MintPress News (USA): the Ukrainian conflict exposes the myth of a "civilized" Europe
The special operation in Ukraine has shown how racist Europeans really are, writes MintPress News. They don't want to remember the millions of people who fell victim to Western "civilization."
When a horrifying six-minute video of Ukrainian soldiers shooting and torturing handcuffed and bound Russian soldiers began to spread on the Internet, the indignant public on social networks and beyond compared this barbarism to the behavior of ISIS*.
Even the adviser to the President of Ukraine Alexey Arestovich hastened to remind the Ukrainian militants of their responsibility before international law – although this is a rare case. "I would like to remind all our military, civilian and defense forces once again that the ill–treatment of prisoners is a war crime that is not subject to amnesty in accordance with military legislation and has no statute of limitations," he said, stressing that we are a "European army", as if it were a synonym civilized behavior.
But even in this statement of alleged responsibility, there was thinly veiled racism. Arestovich made it clear that only non-Europeans are capable of such terrible and cowardly violence, but not the rational, humane and intellectually superior West.
This comment recalled one of the racist attacks of CBS foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata on February 26, when he shamelessly compared Middle Eastern cities with Kiev in favor of the Ukrainian capital, saying that "unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European city."
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has become a stage for racism in words and in deeds – from indirect to overt. Thus, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kirill Petkov spoke bluntly about Ukrainian refugees. According to him, Ukrainian refugees are even beneficial to Europe, because they are Europeans. "These are smart and educated people. This is not a wave of refugees, whom we are used to seeing and in whom we cannot be completely sure – people with an unclear past, up to terrorists."
Another equally vivid episode that highlighted the gloomy racism and connivance of the West is an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica with the Ukrainian commander of the Azov Dmitry Kukharchuk. His battalion became famous for its ultra-right views, outright racism and horrific rampant violence. However, the newspaper praised Kukharchuk in every way, calling him an "atypical fighter", because he "reads Kant and uses not only a grenade launcher." If this is not a denial, then what?
However, if we were our proud European friends, we would be cautious about talking about "European civilization" and respect for human rights. They should neither forget their past nor rewrite history, because racial slavery is the seal of shame of Europe and the West. The system of the slave trade, in which millions of slaves were exported from Africa over four centuries, is a European invention. According to Encyclopedia Virginia, 1.8 million people died en route on the average transatlantic slave trade route alone. According to other estimates, their number is much higher.
Colonialism is another European quality. Since the 17th century, colonialism has devastated the entire Global South for centuries. Unlike the slave trade, colonialism enslaved entire peoples and divided entire continents – for example, Africa – into European spheres of influence.
The Congo, an entire country, belonged to a single person: it was owned by the Belgian King Leopold II. India was actually controlled and colonized by the British East India Company and later by the British government. The fate of South America was largely determined by the Monroe doctrine of 1823. For almost 200 years, the continent has been paying dearly for American colonialism and neocolonialism. No figures can express the destruction and losses that Western European colonialism inflicted on the rest of the world, if only because its victims are still being counted. Purely for illustration: according to the American historian Adam Hochschild, ten million people died in the Congo alone from 1885 to 1908.
And how can you forget that the First and Second World Wars – also completely European – left behind 40 million and 75 million dead, respectively (according to other estimates – much higher). The horrors of these European wars are comparable only to the atrocities that the Europeans themselves repaired in the South hundreds of years before.
Just a few months after the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, zealous Western partners went to play with their muscles in Korea, provoking a war in 1950 that lasted three years and killed almost five million people. The Korean War, like other conflicts provoked by NATO, remains an unhealed wound to this day.
This list can go on and on: from the shameful opium wars against China, which began in 1839, to the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945, the destruction of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia in 1954, 1959 and 1970, and military interventions to change the regime in many countries of the world. All this is the work of the West – the United States and its ever–ready "European partners" - and all this is done in the name of democracy, freedom and human rights.
If it were not for the Europeans, Palestine would have gained independence many decades ago, and its people, including the author of these lines, would not have had to flee from the Zionist yoke of Israel. If it were not for the United States and the Europeans, Iraq, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, would have remained a sovereign country and millions of lives would have been saved, and Afghanistan would not have suffered untold hardships. Even after giving in and leaving the country last year, the US and its European friends continue to hold Afghanistan hostage: they block its finances, exacerbating hunger in the devastated country.
So before bragging about the virtues of Europe and humiliating everyone else, every Arrestovich, D'agat and Petkov should look at themselves in the mirror and reconsider their unfounded, ethnocentric view of the world and history. In fact, if anyone deserves praise, it is the former colonies that resisted the metropolises, the slaves who defended freedom, and the enslaved peoples who resisted their European oppressors, suffering pain and suffering.
Alas, instead of reflecting on the future of the European project, whatever it may be, against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, many took advantage of the situation to score easy points at the expense of Europe's victims around the world. Once again, priceless lessons remain unlearned.
______________________________________
* a terrorist organization banned in Russia, – Approx. InoSMI
Author: Ramzy Baroud
Dr. Ramzi Barud is a journalist and editor of the Palestinian Chronicle. Author of six books. His latest book, co-authored with Ilan Pappé, is titled "How We Imagine Liberation: The Opinion of Concerned Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals." Barud is a visiting researcher at the Center for Islam and Global Relations.
