xenophobia

What is the Significance of the UK leaving the EU?

~ Roger JG Albert

What is the Significance of Britain leaving the EU?

 

Not much in the long term. In the short term, there will be some consequences, but probably not many for ordinary folks. Nobody’s going to war over this one although the political map may see some ‘adjustments’. One might argue that this is just a slight correction, a reminder to the 1% and to finance capital that globalization will not be an easy, carefree ride into a glorious future of one world for the benefit of capital accumulation. There will be push back by the people negatively affected by globalization, especially the poor and those workers who can easily be replaced by automated machines.

 

The European Union is just one of several political structures that, at least in political and financial terms, override countries and their sovereignty. But there is a whole new level of organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that has been messing with national sovereignty for decades in the name of securing the free flow of capital and labour in increasingly global markets. When the World Bank can impose austerity measures and structural adjustment programs on countries who have borrowed money from the WB and are having trouble paying it back, you know that national sovereignty is on borrowed time.

 

That said, countries come and go. Nothing is permanent in our world. There was no Canada before 1867 and Newfoundland was a British colony until 1948 when it voted by a squeaker of a margin to join Canada. The UK used to have a vast empire spanning the globe. Not so much anymore. Now it seems Brits want to pull back into insularity but they can’t hope to get their empire back. Get their country back? Hardly, because they never actually had control of it. Parliament, voting, elections, politicians are there to draw attention away from the real action and that happens behind closed doors in corporate boardrooms everywhere. There is no democracy in finance. Money knows no borders. Democracy is for us, and is meant to give us the impression that we have some control over our lives. Of course, sometimes people take that impression very seriously and Brexit is a consequence of that. In the long term, Brexit won’t change anything. In the short term, things can get ugly especially with people like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump fanning the flames of popular discontent.

 

Obviously, the ‘leave’ side tapped into a well of discontent among voters. Globalization is changing everything for everybody and the changes are not always comfortable or beneficial to a majority of the population. Employment insecurity tops the long list of grievances that many ‘ordinary’ people feel when their jobs disappear and seem to reappear in China or somewhere else, given to workers who make a fraction of what British, European or North American workers made in the presumed glory days of rapid industrial expansion after World War II erasing important gains in worker safety and security won by unions everywhere. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher rode out of the West to change all of that to launch decades of austerity for workers in ‘developed’ countries. Voters are looking for people to blame for their waning fortunes and are finding them in visible minorities, immigrants, especially from the Middle East and former British colonies and everybody else that isn’t what some consider ‘purely’ British and, of course, China, India and other countries which are presumably ‘stealing’ good British jobs. The ‘other’ is blamed for just about everything. Don’t be surprised by that. Outraged maybe, surprised, not.

 

Discontent due to disenfranchisement can often lead to conflict and violence given the ‘right’ leadership. Britain has had its share of violence and public insurrection over the centuries. We could end up with more of the same.

 

The EU is a highly visible and present symbol of globalization and consolidation of power in the hands of global finance capital. What better target for popular hatred? It stands for everything older Brits seem to be feeling pissed off about, but globalization is not going away any time soon, nor is the creation of larger and larger political units like the EU and organizations of global management organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Work will continue to be moved around the globe as corporations look for cheaper and cheaper sources of labour and resources. No, leaving the EU will not mean an end to globalization for the UK.

 

That said, human beings live in communities, not in global organizations and labour for most people means employment in local enterprises or government (education, health care, etc.). As I noted above, a consequence of globalization is the disappearance of steady, predictable, good paying jobs, especially for people whose jobs can easily be automated. When we see our communities attacked by austerity measures and global ‘structural adjustment programs’ we get angry. The EU, as a political unit, represents distance and is seen as anti-democratic and it is. The EU is a mechanism for securing the ascendency of finance capital, but it had better be careful not to piss off people who live locally and don’t think globally. It’s hard to convince a bloke who just saw his factory job of 20 years disappear and re-appear in China two months later that globalization is a good thing. For him or her, it’s not. So there is push back.

 

Part of the push back will be in the form of popular unrest and violence. At the political level, there will be lots of re-negotiating to do as the UK leaves the EU, but at the local level, there may be random acts of violence, but there are some promising developments that should at least get the attention of global capital and that’s the movement to greater and greater local autonomy and control over food supplies, power generation, waste management and social services. People may not get their countries back, but they may, over the long term, get more local control as technologies present opportunities for greater local autonomy.

 

We are in a period of transition when global capital has proven itself capable of exploiting every part of the globe. I think we are getting close to the end times of the glory days of capitalist expansion when profit margins inexorably diminish because there are no longer cheaper workers to be found or resources become too expensive to exploit and when markets are flooded with consumer products that are increasingly at the margins of utility and no longer producing the satisfaction we all seek in our lives.

 

That means the opportunities will abound for us in our communities to get creative in finding local solutions to some of our most pressing problems while we connect to the rest of the world on the internet and create communities there as well, communities of ideas and mutual help that don’t imply direct political involvement or control.

I think Brexit is a wakeup call for capital. That is certainly true, but we must find in it a resolve not to descend into xenophobia, racism, brutish nationalism and violence while seeking solutions to problems in our lives for ourselves, by ourselves, ironically using the tools global capital has so generously provided us. We must resist the urge to blame and scapegoat and instead turn our attention to our communities creating in them the means of living meaningful lives.

 

 

Deep down, are we all racist?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Deep down, are we all racist and xenophobic?

In my last two posts I wrote about a book by Dom Benoit published in 1904 about the Catholic missions in the mid 19th Century in the Canadian West.  The book is a biography of Mgr. Taché, second archbishop of St. Boniface (1853-1894).

Was I unfair in singling them out for a special call-out for being racist?  Yes and no.

It’s pretty obvious that the missionaries understood that the indigenous peoples of the area were human, but that they were significantly different from themselves, especially in the fact that they weren’t ‘children of God.’ The derogatory manner in which they describe indigenous peoples, especially plains peoples, would immediately label them racist in most people’s books.

Their mission’s objective was to make ‘savages’ into ‘children of God’. They may have thought they had accomplished that by baptizing as mahy as possible, but that apparently still didn’t make them equal to white folk in the eyes of Canadian governments, all of which had institutionally racist practices and values regarding indigenous people. There is no doubt that Sir John A. Macdonald’s government was racist to the core. It’s hard not to conclude that most Canadian governments over the decades, both federal and provincial have been racist. Their policies prove it, the Indian Act proves it, all their actions prove it.

So, along with the missionaries of the mid 19th Century, are they special in their racism? Are governments racist, along with a few bad individuals, or are we all racist, deep down? Some of us may deny it vehemently, but the impetus, the imperative, the drive to characterize ‘other’ groups of people and their institutions as inferior or undeserving because of some national or group trait is pervasive. Can we avoid being racist and xenophobic? Can we avoid labelling groups (gender, age, colour, etc.) and nations with sweeping generalizations that deny human individuality and capacity for free thought?

The short answer is that I think we can, but it takes a lot of effort and thought. It means letting go of a lot of ‘isms’ some of which we love dearly, like patriotism.

If we believe that our society, our way of life is the greatest thing on earth, it makes it difficult to just accept others as they are and not to try to convince them, by ideology or coercion, that they should change. The Catholic missionaries of the Canadian West obviously thought that their religious beliefs and practices were the only ones that could lead to salvation, that is to eternal life in the presence of God. It seems to me that they would feel a holy obligation to try to ‘convert’ as many ‘savages’ as possible to save them from being condemned to an eternity in pergatory or hell. One could argue that their drive to ‘save’ the indigenous people is no different from a compulsion we might have to pull someone out of the way of a speeding train in order to save their lives. It’s just something ya gotta do.

So, yes, if we feel we have the only road to heaven, or to salvation, the good life, prosperity or whatever you might want to call it, it’s hard not to want to share it or conversely, to prove to others that ours is a superior way by kicking their asses just to prove it. If, however, we can express some humility in the face of the diversity of human (and other) life on this planet, we can begin to overcome prejudice and ignorance. It’s not easy and it’s not even likely to happen on any scale until the structural and historical conditions in place currently on the planet that make prejudice and ignorance possible and even inevitable are still dominant. 

My rant here is not intended to make you feel guilty or bad because you may harbour secret prejudices or make sweeping generalizations about people. It’s more of an invitation to humility and to critical thought about your world and how it works.

If you ever get a chance, watch a 2003 documentary film called Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality. It does a beautiful job in visually summarizing my argument above. You can do that, or you can rummage around the archives on my blog to find references to Ernest Becker’s work Escape From Evil. The film is based on his work.

Savages Among Saints.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Years ago while rummaging through a used book store in Victoria I ran across and bought a two volume biography of the archbishop of St. Boniface, Manitoba who was installed in 1853. His term ended with his death in 1894. The biography was written by Dom Benoit, Superior of the Regular Canons of the Immaculate Conception of Canada after 1894 and was published in 1904. Dom Benoit’s story is worthy of a blog post in and of itself but his recounting of the life of Mgr. Taché is truly monumental, running to over 1400 pages. Much of it is based on Taché’s letters and reports but Benoit’s research is far-ranging and comprehensive. Of course this isn’t a critical biography. It’s definitely written by someone who admired and respected his subject. Still, the work that went into producing this work is impressive.

That said, when I first opened the pages of La Vie de Mgr Taché, Archevêque de St-Boniface I was struck by the narrative’s accounts of travelling long distances in birch bark canoes with very few of the comforts most of us would find necessary on a modern camping trip. It was about how saintly and long-suffering the missionaries were. I was also struck by the depictions of the First Nations people the missionaries encountered on their travels. They were at best condescending and at worse blatantly racist towards them. But, it’s complicated. We should not feel superior to the missionaries Dom Benoit follows in his narrative. In fact, the default setting in our relations with people we encounter in the world who are not like us is racism and/or xenophobia. It’s the rare person in our culture who can see beyond the blanket prejudgments of others that is pervasive in our workplaces, our communities, our playgrounds, our restaurants and our homes. Beyond the overt racism,which I expected, in the excerpt you are about to read , there is another message that I found even more interesting.

First, read the following:

From: Vie de Monseigneur Taché, Archevêque de St. Boniface by Dom Benoit, Superior of the Regular Canons of the Immaculate Conception of Canada. Published in a limited edition by the Librairie Bauchemin, Montréal, Québec, 1904.

On page 44, Benoit quotes a book by Mgr Laflèche the title of which is Etat général des Missions de la Rivière Rouge.  This is the text in my translation. It’s not clear when this quotation was written but it was around 1850.

“From the moral point of view, a distinction must be made between  the woods and the prairie savages. The prairie savages, who are the Blackfoot, the Assiniboine, the Cree and a large part of the Saulteux, are the worse type and I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that these people occupy the lowest rung of the human ladder. This state of degeneration and wickedness derives from their way of life; they can be found in large camps of 60 to 80 lodges and often more, and they lead a wandering and lazy existence following the innumerable herds of bison that feed and clothe them. When we witness the disgusting lives of these savages we understand that the penance of toil imposed upon man by his sin has been for his happiness and not for his misfortune…If the prairie tribes have become the bilge of all the vices that degrade man, that is, when theft, murder and everywhere terrible debauchery have become daily practice for a large number of these barbarians, it is because work is unknown to them.”

Benoit continues:

“The woods savages, who are the Montagnais, some Cree, Maskegons and Sauteux, have a way of life much different from the former. The poor quality of the lands they occupy forces them to live apart from each other and the land is sparsely populated: on first coming to this land one would be tempted to believe that mankind had yet to settle since there is so little evidence of its presence. They do not have, like the former, herds of bison to feed them when they are hungry or to clothe them when they are cold. They prey on somewhat rare and wary deer. They sometimes fall upon roaming herds of cariboo, but it takes time and patience to kill one. Fishing in certain rivers also offers them a resource to fend off hunger. It is such that these nations must live a much more active existence than the others if they do not wish to disappear. It is rare to find more than two or three families together and these families are always related to one another. It is to this active and remote existence that we must attribute the different morals between the woods and the plains savages. They are generally at peace with the world, are horrified at the thought of theft and murder, just like white people. Although they practice polygamy they are nowhere near as debauched at the others and we do not encounter crimes against nature as is evident on the plains.”

Alright, so it’s obvious the writers have no time for the plains nations. They are much more sympathetic towards the woods nations. Why? Well, according to them, the plains nations are idle, ‘lazy’ and indolent. They (only applying to the men, of course) only ‘work’ intermittently when in need of food or clothing. The woods nations on the other hand had to work hard to make a living.  Their lives were not easy. Laflèche’s argument, echoed by Benoit, is that the problem with the plains ‘savages’ is that they didn’t understand that their fate for original sin was toil. According to the Bible, when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, what was their fate? They now had to work for a living. Apparently the plains people just didn’t get the memo. Their bad.

It’s easy to argue that the writers here are racist, but John A. Macdonald, the first Canadian Prime Minister said some equally racist things about aboriginal people many times and completely unapologetically. So did my parents, and they are not exceptional. I don’t believe that people today are, on average, any less racist or xenophobic than the people of the mid-nineteenth century. We may express it differently today, but generally, we are no less racist than we were 150 years ago. Times have not changed much.

In my next post, more of Dom Benoit.