Apartheid Israel’s war in Gaza along with “Genocide Joe’s” unconditional support for the holocaust there have set me thinking not only about Israel’s settler colonialism, but about colonialism in general and resistance to its depredations. The rebellion is unfolding before our eyes without most of us even noticing it in those terms.
I mean, not only Gazans have risen against continued European and American control of their destinies. In practice, the insurrectionist impulse is shared by colonized people across the planet. They’re moving from empire’s periphery to imperial centers everywhere. It’s what our politicians call “the immigration crisis.”
Consequently, I think it’s time to rethink and reframe what’s happening at our southern border. More than that, it’s time to reframe the question of immigration worldwide.
Let me try.
The Gazan rebellion has made me realize that planet-wide migration is not primarily a question of law, immigration reform, sacrosanct borders, and preventing the entrance “illegals” by walls and militarization of crossing points. Instead, it’s an issue of recognizing global population shifts from the Global South (Latin America, Africa, and South Asia) to the developed West for what they are:
- A human rights movement (literally!) against artificial borders imposed by government’s representing the world’s white minority that comprises only about 12% of the global population, and yet insists on controlling the entire planet. (For instance, during the 19th century and afterwards, white Europeans arbitrarily created entire countries as part of their “divide and rule” policies in Africa, the Mideast, and elsewhere.)
- An unprecedented rebellion against such exercise of white supremacy, control, and border determination.
- A consequent reparations movement for restorative justice
- A largely intuitive demand by workers that they be given the same rights as capital to move freely across borders
- A kind of reconquista (reconquering) of geographical space stolen from ancestral peoples.
And even though few participants in the movement are aware of its historical significance and scale, the movement cannot be stopped. No matter what the white European and “American” elites might do, the migrants will keep coming.
That’s because the immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are implicitly operating from a largely unconscious grasp of the fact that the white European-American order is the root of the problem. The whole system has no moral ground to stand on. It conflicts with fundamental values that transcend and invalidate national borders.
Here my primary reference is to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
In 1948, that Declaration recognized that human beings simply by virtue of having been born have inherent entitlements (yes entitlements!) that include rights to food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, meaningful work, a living wage, and to insured retirement at the end of their lives. That’s what The Declaration says.
And yet, the experience of the colonized is that whenever their governments have tried to implement policies to secure such rights for their people, the former colonizing powers [who btw form the core of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)] under the leadership of the United States identify such governments as “communist.” They subject the offending authorities to regime change and to sanctions that work directly against the guarantees of the UN Declaration. The result is poverty, misery, hunger, unemployment, prison, torture, and death for millions of peasants, teachers, social workers, union organizers, and religious leaders.
Moreover, the white colonial elite have arrogated to themselves the supposed authority to unilaterally declare that the UDHR is only “aspirational.” For them it’s an abstract ideal that lacks the enforcement apparatus required for its implementation. [The U.S. has insured that the document will remain unenforceable by refusing to ratify the protocols guaranteeing its social provisions. In fact, it has withheld its ratification of the UDHR in general. Remember, it is a tiny minority of the world’s population (the whites) who impose such interpretation.]
Well, the current worldwide population shifts show that the globe’s non-white majority is no longer willing to recognize the authority of those who claim to be their betters. For the “invaders,” their human rights transcend the jurisdictional barriers erected on the whims of the white elite robber barons, bankers, lawyers, Wall Street tycoons, and their political appointees.
Again, nothing can stop the momentum of this drive — of this literal movement — for human rights. It’s a question of the world’s majority voting with their feet.
As for what to do about problems at our southern border . . .. The answer is relatively simple.
- Sign off on the Declaration, including its “socialist” protocols.
- Respect and promote the UDHR to enable and encourage Latin Americans to live free from want and fear without leaving their beloved homelands.
- Accordingly, remove all sanctions from countries (like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) that enact policies implementing the UDHR’s social justice protocols.
- In general, stop interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.
- Abandon regime-change aspirations.
- Grant to labor the same rights that capital has to freely cross borders to where the money can be made. (Either that or restrict capital’s ability to cross borders with the same zeal applied to migrant workers.)
- Divert the billions upon billions now spent at the border on walls and militarization of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the rebuilding and repair of Latin American nations (such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) for the catastrophic damages from “America’s” ruinous policies of the past and present.
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