European redemption

Is Europe redeemable?

This is not an easy question, neither to ask nor to answer. For the crimes of Europe extend beyond what can be listed or discussed here. Slavery, economic exploitation, cultural erasure, religious persecution, resource plunder, these are but some of the worst crimes of Europe and its explorers. Let’s suppose Europe is redeemable for these acts; let’s suppose they have progressed passed their savagery and evolved into more sophisticated creatures that wish equality for the brown and black and yellow people of the world; let’s suppose they pursue noble causes such as education, healthcare, scientific development and the enlightenment of man. Let’s suppose they pursue the ideals they have claimed to pursue for the last four centuries. Is Europe redeemable? I argue it is not. For despite giving up their occupation they have yet to return their large swathes of land to the South Africans, for despite giving up their empire they still hold the treasures of South Asia, for despite outlawing slavery they still build cities in the middle east, yet this time the slaves are brown and from South Asia rather than black from Africa.

Europe continues to be guided by the bourgeoisie, it continues its vast empire and it enforces hegemony through its military might. It may no longer be massacring with bullets and machetes but it continues to massacre, through poverty, through war crimes, through imperialism. It continues to profit. When Cesaire speaks of the Bantu, it is almost as if he is speaking about the colonised: “In short, you tip your hat to the Bantu life force, you give a wink to the immortal Bantu soul. And that's all it costs you! You have to admit you're getting off cheap!”. Europe got off cheap; to wipe colonialism out of the history books all they had to acknowledge was the colored persons right to self-determination, codify it in their own image, and they were freed of all else that they owed.

To elaborate this further, perhaps the focus should be shifted to a modern part of the European empire, Israel. The Jews are a unique nation in that they have both been victims of European imperialism and its beneficiaries. For when the state of Israel was created, it was done so as a refuge for jews escaping nazi crimes in Europe; it was created as a neighbouring state to Arab Palestine, as a way for Jews to return to their holy land. Yet what it has succumbed to is the same colonialism that Europe feeds itself on, it has created a new apartheid, and it has continued to spout the same humanist illusion that European philosophers used to justify colonialism and white supremacy. European governments choose to fund Israeli war crimes while negotiating peace deal with Palestinians, they call Palestinian protestors terrorists and claim Israeli soldiers are only defending themselves when they shoot medics dead. Israeli occupation is only one of the post-colonial enterprises of Europe, but it is a poignant example; for it receives massive funding from its European benefactors. For it is a successor to European ideals despite having been a victim of them. It is a promised land that fulfils this promise by removing the Palestinians from their own land. It is an apartheid that continues in a world that proclaims itself to have evolved beyond accepting apartheid; it shows that even today, “at the very time when it most often mouths the word, the West has never been further from being able to live a true humanism-a humanism made to the measure of the world.” It shows that Europe cannot be redeemed because the bourgeoisie, condemned by Cesaire to the responsibility of their barbarianism continue their savagery. Perhaps the question should not be whether Europe can be redeemed but whether it even asks to be redeemed, because the answer to that is within their 21^st century imperialism; and even God only forgives those who ask for it.