The writer who coined the term “decolonization” thought he was talking to “the wretched of the earth.” Instead, his work was read by elites—to disastrous effect.
“Fanon goes further in his analysis. He not only believes that violence is inevitable in a liberation struggle; he also writes that the act of killing purifies the killer in a war against a colonial oppressor. Fanon writes in the “On Violence” chapter: “At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation and analysis, but it’s a justification for vengeance and at the same time, almost a religious practice to purge oneself by sacrificing through killing the perceived scapegoat—the person, people, or thing that causes all your ills. And by doing so, renews the mind and body from that which has been suffocating (oppressing) it.
An excellent read illuminating where some of this rot is coming from.
And this is why Christianity, as the first major religion to codify de-escalation (“turn the other cheek”) as a moral virtue, supported the development of the most peaceful and prosperous societies in the history of human civilization. Postmodernism is effectively an attempt to regress society toward Iron Age morality, with predictable results.
Agree, Jim, at last as far as the formal theology goes. But that cross is a "terrible swift sword" for a reason.
The sad irony is that Christianity became one of the most powerful colonizing forces on the planet. One way was through its relentless zeal to "convert the heathens" through missionary programs and Church schools. The second was by supporting ruthless conquerors and kings who made the Church and its popes rich and powerful in exchange for providing God's "blessing" on secular conquests. Third is through the co-opting of local and national governments by insisting that God and State are one and the same.
Don’t forget the Crusades and the Inquisition. Not to mention the questionable action/inaction of Pius XII during WW2. They’re having an international study group in Rome going through the recently released archives on what exactly went on then that began in October. I think the WSJ has an article about it. As a Catholic, I find the whole thing appalling. My priest friends and relatives all defend Pius XII, but I’m not sure I do.
As for the Catholic schools, when I went to Ireland, I learned about how prior to Irish independence from Britain, Catholics in Ireland were not allowed to own land, vote, or go to public school. They were all poor tenant farmers. Church schools were the only way they got any sort of education. So there’s always another side to any story.
There always is. It seems often, not to sideline the conversation, but we live in an age where we want our heroes and the "side of good" that we've chosen to always be free from poor choices and bad decisions. Unfortunately, that isn't how the world works, or people. Individuals are a complex interplay of white, black, and gray choices/decisions.
Consequently, 'good' itself turns out to be a moving target. Sometimes it's on the side of the revolutionaries; sometimes it's on the side of the king's guards. Historically, those who have insisted on categorically defining 'good' politically, religiously, ethnically, racially, ideologically, etc., have proved suffering and death's cruelest and most effective agents. I can't remember who said that wisdom requires the ability to discern "those flexible limits within which boundary lines oscillate," but he/she was clearly on to something. When you categorically identify 'good' with your nation, your tribe, or your political DNA, you risk finding you've given your loyalty to mere insignia rather than to ethical principles, as the line dividing right from wrong sweeps by over your head.
All your points are well-made, Ann. I was focusing only on the Church as a willing partner in the colonization of many lands. The popes gave the kings and conquerors the cover of God for their crimes--and got money and power in return.
Some Christian schools were, and remain, excellent. Others became the horror shows of the Indian Boarding Schools of Canada and the United States. For every side of any story, there's the second, third, fifth, and 29th side, as we're all learning about the Middle East right now :-)
For every Indian Boarding School tragedy that the Canadian state media discovered, there are quite literally tens of millions of students who attended Christian schools of various iterations who received wonderful preparations for life; but let's not go there. Nor should we go to the root concept of "colonization" and the stunningly ignored fact that there historically were many more pros than cons, yes, even on the receiving end, which itself is verboten in the current narrative. Not trying to offend you, Mr. Gericke, but lots of us need to crack that narrative shell once in a while. And I'd give one Pope Leo I for a thousand secular kings or presidents any day. Just saying.
No offense taken, Brigattista. I happen to agree with your religious school view: for every monstrous one there are thousands of greats turning out high-quality graduates. The examples I used in my post are almost all historic, not current, practice. But they illustrated my point that Christianity (or any other religion, including my own Judaism) are as pure and selfless as the OP to whom I was responding claimed.
Many more pros than cons in colonization? On that we must disagree. Cultures are entitled to their own destinies, even if we believe those cultures lousy. Forcing our culture on others at gunpoint caused too much harm to offset any benefits, because what to us is a "benefit" may very well be abhorrent to them.
Pope Leo I might have been a fine man and gifted head of Church--but I wouldn't want him or any other faith leader dictating the laws of my secular nation. Not Popes, not Martin Luther, not Islam's Mohammed. Separation of Church and State is a good thing for both parties, and the Founders of our nation were wise to insert that clause into our Constitution.
What happens when you get a greedy, venal, and corrupt Pope like one of these guys?
Or Protestantism's Martin Luther, who so profoundly hated Jews that he'd have happily burned them all alive if he'd gotten the chance? Would you want them dictating the laws that govern your secular existence? I sure don't; faith leader + government head is too much power to entrust into any mere mortal.
I agree completely, B S, and you said this well. It sparks a fascinating question: what if the blasphemers are the very same people who set the policy for the religion? In other words, who "owns" any particular religion: the organizers and managers, or the faithful? In the Catholic model, the pope and cardinals are exclusively in charge and the faithful must obey or leave. In other models, congregations can remove their faith leaders if they choose, putting the faithful, not management, in charge.
As for binding people to the sins of their ancestors, agreed, we cannot (or at least should not) allow that. It not only denies people their agency and potential to change for the better, it infantilizes them by saying "you're too immature/childish/stupid to change your ways." We need to treat adults as adults and let them suffer or enjoy the consequences of their behavior.
I'm Jewish, so I have no dog in the hunt over the divinity of Jesus, that's a Christian concept I don't share. But I welcome good people of any faith into my sphere as long as neither of us harms the other for beliefs not our own. I welcome diversity of thoughts in everything as long as innocents are not harmed in the process.
You're very welcome. My journey was the mirror of yours: born into a Lutheran family and converted to Judaism in college. Like you, experiencing multiple religious viewpoints provides a perspective that's useful in analyzing such as Israel-Palestine-Jihadism . . . which is a political Gordian knot much more than a religious.
Solomon's correct: We've seen this show before and we will see it again.
Christianity has gone off the rails in many ways over the centuries but anyone who knows history knows that Christianity is the force that prevented literacy from dying in the West during the Dark Ages and that civilized many barbaric groups who previously spent their lives seeking revenge on each other. Turn the other cheek was more than a slogan.
It is all based on the phycology of ritual animal sacrifice and cleansing. Something which is very Semitic and goes back to Mesopotamia and Egyptian belief. It begins with the idea that the various gods of a tribe, are like tyrannical rulers, harsh in there edicts, and imposing strict laws of morality and conduct on the tribe members. If some laws are broken, then this is sin and to avoid judgement god must be mollified or he will be angry and punish everyone or withhold his bounty. Hence a scapegoat is selected and purified to induce a metaphorical transference of the guilt onto the animal. Then the punishment or SACRIFICE of the animal atones for the guilt and allows the tribe members to escape retribution from god at the final judgement. It also allows them to forgive each other for personal misdeeds. Ritually.
Thank you for providing further context. I only have so much, based on what I've cobbled together over the years from my own sporadic reading and observations.
Would I be mistaken in seeing the thread of the concept that the gods are tyrannical or harsh as an ancestor to gnostic-based beliefs, in that the "god" is cruel and we must purge--either others or ourselves?
There's a theory I've had for a while, and others have pointed out that some modern thinkers have also noted, that the preoccupation and rise of certain political schools of thought in the secular world are similar to gnostic beliefs, with a focus on purity spirals where different tribal groups are trying to define who is the "purist" in their practice of that political belief. They then work toward eliminating not only those who oppose, but purge from their own ranks. Hence, the descent into tribalism that we see and the ascendant theories of particular ideologies or doubling down on different political fronts.
The power of gods of an early agricultural tribes were like comic book heroes. Each had special powers, good or ill, and they control various forces of nature, wind, sun, rain, fire, etc. Thus the chief male god, represented the sky, the wife of the male god, represented the earth, and the planting and harvest and the frutes of the earth, required sex or cooperation between heaven and earth. Etc etc etc
It just strikes me as funny how we humans just keep routing back to the same old fallacies and ways of doings things, despite how "advanced" we claim ourselves to be in our philosophies.
Excellent explanation of why we are where we are today! Just to clarify, the Jewish State was created by the United Nations in May 1948, not by a war. The Arab nations attacked the next day , and like you so accurately state, “ it was a struggle between a people who had survived a genocide and the entire Arab world .” Keep up the excellent work!
Those attacking Arab nations were gleeful Hitler supporters. The Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler and offered Hitler soldiers. Soviet Muslims also joined the Nazi cause. Before 1948 almost all the violence in Palestine was Muslims attacking and in some cases slaughtering Jews. The goal of many Muslims since 1948 has been to finish Hitler’s Final Solution.
And the half-wits today who bray of the "Palestinian genocide" ignore the teeming throngs of bloodthirsty lunatics who inhabit Gaza. Some "genocide....."
Aha! You're missing the big conspiracy: First, double the population, then Starve them. Can't you see how devious those Jews are? And I'll wager a thousand bucks you'll see this same crackpot mental fart pop up on some "Free Palestine" threat within 24 hours.
Thanks to both Liora and Lynne for supporting my comment. As President John Adams once remarked - "facts are stubborn things." The leftist lunatics wailing about a "Palestinian genocide" have been exposed as liars and fools.
It’s a common misconception, but the UN did not create Israel. Its Charter gives it no power to either create a state or set any borders. All the UN can do is recognize a state as qualifying for admission as a member of the UN.
Whether any territory qualifies as a “state” is controlled by the Montevideo Convention of 1933. It is on this basis that legal scholars (the non-partisan ones, anyway) conclude that no State of Palestine exists as a matter of law. Politics, of course, is a separate matter.
The rights of the Jewish people to re-establish themselves in a part of their historical homeland was affirmed by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 which, along with several separate but related treaties, enshrined those rights in international law. The dirty secret is that those rights survive to this day which is why Israel has the superior legal rights to the “disputed territories” and why this fact is effectively shouted down (rather than argued against with evidence) with slogans or simply ignored.
What the UN did in 1947 was to recommend a partition of the remaining Mandate land. (The British had closed off 78% of the land to Jewish settlement to create today’s Jordan in 1923). The UN was denied any authority to impose a solution that diminished the rights afforded the Jewish people under the still existing Mandate by Article 80 of its Charter.
The story is rather simple. When the Mandate terminated on May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. It was then invaded by five Arab armies - in flagrant violation of the UN Charter, by the way. Israel won this war for its survival and was later admitted as a member to the UN.
For what does PLO literally stand. Most would say “ The Palestinian Liberation Organization”. In reality it stands for “The Palestine Liberation Organization”! When was the PLO created. Most would respond “After the ‘67 War”. It was actually formed in 1964 when the West Bank & East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan. There never existed a Palestinian State, ever. In fact in 1972 when Palestinians revolted against King Hussein of Jordan he killed thousands of them. Their deaths are repeatedly memorialized by the UN & Universities.
Small comment: the UN didn’t create Israel, they suggested a partition. The UN doesn’t have any true legal authority. Jews made Israel happen, through 50+ years of hard labour putting “facts on the ground” and then by declaring statehood on their own, based on the UN suggestion.
Just a clarification. In the Bible the Hebrews were given the Promised Land by God. If you don't accept the Bible, the Mernepteh Stele from ca. 1203 BC and a Caananite stele from ca. 950 BC both refer to Israel as a state. So who is colonizing whom. The Hebrews have been there much longer. For further clarification I am not a Jew but a Presbyterian,
The U.N. thinks it created the Jewish state. The is just vanity. But in actuality the state was created by blood and war and has never been accepted by the U.N. Let the UN send an expeditionary force to hell. if they have the guts.
As an undergraduate I was forced to read Wretched of the Earth and remember thinking "how am I going to be able to endure reading the entirety of this tripe and trash" after throwing it across the room in disgust. That the insipid, latte sipping dolts who populate our universities continue to inflict Fanon's sick garbage on undergraduates who lap it up explains much of the modern madness.
You'd think that after seeing the evidence of the last 50-60 years of "independence struggles" in Africa, with formerly flourishing countries becoming economic and political sh*tholes, someone would realize that Marxist fantasies don't turn out as advertised. But no, the comfortable elites keep insisting that there's a right way to stick one's hand in a blender.
The ultimate irony? By any metric - historical, archeological, genetic, even Biblical (if one accepts its validity) - the Jews (from "Judea", hence the name) are the indigenous people, and the Arabs (from Arabia) the colonial power. The decolonization narrative will never apply to the hated Jews.
I consider producing graduates with useless degrees as part of extremism. The absence of teaching real history results in support of whatever is the current agenda presented by the establishment.
This Hamas attack and reaction from college students in this country begs the question, what other brainwashing of extremism is taking place on college campuses?
Coleman Hughes has a fascinating debate on his podcast with a gentleman explaining the Palestinian side of the conflict. His explanation of the historical perspective, IMHO, is entirely flawed, naive, and wrong, but rooted in the notion that Jews came from nowhere and simply took what what never belonged to them. Even the Balfour Declaration is further evidence of white colonizers ruining this great thing the Arabs had till the bad colonizers took it all away.
When viewed in this fashion, there's no debate or discussion. There is one and only one premise: The Jews invaded and therefore must be eliminated. Everything else is fruit from a poisoned tree.
Jews are used to having targets on our backs, but if there's one thing history has taught us it's that it never ever ends with the Jews. When I read this article all I think, who's next?
If you read the Regents of California university response to the faculty letter demanding that the university retract statements condemning the Hamas attacks, it is clear that those in charge clearly acknowledge and understand that the majority of faculty are teaching “dangerous ideas” to the students, but still do nothing to purge them from the university. The Regent Jay Sures states that the thought of these 300 faculty members shaping the thinking of students, sickens him. Yet, nothing is done to remove these lunatics.
People always have the right to move someplace to where they are more comfortable in their skin. So the question is; have we arrived at a point in time to where the immigrants are now the colonizers and demanding the locals change for them? If so, then we have truly learned nothing and I suspect that is exactly it. Mankind never learns from their mistakes.
Reading this article was an education. I had never heard of Fanon or his writings and I am glad to know one part (though certainly not the entirety) of the source of the barbarism in our country today. I feel for Fanon and what he experienced, tho it's always in extremity that we are radicalized either for good or for evil. Thereby perpetuating the very insanity he claimed to be raging against.
However, the first several paragraphs, listing of elite institutions, was most enlightening, bc therein lies the problem. Perception vs Reality. There needs to be an avalanche shift in human consciousness of what true intelligence is. Wisdom vs knowledge. Truth vs propaganda. We are seeing the results of decades of the garbage which has poisoned so many minds and then reproduced and spread them at an alarming rate. There are consequences to ignorance, and the rest of us are guilty by association in allowing this false education to go on so long untrammeled.
Churches, synagogues have not kept pace with the deeper, spiritual needs of humanity and when "progress" has been left to human intellectualism, we see the carnage it leaves in its path. I dealy hope this awakening is not too late.
It is becoming abundantly clear that at any level, the school systems taken as a whole in this country have become failures. Time to scrap them and start with ideas for the days ahead.
"At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
And this dude was a psychiatrist? What world was he living in? Violence makes you violent. Brutality makes you brutal. You don't need to go to school to know that, just try raising a couple kids past the age of five.
What's kind of interesting about all these left wing academics--whose rhetorical pretensions are that they are burly and tough cultural warriors, but whose reality is that they are sad, physically weak, lonely cat people--is that they FAIL TO LOOK AT THE OUTCOMES OF ALL THE CONFLICTS OF THE 60'S.
Look at Algeria. It was better off in many respects under French rule. Certainly abuses, violence and oppression have not disappeared.
Look at Vietnam. Like Cuba, it has essentially stopped economically. It's people are employed as low wage laborers for a connected Party elite who have all the detriments of "Capitalists" without the intelligence or even a pretense of honesty or accountability. And this, after hundreds of thousands of people were summarily executed, and million of families broken apart--parents sent to labor camps, children to be brainwashed--and a thousand years of culture completely destroyed. For what? Nothing. Something worse than the South, at least, had.
Everywhere you look you see people making the claim that if something is bad, anything has to be better. This is stupid. It is a creed articulated by stupid people, for stupid people. Things can ALWAYS get worse.
Look at MLK Jr. Did those who followed his likely assassination by some element of the US government GENUINELY build something good for black folks in this country? No. Not at all. The ghettos are still there, blacks in general are still ignorant and thus make less money than most of us, and crime has gotten vastly, vastly worse. It didn't used to be like that. Black neighborhoods were not unusually dangerous in 1930. Urban crime just wasn't REMOTELY close to what it has become.
Even Saint Gandhi--which in effect is what both Mahatma and Gandhiji mean--led to the partition of India, which led to MILLIONS of deaths, at that time, and in later times, like the brutal conflict in Bangladesh in the early 1970's.
Everywhere you look you see unserious people making stupid plans and then LYING about them, to themselves and others. This is not decency. This is not human goodness. If the world would have been better of had you done nothing, you are the bad guy.
And honest mistakes are one thing, but if you don't learn from your mistakes, the mistakes were not honest.
Fair. But the whole world has gotten wealthier, hasn't it? I'm going to guess white poverty rates went down quite a bit too. Most poor people in this country have always been white people.
But does it not remain a fact that the black neighborhoods which by and large were safe up until they were engulfed in riots, followed by white flight, are now riddled with homicides, failing schools, single teenage parents, violent music, and an inability to attract investment without direct government help?
The War on Poverty failed. All the promises of "I Have a Dream" has by and large been betrayed. We live in a nation that, as far as the Left is concerned, sees little BUT color, but this fact DOES NOTHING CONCRETELY GOOD FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY. All these charges of racism are to tear down white people, prevent an honest analysis, and buttress power positions of amoral psychopaths who just say whatever they need to to get what they want.
White poverty rate in 1968 11%. 2022 8.6%. So no, not a similar drop.
What has happened is the top 5% has become much wealthier, while the bottom 80% has stayed about the same. Middle class wages peaked in 1972 for example.
I blame inflated currency, which is the realm of fractional reserve banking, and the Fed at the top to keep an unstable system at least MORE stable than it would be.
And it may be that more access to opportunities in the black communities because of proactive anti-racist government policies played some role in that decrease. But it may also be that our culture was changing on its own, for many reasons, and that shift alone accounts for the difference.
What is obvious is that inner city blight happened almost overnight, as a result of riots that were sparked in nearly all cases by the sorts of people who read Fannon, and that most large cities have never fully recovered. Inner city schools are terrible. Crime is endemic. Ignorance is the rule, as is teenage pregnancy. Do you want to say I am wrong? Or do you want to claim that fixing these problems is something black leaders are working on? Obama didn't even try. Nobody tries. To try, they would have to admit the existence of the problems, and none of them seem willing to take that first step.
Guns.........ironically argued by the Black Panthers as a constitutional right to own and carry. Combined with the war on drugs and drug dealing becoming a mainstay of poor neighborhoods. Yes, the riots of the 1960s which were policed hard and with equal amount of violence by the police. They were reading Angela Davis and Huey Newton............not Fanon.
Is there any difference between an ankle bracelet and 24 hour state surveillance? If I can cancel your life, seize your bank account, control your speech, drive you from your home and destroy your life at will, for all practical purposes, you're under arrest. In the open air prison all conversations concerning human or political progress become disingenuous self-deception because the participants must pretend and ignore the fact that they are being held at gun point. All idea's about human progress and meaningful life are distorted and reality is dictated by who is in possession of the weapon. A criminal on the street can hold you hostage at gunpoint and steal your personal possessions. With an atomic bomb he can hold the peoples of the world hostage and loot at will.
So, in America today, where are the agreed upon lines of demarcation that transcend violence and allow the exercise of the necessary unfettered human moral reason that creates a meaningful life and a prosperous future? Because, without them, chains or not, one becomes a slave. And slavery is lie. A lie that ultimately neither the universe nor the human being will ignore or abide. Human reality shot through with polarized hatred, division and manipulation inevitably degenerates into a free fire zone where there are no lines of moral demarcation. Only the weapon and the survivor. No other labels apply. Later, moral outrage, political oratory, shiny medals and bugles will provide no resurrection for the dead. After the horror, images of the tortured and decapitated infant, the naked terrified child fleeing the napalmed village and the human shadows left upon the wall by nuclear incineration forever scar the survivors Soul, but will never open the perpetrator's heart.
There is a line. You know the one. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that it is drawn through every human heart. Is it? If so, what does it divide? And, what has its existence ever served? Can we choose to stand on one side or the other or does every man without consent stand astride it? We need not journey to Palestine or Israel to see the raped and battered woman, the murdered infant or the poor man bound, imprisoned and tortured. We see their American faces every day of the week.
GOT CONSTITUTION?
"..I can't run no more..with that lawless crowd...while the killers in high places...
say their prayers out loud....but they've summoned up a thundercloud....."
I doubt most people who use the word “decolonization” on social media have ever read a book, much less Fanon’s. They just robotically repeat words they don’t understand but sound good, like genocide, apartheid, resistance, occupation, etc.
I emphatically reject the teaching of hated and violence towards Jews.. However, progressive liberal Jews have never spoken out as Women studies have preached hatred towards men, black studies towards whites and queer studies against hetero-normative people. I hope they & others will speak out now. Stop contributing to these academic snake pits of hated. They are poisoning our children's minds. We need to stop it now!
I believe seeing the LGBTQ+ crowd now cheering and marching for the likes of Hamas is the evidence you are looking for. All that needs to be done is give them free passage to the Arab world so they can march and be cuddled by the residents of those countries. Such scenes only reinforce the CW they all have a mental issue. Whether true or not. Perception is reality especially when the group does ll it can to show the CW is basically right.
The modus operandi of the left is to create perceived victimhood to then divide. There's no such thing as a progressive. Leftists aren't liberal they are demonstrably the opposite.
It is bizarre to hear anyone argue that acts of barbarism constitute the moral high ground, but why not have a debate on the topic. Seems like there are plenty of academics who are prepared to argue the side of barbarism.
Psychologist point to video game violence as reducing the sensitivity to violence and promoting more violent behavior. What is the actual result of raping, murdering, and torturing children, the elderly, or any human being or animal? It seems beyond fantastical that this brutal behavior would produce leaders and a society that had just laws and the ethics of the moral high ground as its foundation.
I believe that few really know what moral high ground even means. They confuse it with relative morality. If I believe it, it is moral. Even if it wasn't 5 minutes ago.
John Adams represents a high morality achievable by humans. He was a "decolonizer" who used the justice system to Defend "colonizers" after the Boston Massacre. His actions were based on the belief that to achieve a society with just laws required just actions. The philosophy of achieving a just society by any means with glorification of brutal means is a failure as reflected in the bloody excesses of the French revolution. Frantz Fanon drew wrong conclusions and had the ends justify the means belief system.
My belief is we do know what is moral, but far to often write ourselves "my truths" pardons.
We find ourselves adrift in a world devoid of absolute truth. What I've typed here is absolutely true. Now excuse me, I think I'll read a little Al-Rumi.
“Fanon goes further in his analysis. He not only believes that violence is inevitable in a liberation struggle; he also writes that the act of killing purifies the killer in a war against a colonial oppressor. Fanon writes in the “On Violence” chapter: “At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation and analysis, but it’s a justification for vengeance and at the same time, almost a religious practice to purge oneself by sacrificing through killing the perceived scapegoat—the person, people, or thing that causes all your ills. And by doing so, renews the mind and body from that which has been suffocating (oppressing) it.
An excellent read illuminating where some of this rot is coming from.
And this is why Christianity, as the first major religion to codify de-escalation (“turn the other cheek”) as a moral virtue, supported the development of the most peaceful and prosperous societies in the history of human civilization. Postmodernism is effectively an attempt to regress society toward Iron Age morality, with predictable results.
Agree, Jim, at last as far as the formal theology goes. But that cross is a "terrible swift sword" for a reason.
The sad irony is that Christianity became one of the most powerful colonizing forces on the planet. One way was through its relentless zeal to "convert the heathens" through missionary programs and Church schools. The second was by supporting ruthless conquerors and kings who made the Church and its popes rich and powerful in exchange for providing God's "blessing" on secular conquests. Third is through the co-opting of local and national governments by insisting that God and State are one and the same.
In God We Trust, etc.
Don’t forget the Crusades and the Inquisition. Not to mention the questionable action/inaction of Pius XII during WW2. They’re having an international study group in Rome going through the recently released archives on what exactly went on then that began in October. I think the WSJ has an article about it. As a Catholic, I find the whole thing appalling. My priest friends and relatives all defend Pius XII, but I’m not sure I do.
As for the Catholic schools, when I went to Ireland, I learned about how prior to Irish independence from Britain, Catholics in Ireland were not allowed to own land, vote, or go to public school. They were all poor tenant farmers. Church schools were the only way they got any sort of education. So there’s always another side to any story.
There always is. It seems often, not to sideline the conversation, but we live in an age where we want our heroes and the "side of good" that we've chosen to always be free from poor choices and bad decisions. Unfortunately, that isn't how the world works, or people. Individuals are a complex interplay of white, black, and gray choices/decisions.
Consequently, 'good' itself turns out to be a moving target. Sometimes it's on the side of the revolutionaries; sometimes it's on the side of the king's guards. Historically, those who have insisted on categorically defining 'good' politically, religiously, ethnically, racially, ideologically, etc., have proved suffering and death's cruelest and most effective agents. I can't remember who said that wisdom requires the ability to discern "those flexible limits within which boundary lines oscillate," but he/she was clearly on to something. When you categorically identify 'good' with your nation, your tribe, or your political DNA, you risk finding you've given your loyalty to mere insignia rather than to ethical principles, as the line dividing right from wrong sweeps by over your head.
All your points are well-made, Ann. I was focusing only on the Church as a willing partner in the colonization of many lands. The popes gave the kings and conquerors the cover of God for their crimes--and got money and power in return.
Some Christian schools were, and remain, excellent. Others became the horror shows of the Indian Boarding Schools of Canada and the United States. For every side of any story, there's the second, third, fifth, and 29th side, as we're all learning about the Middle East right now :-)
For every Indian Boarding School tragedy that the Canadian state media discovered, there are quite literally tens of millions of students who attended Christian schools of various iterations who received wonderful preparations for life; but let's not go there. Nor should we go to the root concept of "colonization" and the stunningly ignored fact that there historically were many more pros than cons, yes, even on the receiving end, which itself is verboten in the current narrative. Not trying to offend you, Mr. Gericke, but lots of us need to crack that narrative shell once in a while. And I'd give one Pope Leo I for a thousand secular kings or presidents any day. Just saying.
No offense taken, Brigattista. I happen to agree with your religious school view: for every monstrous one there are thousands of greats turning out high-quality graduates. The examples I used in my post are almost all historic, not current, practice. But they illustrated my point that Christianity (or any other religion, including my own Judaism) are as pure and selfless as the OP to whom I was responding claimed.
Many more pros than cons in colonization? On that we must disagree. Cultures are entitled to their own destinies, even if we believe those cultures lousy. Forcing our culture on others at gunpoint caused too much harm to offset any benefits, because what to us is a "benefit" may very well be abhorrent to them.
Pope Leo I might have been a fine man and gifted head of Church--but I wouldn't want him or any other faith leader dictating the laws of my secular nation. Not Popes, not Martin Luther, not Islam's Mohammed. Separation of Church and State is a good thing for both parties, and the Founders of our nation were wise to insert that clause into our Constitution.
What happens when you get a greedy, venal, and corrupt Pope like one of these guys?
https://www.insider.com/crazy-popes-in-history-2017-1#paul-iv-10
Or Protestantism's Martin Luther, who so profoundly hated Jews that he'd have happily burned them all alive if he'd gotten the chance? Would you want them dictating the laws that govern your secular existence? I sure don't; faith leader + government head is too much power to entrust into any mere mortal.
Proving that there is some truth in both sides. As an example, the Amish and the Southern Baptist.
“Vatican’s Silence on Holocaust Was Shaped by Antisemitism and Caution, Archives Show” - https://www.wsj.com/world/vaticans-silence-on-holocaust-was-shaped-by-antisemitism-and-caution-archives-show-4e9ecc90
As long as you keep "the evil in our hearts" to yourself.
Well said.
I thought so, too, Rachael.
I agree completely, B S, and you said this well. It sparks a fascinating question: what if the blasphemers are the very same people who set the policy for the religion? In other words, who "owns" any particular religion: the organizers and managers, or the faithful? In the Catholic model, the pope and cardinals are exclusively in charge and the faithful must obey or leave. In other models, congregations can remove their faith leaders if they choose, putting the faithful, not management, in charge.
As for binding people to the sins of their ancestors, agreed, we cannot (or at least should not) allow that. It not only denies people their agency and potential to change for the better, it infantilizes them by saying "you're too immature/childish/stupid to change your ways." We need to treat adults as adults and let them suffer or enjoy the consequences of their behavior.
I'm Jewish, so I have no dog in the hunt over the divinity of Jesus, that's a Christian concept I don't share. But I welcome good people of any faith into my sphere as long as neither of us harms the other for beliefs not our own. I welcome diversity of thoughts in everything as long as innocents are not harmed in the process.
Thanks for writing, B S.
You're very welcome. My journey was the mirror of yours: born into a Lutheran family and converted to Judaism in college. Like you, experiencing multiple religious viewpoints provides a perspective that's useful in analyzing such as Israel-Palestine-Jihadism . . . which is a political Gordian knot much more than a religious.
Solomon's correct: We've seen this show before and we will see it again.
Love the discussion, but I've always wondered what "...to live up to God's promises" meant. Other than, trying to obey God's law.
Christianity has gone off the rails in many ways over the centuries but anyone who knows history knows that Christianity is the force that prevented literacy from dying in the West during the Dark Ages and that civilized many barbaric groups who previously spent their lives seeking revenge on each other. Turn the other cheek was more than a slogan.
Without Christianity, where would the West be?
Would be hard-pressed to argue against that point.
That's it! Blame others for your own self applied problems.
What do you mean?
Indeed. Let's just do that all the time. Damn the consequences.
It is all based on the phycology of ritual animal sacrifice and cleansing. Something which is very Semitic and goes back to Mesopotamia and Egyptian belief. It begins with the idea that the various gods of a tribe, are like tyrannical rulers, harsh in there edicts, and imposing strict laws of morality and conduct on the tribe members. If some laws are broken, then this is sin and to avoid judgement god must be mollified or he will be angry and punish everyone or withhold his bounty. Hence a scapegoat is selected and purified to induce a metaphorical transference of the guilt onto the animal. Then the punishment or SACRIFICE of the animal atones for the guilt and allows the tribe members to escape retribution from god at the final judgement. It also allows them to forgive each other for personal misdeeds. Ritually.
Thank you for providing further context. I only have so much, based on what I've cobbled together over the years from my own sporadic reading and observations.
Would I be mistaken in seeing the thread of the concept that the gods are tyrannical or harsh as an ancestor to gnostic-based beliefs, in that the "god" is cruel and we must purge--either others or ourselves?
There's a theory I've had for a while, and others have pointed out that some modern thinkers have also noted, that the preoccupation and rise of certain political schools of thought in the secular world are similar to gnostic beliefs, with a focus on purity spirals where different tribal groups are trying to define who is the "purist" in their practice of that political belief. They then work toward eliminating not only those who oppose, but purge from their own ranks. Hence, the descent into tribalism that we see and the ascendant theories of particular ideologies or doubling down on different political fronts.
The power of gods of an early agricultural tribes were like comic book heroes. Each had special powers, good or ill, and they control various forces of nature, wind, sun, rain, fire, etc. Thus the chief male god, represented the sky, the wife of the male god, represented the earth, and the planting and harvest and the frutes of the earth, required sex or cooperation between heaven and earth. Etc etc etc
The act of killing purifies the killer? Wow. No wonder the Marxist mongrel and the Muslim extremist find solidarity. A match made in Hell.
It just strikes me as funny how we humans just keep routing back to the same old fallacies and ways of doings things, despite how "advanced" we claim ourselves to be in our philosophies.
Excellent explanation of why we are where we are today! Just to clarify, the Jewish State was created by the United Nations in May 1948, not by a war. The Arab nations attacked the next day , and like you so accurately state, “ it was a struggle between a people who had survived a genocide and the entire Arab world .” Keep up the excellent work!
Those attacking Arab nations were gleeful Hitler supporters. The Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler and offered Hitler soldiers. Soviet Muslims also joined the Nazi cause. Before 1948 almost all the violence in Palestine was Muslims attacking and in some cases slaughtering Jews. The goal of many Muslims since 1948 has been to finish Hitler’s Final Solution.
And the half-wits today who bray of the "Palestinian genocide" ignore the teeming throngs of bloodthirsty lunatics who inhabit Gaza. Some "genocide....."
A doubling of the population of Gaza in 20 years is a pretty ineffective genocide.
Beautifully played! Thank you.
The rhetoric of hatred and lies from the Left is astounding.
Aha! You're missing the big conspiracy: First, double the population, then Starve them. Can't you see how devious those Jews are? And I'll wager a thousand bucks you'll see this same crackpot mental fart pop up on some "Free Palestine" threat within 24 hours.
The population of Gaza was about a million when Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005. It is now just over 2 million.
Thanks to both Liora and Lynne for supporting my comment. As President John Adams once remarked - "facts are stubborn things." The leftist lunatics wailing about a "Palestinian genocide" have been exposed as liars and fools.
It’s a common misconception, but the UN did not create Israel. Its Charter gives it no power to either create a state or set any borders. All the UN can do is recognize a state as qualifying for admission as a member of the UN.
Whether any territory qualifies as a “state” is controlled by the Montevideo Convention of 1933. It is on this basis that legal scholars (the non-partisan ones, anyway) conclude that no State of Palestine exists as a matter of law. Politics, of course, is a separate matter.
The rights of the Jewish people to re-establish themselves in a part of their historical homeland was affirmed by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 which, along with several separate but related treaties, enshrined those rights in international law. The dirty secret is that those rights survive to this day which is why Israel has the superior legal rights to the “disputed territories” and why this fact is effectively shouted down (rather than argued against with evidence) with slogans or simply ignored.
What the UN did in 1947 was to recommend a partition of the remaining Mandate land. (The British had closed off 78% of the land to Jewish settlement to create today’s Jordan in 1923). The UN was denied any authority to impose a solution that diminished the rights afforded the Jewish people under the still existing Mandate by Article 80 of its Charter.
The story is rather simple. When the Mandate terminated on May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. It was then invaded by five Arab armies - in flagrant violation of the UN Charter, by the way. Israel won this war for its survival and was later admitted as a member to the UN.
For what does PLO literally stand. Most would say “ The Palestinian Liberation Organization”. In reality it stands for “The Palestine Liberation Organization”! When was the PLO created. Most would respond “After the ‘67 War”. It was actually formed in 1964 when the West Bank & East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan. There never existed a Palestinian State, ever. In fact in 1972 when Palestinians revolted against King Hussein of Jordan he killed thousands of them. Their deaths are repeatedly memorialized by the UN & Universities.
I am pretty up on things, but that is mostly new to me and, to be honest, pretty deep.
Small comment: the UN didn’t create Israel, they suggested a partition. The UN doesn’t have any true legal authority. Jews made Israel happen, through 50+ years of hard labour putting “facts on the ground” and then by declaring statehood on their own, based on the UN suggestion.
Just a clarification. In the Bible the Hebrews were given the Promised Land by God. If you don't accept the Bible, the Mernepteh Stele from ca. 1203 BC and a Caananite stele from ca. 950 BC both refer to Israel as a state. So who is colonizing whom. The Hebrews have been there much longer. For further clarification I am not a Jew but a Presbyterian,
Correct.
The Jews accepted UN partition and the Arabs attacked.
The U.N. thinks it created the Jewish state. The is just vanity. But in actuality the state was created by blood and war and has never been accepted by the U.N. Let the UN send an expeditionary force to hell. if they have the guts.
The United Nations. They invited Iran to chair their Human Rights Forum. What a useless, feckless NGO.
https://unwatch.org/iran-to-chair-un-human-rights-forum-on-thursday-sparking-protests/
The Jewish state was “recognized” by the U.N. in 1948. The U.N. “created” exactly zero.
As an undergraduate I was forced to read Wretched of the Earth and remember thinking "how am I going to be able to endure reading the entirety of this tripe and trash" after throwing it across the room in disgust. That the insipid, latte sipping dolts who populate our universities continue to inflict Fanon's sick garbage on undergraduates who lap it up explains much of the modern madness.
You'd think that after seeing the evidence of the last 50-60 years of "independence struggles" in Africa, with formerly flourishing countries becoming economic and political sh*tholes, someone would realize that Marxist fantasies don't turn out as advertised. But no, the comfortable elites keep insisting that there's a right way to stick one's hand in a blender.
Great metaphor
A metaphoric masterstroke
The ultimate irony? By any metric - historical, archeological, genetic, even Biblical (if one accepts its validity) - the Jews (from "Judea", hence the name) are the indigenous people, and the Arabs (from Arabia) the colonial power. The decolonization narrative will never apply to the hated Jews.
I consider producing graduates with useless degrees as part of extremism. The absence of teaching real history results in support of whatever is the current agenda presented by the establishment.
Time to rethink our colleges and what they are and should be doing. This is the real THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY.
Republic. A democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
This Hamas attack and reaction from college students in this country begs the question, what other brainwashing of extremism is taking place on college campuses?
Coleman Hughes has a fascinating debate on his podcast with a gentleman explaining the Palestinian side of the conflict. His explanation of the historical perspective, IMHO, is entirely flawed, naive, and wrong, but rooted in the notion that Jews came from nowhere and simply took what what never belonged to them. Even the Balfour Declaration is further evidence of white colonizers ruining this great thing the Arabs had till the bad colonizers took it all away.
When viewed in this fashion, there's no debate or discussion. There is one and only one premise: The Jews invaded and therefore must be eliminated. Everything else is fruit from a poisoned tree.
Jews are used to having targets on our backs, but if there's one thing history has taught us it's that it never ever ends with the Jews. When I read this article all I think, who's next?
The left is coming for all of us.
Hopefully now that the experiment in the lab has been exposed, all of society will stand against the small minority that believes in this crap.
If you read the Regents of California university response to the faculty letter demanding that the university retract statements condemning the Hamas attacks, it is clear that those in charge clearly acknowledge and understand that the majority of faculty are teaching “dangerous ideas” to the students, but still do nothing to purge them from the university. The Regent Jay Sures states that the thought of these 300 faculty members shaping the thinking of students, sickens him. Yet, nothing is done to remove these lunatics.
People always have the right to move someplace to where they are more comfortable in their skin. So the question is; have we arrived at a point in time to where the immigrants are now the colonizers and demanding the locals change for them? If so, then we have truly learned nothing and I suspect that is exactly it. Mankind never learns from their mistakes.
Reading this article was an education. I had never heard of Fanon or his writings and I am glad to know one part (though certainly not the entirety) of the source of the barbarism in our country today. I feel for Fanon and what he experienced, tho it's always in extremity that we are radicalized either for good or for evil. Thereby perpetuating the very insanity he claimed to be raging against.
However, the first several paragraphs, listing of elite institutions, was most enlightening, bc therein lies the problem. Perception vs Reality. There needs to be an avalanche shift in human consciousness of what true intelligence is. Wisdom vs knowledge. Truth vs propaganda. We are seeing the results of decades of the garbage which has poisoned so many minds and then reproduced and spread them at an alarming rate. There are consequences to ignorance, and the rest of us are guilty by association in allowing this false education to go on so long untrammeled.
Churches, synagogues have not kept pace with the deeper, spiritual needs of humanity and when "progress" has been left to human intellectualism, we see the carnage it leaves in its path. I dealy hope this awakening is not too late.
It is becoming abundantly clear that at any level, the school systems taken as a whole in this country have become failures. Time to scrap them and start with ideas for the days ahead.
"At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence.”
And this dude was a psychiatrist? What world was he living in? Violence makes you violent. Brutality makes you brutal. You don't need to go to school to know that, just try raising a couple kids past the age of five.
What's kind of interesting about all these left wing academics--whose rhetorical pretensions are that they are burly and tough cultural warriors, but whose reality is that they are sad, physically weak, lonely cat people--is that they FAIL TO LOOK AT THE OUTCOMES OF ALL THE CONFLICTS OF THE 60'S.
Look at Algeria. It was better off in many respects under French rule. Certainly abuses, violence and oppression have not disappeared.
Look at Vietnam. Like Cuba, it has essentially stopped economically. It's people are employed as low wage laborers for a connected Party elite who have all the detriments of "Capitalists" without the intelligence or even a pretense of honesty or accountability. And this, after hundreds of thousands of people were summarily executed, and million of families broken apart--parents sent to labor camps, children to be brainwashed--and a thousand years of culture completely destroyed. For what? Nothing. Something worse than the South, at least, had.
Everywhere you look you see people making the claim that if something is bad, anything has to be better. This is stupid. It is a creed articulated by stupid people, for stupid people. Things can ALWAYS get worse.
Look at MLK Jr. Did those who followed his likely assassination by some element of the US government GENUINELY build something good for black folks in this country? No. Not at all. The ghettos are still there, blacks in general are still ignorant and thus make less money than most of us, and crime has gotten vastly, vastly worse. It didn't used to be like that. Black neighborhoods were not unusually dangerous in 1930. Urban crime just wasn't REMOTELY close to what it has become.
Even Saint Gandhi--which in effect is what both Mahatma and Gandhiji mean--led to the partition of India, which led to MILLIONS of deaths, at that time, and in later times, like the brutal conflict in Bangladesh in the early 1970's.
Everywhere you look you see unserious people making stupid plans and then LYING about them, to themselves and others. This is not decency. This is not human goodness. If the world would have been better of had you done nothing, you are the bad guy.
And honest mistakes are one thing, but if you don't learn from your mistakes, the mistakes were not honest.
Black Poverty rate 1968 35%. 2022 17%.................at least try to use reality in your arguments.
Fair. But the whole world has gotten wealthier, hasn't it? I'm going to guess white poverty rates went down quite a bit too. Most poor people in this country have always been white people.
But does it not remain a fact that the black neighborhoods which by and large were safe up until they were engulfed in riots, followed by white flight, are now riddled with homicides, failing schools, single teenage parents, violent music, and an inability to attract investment without direct government help?
The War on Poverty failed. All the promises of "I Have a Dream" has by and large been betrayed. We live in a nation that, as far as the Left is concerned, sees little BUT color, but this fact DOES NOTHING CONCRETELY GOOD FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY. All these charges of racism are to tear down white people, prevent an honest analysis, and buttress power positions of amoral psychopaths who just say whatever they need to to get what they want.
White poverty rate in 1968 11%. 2022 8.6%. So no, not a similar drop.
What has happened is the top 5% has become much wealthier, while the bottom 80% has stayed about the same. Middle class wages peaked in 1972 for example.
I blame inflated currency, which is the realm of fractional reserve banking, and the Fed at the top to keep an unstable system at least MORE stable than it would be.
And it may be that more access to opportunities in the black communities because of proactive anti-racist government policies played some role in that decrease. But it may also be that our culture was changing on its own, for many reasons, and that shift alone accounts for the difference.
What is obvious is that inner city blight happened almost overnight, as a result of riots that were sparked in nearly all cases by the sorts of people who read Fannon, and that most large cities have never fully recovered. Inner city schools are terrible. Crime is endemic. Ignorance is the rule, as is teenage pregnancy. Do you want to say I am wrong? Or do you want to claim that fixing these problems is something black leaders are working on? Obama didn't even try. Nobody tries. To try, they would have to admit the existence of the problems, and none of them seem willing to take that first step.
Guns.........ironically argued by the Black Panthers as a constitutional right to own and carry. Combined with the war on drugs and drug dealing becoming a mainstay of poor neighborhoods. Yes, the riots of the 1960s which were policed hard and with equal amount of violence by the police. They were reading Angela Davis and Huey Newton............not Fanon.
I grew up both surrounded by guns and completely unfamiliar with crime. I first fired a shotgun when I was maybe 8.
Ever now most of the guns are in the most peaceful places.
And what did Huey and Angela read?
Youre ducking my main argument for good reason aren’t you? If we include “unwillingness to admit fallacy and error” as good reasons.
The violence where I live and probably where you live, is MAYBE one percent cop and 99 percent the result of a broken social system.
Is there any difference between an ankle bracelet and 24 hour state surveillance? If I can cancel your life, seize your bank account, control your speech, drive you from your home and destroy your life at will, for all practical purposes, you're under arrest. In the open air prison all conversations concerning human or political progress become disingenuous self-deception because the participants must pretend and ignore the fact that they are being held at gun point. All idea's about human progress and meaningful life are distorted and reality is dictated by who is in possession of the weapon. A criminal on the street can hold you hostage at gunpoint and steal your personal possessions. With an atomic bomb he can hold the peoples of the world hostage and loot at will.
So, in America today, where are the agreed upon lines of demarcation that transcend violence and allow the exercise of the necessary unfettered human moral reason that creates a meaningful life and a prosperous future? Because, without them, chains or not, one becomes a slave. And slavery is lie. A lie that ultimately neither the universe nor the human being will ignore or abide. Human reality shot through with polarized hatred, division and manipulation inevitably degenerates into a free fire zone where there are no lines of moral demarcation. Only the weapon and the survivor. No other labels apply. Later, moral outrage, political oratory, shiny medals and bugles will provide no resurrection for the dead. After the horror, images of the tortured and decapitated infant, the naked terrified child fleeing the napalmed village and the human shadows left upon the wall by nuclear incineration forever scar the survivors Soul, but will never open the perpetrator's heart.
There is a line. You know the one. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that it is drawn through every human heart. Is it? If so, what does it divide? And, what has its existence ever served? Can we choose to stand on one side or the other or does every man without consent stand astride it? We need not journey to Palestine or Israel to see the raped and battered woman, the murdered infant or the poor man bound, imprisoned and tortured. We see their American faces every day of the week.
GOT CONSTITUTION?
"..I can't run no more..with that lawless crowd...while the killers in high places...
say their prayers out loud....but they've summoned up a thundercloud....."
Leonard Cohen/ANTHEM
I doubt most people who use the word “decolonization” on social media have ever read a book, much less Fanon’s. They just robotically repeat words they don’t understand but sound good, like genocide, apartheid, resistance, occupation, etc.
I emphatically reject the teaching of hated and violence towards Jews.. However, progressive liberal Jews have never spoken out as Women studies have preached hatred towards men, black studies towards whites and queer studies against hetero-normative people. I hope they & others will speak out now. Stop contributing to these academic snake pits of hated. They are poisoning our children's minds. We need to stop it now!
I believe seeing the LGBTQ+ crowd now cheering and marching for the likes of Hamas is the evidence you are looking for. All that needs to be done is give them free passage to the Arab world so they can march and be cuddled by the residents of those countries. Such scenes only reinforce the CW they all have a mental issue. Whether true or not. Perception is reality especially when the group does ll it can to show the CW is basically right.
:-) I think they would get a rude awaking. Hamas would not be interested in their pronouns or microaggressions. They would have to grow up very fast.
I doubt Hamas would give them the time to grow at all.
The modus operandi of the left is to create perceived victimhood to then divide. There's no such thing as a progressive. Leftists aren't liberal they are demonstrably the opposite.
It is bizarre to hear anyone argue that acts of barbarism constitute the moral high ground, but why not have a debate on the topic. Seems like there are plenty of academics who are prepared to argue the side of barbarism.
Psychologist point to video game violence as reducing the sensitivity to violence and promoting more violent behavior. What is the actual result of raping, murdering, and torturing children, the elderly, or any human being or animal? It seems beyond fantastical that this brutal behavior would produce leaders and a society that had just laws and the ethics of the moral high ground as its foundation.
I believe that few really know what moral high ground even means. They confuse it with relative morality. If I believe it, it is moral. Even if it wasn't 5 minutes ago.
John Adams represents a high morality achievable by humans. He was a "decolonizer" who used the justice system to Defend "colonizers" after the Boston Massacre. His actions were based on the belief that to achieve a society with just laws required just actions. The philosophy of achieving a just society by any means with glorification of brutal means is a failure as reflected in the bloody excesses of the French revolution. Frantz Fanon drew wrong conclusions and had the ends justify the means belief system.
My belief is we do know what is moral, but far to often write ourselves "my truths" pardons.
We find ourselves adrift in a world devoid of absolute truth. What I've typed here is absolutely true. Now excuse me, I think I'll read a little Al-Rumi.
Would it be Ok to commit violet acts against them when they are oppressing you within the confines of the institutions they work for?