Dissident Veteran For Peace

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from a friend that included a quote from Malcolm X's February 14, 1965, speech "After the Bombing" (at bottom) and several excerpts from Gerry Gambill's 1968 speech "On the Art of Stealing Human Rights." The message also contained the following commentary:

After proven 'successful' (or so they think) in the stolen lands of America against the 'natives', the art of human rights stealing is now being applied 'internationally' to the rest of humanity -other 'natives'- by the so called 'international community'-- a mere code word for barbaric savage and RACIST western-European-American-Zionist powers that be-- through using and abusing their 'international' organisations...

This comment exemplifies the widespread and mistaken notion that colonialism was only used by Europeans against non-Europeans and that it always had a strong racist component. In fact, the techniques of colonialism and empire and their international application are very old and the racial element is comparatively new—no more than five or six hundred years old—and was largely a rationalization, not a motive for the exploitation of non-European people.

The English, for example, began their violent occupation of Ireland in 1171—more than eight hundred years ago--and they occupy a large part of the country to this very day. Millions of Irish died or were displaced during, or as a result of, the conquest. The campaigns of Oliver Cromwell were especially bloody. In 1652, Roger Williams—a prominent English Puritan minister and founder of Rhode Island—published The Hireling Ministry None of Christ's. In it, he wrote

If the holy Scripture ... and doleful experience may be judge, as an eminent person lately spake (upon occasion of a debate touching the conversion of the Indians), we have Indians at home—Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland ...[1]

Williams was familiar with the exploits of Cromwell, a fellow Puritan, and even makes reference to him later in The Hireling Ministry[2]. So, the reference to Indians in Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland takes on a different meaning if we consider what was going in Ireland, for example. After the conclusion of the English Civil War, in 1649, Cromwell landed with 15,000 troops in English-occupied Dublin. The first major battle of campaign was the siege of Drogheda. Cromwell said in a letter: "It has pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda … I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did, are in safe custody for the Barbadoes ..."

Cromwell repeated his exploits at Wexford, Waterford, and Limerick. When Cromwell was finished one quarter of the Catholic population was dead, the tiny Protestant minority controlled 75% of the cultivable land, and thousands had been forced into exile or slavery in the West Indies. [3] The period was commemorated by the Irish poet Yeats in his "The Curse Of Cromwell." Here's the first stanza:

You ask what - I have found, and far and wide I go: Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen, where are they? And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride - - His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified. O what of that, O what of that, What is there left to say?

• Indians in Ireland—Take II
• Indians in Ireland—Take III

• "Errand in the Wilderness: Roger Williams and 'soul liberty,' " a chapter in Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy by Donald A. Grinde, Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen with a foreword by Vine Deloria, Jr.
• On Choctaw aid in 1847 to Irish famine victims: "Native Americans in Ireland" on the Native American History web site of Black Hawk Designs. Archived version here.
• Justine McCabe. "What Indians And Palestinians Share." Znet. May 31, 2005.
• Robert Robideau. " 'God Given Right:' Palestine and Native America." CounterPunch. February 1, 2006.

1. Perry Miller. Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition. (New York: Atheneum, 1974). p. 200.
2. Ibid. p. 202.
3. Phil Evans and Eileen Pollock. Ireland for Beginners. (New York: Writer and Reader Pub., 1994.) pp. 15-18.

I might point out here that colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that is just confined to England or France or the United States. The interests in this country are in cahoots with the interests in France and the interests in Britain. It's one huge complex or combine, and it creates what's known not as the American power structure or the French power structure, but an international power structure. This international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.

—Malcolm X

Labels: Empire, history, identity, Indians, Ireland, Malcolm X, quotations, race, United States, White folks

# posted by PeaceMonger @ 8/03/2006 10:54:00 PM