<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[anti-imperialism &amp; anti-colonialism]]></title><description><![CDATA[anti-imperialism &amp; anti-colonialism]]></description><link>http://94.249.153.3:4569/category/19</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 02:18:21 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="http://94.249.153.3:4569/category/19.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:57:12 GMT</pubDate><ttl>60</ttl><item><title><![CDATA[thoughts on frontier states of the west]]></title><description><![CDATA[Someone has to write a book about how the West conceived, helped create and keeps reproducing the pattern of the "frontier state". Such states today are for example Ukraine, Greece, and to a certain extent Lebanon. These states are positioned above the imaginary border diving West and East, which is today once again militarized perhaps to an unprecedented degree.
These states are (self-)trained ideologically to encounter the perceived existential "threat from the East" which comes always in the form of a supposedly constantly aggressive and "imperialist" state (Russia, Turkey, Syria, respectively).
These frontier states, on the other hand, are condemned to the status of economic lackeys of Western capital and the local comprador elites, deprived of any economic sovereignty and social development.
These are societies states with intense inequalities and gigantic brain drain. Their educational institutions are in fact increasingly modelled as brain drain machines. Their diasporas are educated at home and employed abroad, sending back remittances, which is often the main bloodline of the economy.
Their intellectual elites (even those on the left spectrum) are also buying in the perception of the "eastern threat", albeit dressed in a pseudomarxist, western leftist or secular guise. Their critique of the West stops short from understanding deeper traits of economic, political, ideological warfare whose themselves are often products.
In terms of historical self-perception, these states understand themselves as liberated border zones that pushed back against the advancement of the forces of evil which often appear in the shape of armies, while recently come as migrants and refugees.
In any case, the ideological insecurity of these states vis-a-vis supposed organized plans of civilisational takeover by the mighty eastern Other is always the root of their foreign policy and the rallying and recruitment cry for the far right.
In terms of geopolitics, the frontier state pattern equips these states with a constant obsession with the eastern threat, which obstructs the ability to see the rest of the world in a sober light. These states are both euro-centric and east-phobic, despite the fact that they still share immense cultural traits with the people on the other side of the border! In most cases, they share a millennia-long history of coexistence as part of wider pre-capitalist empires.
Today, however, every major geopolitical move for these states is commonly read, decided and framed within the framework of the threat of the east. Even far fetched history becomes impossible to rethink since every such effort constitutes a form of epistemological treason to the nation.
At some point, especially during crises and (often imported) tensions, the obsession with the threat from the east takes the form of moral panic and outright paranoia, while the enemy and its local collaborators are perceived to have infiltrated everything in the buffer state and its periphery: media, politics, education as well as neighboring governments and international organizations.
There is always thus a recurrent need to "cleanse" such evil traces, which often takes the shape of pogroms by proto-fascist forces whose declared aim is to eradicate political, linguistic, cultural or ideological influences of the threatening east.
These campaigns might at some critical juncture reach levels of ethnic cleansing and massive population transfers. In any case, racial/cultural purity is often the guiding principle of fascist forces in these states. These forces are traditionally supported - militarily, politically, ideologically - by the West: Greek fascists, Lebanese falangists, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and to the West they swear allegiance.
It is important to note that these historical states do not share similar trajectories or even positionalities in the global division of imperial domination. Some are more successful examples than others. Greece for example is a successful case of frontier state; Lebanon is not. Ukraine is currently been sacrificed.
These states might be useful for one period while fall into irrelevance in the next. They might be used as pons of imperial plans to divide and rule regions of strategic importance to the imperium: Middle East, Balkans, East Europe.
Today however these frontier states seem to have fallen further below in the priority list of their patrons. The financial colonization of Greece, the abandonment of Lebanon, the sacrifice of Ukraine underlines the fate of the states that are thrown to the dogs by their own protectors if the time is ripe.
Today, these states have very different positions in the strategic consideration of the imperial rulers but they all have one thing in common: they are subordinate and dictated to submit to the new imperial order, at the top of which sits the frontier state par excellence, the garrison state of "Western supremacy", the ideal type of the genocidal state: the state of Israel.
These are preliminary thoughts which need further clarification and differentiation. Hence a book, not a fb post.
kosmatopoulos/fb
]]></description><link>http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/196/thoughts-on-frontier-states-of-the-west</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/196/thoughts-on-frontier-states-of-the-west</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[istomastor]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:57:12 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title><![CDATA[Vichy in Beirut - On the legitimacy crisis of the Lebanese government under foreign occupation]]></title><description><![CDATA[[image: 1777334131661-7ef65065-982a-414c-83d0-a86d4d914a19-image.webp]
Vichy in Beirut by Dyab Abou JahjahOn the legitimacy crisis of the Lebanese government under foreign occupationRead on Substack 
In the autumn of 1940, the French National Assembly voted to dissolve the Third Republic and grant Marshal Philippe Pétain—hero of Verdun and a national icon—total authority over the French State. The new regime, headquartered in the spa town of Vichy, proceeded to do something that still haunts the French conscience to this day: it wielded the machinery of the state—the police, the courts, the bureaucracy—to hunt down, imprison, and execute its own citizens, including those who dared to resist the German occupation. The Vichy government labeled them terrorists. History knows them as the French Resistance.
Today, Lebanon faces its own Vichy moment.
As Israeli forces consolidate control over parts of southern Lebanon, establishing security buffers, leveling entire villages—including my own, Hanin, now reduced to rubble where even the graves have been erased—and launching military incursions deep into Lebanese territory, the Lebanese government finds itself under extraordinary pressure. This pressure emanates not only from the occupying power but also from the United States, the European Union, and even several Arab states, all urging the state to dismantle and outlaw Hezbollah, the only organized force actively resisting that occupation. The government has indeed taken a decision outlawing the resistance (not the political party Hezbollah, that remains in parliament and in the government itself, but its resistance armed wing). This raises an important question: does a government that criminalizes its own citizens’ right to resist foreign occupation retain any legitimate claim to represent those citizens?
The Right That Cannot Be Surrendered
There is a dangerous misconception that the right to resist occupation is a political privilege granted by a parliamentary majority, or a concession that can be revoked by a simple vote of the legislature. This is a fundamental error in understanding the nature of sovereignty and human rights. The right to resist foreign domination is not a collective bargaining chip to be traded in the corridors of power; it is an inherent, individual right belonging to every single citizen, regardless of their sect, party affiliation, or political leaning. It is a right that exists prior to the state, preceding the constitution, and it cannot be surrendered by a majority, let alone a minority. Even if every citizen in Lebanon were to vote tomorrow to disarm and submit to occupation, that vote would be legally null and void, for no people can sign away their fundamental right to self-defense and self-determination.
After 1945, the people designing the new legal order were not just trying to punish crimes already committed. They were trying, perhaps a little desperately, to prevent their repetition in another form. The fear was no longer only of the foreign occupier. It was also of the local state that bends, adapts, and collaborates.
So the postwar legal architecture began to take shape around a dangerous question: what happens when the state ceases to be a shield and becomes the first instrument of submission? That is part of why later international law, especially under the pressure of anti-colonial movements, moved toward protecting resistance rather than simply criminalizing it.
In 1973, the newly decolonized nations of the world stood up at the United Nations and rewrote the rules that Vichy had exploited. Resolution 3103 declared that the struggle against “colonial and alien domination” is “legitimate and in full accordance with the principles of international law.” It was a direct rebuke to the logic of collaboration: it stated that those who fight an occupier are not criminals to be prosecuted, but combatants entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
Four years later, the world made this binding. Additional Protocol I (1977) shattered the colonial assumption that only states could wage lawful war. Article 1(4) redefined armed conflict to include wars against “alien occupation,” and Article 96(3) gave national liberation movements the mechanism to claim the full protections of international law. These provisions were written specifically for movements like the PLO, the ANC, the FLN—and yes, for the resistance movements of Lebanon at that time. The phrase “by all available means” in Resolution 37/43 (1982) was not an accident. It was inserted over the furious objections of the former colonial powers, who understood exactly what it meant.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — both ratified by Lebanon — affirm in their common Article 1 that “all peoples have the right of self-determination” and that “by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” The right to self-determination is not a privilege granted by states; it is a jus cogens norm — a peremptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted.
When Hezbollah fighters take up arms against Israeli forces on Lebanese soil, they are, in the most literal and legally grounded sense, Lebanese citizens exercising a right that international law recognizes as fundamental, inalienable, and non-derogable. Their identity as Shia Muslims, their ideological affinity with Iran’s Islamic Republic, their political ambitions within Lebanon — none of these biographical details negate the legal and moral reality: they are an occupied people resisting an occupying power, and international law stands with them, not with the government that would silence them.
The Anatomy of Collaboration
The Vichy regime did not begin with executions and mass deportations. Pétain and his ministers insisted that the armistice with Germany was necessary to preserve the French state, that collaboration was the only rational path, and that the Resistance was a dangerous fringe element provoking German reprisals against innocent civilians. The Vichy press called the Maquis “terrorists.” The Vichy courts sentenced them to death. The Vichy police handed them over to the Gestapo.
The logic was seductive in its pragmatism: we cannot defeat Germany, so resistance only brings more suffering. Order must be maintained. The state must survive.
But the state that survives by suppressing its own people’s right to self-defense has not survived at all. It has been hollowed out. It exists in name only, as an administrative convenience for the occupying power. This is the essential insight of the post-war French republic, which declared Vichy’s acts null and void from the beginning — not merely from the moment of liberation, but retroactively, from the very origin. The legal fiction of Vichy’s legitimacy was exposed as precisely that: a fiction.
Now consider the Lebanese government. It presides over a country where foreign troops control territory in the south. It commands an army that does not — and arguably cannot — challenge that occupation. And it is now being asked, under the combined weight of Israeli military pressure, American diplomatic leverage, and European financial incentives, to declare illegal the only force that is actually fighting to expel that occupation.
If it complies, what remains of its legitimacy?
The Colonial Genealogy of the Word “Terrorist”
The weaponization of the word “terrorist” to delegitimize resistance is neither new nor accidental. It is, in fact, one of the oldest and most effective instruments of colonial power — a linguistic technology developed by empire to transform the colonized subject’s refusal to submit into a pathology rather than a political act.
The British called the Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya “terrorists” as they herded hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu into concentration camps, torturing and castrating them in the name of civilization. The French called the FLN “terrorists” as they razed Algerian villages and drowned prisoners in the Seine. The apartheid regime in South Africa called the ANC “terrorists” as it enforced racial subjugation through pass laws, forced removals, and state-sponsored murder. The United States called the Vietnamese National Liberation Front “terrorists” as it dropped more tonnage of bombs on Southeast Asia than all combatants combined in the Second World War. The Israelis called the PLO “terrorists” as they occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and southern Lebanon — the very territory at issue today.
And in every single case, history reversed the verdict. The Mau Mau are recognized as freedom fighters. The FLN founded a nation. The ANC produced a president who received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Vietnamese liberated their country. The PLO took its seat at the United Nations. The “terrorist” label, it turns out, is not a permanent mark — it is a temporary convenience, applied by the powerful to the inconvenient, and discarded when the balance of power shifts.
The pattern is consistent and instructive: the designation “terrorist” is a political act, not a legal classification. It is the language the colonizer uses to refuse the colonized the dignity of a political opponent. To call a resistance fighter a “terrorist” is to say: you are not a combatant with rights; you are a criminal with none. You are not defending your homeland; you are attacking civilization itself. This is not law. It is propaganda, and it has always been propaganda, from Algiers to Soweto, from Hue to Tyre.
When the United States, the European Union, and Israel designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, they are making a geopolitical statement, not a legal determination. Under international humanitarian law, combatants engaged in hostilities against an occupying military force are not terrorists — they are combatants, entitled to the protections of the laws of war. Additional Protocol I says so. UNGA Resolution 3103 says so. The entire edifice of post-colonial international law says so. The deliberate conflation of resistance with terrorism serves a specific purpose: it removes the legal and moral shield that international law provides to occupied peoples, clearing the way for their suppression by any means necessary — including, conveniently, by their own government.
The Lebanese government, if it adopts this designation and codifies it into domestic law, is not merely following international consensus. It is importing a colonial weapon forged in Western capitals and turning it against its own citizens — citizens who are, by any honest reading of international law, exercising a recognized and protected right. It is performing the ultimate act of internalized colonialism: using the master’s vocabulary to condemn the slave who dares to rise.
The Monopoly That Was Never Earned
The standard objection runs as follows: the state must hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Hezbollah’s independent military capacity is a violation of Lebanese sovereignty. Disarming it is not collaboration — it is the restoration of the state.
This argument has elegance but no foundation. It rests on a reading of sovereignty that is profoundly ahistorical — a reading that treats the state as an end in itself, rather than an instrument of the people’s will. The monopoly on force is not a divine right. It is a conditional grant from the people to the state, predicated on the state’s ability and willingness to protect them. When the state fails to defend the nation’s territory — when it cannot prevent foreign soldiers from establishing buffer zones on its soil, when it cannot stop airstrikes on its cities, when it cannot secure its own borders — the monopoly reverts to the people. The social contract is not a suicide pact. The people did not surrender their right to self-defense when they consented to be governed; they entrusted it to the state on the condition that the state would use it to protect them. That condition has been broken.
The Lebanese state has not earned the monopoly it claims. It has not defended southern Lebanon. It has not repelled the incursion. It has not protected the displaced. In the absence of state protection, citizens organized themselves. They found resources, built capacities, and took up arms. To now turn around and declare those citizens outlaws — not because they harmed their fellow Lebanese, but because they resisted a foreign army — is to invert the very logic of sovereignty.
It is to say: the state’s right to a monopoly on violence is more sacred than the people’s right to live free from occupation.
This is Vichy’s logic, stripped to its bones. And it is, at its core, a colonial logic — the logic that says the native must always defer to the institution, even when the institution has abandoned him; that the law exists to discipline the governed, never to empower them; that the supreme value is not freedom but order, not justice but obedience.
The Irrelevance of Allegiance
The most persistent objection to this argument is the Iranian one. Hezbollah, we are told, is not a genuine resistance — it is an Iranian proxy, fighting Israel not for Lebanon’s sake but for Tehran’s. Therefore, disarming it is not suppressing resistance; it is liberating Lebanon from two foreign powers at once.
This argument collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
First, it conflates motivation with action. A Lebanese citizen who takes up arms to drive Israeli forces out of his village is performing an act of resistance regardless of what inspired him to do so. The legal right to resist does not come with an ideological purity test. The French Resistance included communists who took orders from Moscow. No serious historian argues that this invalidated their right to fight the Gestapo. The Afghan mujahideen who fought the Soviet occupation were celebrated as freedom fighters in Washington, even as they received funding, training, and direction from the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. Their foreign backing did not negate their right to resist — it was, in fact, the mechanism through which that right was exercised. The Viet Cong received the entirety of their military capacity from the Soviet Union and China. Nobody — not even the Americans who bombed them — argued that this transformed a war of national liberation into something illegitimate. The right to resist attaches to the fact of occupation, not to the biography of the resister.
Second, it assumes a symmetry that does not exist. Iran’s influence over Hezbollah is real and consequential. But Iran is not occupying Lebanese territory. Iran is not bombing Lebanese villages. Iran is not establishing military buffer zones on Lebanese soil. Whatever Hezbollah’s relationship with Tehran, the bullets flying into southern Lebanon are Israeli, not Iranian. The boots on the ground are Israeli. The walls being built are Israeli. The right to resist responds to facts on the ground, not to the geopolitical sympathies of the resisters. To equate Iranian political influence with Israeli military occupation is a moral obscenity — it places a diplomat’s whisper on the same scale as a soldier’s boot, and declares them equivalent violations of sovereignty. They are not.
The International Enablers
No government makes the decision to outlaw its own resistance in a vacuum. The pressure on Lebanon is not subtle. It comes wrapped in the language of aid, reconstruction, and international legitimacy. The message from Washington and Brussels is clear: disarm Hezbollah, and the funds will flow. Refuse, and you will remain a pariah state, broke and broken.
This is not diplomacy. It is extortion. And it reveals something deeply structural about the international order — something that the formerly colonized world has understood since Bandung.
The same Western governments that invoke international law to demand Hezbollah’s disarmament are conspicuously silent on the occupation that necessitates Hezbollah’s existence. The same United Nations that affirms the right of peoples to resist foreign domination passes resolutions demanding the disarmament of those who exercise that right. The same European Union that designates Hezbollah a terrorist organization recognizes, in its own founding documents, the right of self-determination and the illegitimacy of territorial acquisition by force. The same United States that arms Israel to the teeth lectures Lebanon on the dangers of armed non-state actors.
The international community, in this reading, is not a neutral arbiter. It is an enabler of the Vichy dynamic — providing the diplomatic cover, the financial incentives, and the legal frameworks that allow a government to suppress its own people’s resistance without appearing to betray them.
The Cost of Compliance
Let us consider, for a moment, what actually happens if the Lebanese government complies. Let us trace the logic of disarmament to its conclusion — not as the diplomats imagine it in their conference rooms, but as it will unfold in the villages and valleys of the south.
Hezbollah is outlawed. Its political wing is banned. Its social services — the hospitals, the schools, the infrastructure networks that sustain hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens whom the state has abandoned — are dismantled or seized. Its fighters are ordered to surrender their weapons or face arrest.
Do they comply? Some might. Most will not. The fighters of the south did not take up arms because a political party told them to. They took up arms because their homes were being bombed and their fields were being occupied. They took up arms because the state was absent and the bombs were present. Outlawing the organization does not extinguish the grievance. It drives it underground — and underground, grievances do not disappear. They metastasize.
The result is predictable: a new insurgency, fragmented, leaderless, and far more dangerous than the organized resistance it replaces. The state, having criminalized the only structured force capable of maintaining order in the south, inherits a security vacuum it cannot fill. The Israeli occupation, freed from the constraint of organized resistance, expands. The displaced remain displaced. The dead remain dead. And the cycle of violence intensifies, now with the added fuel of internal betrayal.
This is the lesson that every colonial power learned the hard way: you cannot legislate away a people’s will to be free. The British could not do it in Kenya. The French could not do it in Algeria. The Americans could not do it in Vietnam. The Israelis could not do it in Gaza. And the Lebanese government will not do it in the south — not because Hezbollah is uniquely resilient, but because the impulse to resist occupation is universal, irrepressible, and older than any state.
And the government in Beirut, having traded its people’s right to resist for a seat at the international table, discovers that the table was set for someone else’s feast.
What Legitimacy Means
Legitimacy is not a certificate issued by the United Nations. It is not a seat at the General Assembly or a flag outside a diplomatic building. Legitimacy is the bond between a government and its people — the bond that says: we will protect you, and in return, you will obey our laws.
When a government breaks that bond — when it fails to protect, and then criminalizes those who protect themselves — it does not merely lose legitimacy. It becomes something worse than illegitimate. It becomes complicit. It becomes the instrument through which the occupation is made cheaper, easier, and more durable. For what is an occupying power’s greatest asset if not a local government willing to police the resistance on its behalf?
This was Vichy’s function. Not to fight France’s battles, but to suppress the French who would. Not to expel the Germans, but to ensure that no one else did either. The Vichy state was, in the final analysis, a labor-saving device for the Wehrmacht — and the Wehrmacht, for its part, was grateful for the efficiency.
If the Lebanese government outlaws Hezbollah while Israeli forces remain on Lebanese soil, it will have assumed the same function. Not by ideology — Lebanon is not a fascist state. Not by preference — no Lebanese official desires occupation. But by effect, which is what history judges. The road to collaboration is not always paved with conviction. Sometimes it is paved with exhaustion, with fear, with the slow erosion of principle under the weight of external pressure. But the destination is the same.
The Verdict of the Future
In 1944, when Allied forces and the French Resistance liberated Paris, the first act of the provisional government was to declare the Vichy regime null and void — not from the date of liberation, but from its inception. The message was clear: a government that suppresses its people’s right to resist occupation was never legitimate. It was a legal fiction from the first day.
History will render the same verdict on any government that outlaws resistance while its territory remains occupied. The names and flags and constitutional citations will differ. The principle will not.
And history’s verdict will be harsher still for those who enabled it — the diplomats who applied the pressure, the institutions that provided the cover, the governments that funded the capitulation while arming the occupation.
A state that cannot protect its people has no right to forbid them from protecting themselves. This is not a radical proposition. It is the minimum condition of legitimacy. It is the principle on which every liberation movement in modern history has stood — from Algiers to Hanoi, from Soweto to Bint Jbeil. Everything else — the diplomatic recognitions, the UN seats, the constitutional procedures — is decoration on a structure whose foundation has already collapsed.
The Lebanese government now stands at a precipice. It can stand with its people, honoring the inalienable right to defend their soil, or it can place itself between the people and that very right. It cannot do both. History, which has already rendered its verdict on Vichy, will not hesitate to judge this moment with the same unforgiving clarity.
]]></description><link>http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/155/vichy-in-beirut-on-the-legitimacy-crisis-of-the-lebanese-government-under-foreign-occupation</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/155/vichy-in-beirut-on-the-legitimacy-crisis-of-the-lebanese-government-under-foreign-occupation</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[istomastor]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:55:55 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title><![CDATA[καθόλου δεν ενδιαφέρεται ο μπουρζουάς αν ο προλετάριος φοράει ή δεν φοράει, φέσι ή σαρίκι, μαντήλα ή  μπούρκα, κελεμπία ή αμπάγια, είναι γυμνός ή όχι, αρκεί να δουλεύει και να παράγει υπεραξία]]></title><description><![CDATA[[image: 1776466841349-95224ba9-721e-4a13-95e5-71eed202fb4e-image.webp]
“ [ η αστική τάξη ...] Αναγκάζει όλα τα έθνη να δεχτούν τον αστικό τρόπο παραγωγής, αν δεν θέλουν να χαθούν. Τα αναγκάζει να εισαγάγουν στη χώρα τους το λεγόμενο πολιτισμό, δηλαδή να γίνουν αστοί. Με μια λέξη, δημιουργεί έναν κόσμο "κατ' εικόνα της".”
Καρλ Μαρξ - Φρήντριχ Ενγκελς:
Μανιφέστο του Κομμουνιστικού Κόμματος, Αστοί και προλετάριοι.
“Τίποτα δεν πιστεύεται τόσο ακράδαντα όσο αυτό που γνωρίζουμε λιγότερο.”
Μισέλ ντε Μονταίν, Δοκίμια.
Δύο γυναίκες περιμένουν σε σταθμό του μετρό, στην Τεχεράνη.
Πέρα από τις εμφανείς διαφορές (ντύσιμο, η μία διαβάζει βιβλίο, η δεύτερη μάλλον σερφάρει με το κινητό στο διαδίκτυο), είναι σχεδόν απολύτως βέβαιο ότι η μία ξενίζει ή προκαλεί αποστροφή κι απόρριψη ενώ η δεύτερη πληρεί κάθε κριτήριο αποδοχής της δυτικής, “πολιτισμένης” αισθητικής ματιάς.
Ενός κριτηρίου που πίσω από την περίφημη πολυπολιτισμικότητα (“μεγαλουπόλεις-χωνευτήρια πολιτισμών και φυλών”) κρύβει τη στυγνή εκμετάλλευση κάθε σκουρόχρωμου που βρέθηκε στη Δύση μήπως και δει Θεού πρόσωπο.
Από τον 16ο αιώνα ο Μονταίν διέκρινε ότι αυτό που οι ευρωπαίοι αποκαλούσαν “βαρβαρότητα” ήταν απλώς θέμα οπτικής, αμφισβήτησε την πολιτισμική υπεροχή των ευρωπαίων, αναγνωρίζοντας το γεγονός ότι οι σύγχρονοι Ευρωπαίοι υπήρξαν μακράν πιο βάρβαροι στις σκληρότητές τους απέναντι στους ιθαγενείς, αθώους ανθρώπους, τον τρόπο ζωής των οποίων καταδίκαζαν.
Ο κριτικός αναστοχασμός, επομένως, του οικείου, μη ξένου, πολιτισμού κι η αναγνώριση σ' αυτόν των στρεβλώσεων, παρανοήσεων και προκαταλήψεων μέσω των οποίων προσλαμβάνεται ο “ξένος” ως βάρβαρος, άξεστος, απολίτιστος ή καθυστερημένος είναι αναγκαίος προτού “τον λίθον βαλέτω”.
Το υποκριτικό ενδιαφέρον του δυτικού ανθρώπου, του αστού, να “εκπολιτίσει” τον “ξένο”, να τον μετα-πλάσει “κατ' εικόνα” του, κρύβει την αστείρευτη εγκληματική δίψα για τη νομή κάθε μορφής και είδους αξίας που κατέχει ο “βάρβαρος”.
Και μόνον όταν αυτό το άτομο, ο “βάρβαρος” και “καθυστερημένος”, αποκτήσει εκείνα τα χαρακτηριστικά που είναι οικεία και αποδεκτά στον δυτικό κόσμο και πολιτισμό - να μακιγιάρεται όπως στη δύση, να βλέπει τις ίδιες ταινίες, σόου και εκπομπές, να ακούει την ίδια μουσική, να ντύνεται - ή να γδύνεται - όπως στη δύση, με λίγα λόγια να αλλοτριωθεί κυριολεκτικά από τη λαίλαπα του δυτικού πολιτιστικού ιμπεριαλισμού, να απωλέσει κάθε ίχνος και στοιχείο των χιλιετιών της διαφορετικότητάς του, της εθνικής του παράδοσης, τότε και μόνο τότε, θα γίνει αποδεκτός, αλλοτριωμένος κι αποξενωμένος από τις παραδόσεις του και ταυτόχρονα κατάλληλος προς εκμετάλλευση.
Ο,τι επιτραπεί να παραμείνει θα είναι μόνο αυτό που θα αποφέρει ακόμα περισσότερη εκμετάλλευση και κέρδος - κι από τη μύγα ξύγκι - ως χυδαία τουριστική και φολκλόρ γραφικότητα, ως κουλέρ λοκάλ προς τέρψη της μικροαστικής μικρόνοιας (καθόλου δεν ενδιαφέρεται ο μπουρζουάς αν ο προλετάριος φοράει ή δεν φοράει, φέσι ή σαρίκι, μαντήλα ή  μπούρκα, κελεμπία ή αμπάγια, είναι γυμνός ή όχι, αρκεί να δουλεύει και να παράγει υπεραξία).
Κι όταν όλα αυτά επιτευχθούν κι οι “βάρβαροι” εκπολιτιστούν, τότε ίσως σταματήσουμε να τους βομβαρδίζουμε και να δολοφονούμε τα παιδιά τους.
απο W.B./fb
]]></description><link>http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/143/καθόλου-δεν-ενδιαφέρεται-ο-μπουρζουάς-αν-ο-προλετάριος-φοράει-ή-δεν-φοράει-φέσι-ή-σαρίκι-μαντήλα-ή-μπούρκα-κελεμπία-ή-αμπάγια-είναι-γυμνός-ή-όχι-αρκεί-να-δουλεύει-και-να-παράγει-υπεραξία</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/143/καθόλου-δεν-ενδιαφέρεται-ο-μπουρζουάς-αν-ο-προλετάριος-φοράει-ή-δεν-φοράει-φέσι-ή-σαρίκι-μαντήλα-ή-μπούρκα-κελεμπία-ή-αμπάγια-είναι-γυμνός-ή-όχι-αρκεί-να-δουλεύει-και-να-παράγει-υπεραξία</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[istomastor]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:01:31 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title><![CDATA[Μιλάω στο όνομα του φτωχού παιδιού που πεινάει]]></title><description><![CDATA[Τομά Σανκαρά: “Μιλάω στο όνομα του φτωχού παιδιού που πεινάει”
[image: 1776213388752-21834ff7-5912-4379-be83-960ff0ad1939-image.webp]
“Μιλάω επίσης στο όνομα του παιδιού. Του φτωχού παιδιού που πεινάει, κι αλληθωρίζει κρυφά προς τη συσσωρευμένη αφθονία σ’ ένα μαγαζί για πλούσιους. Σ’ ένα μαγαζί προστατευμένο από παχύ τζάμι. Ένα τζάμι προστατευμένο από απροσπέλαστα κάγκελα. Κάγκελα φυλασσόμενα από έναν κρανοφορεμένο και γαντοφορεμένο αστυνομικό, οπλισμένο με γκλομπ
"Έρχομαι εδώ φέρνοντας μαζί μου τον αδελφικό χαιρετισμό μιας χώρας όπου εφτά εκατομμύρια παιδιά, γυναίκες και άντρες αρνούνται πλέον να πεθαίνουν από αμορφωσιά, πείνα και δίψα.
Έρχομαι να σας μιλήσω στο όνομα ενός λαού που επέλεξε να διεκδικήσει και να αναλάβει πάνω στη γη των προγόνων του την ευθύνη της Ιστορίας του, με όλες τις θετικές και τις αρνητικές της όψεις, χωρίς κανένα σύμπλεγμα κατωτερότητας.… Δεν έχω πρόθεση να διατυπώσω κανένα δόγμα. Δεν είμαι ούτε μεσσίας ούτε προφήτης. Δεν κατέχω καμιάν αλήθεια. Μια φιλοδοξία έχω μονάχα, κι έναν διπλό στόχο:
Πρώτον, να μπορέσω σε απλή γλώσσα, αυτήν της σαφήνειας και της καθαρότητας, να μιλήσω στο όνομα του λαού μου, του λαού της Μπουρκίνα Φάσο.
Δεύτερον, να κατορθώσω να εκφράσω με το δικό μου τρόπο το παγκόσμιο πλήθος των απόκληρων, δηλαδή όλους εκείνους που ανήκουν στον εκ του πονηρού αποκαλούμενο Τρίτο Κόσμο, και να διατυπώσω, έστω κι αν δεν γίνουν αντιληπτοί, τους λόγους που έχουμε να εξεγειρόμαστε.
Κανείς δεν θ’ απορήσει που η Μπουρκίνα Φάσο κατατάσσεται στην αποθήκη των περιφρονημένων, δηλαδή στον Τρίτο Κόσμο, που οι άλλοι κόσμοι επινόησαν την εποχή των τύποις ανεξαρτητοποιήσεων για να διασφαλίσουν καλύτερα την πολιτισμική, οικονομική και πολιτική μας αλλοτρίωση.
Θέλουμε ωστόσο να συμπεριληφθούμε σ’ αυτόν, χωρίς να σημαίνει πως υιοθετούμε αυτόματα και την τεράστια φαλκίδευση της Ιστορίας.
Κι ακόμα λιγότερο πως συναινούμε στο να παίξουμε το ρόλο της πίσω αυλής μιας χορτάτης Δύσης.
Το κάνουμε όμως για να ενισχύσουμε στη ίδια μας τη συνείδηση το γεγονός ότι ανήκουμε σ’ ένα ευρύτερο τρι-ηπειρωτικό σύνολο, και πως ως αδέσμευτοι, μια πολύ ιδιαίτερη αλληλεγγύη συνδέει τις τρεις ηπείρους της Ασίας, της Λατινικής Αμερικής και της Αφρικής σε μια κοινή μάχη ενάντια στους ίδιους πολιτικούς λαθρέμπορους και τους ίδιους οικονομικούς εκμεταλλευτές.
Ενδυναμωμένοι απ’ αυτήν μας την πεποίθηση, θέλουμε ο λόγος μας ν’ αγκαλιάσει όλους όσοι υποφέρουν στο πετσί τους, όλους όσοι η ανθρώπινη αξιοπρέπειά τους χλευάζεται από μια μειοψηφία ανθρώπων ή από ένα σύστημα που τους συντρίβει.
Μιλάω στο όνομα των εκατομμυρίων που ζούνε στα γκέτο γιατί έχουν μαύρο δέρμα ή γιατί είναι φορείς μιας διαφορετικής κουλτούρας και απολαμβάνουν μεταχείρισης μόλις καλύτερης εκείνης που επιφυλάσσεται στα ζώα.
Υποφέρω στο όνομα των Ινδιάνων που σφαγιάστηκαν, ποδοπατήθηκαν, ταπεινώθηκαν και ζούνε εδώ κι αιώνες περιορισμένοι στις "ρεζέρβες" ώστε να μην χαίρουν κανενός δικαιώματος και ο πολιτισμός τους να μην μπορεί να εμπλουτιστεί ερχόμενος σ’ ευτυχισμένο γάμο με άλλες κουλτούρες, συμπεριλαμβανομένης κι αυτής του καταχτητή.
Κραυγάζω στο όνομα των ανέργων ενός συστήματος δομικά άδικου, καταδικασμένων ν’ αντιλαμβάνονται από τη ζωή μονάχα την αντανάκλαση εκείνης που ζούνε οι έχοντες.
Μιλάω στο όνομα των γυναικών όλου του κόσμου που υποφέρουν μέσα σ’ ένα εκμεταλλευτικό σύστημα που επέβαλαν οι αρσενικοί.
… Μιλάω στο όνομα των μανάδων των στερημένων χωρών μας, που βλέπουν τα παιδιά τους να πεθαίνουν από μαλάρια ή διάρροια, αγνοώντας πως υπάρχουν απλά μέσα για να τα σώσουν.
Μέσα που δεν τους προσφέρει η επιστήμη των πολυεθνικών καθώς προτιμάνε να επενδύουν στα εργαστήρια καλλυντικών και στην πλαστική χειρουργική, ικανοποιώντας τα καπρίτσια λίγων γυναικών ή αντρών των οποίων η φιλαρέσκεια απειλείται από το περίσσευμα θερμίδων γευμάτων τόσο πλούσιων και τόσο συχνών που σ’ εμάς προκαλούνε ζάλη.
Μιλάω επίσης στο όνομα του παιδιού. Του φτωχού παιδιού που πεινάει, κι αλληθωρίζει κρυφά προς τη συσσωρευμένη αφθονία σ’ ένα μαγαζί για πλούσιους. Σ’ ένα μαγαζί προστατευμένο από παχύ τζάμι. Ένα τζάμι προστατευμένο από απροσπέλαστα κάγκελα. Κάγκελα φυλασσόμενα από έναν κρανοφορεμένο και γαντοφορεμένο αστυνομικό, οπλισμένο με γκλομπ.
… Η χώρα μου είναι η συμπύκνωση των συμφορών όλων των λαών, μια οδυνηρή σύνθεση όλων των πόνων της ανθρωπότητας.
Αλλά είναι επίσης, και κυρίως, η συμπύκνωση των ελπίδων των αγώνων μας.
Γι’ αυτό και δονούμαι στο όνομα των αρρώστων που στρέφουν τα μάτια με αγωνία στον ορίζοντα μιας επιστήμης αγορασμένης από τους εμπόρους των όπλων.
Οι σκέψεις μου πάνε σε όλους εκείνους που θίγονται από την καταστροφή της Φύσης, και στα τριάντα εκατομμύρια ανθρώπους που όπως κάθε χρόνο θα πεθάνουν, θερισμένοι από το τρομαχτικό όπλο της πείνας.
… Αναγνωρίζοντας τη θέση μας στους κόλπους του Τρίτου Κόσμου, και παραφράζοντας τον Χοσέ Μαρτί, επιβεβαιώνουμε «ότι αισθανόμαστε πάνω στο μάγουλό μας κάθε χαστούκι που δίνεται σ’ οποιονδήποτε άνθρωπο στον κόσμο".
Μέχρι σήμερα στρέφαμε και το άλλο μάγουλο. Τα χαστούκια διπλασιάστηκαν. Μα η καρδιά των μοχθηρών δεν συγκινήθηκε. Ποδοπάτησαν την αλήθεια του δίκιου.
Του Χριστού προδώσανε το λόγο.
Μετατρέψανε τον σταυρό του σε ρόπαλο. Κι αφού φορέσανε το χιτώνα του, ξέσκισαν τα κορμιά και τις ψυχές μας.
Συσκότισαν το μήνυμά του. Το δυτικοποίησαν, την ίδια στιγμή που εμείς το υποδεχόμασταν ως μήνυμα οικουμενικής απελευθέρωσης.
Ανοίξαμε τότε τα μάτια μας στην πάλη των τάξεων.
Δεν θα υπάρξουν πλέον άλλα χαστούκια".
Απόσπασμα από την ομιλία του Τομα Σανκαρα στον ΟΗΕ στις 4/10/1984.
Πηγή: guernicaeu
]]></description><link>http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/137/μιλάω-στο-όνομα-του-φτωχού-παιδιού-που-πεινάει</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/137/μιλάω-στο-όνομα-του-φτωχού-παιδιού-που-πεινάει</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[istomastor]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:36:30 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title><![CDATA[Franz Fanon  &quot; Της γης οι κολασμένοι &quot;]]></title><description><![CDATA["Ἐμπρὸς σύντροφοι, εἶναι καλύτερα ν᾿ ἀποφασίσουμε ἀπὸ τώρα ν᾿ ἀλλάξουμε δρόμο. Τὴ μεγάλη νύχτα ποὺ μέσα της εἴμαστε βυθισμένοι πρέπει νὰ τὴν ἀποτινάξουμε καὶ νὰ βγοῦμε. Ἡ καινούργια μέρα ποὺ σηκώνεται πρέπει νὰ μᾶς βρεῖ σταθερούς, συνετούς κι ἀποφασισμένους.
Πρέπει νὰ παρατήσουμε τὰ ὄνειρά μας, νὰ ἐγκαταλείψουμε τὶς παλιές μας πίστεις καὶ τὶς συμπάθειές μας ἀπὸ τὸν καιρὸ ποὺ δὲν εἴχαμε ἀρχίσει νὰ ζοῦμε. Ας μὴ χάνουμε καιρὸ σὲ στεῖρες λιτανεῖες ἢ σὲ ἐμετικοὺς μιμητισμούς.
Ἂς ἐγκαταλείψουμε αὐτὴν τὴν Εὐρώπη ποὺ δὲν σταματάει νὰ μιλάει γιὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπο κατασφάζοντάς τον ὅπου τὸν συναντήσει, σ᾽ ὅλες τὶς γωνιὲς τῶν ἴδιων της τῶν δρόμων, σ᾽ ὅλες τὶς γωνιὲς τοῦ κόσμου.
᾿Ἀπὸ αἰῶνες ἡ Εὐρώπη σταμάτησε τὴν πρόοδο τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων καὶ τοὺς ὑποδούλωσε στοὺς σκοπούς της καὶ στὴ δόξα της. ᾿Απὸ αἰῶνες στ᾿ ὄνομα μιᾶς ὑποτιθέμενης "πνευματικῆς περιπέτειας" πνίγει τὸ σύνολο σχεδὸν τῆς ἀνθρωπότητας. Κοιτάξτε την σήμερα νὰ ταλαντεύεται ἀνάμεσα στὴν πυρηνική διάλυση καὶ στὴν πνευματική διάλυση.
Ἡ Εὐρώπη πῆρε τὴν ἐξουσία τοῦ κόσμου μὲ θέρμη, κυνισμὸ καὶ βιαιότητα. Καὶ κοιτάξτε πόσο ἡ σκιὰ τῶν μνημείων της ἁπλώνεται καὶ πολλαπλασιάζεται. Κάθε κίνηση τῆς Εὐρώπης ἔκανε νὰ ραγίσουν τὰ σύνορα τοῦ χώρου κι ἐκεῖνα τῆς σκέψης. Ἡ Εὐρώπη ἀρνήθηκε κάθε ταπεινότητα, κάθε μετριοφροσύνη, ἀλλὰ καὶ κάθε φροντίδα, κάθε τρυφερότητα.
Τσιγγούνα δείχτηκε μόνο μὲ τὸν ἄνθρωπο, εὐτελής,σαρκοβόρα, φόνισσα μόνο μὲ τὸν ἄνθρωπο.
Λοιπὸν ἀδέρφια, πῶς δὲν καταλαβαίνετε πὼς μποροῦμε νὰ κάνουμε κάτι καλύτερο ἀπὸ τὸ ν᾿ ἀκολουθήσουμε αὐτὴν τὴν Εὐρώπη;
Αὐτὴ ἡ Εὐρώπη ποὺ δὲν ἔπαψε ποτὲ νὰ μιλάει γιὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπο, νὰ διακηρύσσει πὼς δὲν τὴν ἐνδιέφερε παρὰ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ξέρουμε σήμερα μὲ τί βάσανα πλήρωσε ἡ ἀνθρωπότητα καθεμιὰ νίκη τοῦ πνεύματός της.
Ἐμπρός, σύντροφοι, τὸ εὐρωπαϊκὸ παιχνίδι ἔχει τελειώσει ὁριστικά, πρέπει νὰ βρεθεῖ κάτι ἄλλο. Μποροῦμε νὰ κάνουμε τὰ πάντα σήμερα, μὲ τὴν προϋπόθεση ὅτι δὲν θὰ πιθηκίσουμε τὴν Εὐρώπη, μὲ τὴν προϋπόθεση ὅτι δὲν θὰ μᾶς κυριαρχεῖ ὁ πόθος νὰ φτάσουμε τὴν Εὐρώπη.
Ἡ Εὐρώπη ἀπόκτησε μιὰ τέτοια ταχύτητα, τρελή κι ἀκανόνιστη, ποὺ ξεφεύγει σήμερα ἀπὸ κάθε ὁδηγό, ἀπὸ κάθε λογική, καὶ πηγαίνει μὲ φοβερὸν ἴλιγγο πρὸς ἀβύσσους ἀπὸ τὶς ὁποῖες θὰ ᾿πρεπε ν᾿ ἀπομακρυνθοῦμε τὸ γρηγορότερο... "
Από τον θεωρητικό της Αλγερινής επανάστασης Fantz Fanon
" Της γης οι κολασμένοι "
απόσπασμα από τον Επίλογο
]]></description><link>http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/136/franz-fanon-της-γης-οι-κολασμένοι</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://94.249.153.3:4569/topic/136/franz-fanon-της-γης-οι-κολασμένοι</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[istomastor]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:01:53 GMT</pubDate></item></channel></rss>