It's Time To Overthrow The Colonial Empires (Again)
We can't fight pandemics or climate change under western hegemony. We have to overthrow them.
Climate change, vaccine apartheid, racism, and war are different problems with one cause. Empire. The old colonial empires never disappeared, they just went capitalist. They hid behind borders and institutions but they're still up to the same nefarious shit. The empire struck back, assembled a Death Star of resource extraction and now the whole planet is about to explode. COVID-19 was just a test shot and look how they've spread the disease and left everyone to die. If we don't overthrow them now they're going to finish the job with climate change.
The fact is that we are not going to solve our existential problems through western leadership. They'll give us reports and 'aid' and committments, but they will not change. Their development model was exploitation for hundreds of years and it still is. They keep telling us to 'develop' like them but if we did the Earth would surely melt. We have to overthrow them and chart a new path if we are to survive.
Forget influencing them, forget appealing to their conscience (for they have none). We have to attack and dethrone them. We have to undertake the same non-violent resistance that helped overthrow apartheid and colonialism (there was violence as well) and take them on from a position of strength, what Gandhi called satyagraha, or truth force. Because this is true.
The colonial empires of the US, Europe, and Australia came for our bodies and our land and now they have come for the air, the oceans, and the entire Earth. We do not have time for them to grow a soul. If we do not overthrow these colonial empires again, the Earth as we know it will end.
The Rap Sheet
Before we get to how, why should we overthrow the western empire. I mean, besides the stormtroopers and constant war, let's look at three specific problems humanity has.
- Climate Change
- Vaccine Apartheid
- War
Separate issues of course, but let's look at who is causing them.
1. Climate Change
Over 80% of the responsibility for climate breakdown lies with the US and Europe. Over 90% is with what people call the 'Global North', but as it includes Australia, I'll just call them the global white supremacist minority. For short, 'these assholes'. These assholes were founded on the exploitation of land and people and they have not changed. Their colonial empires spread with massive deforestation, mining, killing and skinning animals, enslaving human beings, shipping, digging, consuming, more, more, more.
Colonial capitalism is a rapacious engine based on always more, more, more. That's what it does. Rich westerners acquire their wealth by taking it from somewhere else, from someone's labor, or from the land. And now the land itself has run out. We have already exceeded our planetary limits. We have already irreversibly warmed the Earth, leading to the destruction of what you could callously call an asset, but what decent people call life as we know it. Anything that grows without end is just cancer, and colonial capitalism has become a cancer upon the Earth.
It didn't stop after colonialism ostensibly fell, and they're still going. Despite the huge climate debt these countries owe the world, despite knowing the cost for years, they're still going. They'll wreck the whole Earth, hide behind their wealth and leave us to die. Just as they are doing with COVID-19.