It's Raining Roundup and Paraquat

There's not a morning I go through without being reminded of the pervasive, crippling "race" prejudice emanating from the places where I have lived most of my life: east-(central) Europe, north America, various parts of west-(central) Europe, and others. We are living in times when "race" cognition is elevated to incredible heights: official state policy and popular resistance. Both are taken by "race" cognition, if not outright racism. This applies even to significant instances of supra-state policy--think of NATO, EU, IMF. All kinds of other CAPITAL letters.

I wrote something about the deep seeded racism in Europe and in particular about inferiority-complex-overcompensating, forever deeply racist east European, "dirty white" identity four years ago. You can read it here or here. The Magyar version is available here or here.

At this point I am unable to think of the history of modern capitalism, in "the West," in the middle of Europe, and everywhere else, as a process devoid of "race" prejudice. It's been omnipresent. (As an aside to post-state-socialist subjects in the world: I wonder why we have not been taught the history of modernity, capitalism, empires, etc., with "race" as a key element. Explicitly. Front and center.)

Of course I am aware of--and practice endlessly--materialist, historical-social critiques of global and regional formations under capitalism. It is clear that somehow--we can pretty much guess how--"race"-cognition is emerging to the point of official ideologies. It's a pan-spectral political language, having saturated the entire political field. Almost a supra-ideology, sitting atop all ideologies. Being a non- (let alone anti-) racist requires an individual act of courage / weirdness today. People opposing genocide are hunted down by the oppressive organs of the capitalist state, and through all-powerful informal social networks.

Do you want to be isolated? Be a humanist and apply the same fundamental ethical standards to all. That'll do it.

In other words, we are living in "interesting times." An epochal change. And its essence is not ONLY the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Not even "just" the end of US hegemony over the world-system. Nor even a simple transition to the newly-emerging hegemony of China (whatever it might turn out to mean), under the firm leadership of the Communist Party over the capitalist world-economy. Nor do I see any reason to pronounce the end of world capitalism and of all the catastrophes it had created.

Not yet.

There's, clearly, wild hegemonic turbulence, or indeed even chaos, happening. Like in the weather report from the United States: "a hundred tornadoes at once!"

But something else, and more, is also happening. Clearly, the alliance between the political "elites" and Big Capital of the declining hegemon and its minions, cringing in the squeeze press of a world-economy, stuck in an extremely resource-wasteful technological civilization in a world offering relatively limited resources AND a fantastically dynamic east, south-east and south Asian region, the latter in the middle of a veritable technological "Great Leap Forward," . . . so, they, the declining-hegemon-and-its-minions, have turned to "agitation and propaganda" and not-so-subtly revised their rhetorics.

They have transformed their mass and "social" media-content, the detritus they have been spraying over the world for generations now, into poison. They spray the world with a mix of Roundup and Paraquat. In other words: universally destructive poison. Material that kills all that lives.

Non-white, non-male, non-propertied, non-highly-educated, non-millionaire billions of humans are increasingly treated as weed. (In the non-recreational sense of the word.) It feels like we are under some kind of a planetary rainstorm: a violent, overtly nazi, mass murderous tornado, showering us with a rhetoric of "race"-inferiority-and-superiority. Promoting violence and, ultimately, elimination of others. All others.

Who are the "others"? We, all.

If somebody has any suggestion as to how to go beyond this, and live, and be content, I'd love to hear it.