Murder Incorporated - Dreaming of Empire: Book One
347
Murder Incorporated - Dreaming of Empire: Book One
347eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780998960036 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Prison Radio |
| Publication date: | 04/03/2018 |
| Series: | Empire, Genocide, and Manifest Destiny |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 347 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
With God On Our Side
Well, you see Willard ... In this war, things get confused out there ... power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be god. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has a breaking point. You and I have one. Walt Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane.
— General Corman to Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now
When Francis Ford Coppola adapted Joseph Conrad's seminal work, Heart of Darkness, for his Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, he found in the 1903 novella a searing attack on the cruelties of colonialism and the toxic seeds of empire. In Conrad's story, as in the world he lived in, European occupiers exercised a brutal exploitation of the working class. In Heart of Darkness it was specifically the African working class. Clearly for Coppola, this was a fitting parallel to the American Empire's savage assault on the people of Southeast Asia. Conrad recognized the oppressive operational apparatus of the white European ruling class: social Darwinism combined with a muscular belief in the Carlylean work ethic, which Conrad underscores throughout Heart of Darkness. Of course the occupier's embrace of these two Victorian standards is their era's justification of the perennial exploitation of an "inferior" indigenous population presupposed to be in desperate need of the "superior" scientific and spiritual knowledge offered so graciously by white Europeans to the "Dark Continent." But like most occupations throughout human history, just the act of occupation is corrupt and sadistic. Conrad demonstrates this historic truth as the European's piggish thirst for wealth and power devastates the land and the people of Africa without sorrow and without regret.
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
No doubt that it's murder and plunder for fortune. Capitalism 101. But there's more than just meat chunks of avarice in this colonial stew. There is also madness — the warped embrace of human exceptionalism, of being God's chosen people, allowed to behave like brutes and then dance like angels.
Translatio Imperii, which translates from the Latin as "transfer of rule" or "transfer of empire," is a concept rooted in the Middle Ages describing the movement of history as a transfer of power from one imperium to the next. It's the idea that one nation or empire will be the dominant political and cultural influence across the globe until the power shifts to another state over the passage of time; Rome, Great Britain, America (with apologies to all the Empires not mentioned).
Social Darwinism: Imperial Justification
The concept of "Social Darwinism" has been a useful and convenient tool in the march of empire. Even before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the progenitors of conquest were well acquainted with the paradigm later coined as "survival of the fittest" by English philosopher Herbert Spencer. Then, as always, the power elites were very good at unleashing the dogs of war or swinging the scythe of economic terrorism in their bloody pursuit of conquest, meticulously ensuring the ends justified the means. According to the canon of social Darwinism, those with strength — be it economic, physical, or technological — flourish, and those without are destined for extinction. War on the weak is "survival of the fittest" fueled by greed, characterized by bloodlust, infused with a superiority complex and, when stripped of its pretenses, little more than a business model cashing in on another civilization. And this has been true, even if it's meant eradicating or beating the tar out of an already-in-place population. Africans. American Indians. Mexicans. Filipinos. Latin Americans. Asians. Iraqis. Afghanis. Hell, any brown, yellow, or red skinned group of "inferior beings" fits the bill. Let's roll. It's arrogance on steroids. Imperial hubris loaded in a warhead. Or as anthropologist Wade Davis concludes:
Other cultures are not failed attempts to be like you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit.
So as we revisit Heart of Darkness for the illustrative purposes of deconstructing the merciless tentacles of colonialism, as practiced (in this case) by the Europeans, it becomes clear that Conrad presents a very valuable side-by-side comparison: the harmony between the native Africans and their indigenous environment as opposed to the white "civilized" imperialists who brutishly take without asking and then reign over the wealth and resources without any regard to human dignity, liberty, and of course the basic tenets of sovereignty. In fact this malicious trek up the channel for riverboat captain Charles Marlow shines a bright light on the sinister nature of imperial hubris — the blatantly racist disruption of indigenous cultures for power and profit. Throughout the novella, Conrad calls into question the accepted history of colonial conquest and underscores the moral bankruptcy of Europe. In fiction, as in the harsh light of reality, the occupiers' ruthless treatment of the natives rips open and reveals the true heart of darkness.
It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: "Exterminate all the brutes!"
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Whether it's a work of thinly veiled fiction or the grim realities born in the foggy shadows of unfathomable acts of evil perpetrated during the American Holocaust over the last five hundred years, Darwin's model of "natural selection"— later manipulated by Spencer to become "survival of the fittest"— was never intended to be a model for the practiced and accepted behavior used against nations and races of people. American labor leader and author Sidney Lens describes it this way in his classic work, The Forging of the American Empire:
The 1880's and 1890's were a period in which conservative intellectuals invariably used the Darwinian theory of natural selection as justification for their political goals. Nothing should be done for the poor, Herbert Spencer and other Social Darwinists proclaimed, because they had been destined for the scrap heap by the immutable laws of nature. On the other hand, the preeminent Anglo-Saxons were clearly selected for world domination and should accept their assignment with dignity.
But Social Darwinism was only the modern, nouveau scientific argument for a psychotic self-image of superiority that had been brewing for centuries, with its corruptive tendrils reaching back to a convoluted and inherently dubious myth of racial apotheosis.
The Aryan Prototype
The growth of civilization and all subsequent empires has forever been tied to the mythical but powerful tale that civilization follows the sun. The fable (read: lie) went something like this: Herculean and heroic white Christian males appeared silhouetted on the eastern horizon (like Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine portrayed by white actor David Carradine in the old American television show Kung Fu) eager to civilize inferior races. In fact, this myth eventually declared the white Christian male as king of the jungle, top dude on the human evolutionary hierarchy, and, via infiltration of lesser foreign peoples, arbiter of all the great feats of human history. In his compelling historic narrative, The Imperial Cruise (which we will cite numerous times), author James Bradley details the Aryan myth that would come to dominate White Western consciousness:
ONCE UPON A TIME, the story went, an "Aryan race" sprang up in the Caucasus Mountains north of what is now Iran. (The word Iran derives from the word Aryan.) The Aryan was a beautiful human specimen: whiteskinned, big-boned, sturdily built, blue-eyed, and unusually intelligent. He was a doer, a creator, a wanderer, a superior man with superior instincts, and, above all, a natural Civilizer. In time, the Aryan migrated north, south, east, and west. The ancient glories of China, India, and Egypt indeed, all the world's great civilizations–were the product of his genius ... It was the myth that "civilization follows the sun." The roots of this belief could be found in a concoction of history, fable, and fantasy.
The Aryan myth continued to take shape throughout the first millennia after Christ, but all did not progress as planned. The Aryan male warriors made the near fatal mistake of mixing their blood with non-whites: Asian, Indian, as well as Egyptian women. The result, according to this myth, was the weakening of the race as miscegenation created a mongrelized crossbreed. James Bradley continues:
Not all was lost, though. A group of Aryans had followed the sun westward from the Caucasus to the area of northern Europe we now call Germany. This Aryan tribe did not make the mistake of their brethren. Rather than mate with lesser-blooded peoples, these Aryans killed them. By eradicating the Others, the Aryans maintained the purity of their blood.
It was here, in the uncharted German hinterlands, that the Aryan prototype evolved into "the Teuton"— a superman conqueror who appeared to have no equal. As the legend grew, the Teutons developed into an even more advanced race — a race chock-full of white civilizing heroes. Bradley describes this mythic growth of the Teutons' political and social shrewdness:
The clever Teuton demonstrated a unique genius for political organization. He paid no homage to kings or emperors. Instead, the Teuton consulted democratically among his own kind and slowly birthed embryonic institutions of liberty that would later manifest themselves elsewhere.
At the end of the first century AD, Roman historian Tacitus recorded this account: "The peoples of Germany were a race untainted by intermarriage with other races, a peculiar people and pure, like no one but themselves ... with a high moral code and a profound love of freedom and individual rights; important decisions were made by the whole community." So as the sun traveled west across the ages, the Teutons — representing civilization as it ought to be — dramatically drove history forward. James Bradley continues the fable:
Eventually the Teuton — with his Aryan-inherited civilizing instinct spread out from the German forests. Those who ventured south invigorated Greece, Italy, and Spain. But these Teuton tribes made the same mistake as the earlier Aryans who founded China, India, and Egypt: instead of annihilating the non-White women, they slept with them, and the inferior blood of the darker Mediterranean races polluted the superior blood of the White Teuton. Thus the history of the Mediterranean countries is one of dissolution and nondemocratic impulses.
In time, the Teutons crossed the English Channel and settled on what are today the British Isles. Again, as the story goes, they succumbed to temptation and began procreating with non-Aryans, their blood debased by these lesser beings. All hope for humankind may have been teetering on the brink, but "luckily for world civilization, these Teutons obeyed their instincts. By methodical slaughter of native men, women, and children, they kept themselves pure. As these Germanic tribes spread westward and northerly, they gradually became known as Anglo-Saxons."
By the sixteenth century, the great myth of white supremacy was cemented as gospel in many quarters and, when English King Henry VIII split from Pope Clement VII and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, he founded the new Anglican Church of England as a beacon of the true Anglo-Saxon tradition — a tradition that existed before the Norman conquest of 1066. So as the sun rose and guided the 1600s west toward the so-called "New World," the accepted history of the British Empire was framed by three laws regarding civilization: the white race established all civilizations; when the white race preserves its "whiteness," civilization is sustained; when the white race suffers defeat or the purity of its blood is overly diffused, civilization is lost.
Even a superficial look at history supports the necessary elements of the "whiteness" line of reasoning. Bradley writes:
The Anglo-Saxons were a liberty-loving people who spawned the Magna Carta, debated laws in Parliament, produced exemplars like Shakespeare, and tinkered the Industrial Revolution to life. But woe to those who ignored civilization's rules and went south to Africa or east to Egypt, India, and China. The Anglo-Saxon in those benighted countries were but small rays of light overwhelmed by the more populous dark races. There were just too many Africans, Indians, and Chinese to slaughter in order to establish superior civilizations. The best that could be hoped for was an archipelago of White settlement and the exploitation of local primitives in order to produce greater European riches.
Although this paradigm for Anglo-Saxonism produced great riches, it also meant significant limitations on their ultimate growth and unrelenting expansion. So, once again, as the sun passed overhead, they heard the sacred call. Bradley concludes:
Progress sailed across the Atlantic with the White Christians who followed the sun west to North America. And once again — emulating their successful Aryan and Teuton forebears — the American Aryans eliminated the native population. From Plymouth Rock to San Francisco Bay, the settlers slaughtered Indian men, women, and children so democracy could take root and civilization as they understood it could sparkle from sea to shining sea.
It's clear to see, with even a cursory read of American history, that this Aryan supremacist ideology of civilization chasing the sun west has its legendary claws buried deep inside the foundation of American expansionist rationale. Never one to let down the gods of empire and Anglo-Saxon supremacism, blustery Theodore Roosevelt barked in 1906, "The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests in alien lands."
Toward a New Jerusalem: America as the New Israel
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
— Jesus Christ, The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:14-16
When he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the lord make it like that of New England: for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for Gods sake ...
— John Winthrop (Governor, Massachusetts Bay Colony), "City Upon A Hill," 1630
I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us". Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.
— President-Elect John F. Kennedy, 1961
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.
— President Ronald Reagan, 1989
Americans know that our future is brighter and better than these troubled times. We still believe in the hope, the promise and the dream of America. We still believe in that shining city on the hill.
— Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, 2012
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide, and Manifest Destiny"
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Table of Contents
FOREWORD—Chris Hedges,
PROLOGUE,
1. WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE,
2. LAMENTING THE CORRUPTIONS OF EMPIRE,
3. THERE IS A PLAGUE LOOSE UPON THE LAND,
4. THE MURDERERS OF THE WORLD ARRIVE IN THE AMERICAS,
5. AFRICAN CAPTIVITY One Thousand Years of Hell on Earth,
6. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Who Won? Who Lost?,
7. THE MONROE DOCTRINE Dreaming of Eminent Domain Forever,
8. LA OTRA AMERICA The United States Invades Mexico,
9. LIFE & DEATH IN THE EMPIRE'S BACKYARD Imperial Hubris South of the Border,
10. NO,
• Harriet Tubman,
• Malcolm Boyd,
ENDNOTES,