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Thursday March 28, 2024

Race war

By Hiroyuki Hamada
July 14, 2016

The US establishment has institutionalised the essence of slavery and settler colonialism as a global invisible caste system. The system preys on dehumanised minorities and economically disadvantaged populations caged in the lower layers of the caste system.

They function as the source of profits as well as a gateway to introduce unjust laws, inhumane precedents and the rest of the colonial schemes for the corporate capital. The momentum of plundering is powered by, as you might have guessed, capitalism.

A police officer leaving a body on scorching asphalt for hours is a street execution, parallel to the act of hanging a body from a tree. A dying Black man covered in his own blood is the headless body of an American Indian. Yes, white people get shot too, because anyone who can’t go along with the norms and values of the patriarchal white supremacy of money and violence is marginalised and located down at the bottom of the caste system, just as courageous white people were hung right next to their black friends by the lynchers.

Conversely, anyone who upholds the rule of the hierarchy is given varying degrees of opportunity to get ahead in the hierarchy. The pain and suffering inflicted on the ones at the bottom and the limited opportunities given to the people at the bottom keep the divided population fighting among themselves in climbing the hierarchy or just to struggle to remain where they are forced to be.

A bullet in a black man’s head is a message to get back in the hierarchy. It’s a call to protect one’s position by securing one’s spot in the layers of a power structure by looking up to the privileged people and by looking down on the bottom dwellers.

When someone says “black lives matter,” you hear “all lives matter.” When someone says “slavery has never ended,” you hear the reply “we have a black president.” When police officers become shooting victims, you hear the now urgent call “all violence must stop”. When someone mentions the role of economic and racial divisions in our predicament, you hear the chastisement “don’t be divisive”.

A call for unity within the caste order will legitimise the inhumanity and injustice. We are already divided in the caste system. And not only are we divided, we are being forced to play the roles of victims and victimizers. In the process, we are increasingly dehumanised as a whole to play the role of prey in an acute phase of economic exploitation as the cycle of capitalism forces the mode of governance into fascism. Tools to enforce compliance – militarised police, draconian laws, commodification of human rights and so on – are already in place.

A call for reforms without seeing the caste system will strengthen the tools of centralisation and the accumulation of power and wealth into the hands of the few. We have seen crime bills being used to oppress minorities. We have seen war on drugs used to oppress minorities. We have seen war on terror harnessed to colonise, militarise and corporatise.

As long as the population tolerates the institutionalized invisible caste system, it will continue to function as a smoke screen to hide the most effective feudal system that has ever existed on the planet. .

This article has been excerpted from: ‘Race war fraud’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org