"Any time you see that Arab youth fist pump, you know you're going to see pain at the pump"
Eric Bolling, Fox News
The heinous reaction of the imperial apologists to recent events in Tunisia and Egypt is predictable but still breathtaking.
Let's be perfectly clear about this: Americans are being ordered by the corporate media and right-wing fear-mongers to despise Arabs who strive for freedom and dignity specifically because they are seen as underserving of such freedom. In the past two months, the Arabs have done more on their own to advance the cause of democracy in their own lands than the US ever has and probably ever will. Plus, as we've seen in Egypt, they managed to do it without our newfangled technologies and online social networking. Far from being a vindication of the "freedom agenda" of the Bush admin, this is a repudiation. Heavily implied is a message to "Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy" crowd: we are a political movement with true meaning, not a color for your Twitter avatar.
Consider all the inane theorizing over who is "behind" the uprisings. Is it the Islamists? The Commies? The (I shit you not) American labor unions? All of the above? Very little thought is being given to the grievances of the Egyptian people in dealing with rising economic inequality and political repression. They could not possibly be upset and angry enough on their own to do things on their own. Clearly, there must be some shadowy force on the sidelines inciting them and (gasp!) organizing them.
Deeply ingrained in this sentiment is a sense of resentment towards Arabs and perception of ingratitude towards their Benevolent White Masters. One critic of the Egyptian revolt sarcastically remarks:
Realizing that Arab socialism, war, and the Soviet alliance wasn't benefiting Egypt, Sadat changed sides, had a rapprochement with America ($2 billion in aid a year, oh those hated Americans!) and made peace with Israel (all the Sinai, the oilfields, the Suez Canal). Oh, and the United States rebuilt the Egyptian military with advanced weapons, and all they had to do was not to launch another war on Israel. Oh, hated Americans!
It is, of course, incredibly stupid for anyone to suggest that the Egyptian people should be thankful to the US for providing their horrible government with military and security aid to repress them. It is also disingenuous to ignore the role of Egypt's neo-liberal economic policies in increasing suffering and fomenting dissent. But that's essentially what the colonial mentality is all about. It is always assumed that the natives are incapable of any social development without being exploited by a domestic ruling class and Western profiteers.
As Aimé Césaire once so eloquently stated:
And since I have been asked to speak about colonization and civilization, let us go straight to the principal lie which is the source of all the others.
Colonization and civilization?
In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.
In other words, the essential thing here is to see clearly, to think clearly - that is, dangerously - and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.
This brings me to my next issue. We've heard a lot of fears being expressed about access to the Suez Canal and the possibility of oil prices going up. Such concerns are probably overblown but they reveal how the legitimate economic concerns of the American people are being channeled into right-wing political views and support for foreign adventurism. Inequality in America is at an all time high and wages are stagnating. So the we are presented with the possibility of losing access to cheap gas because some dusky skinned foreigners are getting too uppity. Since gasoline is primarily used for the automobile --and by extension the "American way of life"--even a little US-based cultural chauvinism can be thrown into the mix as well.
Bush's famous assertion that the terrorists hate us for our freedom could just as well apply to those of us in the West who demonize the Arab liberation movements. It has long been the case that the US despises true democracy since it empowers the majority, the unwashed masses, with a means of checking the influence of the ruling class. This applies even more so to the Third World than it applies to US since the people there are far poorer than the poorest of the poor here. It is in their interest to vote for candidates who are unfriendly to US business interests. Since we cannot state this outright, we feel the need for a cover story about fighting communists and Islamists. Crushing the will of the people has become our raison d'être. It is a cruel irony that the American experiment has become seemingly dependent on disenfranchising the poor and oppressed of the world in order to maintain its own stature.