In September 1847, American soldiers entered Mexico City, and the following year, with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico lost half its territory (modern-day Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and California) to its powerful neighbor, which profited from the cotton produced by slaves and sent to the Manchester textile mills that led the industrial revolution overseas.
On the other side of the world, the British Empire forced the Chinese to consume narcotics to ensure profits from Bengal’s opium production. To balance the balance of payments with the Celestial Empire, the East India Company transformed the agricultural lands of northeast India into poppy fields. Opium production was run as a monopoly by the Company and, later, by the British state. Opium was probably the most profitable commodity of the 19th century. London waged two wars against China to secure this profitable venture.
This is history, but the intricate intertwining of capitalism and colonialism is still central today. The United States appears determined to take Greenland, whether through military acquisition or occupation remains to be seen.
Capitalism is colonialism. Its reproduction requires constant and unbridled appropriation of human and material resources. Making the world productive has constantly been accompanied by the idea that European thought and morality occupy a superior position in humanity. Historically, this has proven to be a racial mandate where some lives matter more than others.
If today we live in blatant disregard for the rule of law, where force has become law, whether it is the genocide in Gaza, the kidnappings in Caracas or migrants along the routes of North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the English Channel, it seems that we are faced with a new scenario.
Or maybe not? Rather, with the political mandate that once supported social democracy now increasingly shattered, we are faced with the political skeleton of the deeper stories that have shaped the modern world. Of course, the syntax of technologies and coordinates has changed, but the brutal consistency remains to be considered. Furthermore, Europe no longer even respects its own laws or international law: just think of the invasion of Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the interference in Ukraine, long before Russian aggression.
Today, Europe refuses to recognize the genocide in Gaza and to respect the International Criminal Court. Those who question the official narrative can be detained for months without trial. Western governments and the EU simply want adherence to the script (not to history or facts), which leads to the repression of free speech and the nullification of the rule of law. Everything is increasingly censored, punished and silenced. The accusations read like suicide notes, as the threats are self-inflicted. They come not from Russia or China, but from the West itself.
To discuss Ukraine from a historical perspective, even mildly, is to be accused of being Putinian; to condemn the genocide in Gaza is to be labeled an anti-Semitic terrorist. Even the limited exercise of European liberal reasoning, which never recognized the colonial constitution, now retreats into the ruins of the rule of law, lamenting the loss of a mythical Europe. Ultimately, it’s just another excuse for white supremacy.
Throughout the West, institutional democracy has been completely hollowed out. We have the United States governed by extra-constitutional presidential decrees and an EU managed like a holding company. Then there is London, where, without a written constitution and with a hereditary monarchy and an unelected House of Lords, it is difficult to talk about democracy. So when a domineering businessman behaves like a gangster and feels above the law, there is no possibility of critical opposition, only humiliating compromises. The EU and the rest of the West behave like servile accomplices.
In immediate terms, it all started with Israel. Once Europe, especially Germany, decided to unconditionally support the genocide in Gaza, all legal and ethical restrictions disappeared. With this void, what can be said now about the antics of the United States? Nothing. In a lawless world, what will happen when they invade Europe (Greenland-Denmark) and Israel gets the green light from Washington to attack Iran? Under these storm clouds, if China occupied Taiwan and Russia continued to advance into Ukraine, they would be merely local incidents in a world on fire. With Europe in ashes.
