18-09-2025 - Pep speech

in September 2002 I was sitting in class, 19 years old, and learning for the first time about Eurocentrism, the belief that the West is the center of the world, the best of the world, and everyone else is backwards to varying degrees. This is of course still the platform of the right-wing to this day. 

The way Eurocentrism was introduced to me was by quoting a Spanish priest about the behaviour of the conquistadors in the Caribbean. They would throw babies in the air and catch them with their rapiers. They would throw babies into the river or crush them against rocks, or feed them to dogs. They would slice open the belly of a child and laugh as the innards spilled out. They roasted people alive. 

It's not just the West.

During the rape of Nanjing, the Japanese treated the Chinese much the same way, where Japanese soldiers would catch Chinese babies on their bayonets. 

In the autumn of 2022, the Ukrainian military recaptured a lot of territory from the Russians. They found mass graves, with indications of civilians being executed from close range. They also found torture cellars, with boxes full of extracted teeth.

Now I quote Noura Erakat, the famous Palestinian activist:

"The Sri Lankans in the north-west part of the territory, the Tamils have fought for their self determination, in the form of secession, and fought against the Sri Lankan army for decades in armed resistance. Ultimately it was horrendous, the genocide that they were subject to. They had taken shelter, where they when then fumigated, killed en masse. Then the Tamils surrendered. 

Even after surrendering - and this is relevant to our moment right now, of thinking about this demand, that if only Hamas surrendered, everything would end, because that keeps shifting: give the hostages, then step down from power, next it's going to be: we want you to commit collective suicide. These are the demands. There's the fallacy in believing that surrender offers reprieve. When the Tamils surrendered, the United Nations was evacuating them in marked buses, the Sri Lankan army then massacred all those on those buses. 

It's a reminder that we should also pay attention to the genocide of the Tamils, and the fact that Sri Lankan enters now in national security arrangements and the exchange of military carceral technology with the United States and Israel, in the aftermath, this is 2009, as a model. Like Sri Lankan did it, for counter terrorism.

But it puts you on this road, let's think of other moments that turned out poorly. Think about the PLO in Lebanon. When the PLO leaves Lebanon for Tunisia, the massacre that the UN described as a genocide at Sabra and Shatila, happens AFTER the PLO leaves. Surrender doesn't equal security. It makes us more insecure and vulnerable and destitute." 

All this to say two things:

1) whether recent or long ago, whether by Europeans or by others, every aggressor, every power, holds the capacity to commit the worst crimes people can do to each other. Gaza is a clear example, and the things Israelis have been saying, the things you can read on all these signs, give a clear indication that the worst of this genocide would come after the fight with Hamas is over. 

2) The Marxist thinker Vivek Chibber once said that colonialism doesn't tell you much, that as a concept it is analytically null. It's just people going somewhere, doing some killing and stealing their stuff. What colonialism and aggression have taught me however is that in all the examples I've mentioned, whether it's the Spanish conquistadors, the imperial Japanese, the Russian invaders, the Sri Lankan army or the IDF, what enables these horrible crimes is the firm belief by the guys with the most power who are intent on taking other people's stuff, that  their victims are subhuman and deserve their treatment. This mindset is an absolute must, because if the aggressors would lapse for a moment and acknowledge the equal humanity of all, they would have no justification for their actions. The depraved racism of the Israelis we have seen therefore performs a vital function. Without it they cannot continue to occupy, steal, or commit genocide.

I want to end on a positive note. Humanity is not all bad. The proof is right here. Most of you who are here are spending your free time to fight for a people you don't know, who are far away. We can be beautiful as long as we reject and fight the culture of death and supremacy 

Thank you