The West is dead
The myth of the democratic, progressive, enlightened West is revealed to be precisely that — a fairytale we’ve told ourselves for decades, with no basis in truth.
Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (who is already broadly reviled by many on the green island) has suggested that Ireland will not join South Africa in putting charges of genocide against Israel.
He is part of a broader cowardice by Western governments, not a single one of whom has stood up to be counted.
So the Irish turned up in their thousands in Dublin on Saturday 13th to yell:
- Ceasefire now.
- Join South Africa in naming the genocide being perpetuated by Israel.
- Expel the Israeli ambassador.
The fact that Varadkar has refused to do any of this for the past 3 months is inexpressibly infuriating to any human being that has borne witness to the horrors unleashed on innocent civilians by US and Israeli bombs and snipers, but it is especially heart-stopping for the Irish.
You see, there is an unbreakable bond between the Irish and Palestinians. A connected history, a shared trauma, as outlined by Irish musician Blindboy on a Novara Media podcast recently. When the English were done terrorizing and killing the Irish, the Empire sent the Black and Tans on to Mandatory British Palestine to maintain its racist regime there.
And then after the English simply handed the keys over to the Zionists, those “Zios” continued and extended that imperial work — reenacting their own traumas from the Holocaust on the poor Arabs (or goyim as they prefer to call them).
My discussions with friends throughout the ongoing ethnic cleansing and murder have surfaced a recurring, growing sense that we will never be the same again. And our idea of the world we inhabited has been completely rewritten.
Of course, witnessing Israel slaughter thousands of people has been traumatizing, even from safety behind our screens.
But what has really shaken us to the core, and has changed our realities forever, is the full-throated support our leaders have given this genocide. Even as we watched fathers kiss the eyes of their dead daughters, mothers clasp the wrapped little bodies of their infant sons, children shiver uncontrollably with fear and pain on cold hospital floors — our leaders have stood up to say “there’s nothing to see here, and everything is fine”.
We’ve known for some time that our neoliberal representatives value profit over people. There’s a reason that the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to grow, and standards of life for the average citizen continue to drop. We know that our politicians and corporate overlords are in cahoots, working hard to hoard everything and leave nothing for the rest of us. We know that they are only ever moved to action if their capital and power are threatened.
But perhaps never before has the curtain really been so fully drawn to reveal the capitalist war machine beneath, grinding up humanity for profit, as it has throughout this massacre of Palestine. Never before has the industrial military complex been so blatantly indifferent to suffering and depravity.
Because there’s no capital to be found in Gaza. No resources to be exploited, nothing to be drained from the land, to feed the Capitalist Gods.
So our cowardly leaders remain silent or actively support Israel’s “right to defend itself” (there’s no right for an occupying power to defend itself against the occupied natives) — a defence which apparently necessitates the complete eradication of Palestinians.
Germany, in a warped effort to atone for the Holocaust decades ago, has even decided to defend Israel’s right to obliterate thousands, by countering South Africa’s ICJ application. Biden continues to arm Israel with some of the most vicious, cruellest weaponry. The UK, Australia, and others have joined together to bomb Yemen because of disruptions to trade.
But the West — that prides itself on the Enlightenment, scientific advances, proclaiming democracy, and promising progress — will not defend life if it is brown and/or unprofitable.
This is the death of a metanarrative that will resonate for decades to come.
The story we've grown up on - that the West is the zenith of civilization, freedom, humanitarianism, and democracy - is finally crumbling. The curtain has been pulled back, and a snivelling colonial monster is revealed behind it, drunk on money and power.
It will affect how we raise our kids, how we view our education system, how we interact with our legal and political institutions and our civic discourse. It should affect how we vote or if we vote at all, what our activism strives to achieve, and how we consume our media.
And consequently it will (and has already) change our own sense of identity — individually, and collectively. What does it mean to be a Westerner when our leaders show absolutely no regard for our wishes or for human life? What does it mean to belong to the European Union or the United States if that unity only serves to prop up mass murderers? How can we vote in our elections knowing that our elected officials will disregard our wishes when it really counts?
It was only when King Lear was brutally blinded, and was stripped of the protection of his old regal identity to run mad and naked on the “blast’d heath”, that he knew the truth. We have never been so naked before, nor so mad.
