Understanding...

Since my last post I travelled to Europe for five weeks. I wanted to focus on the task I charged myself with as well as ingest as much of the culture I could so I did not want to be stuck behind my computer. Also, I was spooked by the supposed large amount of pick pockets in Europe (there were no attempts on my pockets). Despite no computer I did write, I wrote a lot. In the coming weeks I will be posting quite a few essays that I wrote in the notebooks I took with me. The following essay I did not write overseas. I am back in Los Angeles able to listen to bullshit media outlets once again give a fuck about what Donald Trump Tweets when he's drunk and coked out getting his asshole tickled by an Eastern European immigrant he keeps in a White House tool shed. They just do not interest me. In fact, nothing he does interest and I do not pay attention to anything he does or says. He's a distraction.

Fuck the Tweet, look it up if you want. The response to his Tweet by the Tweet's subject is what I find fascinating and ridiculously truthful in an age where people incessantly and aggressively lie to themselves about who and what they are and what they believe (in my humble opinion). I use aggressively because a lot of people in our hypersensitive society try to kill everyone in anyway they can; socially, economically, physically, if their opinion or thought process is not aligned to how they arbitrarily identify. There is no introspection, there is no more, "I think therefore I am." There is no more personal affirmation of identity, despite what some would argue. The times have developed into "You must confirm what I think I am." Maybe, identity is not validated by society but it must be confirmed by it.  That is my convoluted understanding.

Understanding...

In the above video, Julius Malema the leader of the South African based Economic Freedom Fighters Political Party responds to a tweet by Donald Trump about his parties want to expropriate the land from white farmers and return the land back to the indigenous people of South Africa. Beginning at the fifty second mark he says,

"In all the hearings I have recommended and said I have still to meet a white person who supports expropriation of land without compensation. So why are you shocked? I see leaders of the EFF and everybody responding to Donald Trump's Tweet... I don't have time for nonsense. I expected this and more bad language has yet to come. If South Africans aren't ready to expropriate the land because they are scared of sanctions, they're scared of backlash then don't vote for the EFF. Because if you vote for us we're going to expropriate land and Donald Trump will come for us, and Britain will come for us, and the EU will come for us... we must be prepared for all of them."

I believe this is Malema admitting to his understanding of the consequences of his stance. I believe he not only understands the nature of the people who violently appropriated the land in South Africa but that their will undoubtedly be retaliation, retaliation is not just imminent it is certain.

Why does Malema want to expropriate the land? Why would anyone feel the need to expropriate land? Could it be for the same reason the Belgian and British and other European colonial powers slaughtered the indigenous peoples for it? This is about an understanding of history as well. 

Why must indigenous peoples all over the planet adhere and accept the history of European/United States Imperialism? Because there are white guns pointed at their heads? Too much time has passed? If I learned anything about Europe being educated in the United States is that they are very proud of all what they have built and what they have accumulated. It does not matter how they gained control of all the resources that their continent cannot produce, that their homelands could never possess or cultivate, that built their wealth and influence. All of the labor and minerals that fueled their industrial revolutions and allowed for the creative innovations that have destroyed human interaction, human activity and relationships, and the environment. Is this understanding revisionism based upon some inherent inability or is that why the African "trends" on the bottom rungs of society? Or is it necessitated by the capitalist structure? Does looking down the barrel of a gun make you so nervous that you become dumb, deaf, and blind? 

That is Malema's understanding. Every talking head criticizing his comments are only reading from  the same white supremacist script that has led to this dystopian world. Some people, like Malema, understand the lies that white supremacy must tell itself in order to persist and that some people will pretend like they do not know they are being lied to for comfort.

This is the same understanding I use when approaching these critical issues in today's society. I try to be knowledgeable enough about history to understand how everyone ended up in the moment of complaint about identity, representation, compensation, oppression. How did "X" person from "Y" background end up "Z"? What was the impetus, what flicked the domino? What is this situation causally dependent?

Malema lastly understands his opponent, their allies, and the how they will react to his party, to his country, to all black/African people globally, if elected, and succeeds in expropriating the land. He understands their reaction to his party's goals because he understands how Britain, the European Union, and the United States have always acted with violence towards those in the way of their wants and interests and that the African has been at the barrel's end of that violence since the invention of the gun. 

It is understanding that history that has to be the basis of Julius Malema's political understanding. I bet more indigenous peoples from around the globe would feel the exact same way, but they're either silenced by fear and placation or they've been completely exterminated. Luckily, there are still enough Africans where a certain segment of them are still resisting colonialism and actually trying to reverse the effects of it on their society. Malema understands, just as the oppressor understands, that their must be a perpetual resistance against oppression. That is very similar to my understanding of this society. Echoing El Hajj Malik Shabazz I don't feel like an American (I was born and raised in the United States, I possess a masochistic love for this country), but as someone victimized by America, someone who is apart of groups that have been systematically marginalized because it is necessary for the oppressors to maintain their excess. 

This mindset is understandable especially using the model of the oppressors. The oppressors necessarily exalt their history. You see what I'm getting at? The initial action cannot be ignored. This is what they can only erase by complete extermination otherwise both parties the oppressor and the oppressed understand that initial action and the histories that were born from it. No matter how hard the oppressor tries the oppressed cannot forget the plight of their ancestors, in the case of the Alkebulan the lands that they cultivated for centuries, the lands they defended for centuries. 

If you understand the history of Britain, the United States of America, and of the European Union, whether you appreciate, laud, and are emboldened by that history or if you are embarrassed or victimized by that history you necessarily must understand that there is an absolute probability that the historical narratives being told in history classes and museums in the western world are not the same narrative being told in schools and museums of the colonized, the subjects of imperialism. In fact, in the western world the history of the "white" nations has become fantastically fabricated it has become solely propaganda.

Noam Chomsky wrote in his book, Media Control, "That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything." The history of the European has become sloganeered. Centuries of their history have been presented just like petitioners present the affect of Propositions, Bills, and Laws, in brief paragraphs. Tweetable quotes are believed to be able to summarize a vast history filled with complicated relationships with all cultures, including each other, as well as, valiant and most often atrocious, deeds. 

Julius Malema will not adhere to this "get down or lay down" mentality (policy). Adherence, placation cannot be and is not inherent in all people on the globe. Certainly, in the minds of the direct subjects of the colonizers/imperialists (the white tax paying citizens of the western world) there is a need to protect that history to maintain a wanted level of comfortability. Despite that level of comfort being guided and molded by transnational corporations and banks. They must refuse to understand, I think they must refuse to understand.

I think I understand where Julius Malema is coming from. I do understand. More people need to gain his understanding.