cell913blog.com #15

One of the issues facing every group, especially any group dedicated to a series of principles, is the intersection (interface) of the principles with their enactment. Words on a page, crafted and curated, edited and vetted, with an eye to clarity, precision, intelligibility, easy and ready accessibility, elevating an idea, an aspiration, a hope and an ideal, might or might not include some form of accountability and the potential sanctions that attempt to enforce compliance. Often, too, any such ‘group’ or organization comes into being if and when a number of individuals come to a shared view of the need for change, to which they commit themselves and the group, both individually and collectively, to ‘action,’ that is the ‘work’ necessary to bring about that change.

The documentation of the formation, development, narrative of conflicts toward the achievement of the group’s goals, and the evaluation of the group’s success/failure in attaining its stated purpose taken together, comprise the history of that group or movement.

 In his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela, in part 11 of that work, entitled, ‘Birth of a Freedom Fighter,’ writes:

I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one’s birth, whether one acknowledged it or not. An African child is born in an African Only hospital, taken home in an Africans Only bus, lives in an Africans Only area, and attends Africans Only Schools, if he attends school at all.

When he grows up, he can hold Africans Only jobs, rent a house in Africans Only townships, ride Africans Only trains, and be stopped at any time of the day or night and be ordered to produce a pass, failing which he will be arrested and thrown in jail. His life is circumscribed by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and stunt his life. This was the reality, and one could deal with it in a myriad of ways.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people: instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise. (p.95)

Mandela, along with others, had to face, and then shed what he referred to as “paternalistic British colonialism and the appeal of being perceived by white as ‘cultured’ and ‘progressive’ and ‘civilized.’ I was already on my way to being drawn into the black elite that Britain sought to create in Africa. That is what everyone from the regent (his mentor) to Mr. Sidelsky (law partner where Mandela articled) had wanted for me. But it was an illusion. Like Lembede, (South African lawyer, and one of the founders of the ANC) I came to see the antidote as militant African nationalism. (Op. Cit. p. 97)

It may be somewhat beyond the scope of the imagination of many western readers, especially those whose lives have been founded on access to privilege, a full education, honourable and remunerative employment, and all the benefits of access to health care, and especially freedom from any infringements on his/her human rights, to envisage himself/herself living under such conditions. Nevertheless, there lingers deep and constricting signs of ‘paternalistic British colonialism’ and the concomitant ‘reputation’ as ‘cultured’ and ‘progressive’ and ‘civilized’ if and when one integrates oneself into the established power ‘structure’. And, one does not have to be black, Asian, Middle Eastern, or even European to confront those ‘preferred patterns’ of social, political, educational and workplace tolerance and integration.

Any form of “militancy” in the west, is both suspect and, while formally and legally permitted under free speech statues, is nevertheless surveilled carefully and critically, by the ‘establishment’. Indeed, as the “Black Lives Matter” and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee Recommendations (Canada) have demonstrated, there is deeply rooted and systemic racism on both sides of the 49^th parallel. Among directly impacted men, women and children, there are hundreds, if not thousands of activists who, every day, dedicated themselves to righting the wrongs and the colonial vestiges of their/our shared history. Generally, whites, on both sides of the 49^th, do not either identify, nor actively support these efforts. Indeed, it is a legitimate discernment to note that governments at all levels, municipal, provincial/state and federal/national continue to resist a full acknowledgement of the oppression and repression under which minorities have to live.

And it is not only the absence of what might be called ‘human rights’ that is oppressive. It is also, and perhaps even more penetratingly and tragically, the turning away, the eyes that ‘do not see’ and the ‘ears that do not hear’ and the opinions that continue to ‘disparage, demean, denigrate and dismiss’ people of difference, whether that difference is colour of skin, accent of language, belief of religion, or choice of lover. We all have developed, inherited, endorsed, and supported a myriad of body movements, verbal epithets, social attitudes and superior ‘noses’ (literally and metaphorically) that both ‘show and tell’ the different ‘others’ how we actually view, consider, distance and alienate them. In each and every group, even where the divide does not have a skin colour, or a language accent, or a religious belief, there is a hierarchy of ‘in’s and out’s’ to which every one either subscribes and fits within, or refuses and is excluded or withdraws.

Parochialism, defined as a limited or narrow outlook, narrow-mindedness, may well be the inherited face of nationalism, or its Siamese twin, as we watch the erection of both physical and mental borders of exclusion being both funded and applauded around the world. Different forms and faces and histories of ‘paternalistic imperialism’ not only continue, but seem to be garnering more and more political support, especially from what has come to be known as the ‘alt-right’. And ‘freedom fighters’ in the model of Mandela, (and not in the model of ISIS, Al Qa’da, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Ansar al-Sharia, Afghan Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin,  Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, Al Nusrah Front, Hamas, Hizballah…et al) but in the model of Nelson Mandela, and his ANC, with its Youth League, (resisting armed conflict, until they had to resort to it) seem to be either dispersed or unwilling to come forward to take ‘political action’ against what is obviously becoming a tightening noose around the neck of liberal democracies.

Even this weekend, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are extolling the ‘moderation’ of the likely Republican Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States. “He’s not that bad!” will be echoed around both the U.S. itself and around the world as leaders everywhere attempt to brace themselves and their people for a second term of this monster. As discussed on Morning Joe on MSNBC today, this legitimizing of the trump fascism, so promised and articulated as not to be either missed, disguised, or denied, a promise that includes the embrace of tyrants like Putin, Orban, Kim Jung Un, and others.

Is it respectability and the imprimatur of ‘decorum’ and ‘decency,’ and monikers like ‘cultured and civilized and progressive’ that those who have the spark and the spine to confront what is clearly a threat to all human rights, human lives and human security are seized by? Are we sharing a moment, perhaps even a decade or two or three,

·        when we will have capitulated in our shared need to reduce global warming and climate change,

·        when we have ceded, permitted and walked away from inordinate, inexorable and inexcusable divides in income between CEO’s and ordinary workers,

·        capped ceiling on the labour movement to organize,

·        permitted the inexcusable banning of books,

·        continued the brutal and cruel deployment of capital punishment,

·        and the imprisonment of political prisoners (just this weekend, a women who posted protests against the war in Ukraine was sentenced to 7 years in prison in Moscow)

·        walked away from United Nations Security Council Resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza,

·        refused to fund and to support the Ukrainian defense of their homeland because ‘trump’ is too cozy with Putin…

·        refused to confront Netanyahu and joint the law suit charging Israel with ‘genocide’ in Gaza, in the International Court in the Hague

·        Watched banks and financial institutions reap billions in profits, while ordinary people have to decide between needed medicines and food or rent

·        and continued to appropriate, in America, more funds for the Pentagon, that all other countries combined (for U.S. defence, rather than for Ukrainian support)

Individuals, the triumphant image of the western, especially the United States’ ethos, has not only erased any perception of the ‘public good’ and ‘public interest,’ but in its short-sighted, narcissistic and selfish opportunism, ‘grab what you can today’…and damn the consequences for the next generations….is a sure tidal wave of collective self-sabotage.

Are there any freedom fighters who can and do see the threats we share collectively, around the globe? Are the thought leaders, whose intellectual lens and pens see and document the connection of the dots in a way that the spirit of Mandela and his band of freedom fighters can be and will be found and recruited, funded and engaged in a series of not merely defensive manoeuvres, but actual offensive initiatives legal, (non-military, but legal, informational, educational, with both credibility and validity in the arguments proferred)? Can the tidal wave of threats, all of them at some level co-ordinated and co-sponsored, by those seeking to overthrow what has been considered an established world order, for more than three-quarters of a century, be presented with a determined, courageous and undeterred anti-dote?

We can talk about principles until the cows come home, without having to embody their breathe and blood. And we can discuss, and debate and defer to matters of personal decorum, both legitimately and ethically, without actually making any change in our personal lives or in the collective life we share. And when the contest of opposing principles provides the kind of conflict to which men and women either gravitate to or withdraw from, another silent ash of the paper on which the principles were written will lie in the ashes of that group.

Individuals, just like governments and families and organizations can be and are parochial, imperial, paternalistic and exclusionary. And unless and until we address, each of us, our own narrowness of attitude, belief, cognition, dogma or even social status, our organizations and their principles will founder on our personal myopia.

And, most, if not all attempts to remove the blinkers, will find resistance and withdrawal and perhaps even enhanced conflict and division.