个、也不是个十恶不赦的人吧。对。 MXTX: In my eyes, Jiang Cheng... In my eyes, Jiang Cheng is... Actually, it's nothing special. I am relatively objective when writing. When I look at him... When I look at him, it's like looking at a work of art. Female host: If you were to introduce Jiang Cheng, how would you introduce him? MXTX: I think he is a person with a lot of negative energy... Female host: Is it that simple? MXTX: Yes, he has a lot of negative energy, but he is not a heinous person. Yes.

In short: MXTX describes Jiang Cheng as a character that is filled with negativity and unable to date, but he is not inherently evil nor to the point of being irredeemable. He is a product of the story and fulfills the role he was created to fulfill in the plot. He's not a good person, not overtly and not secretly. That's it.

[trigonometry-is-my-bitch]

In the light of the racial Injustice we have seen in America, where a Black man named George Floyd was murdered at the hands of the US police, and where Breonna Taylor, a Black EMT, was murdered while sleeping in her home by police without uniform, and many other brutalities take place every day in America unto black people that goes unheard, it lifts my spirits to see people all around the world in support of the Black lives matter movement for racial justice.

I am heartbroken to watch their governments show little to no support for their people protesting against racism, when they have plenty to talk about from their unsettled past actions during the colonial era, as well as institutionalised racism which breathes today in their countries. 

In the years of 1884 - 1914, the Berlin conference saw many of the major nations of europe partake in the colonisation of African countries known as the Scramble for Africa, which set a low bar for the history of mankind. You can and should read all about the atrocities onto African people, such as the Human Zoos, or the genocides which took place under the foot of colonial powers

I ask you to remember the starving to death of 65,000 Herero people, 80% of their number. And the 10,000 Nama people, 50% of their number in German concentration camps like Shark Island. They were the first genocides of the 20th century, we are only in the beginning of the 21st. The effects are still suffered today.

I ask you to remember the Belgium Rubber mines which saw the people of Congo enslaved and tortured. Even today countries like France interfere with African politics, and are forcing 14 african ex-colonies to pay colonial tax since their independence. 85% of these countries’ national reserve is controlled by France. The effects are still suffered today.

The colonial powers did not care to make amends with the ex-colony states after the end of colonialism, which saw many african nations and cultures in total ruin. They carved up borders that were not there, grouping and racially categorising indigenous people, which saw tribes amongst the desolation of a sacked continent at war with each other, and lead to incidents such as those seen in Rwanda.

Now today you hear white supremacist leaders that accomplish nothing for their citizens, calling African nations “shithole countries”. The painting of the african continent is that they cannot develop their cultural identity like Europe can because they are inferior, and not because while they were subjugated, their culture was abolished for being unlike theirs, and surely therefore barbaric. Or they cannot create strong economies like Europe can because they are inferior, while the wealth of those european countries is built on the spoils of a war against Africans, those same Africans did not choose to be engaged in.

And in america, white supremacy will convince you today that black people are lazy, after fighting a civil war to keep them enslaved, to do the hard labour for them because black people were just so good at building roads and the White house.

It is not okay to be silent about racism. It is equally dangerous to humanity to leave mankind’s sins unhealed and conveniently forgotten, because the pain is felt every day by black people and african nations by racism which lives today just as fresh as then in the beginning of Colonialism. The effects of racism don’t go away because a government stops carving up your homeland, or enslaving your people, the problem gets passed down on both sides of the conflict and becomes a generational issue like we are seeing in Britain, Africa, America, and other parts of the world.

I live in the United Kingdom, so I call for the government to come forward and address properly the injustice done to ethnic minorities today in britain, as well as in the past. I call for other European countries to address racism in a similar manner officially, if you are a European citizen, you should call upon your government too. Italy, Spain, Portugal, France,Belgium, Britain are failing to engage the public in conversation about racism.

European Governments are failing the people taking a stand against racism and protesting. Because they are hiding in shame like the biblical adam  who knew he had sinned. If only they put the same level of energy and enthusiasm in healing the wounds of centuries of racism as they did sowing its seeds.

To start, I call for the Statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, proudly displayed at Oriel College, Oxford University, to be taken down and put in a museum. In 2016, a petition to remove the statue which represents British white supremacy, was refused because “the statue was a reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism”. There is nothing complex at all about colonialism, that is only delusional exceptionalism born from white supremacy. It is animalistic barbarism, and failure of compassion that forever left a stain upon humanity, which at least we can learn from - in a museum. If it is indeed history it should be put in a museum.

Sign the petition to remove the Cecil Rhodes statue.

Please, share this, and do all that you can to support the movement for racial justice. Do what you can in your country.

Donate to Black lives matter: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

[murkserious]

We Did Not Sell Each Other Into Slavery.

The single most effective White propaganda assertion that continues to make it very difficult for us to reconstruct the African social systems of mutual trust broken down by U.S. Slavery is the statement, unqualified, that, "We sold each other into slavery." Most of us have accepted this statement as true at its face value. It implies that parents sold their children into slavery to Whites, husbands sold their wives, even brothers and sisters selling each other to the Whites. It continues to perpetuate a particularly sinister effluvium of Black character. But deep down in the Black gut, somewhere beneath all the barbecue ribs, gin and whitewashed religions, we know that we are not like this.

This singular short tart claim, that "We sold each other into slavery", has maintained in a state of continual flux our historical basis for Black-on-Black self love and mutual cooperation at the level of Class.

The period from the beginning of the TransAtlantic African Slave so-called Trade (1500) to the demarcation of Africa into colonies in the late 1800s is one of the most documented periods in World History. Yet, with the exception of the renegade African slave raider Tippu Tip of the Congo Arabs(Muslim name, Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juna al-Marjebi) who was collaborating with the White Arabs (also called Red Arabs) there is little documentation of independent African slave raiding. By independent is meant that there were no credible threats, intoxicants or use of force by Whites to force or deceive the African into slave raiding or slave trading and that the raider himself was not enslaved to Whites at the time of slave raiding or "trading". Trade implies human-to-human mutuality without force. This was certainly not the general scenario for the TransAtlantic so-called Trade in African slaves. Indeed, it was the Portuguese who initiated the European phase of slave raiding in Africa by attacking a sleeping village in 1444 and carting away the survivors to work for free in Europe.

Even the case of Tippu Tip may well fall into a category that we might call the consequences of forced cultural assimilation via White (or Red) Arab Conquest over Africa. Tippu Tip s father was a White (or Red) Arab slave raider, his mother an unmixed African slave. Tip was born out of violence, the rape of an African woman. It is said that Tip, a "mulatto", was merciless to Africans.

The first act against Africa by Whites was an unilateral act of war, announced or unannounced. There were no African Kings or Queens in any of the European countries nor in the U.S. when ships set sail for Africa to capture Africans for profit. Whites had already decided to raid for slaves. They didn't need our agreement on that. Hence, there was no mutuality in the original act. The African so-called slave "trade" was a demand-driven market out of Europe and America, not a supply-driven market out of Africa. We did not seek to sell captives to the Whites as an original act. Hollywood s favorite is showing Blacks capturing Blacks into slavery, as if this was the only way capture occurred. There are a number of ways in which capture occurred. Let s dig a little deeper into this issue.

Chancellor Williams, in his classic work, The Destruction of Black Civilization, explains that after the over land passage of African trade had been cut off at the Nile Delta by the White Arabs in about 1675 B.C. (the Hyksos), the Egyptian/African economy was thrown into a recession. There is even indication of "pre-historic" aggression upon Africa by White nomadic tribes (the Palermo Stone).. This culminated as an unfortunate trade, in that, when the White Arabs attacked, they had the benefit of the knowledge and strength of Africans on their side, as their slaves. This is a significantly different picture than the propaganda that we sold our immediate family members into slavery to the Whites.

It becomes a kind of racism; that, while all ethnic groups have sold its own ethnic group into slavery, Blacks can't do it. When Eastern Europeans fight each other it is not called tribalism. Ethnic cleansing is intended to make what is happening to sound more sanitary. What it really is, is White Tribalism pure and simple.

The fact of African resistance to European Imperialism and Colonialism is not well known, though it is well documented. Read, for instance, Michael Crowder (ed.), West African Resistance, Africana Publishing Corporation, New York, 1971. Europeans entered Africa in the mid 1400 s and early 1500 s during a time of socio-political transition. Europeans chose a favorite side to win between African nations at a war and supplied that side with guns, a superior war instrument. In its victory, the African side with guns rounded up captives of war who were sold to the Europeans in exchange for more guns or other barter. Whites used these captives in their own slave raids. These captives often held pre-existing grudges against groups they were ordered to raid, having formerly been sold into slavery themselves by these same groups as captives in inter-African territorial wars. In investigating our history and capture, a much more completed picture emerges than simply that we sold each other into slavery.

The Ashanti, who resisted British Imperialism in a Hundred Years War, sold their African captives of war and criminals to other Europeans, the Portuguese, Spanish, French, in order to buy guns to maintain their military resistance against British Imperialism (Michael Crowder, ed., West African Resistance).

Eric A. Walker, in A History of Southern Africa, Longmans, London, 1724, chronicles the manner in which the Dutch entered South Africa at the Cape of Good Hope. Van Riebeeck anchored at the Cape with his ships in 1652 during a time that the indigenous Khoi Khoi or Khoisan (derogatorily called Hottentots) were away hunting. The fact of their absence is the basis of the White "claim" to the land. But there had been a previous encounter with the Khoi Khoi at the Cape in 1510 with the Portuguese Ship Almeida. States Eric A. Walker, "Affonso de Albuquerque was a conscious imperialist whose aim was to found self-sufficing colonies and extend Portuguese authority in the East&He landed in Table Bay, and as it is always the character of the Portuguese to endeavor to rob the poor natives of the country, a quarrel arose with the Hottentots, who slew him and many of his companions as they struggled towards their boats through the heavy sand of Salt River beach." (Ibid. p. 17). Bartholomew Diaz had experienced similar difficulties with the indigenous Xhosa of South Africa in 1487, on his way to "discovering" a "new" trade route to the East. The conflict ensued over a Xhosa disagreement over the price Diaz wanted to pay for their cattle. The Xhosa had initially come out meet the Whites, playing their flutes and performing traditional dance.

In 1652, knowing that the indigenous South Africans were no pushovers, Van Riebeeck didn't waste any time. As soon as the Khoi Khoi returned from hunting, Van Riebeeck accused them of stealing Dutch cattle. Simply over that assertion, war broke out, and the superior arms of the Dutch won. South African Historian J. Congress Mbata best explains this dynamic in his lectures, available at the Cornell University Africana Studies Department. Mbata provides three steps: 1) provocation by the Whites, 2) warfare and, 3) the success of a superior war machinery.

There are several instances in which Cecil Rhodes, towards the end of the 19th Century, simply demonstrated the superiority of the Maxim Machine Gun by mowing down a corn field in a matter of minutes. Upon such demonstrations the King and Queen of the village, after consulting the elders, signed over their land to the Whites. These scenarios are quite different from the Hollywood version, and well documented.

It has been important to present the matters above to dispel the notion of an African slave trade that involved mutuality as a generalized dynamic on the part of Africans. If we can accept the documented facts of our history above and beyond propaganda, we can begin to heal. We can begin to love one another again and go on to regain our liberties on Earth.

Respectfully,

Oscar L. Beard, B.A., RPCV

slavery at the dawn of capitalism and the ideology of white supremacy

Slaves were denied any rights. Throughout the colonies in the Caribbean to North America, laws were passed establishing a variety of common practices: Slaves were forbidden to carry weapons, they could marry only with the owner's permission, and their families could be broken up. They were forbidden to own property. Masters allowed slaves to cultivate vegetables and chickens, so the master wouldn't have to attend to their food needs. But they were forbidden even to sell for profit the products of their own gardens. Click and read more...

http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/11782086-we-did-not-sell-each-other-into-slavery

[tkmedia]

Kenneth Kaunda: The Last Giant Of African Nationalism

Spread This NewsBy Gavin Evans – The Conversation KENNETH Kaunda, the former president of Zambia, who has died in hospital in the capital, Lusaka, at the age of 97, was the last of the giants of 20th century African nationalism. He was also one of the few to depart with his reputation still intact. But perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the standing of the man who ruled over Zambia for 27 years is clouded with ambiguity. The charismatic president who won accolades for bowing out peacefully after losing an election was also the authoritarian who introduced a one-party state. The pioneer of “African socialism” was the man who cut a supply-side deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The nationalist leader known for personal probity planned to give huge tracts of farmland to an Indian guru. The revolutionary who gave sanctuary to liberation movements was also a friend of US presidents. I met him in 1989 when I helped organise a delegation of 120 white South African notables for a conference with the then-banned and exiled African National Congress, which was fighting for the liberation of black South Africans, in Lusaka. “KK”, as he was known, shed tears as he welcomed guests, who included the liberal MP Helen Suzman, known for her defiant opposition to the apartheid government. By then, he’d been president for a quarter of a century and seemed a permanent fixture at the apex of southern African politics. And yet, as it turned out, he was on his final lap. He exuded an image of the benign monarch, a much-loved father to his people, known for his endearing quirks – safari suits, waving white handkerchiefs, ballroom dancing, singing his own songs while cycling, and crying in public. And yet there was also a hard edge to the politics and persona of the man, whose powerful personality helped make Zambia a major player in Africa and the world for three decades. The early years Kenneth David Kaunda was born in Chinsali, Northern Zambia, on October 24, 1924. Like so many of his generation of African liberation leaders, he came from a family of the mission-educated middle class. He was the baby among eight children. His father was a Presbyterian missionary-teacher and his mother was the first qualified African woman teacher in the country. He followed his parents’ profession, first in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), where he became a head teacher before his 21st birthday. He also taught in then Tanganyika (Tanzania), where he became a lifelong admirer of future president Julius Nyerere, whose “Ujamaa” brand of African socialism he tried to follow. After returning home, Kaunda campaigned against the British plan for a federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland, which would increase the powers of white settlers. He took up politics full-time, learning the ropes through working for the liberal Legislative Council member, Sir Stewart Gore-Browne. Soon after, as secretary-general of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, he was jailed for two months with hard labour for distributing “subversive literature”. After his release he clashed with his organisation’s president, Harry Nkumbula, who took a more conciliatory approach to colonial rule. Kaunda led the breakaway Zambian African National Congress, which was promptly banned. He was jailed for nine months, further boosting his status. A new movement, the United National Independence Party (UNIP), chose Kaunda as its leader after his release. He travelled to America and met Martin Luther King. Inspired by King and Mahatma Gandhi, he launched the “Cha-cha-cha” civil disobedience campaign. In 1962, encouraged by Kaunda’s moves to pacify the white settlers, the British acceded to self-rule, followed by full independence two years later. He emerged as the first Zambian president after UNIP won the election. The challenges of independence One challenge for the newly independent Zambia related to the colonial education system. There were no universities and fewer than half a percent of pupils had completed primary school. Kaunda introduced a policy of free books and low fees. In 1966 he became the first chancellor of the new University of Zambia. Several other universities and tertiary education facilities followed. Long after he was ousted as president, Kaunda continued to be warmly received in African capitals because of his role in allowing liberation movements to have bases in Lusaka. This came at considerable economic cost to his country, which also endured military raids from the South Africans and Rhodesians. At the same time, he joined apartheid South Africa’s hardline prime minister BJ Vorster in mediating a failed bid for an internal settlement in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1975. He attempted the same in South West Africa (Namibia), which was then administered by South Africa. But President PW Botha, who succeeded Vorster after his death, showed no interest. Kaunda helped lead the Non-Aligned Movement, which brought together states that did not align with either the Soviets or the Americans during the Cold War. He broke bread with anyone who showed an interest in Zambia, including Romania’s Nicolai Ceausescu and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, while also cultivating successive American presidents (having more success with Jimmy Carter than Ronald Reagan). He invited China to help build the Tazara Railway and bought 16 MIG-21 fighter jets from the Soviet Union in 1980. African humanism Kaunda’s economic policy was framed by his belief in what he called “African humanism” but also by necessity. He inherited an economy under foreign control and moved to remedy this. For example, the mines owned by the British South African Company (founded by Cecil John Rhodes) were acquired as a result of colonial conquest in 1890. Kaunda’s threats to nationalise without compensation prompted major concessions from BSAC. He promoted a planned economy, leading to “development plans” that involved the state’s Industrial Development Corporation acquiring 51% equity in major foreign-owned companies. The policy was undermined by the 1973 in the spike in the oil price and fall in the price of copper, which made up 95% of Zambia’s exports. The consequent balance of payments crisis led to Zambia having the world’s second highest debt relative to GDP, prompting IMF intervention. Kaunda at first resisted but by 1989 was forced to bow to its demands. Parastatals were partially privatised, spending was slashed, food subsidies ended, prices rocketed and Kaunda’s support plummeted. Like many anti-colonial leaders, he’d come to view multi-party democracy as a western concept that fomented conflict and tribalism. This view was encouraged by the 1964 uprising of the Lumpa religious sect. He banned all parties other than UNIP in 1968 and Zambia officially became a one-party state four years later. His government became increasingly autocratic and intolerant of dissent, centred on his personality cult. But Kaunda will go down in history as a relatively benign autocrat who avoided the levels of repression and corruption of so many other one-party rulers. Julius Nyerere, who retired in 1985, tried to persuade his friend to follow suit, but Kaunda pressed on. After surviving a coup attempt in 1990 and following food riots, he reluctantly acceded to the demand for a multi-party election in 1991. His popularity could not survive the chaos prompted by price rises and was not helped by the revelation that he’d planned to grant more than a quarter of Zambia’s land to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who promised to create a “heaven on earth”). The trade union leader Frederick Chiluba won in a landslide victory in 1991. The last years Kaunda won kudos abroad for what was considered to be his gracious response to electoral defeat, but the new government was less magnanimous. It placed him under house arrest after alleging a coup attempt; then declared him stateless when he planned to run in the 1996 election (on the grounds that his father was born in Malawi), which he successfully challenged in court. He survived an assassination attempt in 1997, getting grazed by a bullet. One of his sons, Wezi, was shot dead outside their home in 1999. The 1986 AIDS death of another son, Masuzgo, inspired him to campaign around HIV issues far earlier than most, and he stepped this up over the next two decades. After Chiluba’s departure, he returned to favour and became a roving ambassador for Zambia. He reduced his public role following the 2012 death of his wife of 66 years, Betty. Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who, at great cost, gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat who reluctantly introduced democracy to his country and an international diplomat who punched well above his weight in world affairs. Read the full article

[handandbanner]

What if McCain was not a hero and civility is not important? Our anti-colonial struggle for hearts and minds

I'm thinking about the colonial war on hearts and minds that seems to be waged constantly and the psychological impact on regular people who want to practice telling truth in public.  In recent days I observed that even people in my shared spaces who are supportive of anti-colonial values participated in naming McCain as a “war hero”.  There are things that are difficult I imagine about how to reflect on a life soon after death.  Those grieving personally may have a different set considerations and responsibilities to tend to in private mourning than the responsibilities we have in the stories we tell in public about the public career and contributions of public lives - truth has to be possible.  Even as we reflect on the giants of liberation movements who sacrificed life and freedom in the freedom struggle of oppressed people, we have a responsibility to pay attention to issues like patriarchy and misogyny, and point out the problematic in Nelson, Martin or Malcom as examples of towering figures, who especially in two of those cases were largely silent and complicit in the erasure and I would argue oppression of Black women within the liberation struggle and in their private lives.  We do not look for perfect leaders, but we do need to be able to tell the truth about what it is that people’s public lives were about and I would argue  that the measure of goodness in public life is tied to the impact of one’s actions on “the least of these” or the most vulnerable. There might be many ways to talk about a man who enthusiastically participates in a campaign to burn scores of villagers alive and later takes public office and exhibits good manners while championing aggressive disastrous war interventions. People might say for example, that he is “not Trump-like” (because of the manners) and apparently judging from the eulogies and for those still desperately trying to salvage a crumbling globally imposed perception of American moral leadership, it matters very much that there is somebody out there, a high-ranking public servant, but anybody really, any white man in politics with power and a globally recognizable name, who is “not Trump-like” and can take up a week’s cycle of headlines.  But should we give in to the idea that being “not-Trump” is worthy of valorization we will be succumbing once again the historical white-patriarchal ever falling standards of what it means to be good and decent in this world.  

Artist: Carrie Mae Weems

We seldom have a way of quantifying the harm and trauma of lies as a historical and everyday component of colonial harm. I think it's because when people are being killed, and being stolen from, being lied to feels like the lesser of the three constant evils of empire. Today global Indigenous movements are looking at what it means to decolonize institutions of learning as spaces where knowledge is produced and disseminated and spaces where minds are developed.  BIPOC students around the world are resisting having to learn in spaces where the images and names of white male perpetrators and architects of colonial genocide, enslavement and oppression have been upheld for decades and even centuries.  An example is the white supremacist Cecil Rhodes’ statue that South African students mobilized to have removed at the University of Cape Town in the #RhodesMustMall movement that later spread to Oxford University where his statue still stands.  As well as being an explicit white supremacist who called for global domination of the Anglo-Saxon race as the “first-race”, Rhodes’ legacy of racist public policy in Southern Africa included land acts that facilitated the violent dispossession and resource extraction that devastated Indigenous Black African communities as well as set the path towards the racist Apartheid regime. It would require a lot of space to discus all the ways that the dehumanizing aggression of Rhodes still impact communities today.  Same can be said of the legacy of slave-owner Isaac Royal who the Harvard School of Law’s #RoyalMustFall movement sought to raise awareness about or Canada’s John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier, whose names and images are also upheld in institutions of learning.  While the work of quantifying and documenting the harm that these men have perpetrated on whole cultures and communities around the world is still ongoing, part of the work that impacted communities have been left with is having to address dominant false narratives that have upheld these men as heroes.  This work for those who are forced to or choose to take it up has a cost associated with it that ranges from emotional and psychological suffering, to economic suffering due to loss of status as students or employment opportunities, to political imprisonment.  We also know that historically the work of undoing lies has cost people their lives.  

Artist: Carrie Mae Weems

What I have learned about the ongoing colonial project, is that the enactment of false narratives, just like the killing and the theft, is not just a historic practice but a constant assault. There are false narratives that are birthed constantly, and the empire seems to have more resources for narrative production that continues to wage war on the hearts and minds in all of our communities form the earliest age possible and we are all vulnerable.  I am also observing that false narratives are often introduced into the public consciousness in ways that are palatable and subtle and provide tension resolution.  

With all of these in mind it was disturbing to me to watch in the last couple of weeks for people who would usually be aligned with anti-colonial values, describe John McCain as a “war hero” in what seemed to be an attempt to hold up an alternative-to-Trump version of white male leadership.  

Most would agree that the Trump Age is marked by elevated tension and crisis. Not just for targeted communities who are suffering and dying but also in a different way for white people with colonially attained socio-economic privilege around the world.  With new levels of public discourse about racism and white-supremacy, as well as what I would describe as instances of both eruptive and reflective previously repressed and suppressed expressions of BIPOC colonial trauma, white people whose privileged false identities depended on the silence of BIPOC, are having to come to terms with identity displacement.  The conditions are ripe not just for the production of false narratives but also for a high-social-demand for lies, there is a market for it. People invested in oppression want to be told that who they are culturally and historically are not what the stories that BIPOC trauma are telling every day.  

We also know that whatever its original meanings, the concept of civility has evolved in the Western world as a historical tool for constructing social conditions that make a particular kind of duplicity acceptable.  Fundamentally and strongly oppositional realities, not just minor contractions, but realities that cannot co-exist without rendering each other meaningless are held up as possible.  An example would be the rapist, slave-owning “gentleman”.  It is important for empire to create a new “virtue” because age-old recognizable concepts like love and justice will never be ultimately sustainable under empire.  But civility provides an opportunity for subscribers to engage the human need to be good and virtuous by living out a value that is created by and in service of the empire alone.  

Maybe it did not seem like a significant contradiction to talk about McCain as a “war hero” for those who are sympathetic to anti-colonial liberation movements in the past week.  What could it have looked like for those privately grieving to acknowledge McCain’s humanity and for the truth to also be told in public about the Vietnam War? Does the truth matter? Can McCain be a “war hero” today and Dr. Martin Luther King be a moral leader a few months later in January during annual memorializing rituals, on the same timelines?

Before his death, MLK denounced the Vietnam War as criminal and an expression of American colonialism, shortly after he was assassinated.  McCain at the same time in history was on an aerial mission called Operation Rolling Thunder that killed at least 50,000 civilians and that was just one mission. These are mostly villagers.  There is documentation of McCain complaining that the target list provided to aerial bombers was “too restrictive”.  The bombing attacks by the U.S on South-East Asia were so brutal and severe, the bombing in villages is said to exceed all bombs dropped by all sides involved in World War II. This was time in history when white men who relished in murder would do things just because they could, the documented transcripts from “bombing missions” support this view.   The severity of the attacks would trouble the hearts of a population involved in their own freedom struggle within the America empire, so that Black leaders of faith, members of the Black church, the Black Muslim community and all Black-Liberation traditions made resisting the war a primary focus of their own struggle that was finally making some gains. By speaking out against the war in Vietnam, Black American movement leaders experienced increased backlash and persecution become primary targets of American domestic terror campaigns. 

There are implications for choosing to tell the story of McCain’s public life as a lesson in civility, as has been the practice with figures such as Obama and others.  It sounds virtuous and it meets a need for some members of the dominant culture but there is more at stake. There is a day that telling the fuller story of 20th century American colonialism will be part of the day to day work of surviving cultures around the world.  And it may be that having to dismantle the narrative of McCain as a “war hero” that we passively contribute to today, in the future will cost recovering cultures their health, wellness or liberty.  

Students in various parts of the world today that seek to tell the true story and dismantle false narratives about colonizers have faced a growing backlash.  The movement to decolonize campuses in Canada was met with a counter-movement that is working to centre white supremacy and promote explicit discourse that dehumanizes BIPOC communities under the guise of free speech.  Decolonized learning empowers students to draw attention to and transform curriculums that exclude the histories and realities of their communities.  The struggle to decolonize learning is a struggle for space to shape the minds and hearts of BIPOC students and allies in away that will allow them to effectively serve and give back to their recovering cultures and societies.  The counter movements led by the so-called “alt-right/far-right white supremacist” groups are responses that seek to maintain institutions of learning as part of the capitalist projects that uphold global white supremacy.  It is no surprise that relationships are being built between leaders of these movements and politicians who are hostile to racial and social justice.  These past few days in Ontario the Ford government has mandated that all higher-learning institutions put in place “free-speech policies” by January of 2019 or risk losing public funding.  These “free speech policies” so far are being used to provide mobilizing platform to explicit views that call for racist and violent policies against marginalized groups and communities around the world.  Even so, the work of telling the truth about our collective histories and decolonizing spaces of learning continues, because many students around the world believe that legacies of colonizers must fall as we continue to struggle towards upholding the truth about the past and working our future liberation.

[fireleaptfromhousetohouse]

This old cookdandbombd thread is worryingly similar to @slatestarscratchpad‘s ‘Right is the new Left’ (despite a lack of analogies involving cellular automata). Some key quotes:

In a society in  which the establishment is (largely) tolerant, conservatism is the newest form of subversion. My A-level politics group has convinced me about that as much as the current content of most popular comedy.

It seems faux-reactionariness is quite fashionable in journalism too - lots of columnists taking a right-wing stance because it's (a) more original, and (b) the 'realistic' option. Or because it makes them look tough or something. 

It's about distribution of power.  In the old days you didn't do sick humour or political stuff so obviously a whole generation did nothing but that.  What we're seeing is the tail end of the reaction to the "no politics no sick jokes" sentiment of the 70's. White is the new black and all that.

You know when people say The South really won the American Civil War, it just took 200 years. Isn't that true of seventies club comics vs alternative comedy? Except this time it's just waiting 30 years for the paki joke being king again.

It could be simply a case of 'action/reaction' - society tells us (often clumsily) that racism, homophobia, discrimination against the disabled etc are wrong, and so there are those who unthinkingly react against it, wishing to subvert at any costs. This also gives rise to the large amounts of supposedly 'ironical' humour on the subject of race, disability, gender etc...which apparently is intended to mock the right-wing humour which sounds the same to an untrained ear. But for many people who claim their humour is 'ironic', the laughs come for the same reason as that of those Mail-reading bastards - something 'shocking' (or 'non-PC') has been said.

I think the reason why that sort of [offensive] material works in Sadowitz's act is that he's defiantly unheroic.  A misfit.  And that's what comedy should be - people who don't quite fit in.

Morris is 'right-wing' in the Private Eye, Auberon Waugh sense. Anti-government; anti-institution; anti-rules; anti-general consensus. I don't know what his politics are (does he vote Lib Dem?), but I'd hazard a guess at him being vaguely Libertarian, and Libertarianism is often seen as being very right-wing, even though it's anti-facist. I can't see too many jokes about poofs in his work; stuff like 'Gay News' etc. is said in the context, of a faux news room, and the media was once, and still is perhaps, extremely homophobic. But you can argue 'is it serious or not?' all day

And comedy is a worthwhile lens to see the incredibly vague category of the ‘new right’ through, since possibly the only real uniting factor of the alt-right umbrella is comedy. Granted it’s mainly tired old music-hall gags about minority groups (seriously, show the average kek-righter a Bernard Manning tape and it’d blow their minds, or otherwise really piss them off for having stolen all their jokes before the fact), but then rallying around that stuff is a form of traditionalism. Similarly, comedy is the main link between the fairly authoritarian majority of the alt-right and libertarian politics - by nature, they want God-Emperor Trump to sort everything out and get rid of the bad people, but in an immediate way they want to be left alone to tell their terrific joke about the Jews.

The thread moves onto offensive comedy generally, with - just to illustrate how old it is - Timmy from South Park coming in for some debate, and then looking forward Morris’s then-upcoming Four Lions. Which, while very well done, was as the comments pointed out in a very similar vein to the ‘crap jihadis’ sketches in Monkey Dust - compare Shafiq’s mum offering a feast of brand-name foodstuffs to Four Lions’s Omar explaining his terrorist mishaps to his son via a proacted Lion King analogy.

Both are, of course, directed squarely at the al-Qaeda era of Islamic terrorism - Four Lions reveals at the end that Omar accidentally blew up Osama bin Laden, for instance - rather than the current ISIS era, making that feel oddly like an XTREME reboot of the format. But more importantly, both are directed at the home-grown end of Islamic terrorism, what Morris described as a post-7/7 influx of ‘all these guys with a Hovis accent’ in media scaremongering, depicting British-born terrorists with only tentative connections to the fundamentalist Islamic world.

So what I’m getting at is that perhaps there’s some comparison to be made between a young West Bromwich man who wants to blow himself up for the jihad, and a young middle American man who gets all misty-eyed when fantasising about retaking Jerusalem for Christendom or reviving European colonial empires (only this time, of course, in an XTREME way). Granted the alt-right covers plenty of Europeans too, but they have about as much material connection to Cecil Rhodes, Leopold II of Belgium, and the like as our middle American does. It comes squarely back to what @raggedjackscarlet cited as the good side of traditionalism, that ‘here is something worth believing in, if you dare to’ in contrast to modernist nihilism. And really, if society can’t offer anything better than impotent colonialism or not-so-impotent bombing plots, someone has fucked up bad.