Lodewijk Asscher's Angstpolitiek 8

'It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,' aldus Malcolm X.

Als vicepremier Lodewijk Asscher werkelijk geloofwaardig had willen overkomen dan zou hij de zo vaak door westerse politici geclaimde universele normen en waarden ook daadwerkelijk serieus en universeel hebben moeten toepassen. Maar dat wil de huidige macht niet. Asscher's neoliberale VVD/PVDA-kabinet en de al even neoliberale EU van 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel' zetten alles op alles om het huidige failliete bestel zo lang mogelijk te laten overleven, ten koste van de mens en de natuur. En als de PVDA-er het internationaal recht en de moraliteit wel zou willen respecteren, dan nog zijn er bondgenoot Washington met het militair-industrieel complex, en, last but not least, zijn zionistische vrienden, waar dan ook. 

Om nog eens haarscherp aan te geven in welke wereld wij leven, citeer ik de vooraanstaande Amerikaanse journalist Chris Hedges, die 15 jaar lang buitenland correspondent is geweest van de 's werelds beroemdste krant de New York Times. Op de kritische Amerikaanse website Truthdig van zondag 1 februari 2015  schreef hij het volgende:

NEW YORK — Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation—which he said were a sham—and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. He, perhaps better than King, understood the inner workings of empire. He had no hope that those who managed empire would ever get in touch with their better selves to build a country free of exploitation and injustice. He argued that from the arrival of the first slave ship to the appearance of our vast archipelago of prisons and our squalid, urban internal colonies where the poor are trapped and abused, the American empire was unrelentingly hostile to those Frantz Fanon called 'the wretched of the earth.' This, Malcolm knew, would not change until the empire was destroyed.

'It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,' Malcolm said. 'Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.'

King was able to achieve a legal victory through the civil rights movement, portrayed in the new film 'Selma.' But he failed to bring about economic justice and thwart the rapacious appetite of the war machine that he was acutely aware was responsible for empire’s abuse of the oppressed at home and abroad. And 50 years after Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem by hit men from the Nation of Islam, it is clear that he, not King, was right. We are the nation Malcolm knew us to be. Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed.

'Sometimes, I have dared to dream… that one day, history may even say that my voice—which disturbed the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency—that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even fatal catastrophe,' Malcolm wrote.

The integration of elites of color, including Barack Obama, into the upper echelons of institutional and political structures has done nothing to blunt the predatory nature of empire. Identity and gender politics—we are about to be sold a woman president in the form of Hillary Clinton—have fostered, as Malcolm understood, fraud and theft by Wall Street, the evisceration of our civil liberties, the misery of an underclass in which half of all public school children live in poverty, the expansion of our imperial wars and the deep and perhaps fatal exploitation of the ecosystem. And until we heed Malcolm X, until we grapple with the truth about the self-destruction that lies at the heart of empire, the victims, at home and abroad, will mount. Malcolm, like James Baldwin, understood that only by facing the truth about who we are as members of an imperial power can people of color, along with whites, be liberated. This truth is bitter and painful. It requires an acknowledgment of our capacity for evil, injustice and exploitation, and it demands repentance. But we cling like giddy children to the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. We refuse to grow up. And because of these lies, perpetrated across the cultural and political spectrum, liberation has not taken place. Empire devours us all.

'We’re anti-evil, anti-oppression, anti-lynching,' Malcolm said. 'You can’t be anti-those things unless you’re also anti-the oppressor and the lyncher. You can’t be anti-slavery and pro-slavemaster; you can’t be anti-crime and pro-criminal. In fact, Mr. Muhammad teaches that if the present generation of whites would study their own race in the light of true history, they would be anti-white themselves.'

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/malcolm_x_was_right_about_america_20150201 

Willen we de werkelijkheid beschrijven dan dienen we eerlijk te zijn, allereerst tegenover onszelf en vervolgens tegenover de anderen. Het huidige neoliberale kapitalisme heeft een parasitaire cultuur gecreëerd die het voortbestaan van de mensheid ernstig bedreigt. Het huidige economische en financiële systeem kan alleen overleven in een geglobaliseerde vorm waarbij het gewelddadige kapitalisme, onder aanvoering van de Verenigde Staten, 'unrelentingly hostile' is

to those Frantz Fanon called 'the wretched of the earth.' This, Malcolm knew, would not change until the empire was destroyed.

Het is

impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,' Malcolm said. 'Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.'

Vandaag de dag zijn wij getuige van de onvermijdelijke ineenstorting van het onverzadigbare westerse materialisme dat de wereld terugbrengt tot één grote markt van koop en verkoop, en in dit proces alles dat niet bruikbaar en efficiënt is degradeert of uit de weg ruimt. Zo is een meedogenloze 'samenleving' ontstaan, waaraan een politicus als Lodewijk Asscher een, volgens eigen zeggen, 'heilig geloof' hecht. Dit is niet verwonderlijk, aangezien in een ontheiligde werkelijkheid alleen nog geld en geweld heilig zijn. Het gevolg is dat de geloofwaardigheid van zowel 'democratische' politici als de 'vrije pers' minimaal is. De westerse burger weet maar al te goed belogen en bedrogen te worden door degenen die zich opwerpen als de redders van het vaderland, terwijl de armen, zeker de gekleurde, de rekening betalen. Malcolm X had gelijk: 'only by facing the truth about who we are as members of an imperial power can people of color, along with whites, be liberated.' Zo niet, dan geldt: 'Empire devours us all.' Daarom is het van zo'n groot belang om, in de woorden van James Baldwin uit 1963:

To accept one's past -- one's history -- is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

Maar deze wijsheid dringt niet door tot de botte opvattingen van de economische en politieke macht en haar spreekbuizen in de commerciële massamedia. Bij gebrek aan enig alternatief blijven ze zich met een verbijsterende onnozelheid vastklampen aan de neoliberale ideologie. Misschien wel de allerergsten zijn de voormalige sociaaldemocraten en de vroegere marxisten die inmiddels het kapitalisme integraal hebben geadopteerd, inclusief zijn geschiedschrijving. Vandaar dat de mainstream de feiten verzwijgt die bijvoorbeeld de Amerikaanse auteur, filmmaker en journalist André Vltchek opsomt in zijn boek On Western Terrorism. From Hiroshima to drone warfare (2013). Met betrekking tot The Murderous Legacy of Colonialism schreef hij:

Between 50 and 55 million people have died around the world as a result of Western colonialism and neocolonialism since the end of World War II. This relatively short period has arguably seen the greatest number of massacred in human history. Most of them were performed in the name of lofty slogans such as freedom and democracy. A handful of European nations and those governed mainly by citizens of European descent have been advancing Western interests -- the interests of the people who ‘matter’ -- against those of the great majority of humanity. The slaughter of millions has been accepted and seen as inevitable and even justifiable. And the great majority of the Western public appears to be frighteningly badly informed.

Along with the 55 million or so people killed as a direct result of wars initiated by the West, pro-Western military coups and other conflicts, hundreds of millions have died indirectly, in absolute misery, and silently. Such global arrangements are rarely challenged in the West, and even in the conquered world it is often accepted without opposition. Has the world gone mad?

De Nederlandse mainstream media zwijgen erover. Sterker nog: ze presenteren hun westerse cultuur als het best denkbare voorbeeld voor de hele mensheid. André Vltchek:

When Columbus landed in the Western hemisphere, there were probably 80-100 million people with advanced civilizations: commerce, cities, etc. Not long afterwards about 95 percent of the population had disappeared. In what is now the territory of the United States, there were maybe ten million or so Native Americans, but by 1900, according to the census, there were 200.000 in the country. But all of this is denied. In the leading intellectual, left-liberal journals in the Anglo-American world, it’s simply denied… casually and with no comment.

According to the medical journal The Lancet, six million children die every year from lack of elementary medical procedures, which could be provided at virtually no cost. The number is all to familiar. Malnutrition and easily treatable diseases kill 8000 children in Southern Africa alone every day: Rwanda level, but every day. And easily ended.

And we are moving toward what may in fact be the ultimate genocide -- the destruction of the environment. And this is barely being addressed; in fact, the United States is going backwards on it. In the U.S. there is now euphoria about the possibility that we may have a hundred years of energy independence as a result of sophisticated techniques of extraction of fossil fuels, that this will preserve American hegemony for another century, that we will become the Saudi Arabia of the world, and so on. President Obama spoke about it enthusiastically in his 2012 State of the Union address.

Een van de meest beangstigende feiten is daardoor, zoals Vltchek stelt, dat de gevolgen op langere termijn worden genegeerd door de commerciële massamedia die nagenoeg geen aandacht besteden aan 

the question of what the world is going to look like in a hundred years if we proceed with this. Thats is not discussed. Now these are very fundamental problems. They are kind of intrinsic in the market-oriented societies, where you do not consider what we call externalities. Things that don't enter into any particular transaction, those that affect others: that is not considered. 

Op grond van de historische feiten kan de conclusie alleen maar zijn dat 

After the centuries of plunder, rape and occupations, the West has no mandate to govern the world.

Omdat de westerse macht evenwel een eigen virtuele werkelijkheid heeft geschapen, en met geweld wereldwijd een systeem opdwingt dat door C. Wright Mills al een halve eeuw geleden werd gekarakteriseerd als 'rationality without reason,' menen westerse politici  dat ze meer van hetzelfde kunnen doen, en zien we een voortdurende herhaling van domme zetten. Een van de grote gevaren vloeit voort uit het feit dat de sociaaldemocraten met hun falend neoliberaal beleid alles in het werk zullen stellen om hun macht te consolideren. Ze zullen alles verkopen nu bijvoorbeeld het laatste beetje geloofwaardigheid van de neoliberale PVDA dreigt te worden weggevaagd door de Griekse Syriza-regering. Als die erin slaagt om een alternatief te scheppen, hoe gebrekkig ook, voor de neoliberale dictatuur dan is het helemaal bekeken met de voormalige sociaaldemocraten. Ze beseffen dit als geen ander, getuige de opmerkingen van partijleider Diederik Samsom, die niet de commerciële banken als zijn grote tegenstander ziet, maar de Griekse socialisten. Op 27 januari 2015 liet hij zijn achterban weten dat

Het economische beleid van de nieuwe Griekse regering wordt misschien niet eens onze grootste zorg,

nadat hij eerst de Griekse regering had proberen te stigmatiseren als 

Een coalitie met een nationalistische, anti-semitische, xenofobe, homofobe partij 

Het is een treurige illustratie van hoe doorslaggevend het voor de PVDA is om haar dienstbaarheid aan het neoliberalisme te tonen. Zij laat liever de almaar groeiende kloof tussen rijk en arm toenemen, en is bereid een oorlog te riskeren met Rusland, dan dat zij de -- in haar ogen -- 'extreem-linkse' Syriza-regering een kans geeft. De Brusselse kadaverdiscipline vereist dat allen in de pas blijven lopen, en daarom is volgens de lichtelijk hysterische Samsom 'Een blokkade van eensgezind EU antwoord op Russische Agressie' een imperatief. 

In Nederland zit de bevolking opgescheept met regeringspartijen die als er nu verkiezingen zouden zijn zullen worden gedecimeerd. De kloof tussen het politieke beleid en de publieke opinie is niet meer te dichten. Hoe erg de PVDA de Griekse regering ook zal trachten te criminaliseren, het zal haar niet helpen. Het meest fundamentele probleem is dat de partij geen alternatief weet te bieden, omdat zij geen intellectuele kracht bezit. Asscher en Samsom zijn  politieke lichtgewichten, die er goed aan zouden doen om de geschiedenis te bestuderen in plaats van doortrapte politieke spelletjes te spelen ten koste van jonge islamitische Nederlanders of de onbevreesde intellectuelen van Syriza. Ze zouden Slavoj Žižek's betoog in het Britse politiek-culturele tijdschrift de New Statesman van 10 januari 2015 kunnen lezen. Hij wijst op het volgende:

the rise of Fascism is the Left’s failure, but simultaneously a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, dissatisfaction, which the Left was not able to mobilize… 

So what about the core values of liberalism: freedom, equality, etc.? The paradox is that liberalism itself is not strong enough to save them against the fundamentalist onslaught. Fundamentalism is a reaction – a false, mystifying, reaction, of course - against a real flaw of liberalism, and this is why it is again and again generated by liberalism. Left to itself, liberalism will slowly undermine itself – the only thing that can save its core values is a renewed Left. In order for this key legacy to survive, liberalism needs the brotherly help of the radical Left. THIS is the only way to defeat fundamentalism, to sweep the ground under its feet…

What Max Horkheimer had said about Fascism and capitalism already back in 1930s - those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep quiet about Fascism - should also be applied to today’s fundamentalism: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism.

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/01/slavoj-i-ek-charlie-hebdo-massacre-are-worst-really-full-passionate-intensity 

PVDA versus Syriza. De neoliberalen versus de socialisten. Samsom's spel is afgelopen, hoe erg hij ook zal fulmineren tegen links.

Vicepremier Asscher, die wel herhaaldelijk het islamitisch terrorisme bekritiseert, maar niet de zionistische terreur van Israel, zoals die door de Joods-Israelische mensenrechtenorganisatie B'Tselem hieronder wederom gedocumenteerd aan de kaak wordt gesteld.

Soldaten van de bevriende staat Israel, die elke dag weer de Palestijnse bevolking in bezet Palestijns gebied terroriseren.

	B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
	Dear Friends, It’s been five months since the end of Israel’s most recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip, dubbed Operation Protective Edge. Day after day, throughout the operation, B’Tselem received reports of entire families being bombed in their own homes. One report succeeded another, and yet another. When the fighting ceased, we focused on careful probes of those horrendous incidents. Our field researchers in the Gaza Strip met with survivors and sent our data department in Jerusalem the material they had gathered: witness accounts, photographs, death certificates and other documents. We meticulously examined each item, cross-checking and corroborating all data. B’Tselem’s work on these cases was harder than ever. For one thing, gathering official documents from people who just lost their homes posed practical considerable hurdles. Those, however, pale in comparison to the dissonance resulting from the juxtaposition of the horror as disclosed in the material with the need to carefully and dispassionately examine every point of detail, including pressing for answers from people who are doing everything in their power to survive after having lost their nearest and dearest, their homes, and all their belongings. Seventy of the cases we documented served as the basis for our new report. We chose to include only cases in which three or more people were killed in an attack on a home, a total of over 600 fatalities, at least 70% of whom apparently did not take part in the fighting. These attacks were not carried out on the whim of individual soldiers, pilots or commanders in the field. They are the result of a policy formulated by top government officials and the senior military command, who permitted the attacks to continue even after the horrifying consequences became clear. The report reviews the moral and legal implications of this policy. Noa Tal, Data Department Director