Decolonize This…
Context: A Couple days ago, a Facebook friend posted this meme
And I responded to it, stating that it is an overgeneralization regarding western societies and indigenous ones, and that several European societies do have extensive periods of grieving (I mean, have you seen a Bergman movie?) and that the meme is misleading. This guy initially responded thanks for the information and I figured he’d move on, and THEN, he proceeded to tag me in multiple IG and Facebook posts calling upon me to “decolonize my mind”, so I privately messaged him to invite him to have a real dialogue about the subject, which he ignored. He then did a whole post about Columbus Day and indigenous activism and called me out directly as somehow being, well, I’m not sure, pro-Western maybe? It was unclear, so I invited him again, this time publicly, to have a discussion with me, which he again ignored, and then today, a friend of his decided to jump in, with him cheering them on, and I thought, ok, I have to respond to this bullshit.
Additional background: The friend is a psychiatrist and veteran and artist, who until this horseshit, I really respected. Myself, I’m an artist and a veteran and a technician and man of many hats. I also have a bachelor’s in Spanish Studies and History, and history is a major passion of mine, as is the Spanish speaking world. I’m also a Marxist and a Puerto Rican independentista. The friend is also a progressive Puerto Rican.
My Response: I don’t usually respond to posts like yours, which is hard because every artist on social media these days is inclined to be an activist and voice to change the world and posts daily, or close to it, memes and rants and whatnot about their beliefs. I have done this too from time to time, but I try to pick and choose because, to be frank, I think online activism is virtue-signaling, narcissistic bullshit.
Posting memes or doing social media rants or tweets do not change the world. They affect media because every journalist is on Twitter, but even journalists admit that Twitter isn’t representative of the world and that it might be destroying journalism. The internet is and has always been, a godsend for cowards who want to be sassy, seem wise and knowledgeable, seem strong and defiant, when in reality, they’d never talk in real life the way they do online. This is true for people across the political spectrum, and true of the guy who had no problem spamming my inbox and making derisive posts of me but refused to respond to my direct messages.
And online activism is more of the same, you get to post things that impress your friends, get you likes and praise, and if someone disagrees with your take, you and your friends can take them down in a flurry of moralistic virtue with righteous conviction. And you can do it without having to say any of your vitriol directly to your target. So brave.
But let’s not forget the origin of all of this. Why did I seemingly defend Europeans against indigenous people? Am I a white supremacist? Am I colonized western-loving sheep who has bought the lies of the white patriarchy? Am I racist against indigenous people, who after all, are the noble saints of world history, who have never done anything wrong? Don’t you know that Europeans, and ONLY Europeans, are evil and without any redeemable qualities, and have contributed nothing to the world but bloodshed and pain while indigenous people have only suffered, and wept, and been punished for their perfection, which is why they pray for their enemies, using their sacred connection to all of nature to find peace and solace in spite of their constant suffering and agony. Indigenous people need to be held, and defended, and loved, and praised, for all they have sacrificed!
Before I answer such a dramatic charge, let me tell you about a movement in the 19th century, wherein well-meaning white British men, and later, white American men, embarked on this thing called “White Man’s Burden”, which argued that black people were not savage brutes, but merely human beings who had not had the privilege to grow up in civilized society, and that it was up to white people to civilize blacks so they could join modern society. The people who adhered to this belief were, at the time, considered progressive (which considering the time period, makes sense, but shows how low the bar was). While today, “White’s Man’s Burden” is seen as a patronizing, passively racist idea because it supposed that black people, by nature, lack civilization, and can only be civilized if they adhere to western norms, I would and will argue that the liberal online activism of today does the same thing, and indigenous people are the new Magical Negro.
Recently, a movie called Exterminate All the Brutes was released, that looks at the colonial period in the Americas and Africa in order to make a statement about the structural foundations and systems of white supremacy. I watched the trailer, and I suggest you do to. It seems like a provocative movie, but like I was telling a friend of mine, it bothers me that, in the trailer at least, the depiction of African and indigenous people as rural people with iron age technology, and that seemingly nothing was going in those continents at the time, supported a notion I have noticed amongst liberals, especially black and brown activists, who have adopted not only the perspective that Europeans are evil but that African and American societies pre-Columbus were ethereal, simple, peaceful, and lacked urbanization or advanced technology. This is historically inaccurate, but is necessary if you want to simply go from mythologizing white people to mythologizing black and brown people. The real story is messier, darker, and much harder to cheer. The American left today is a group of people who like their idols to be peaceful, virtuous, and above reproach. It is a left that emphasizes peaceful protest and contained anger. It is a left obsessed with moral superiority. It is also a left with a wholly American-centric take on everything, which leads to hypocrisy like bashing all things western civilization related but loving western-style democracy and western-developed vaccines, and promoting the American Dream, especially when it comes to immigrants. But then you turn around and say fuck whitey this and fuck whitey that, while you’re serving the system whitey set up the whole time. You aren’t calling for the destruction of the US, or black nationalism. You hate white people when it’s convenient, and makes you look good to your friends.
To put it simply, I think indigenous people are dehumanized by the left by making them saints, instead of having the full spectrum of human assholery and human kindness. Chicanos, for instance, idolize Aztec clothes, art, and architecture, but conveniently leave out all the human sacrifice (including of children) and enslavement of the Mayans to build their pyramids. The Incans, who I vote for as the best medieval society in the world even with its faults, had a road system to rival the Romans, armor that was so strong the Spaniards used it to fight them (so much for the Spaniards being more technologically advanced), and they had a food preservation system that allowed an empire that was almost the size of Rome to have irradicated hunger — BUT — if you stood up against the Incan government, you would be sent away to what we’d now call re-education camps, and if you did something the government perceived as traitorous, your entire family would be rounded up, killed in front of you, and then you’d be torn limb from limb and left to bleed to death. The Aztec and Incan societies were complex, and had a mix of good and bad. What we know of the great Mississippian societies is that they had enormous wealth inequality and what we’d now view as an authoritarian government. Historically, this isn’t unique, and the time in history when these societies existed, they were comparable to kingdoms around the world, but if we can look at Old World civilizations in all their complexity, why can’t we do the same with indigenous people? Racism and colonialism does a lot of bad things, but I would say one of the worst consequences of those things is that white people get to be both Hitler and Albert Einstein, while for brown and black people, they can only be one or the other.
If we are going to make a real progressive argument in support of a community, we need to stop treating that community as too traumatized, too oppressed, to be looked at critically. Activists, particularly online ones, want to treat every “marginalized” community like a beaten up puppy that needs its soothing and protection. First of all, stop calling mine or anyone else’s community marginalized. It makes us sound like victims and unfortunately, we ourselves play into being victims far too much just to get noticed. I get it, it’s easy to get sympathy that way. But maybe I wanna be able to fuck up some public property and punch a cop and you still think I’m a human being. You know, like a white guy would do. If you can find humanity in Hannibal Lector, you can find humanity in a gang banger. A lot of these online discussions and memes and whatnot, act like anyone who isn’t a white straight person has thin skin and can’t take shit, and that’s insulting. Stop the virtue signaling and hand holding, and stop feeling sorry for non-white people. We have great culture, great arts, great jokes, and great community. We don’t need to be like white people to be happy, they need to be like us, that’s why they stole a bunch of our shit. But I’m not gonna ignore the black and brown assholes and tyrants of the world either. We got some evil on our side too because we are human, and humans are fucked up.
But if you’re gonna make a blanket statement just to seem like you’re virtuous and all wise, back it up with some knowledge, and conviction for something other than your own ego-boost. That’s all I’m saying.