According to the “Racial Contract” of Charles W. Mills [1] there
is a binary divide: white and nonwhite. The whites are fully human,
have the power, money and, crucially, human rights. Nonwhites have
less power and money, do not have full human rights and, indeed, are
slightly less than human.
The Racial Contract
allows whites to exploit nonwhites in the same way that people
exploit animals. There are countless examples in the history of
European and American imperialism and colonisation: the slave
trade, the genocide of the indigenous peoples of North and South
America and Australia, British atrocities in India, apartheid in
South Africa and so on.
Who is defined as
white and who as nonwhite is not fixed [2]. In the UK, Irish people
were once classified as nonwhite. Infamously, rooms to let in London
would stipulate: No Irish, no blacks, no dogs [3]. Few people would
now think like that about Irish people. For most people, the Irish are now unequivocally white.
There was a time
(and still is, for modern-day antisemites) that Jews were classified
as nonwhite. That, in harness with the Racial Contract, was one of
the weapons of anti-semitism, and it reached its terrible climax in
the Holocaust when Jews were murdered alongside other not-quite-human
people such as Roma and Sinta people, homosexuals and people with
disabilities.
One of the unique
features of the Holocaust was that it took place on European soil,
and after the war Western powers recoiled in horror as they were
presented with details what had gone on, and declared ‘never
again’. It turned out, though, that the mechanism for 'never again'
was not the ending of the Racial Contract. No, the Racial Contract
remains in force to this day. "Never again" meant
redefining Jews as white so that they should no longer be oppressed.
They could join the ranks of the oppressors. Israel was set up as
white colony, not even acknowledging the existence of the
Palestinians. It could be said that it was “a land without a people
for a people without a land” because the Palestinians were, in the
terms of the Racial Contract, not really people.
And today the terms
of the Racial Contract allows the slaughter of Palestinians by the
state of Israel backed by white Western powers, especially the USA
and the UK. The nonwhite victims are the Palestinians. The Racial
Contract requires the nonwhites to be perceived as barbaric, so every
opportunity is taken to talk-up the killing of Israeli civilians on
the 7th October. By contrast, the whites are by definition
civilised and not barbaric, so no matter how many civilians,
including children, are slaughtered by the IDF, no matter how
indiscriminate the Israeli air bombardment of Gaza, never mind the
individual tales of cruelty by the Israeli forces, the Western
narrative will always be of Western civilization, represented by
Israel, up against the barbarian terrorists of Hamas.
Read, for example,
the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks on the situation in Israel
and Gaza to the General Synod of the Church of England on 13th
November 2023 [4]. Justin Welby calls for an end to the killing of both
Israelis and Palestinians, but the killing of Israelis he describes
as “barbaric slaughter of innocent Israelis by Hamas” whereas
while he calls the killing of innocent Palestinians “a great wrong”
and says it “cannot be morally justified”, he doesn’t call it
barbaric. Indeed, he says “there is no equivalence between the
atrocities of Hamas against Israeli civilians, and the right and duty
of Israel to defend itself”. Even today, after the bombing of
hospitals, targetting Red Crescent ambulances, killing people who are
waving a white flag, the murder of more than 12,000 children, you
will search in vain for any suggestion by Justin Welby that anything
done by Israel is barbaric. [5]
Notes:
1 Mills, Charles W.
(1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press
2 It is information.
3
https://www.rebelnews.ie/2023/01/18/no-blacks-no-dogs-no-irish-a-short-history-of-discrimination-against-irish-migrants/
4
https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/speaking-writing/speeches/general-synod-archbishop-canterburys-presidential-address
5 Search Twitter (X)
for from:@JustinWelby barbaric
