During my time as a Green I tried to have conversations with fellow members that were expressly anti-capitalist. And in my local black organizing community I tried to have similar conversations that always stop short of imperialism and straight to capitalism and stays there. Black people in the US should be talking about how US imperialism has stolen our self-determining destinies. As we witness a spark across the world right now during a global pandemic protests against the death of George Floyd. The police have been used to enforce imperialism on the people who it intends to dominate. Replacing a foreign military with an internal force to maintain the status quo and their power.
This week I searched the internet again for any writing on American Imperialism and there is very little. I'm sure that makes imperialists very happy we're not talking about them. Then this weekend I found a chapter in a textbook. The Age of Imperialism (1870-1914 was eye-opening and connected a lot of dots for me. Imperialism is the force we are fighting without an articulation for it.
Imperialism
Domination of a country or people
over another group of people
Western countries in the earlier 1800's, Great Britain (UK), France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium and the US, used cultural imperialism of white, Christian superiority over foreign nations and superior military to steal human capital and natural resources to benefit their economies. Their giants of industry. Imperialism is an ideology that an entire economy benefits a small group of capitalists. Imperialists use capitalism for cheap labor and cheap materials. The oligarchy are the imperialists! They have unlimited access to capital because of hundreds of years of oppression and corruption.
Imperialists are not just satisfied to sell us useful things we need. No! They are greedy! They have to learn new ways to sell us things we don't need. Even if those things kill us. Or destroy the earth.
Our imperialism is no longer the "white man's burden" but his greed. Neo-imperialism does not have the rhetoric of converting "savages" into Christians. It is strictly for profit, power and influence. In reality it has always been and remains about controlling economics but not among Kings and Queens now it is white oligarchs controlling the government and policy.
The United States is in the beginning of an uprising that sparked the world to join. Why? Neo-imperialism impacts all foreign policy. Of course the world can understand Black America collectively chanting, "I CAN'T BREATHE" because the world can't breathe when all policies are made to enrich a few imperialist oligarchs. We need a new nationalism that values black, indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQI, and poor people the same way neo-imperialism values rich, CIS, white males and all those proximal to him. A solidarity coalition is needed to replace the white supremacy and patriarchy that dominates our lives now.
Neo-imperialism crushes craft industries and small business with it's stranglehold on capital and its distribution. It caused an outrage when the corporations sucked up the Paycheck Protection Program money but was the perfect example of how neo-imperialism operates.
It's time to become realists and name the system that is ultimately influencing and oppressing the global system. American Imperialism. All the countries and people that maintain it should be on our agendas going forward. Identify the forces that protect it's sphere of influence to benefit their own individual proximity to power.
We can have our conversations about capitalism. But when we will talk about imperialism? The new imperialism put a stranglehold on capitalism, much the same way the US did to Reconstruction. The perversion of their influence paying slave-owners and not the enslaved. Creating apprenticeships to replace the free labor from before the Civil War. When capitalism was working for the black community in Tulsa, neo-imperialism fueled the white mob to burn the city to the ground.
While conventional wisdom has stated capitalism is the highest form of imperialism, I say capitalism has been used by imperialists to maintain their power and wealth into the hands of the few. If we fight against imperialism's influence, especially in the United States, we will set markets free to work for the people. We will see discrimination end because what upholds white supremacy and patriarchy is neo-imperialism.
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