Carrying On the Cultural Legacy of Christopher Columbus
Carrying On the Cultural Legacy of Christopher Columbus
“Columbus introduced two processes of race relations that transformed the modern world: first, the taking of land, wealth and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their extermination; and second, the transatlantic slave trade. As Sale poetically sums up, Columbus’s “second voyage marks the first extended encounter of European and Indian societies, the clash of cultures that was to echo down through five centuries.” The seeds of that five century conflict were sown in Haiti between 1493 and 1500. These are not mere details that our texts omit- they are basic information, crucial to understanding American and world history.” The Truth About Columbus A Subversively True Poster Book for a Dubiously Celebratory Occasion by Professor James W Loewen page 25
As the West celebrates another anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ unleashing waves of violence, rape, pillage and plunder that would have made the Vandals, Vikings and Huns proud, I can’t help but make a modern day connection between those barbarians, Columbus and a succession of whites from George Washington to George W Bu$h. When we look at the history of this country we are looking at an extension of the global brutality and virulent rapine of Europeans against people of color. This cultural pattern did not start out as just whites against melanated people. The Europeans carried their unique cultural proclivity for wars, bloodletting and pillage everywhere they went on planet Earth. Their history of inter and intra tribal warfare when they lived in the Steppes of Central Asia, when they migrated into Europe and later diffused everywhere they went on this planet was the same, an intense and ongoing pattern of violence and warmongering. In fact to this very day there is only one land mass on this planet they have not invaded and wrecked havoc upon, that is Antarctica; and that is only because they didn’t find any human settlements who had natural resources they could steal! The impact of Christopher Columbus on the Tianos and Arawaks set the stage for five hundred years of continuous culture clash.
We are witnessing the continuation of this clash of cultures in the AmeriKKKan invasion and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq not to mention what they’ve done in other places around the world over the years. Europeans, from their ancient to their modern history, have produced a culture of war. War, violently and cunningly expropriating other people’s goods while desecrating their personhood and space are the Europeans' norm. Marimba Ani calls the core values of a collective culture of a tribe or people Asili. In her seminal book Yurugu An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior she says, “The idea is that the asili is like at template that carries within it the pattern or archetypical model for cultural development; we might say that it is the DNA of culture. At the same time it embodies the ‘logic’ of the culture. The logic is the explanation of how it works, as well as the principle of its development ... It is a compelling force that will direct the culture as long as it remains intact: i.e. carried in the ‘cultural genes.’ In order for the culture to change (and this includes the collective thought and behavior of those within it), the asili itself would have to be altered. But this would involve a process of destruction and the birth of a new entity. Cultural asili(s) are not made to be changed.” page 12
I share Dr. Ani’s insights because it is obvious that the archetype or asili of European culture is a veneration of violence in a myriad of forms and manifestations : gender violence, xenophobic violence as well as a rigid leadership, caste and class stratification based upon the will and power to exercise violence as a means of domination of others. European history is a history of wanton violence. An unbiased reading of European history would conclude they are a group of warmongers, socio and psychopaths. Dr. Amos Wilson once said, “the European’s psychology is not found in their psychology books, we find their true psychology in their history because their history is one of violence and predation which is an outgrowth of their psychology and core values.” Europeans love war but they call it peace, they love to rob and steal but they call it progress when they can loot and plunder large swaths of territory of their human and natural resources. That is why they hold up empires in their history books.
Christopher Columbus was a soldier of fortune. He set out to find gold and riches and he didn't care how he acquired them. In his first contacts with non-Europeans his European asili revealed itself. According to Columbus’ own journal after assessing two or three native villages he wrote. “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased.” Columbus returned to Spain and informed his sponsors of the prospects of easily conquering the natives. The Europeans responded according to their asili, “Upon his return to Spain Ferdinand and Isabella outfitted Columbus for a second voyage with twelve hundred to fifteen hundred men, seventeen ships, cannon, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs.” The Truth About Columbus A Subversively True Poster Book for a Dubiously Celebratory Occasion by Professor James W Loewen page 22. The European asili of warmongering, bloodlust and rapine immediately moved to wage war on the Arawaks, the natives of the island we now call Haiti. When Colombus returned he instigated hostilities that eventually wiped out all the natives and as a result he then proposed the importation of Africans to provide the free labor the lazy Europeans needed to extract and expropriate the natural resources of the islands. The rest as we say, is history!
We see the same asili manifesting itself over five hundred years later as the Anglo-AmeriKKKan (and in some parts of the world the Israeli) axis wage imperialist campaigns against smaller less technologically developed nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Haiti. Just as Columbus instigated his wars in the name of the Spanish monarchs and the Pope of his day, George W Bu$h is waging his campaigns of ethnic cleansing and rapine in the name of “freedom, liberation and democracy.” We most see this in historical as well as cultural terms as opposed to the propaganda and hype used by the corporate mind control apparatus to justify the carnage of the ruling class. AmeriKKKa as a white nation (or more precisely a multi-ethnic nation ruled by whites) is merely continuing the cultural legacy of Christopher Columbus as well as the earlier legacy of the Huns, Goths, Jutes, Vandals, Normans, Vikings, Saxons and Anglos. They can’t help it, its in their genes, their physical and cultural DNA. The truth of the matter is, if the majority of AmeriKKKans really wanted peace, they would pay whatever individual and collective price needed to be paid to alter their asili, but they won’t. The proof is in the pudding. And the proof is, their asili is manifesting itself once again big time!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home