“The Arab world is increasingly divided between those who are losing everything, and those who have everything.

For the past few months, there has been a grim new ritual whenever I meet people from some Arab countries. It’s a sort of mutual commiseration and checking in. How are things with you? Where is your family? I hope you are safe, I hope they are safe. I hope you are OK. We are with you.

There is a comfort to it, and also an awkwardness. Comfort because the words are earnest, the solidarity almost unbearably meaningful. Awkward because the scale of what many are enduring is too large to be captured in those words. Everything feels shot through with survivor’s guilt, but also with a little bit of resolve in the knowledge that the calamities tearing apart our nations have closed the distances between us.

At the heart of it all is Palestine – an open trauma that haunts interactions. A muteness has set in, where before there was anger and shock. Added to this is Lebanon. … At the same time, Sudan is a year and a half into a bewilderingly savage war. …

Zoom out further and the scene across the Arab world looks historically bleak. Fires big and small are burning everywhere. Many countries – Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Syria – are either divided by low-grade rumbling conflicts (Syria is once again escalating), or struggling through humanitarian crises.

The tolls of the past few years are staggering. Not just in terms of death, but displacement, too. … Almost every Sudanese person I know, within and outside Sudan, is huddled with other family members in temporary circumstances, living out of a suitcase, waiting for the next time they have to move again. …

Another toll, less urgent when one is speaking of life and death, looms in the background. Large historical cities are being ravaged and a process of civilisational erasure is under way. All of Syria’s Unesco world heritage sites have either been damaged or destroyed. Gaza’s Great Omari mosque, whose origins date back to the fifth century and which has been described as ‘Gaza’s historic heart’, was laid to ruin by the IDF. The old city of Sana’a in Yemen, inhabited for more than 2,500 years, has been classified as ‘in danger’ since 2015. This year, in Sudan, tens of thousands of artefacts, some of them dating back to the pharaonic era, have been looted. Cities can be rebuilt, but heritage is irreplaceable.

Even stable countries such as Egypt have not escaped this cultural sabotage. Heritage sites are being razed to make way for urban development by a government that is racing to rebuild Egypt to conform with its monoculture of military rule. In this, there is a metaphor that applies across the region. For the sake of entrenching power, the political establishment is happy to vandalise identity.

Even in my own mind, I can feel cultural contours blurring as physical architecture disappears. And with it, so many other things are being erased – a sense of rootedness, of continuity, of a future. I look at my children and am chilled by the realisation that the very topography of Sudan, and the Arab world as I experienced it through literature, art and travel, is something they will never know. …

I sound like an old nostalgic woman now, I know. Singing the blues of exile, idealising a past that was always far from ideal, ready to annoy a new generation and tell them that it wasn’t always like this. Because I was once that new generation, listening to elders smoking Marlboro Reds and drinking tea and telling me it’s a shame you never experienced the heyday, when we used to study medicine in Baghdad for free, go to the theatre in Damascus, host Malcolm X in Omdurman. When we had behemoth publishing houses and a pan-Arab solidarity. I used to think, well, isn’t that failure yours as well? Because your class didn’t manage to translate that into a political project that wasn’t constantly hijacked by military men and dictators.

As the centre of political and economic power in the region shifts to the oil-rich Gulf states, which are becoming concentrated expressions of hyperconsumerism and modernity, … high-octane sports events and extravaganzas of glamour, as orgies of violence unfold elsewhere. …

An Iraqi friend recently offered me some solace on Sudan. Baghdad was starting to feel normal, she told me, for the first time in 20 years. Things were far from ideal, but there was a possibility that in a few decades, there would be a chance for a new start. And maybe the best you can hope for is a new start, and not a rehabilitation of the past. In the meantime, all that can be said to friends and strangers, all now countrymen, is I hope you are safe. I hope you are OK. We are with you.”

aus: Nesrine Malik: From Beirut to Khartoum, the Arab world is changing beyond our recognition, The Guardian online, 2.12.24, im Internet.

Abb.: Smurf our blue planet, Europakruispunt, Brussel, April 2024, auch im Internet.

12/24

“But apparently, we humans also share 60% of our DNA with a banana. How arbitrary is that? Half of our genes have counterparts in bananas! We are just a bunch of very complicated and violent bananas.”

aus: Xiaolu Guo: A Chinese-born writer’s quest to understand the Vikings, Normans and life on the English coast, Guardian online, 15.8.24, im Internet.

Abb.: Thomas Baumgärtel: Banane am Kreuz, 1983, im Internet.

08/24

“Guilt … is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since then it is no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication, it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. …

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices.”

aus: Aude Lorde, zitiert durch: Emma Dabiri: What white people can do next, o.O.: Penguin Random House UK 2021, S.92.

Abb.: Poster Rex (gegründet durch Markus Lange und Lars Harmsen), 2014-

08/24

“Unfortunately, much of the present ‘anti-racist’ conversation is ahistorical and lacking in this analysis. It is also generally devoid of analysis of class or capitalism, which it seems to have largely replaced with interpretation of interpersonal ‘privilege’. …

It is far more persuasive to be presented with a clear vision of the type of society we want to create because we all stand to benefit from it, rather than being chastised to transfer your ‘privilege’ to a ‘black‘ person, especially when the steps about how to actually do that are the best vague and nebulous. …

[For example, Holiday Philips writes,] ‘An ally is someone from a non-marginalized group who uses their privilege to advocate for a marginalized group … They transfer the benefits of their privilege to those who lack it.’

First of all, this is wildly generic. Who is the ‘non-marginalized group’ and who is the ‘marginalized’? … Many white people are not in possession of enough privilege to transfer its benefits to anyone. … Moreover, how would they transfer it?

Are the benefits of the ‘privilege’ we are demanding they transfer merely material benefits extracted through the exploitation of the poor? Of migrants? Of sweatshop labourers? Of the environment? Because the mainstream anti-racist conversation is conveniently devoid of any analysis of class or capitalism, this crucial question is left unanswered, and the ”transfer of privilege’ to ‘marginalized groups’, irrespective of individual circumstances (these transfers always seem to be framed in terms of individuals rather than systems), starts to look like the transfers of resources to people in the global north – who, although members of ‘marginalized groups’, still often have structural privilege over other people with whom they might share racial, but not class, identities. …”

aus: Emma Dabiri: What white people can do next, o.O.: Penguin Random House UK 2021, S.5, 16, 22, 23.

Abb.: Jaelin-doodles: End your privilege, im Internet.

08/24

“This unconscious tendency to double down on the racial categories ‘black‘ and ‘white’, making blanket statements about the behaviours, beliefs, actions and desires of diverse groups of people unified under fictive, generic ‘races’, highlights how many of us still apparently believe that race exists as a natural biological reality. I have serious reservations about popular social movements, however well intended, that reinforce a reinvestment in racial categories in this way. ‘Allyship’ being described as a ‘selfless act’ exacerbates the division, assuming a fundamental and immutable separateness between ‘different’ ‘races’, offering charity at the expense of solidarity. … With … its fetishizing of privilege without any clear means of transferral, as well as the ways in which it actively reinforce whiteness, allyship is not only up to the task, it is in many ways counterproductive. …

Race is one of the most powerful, seductive and enduring myths of the last four centuries … The concept of a ‘white race’ and a ‘black race’ … is a socially engineered concept invented with a very specific intention in mind. That intention was racism. Until we understand this beginning, there will be no happy ending. … We have to at least attempt to imagine outside and beyond the race logic inherited from long-dead élite European me, and conceive other ways of dreaming, living and being.

aus: Emma Dabiri: What white people can do next, o.O.: Penguin Random House UK 2021, S.14, 19, 27, 142.

Abb.: Paul Rucker’s Klan robes, Artnet, im Internet.

08/24

“Ok, “at least try to explain”. Jews have always lived all over the Middle East. When the Hashemites had to leave Mekka because the British Vice-king of India had promised Mekka to the Saudi’s, the Hashemites got Jordan, because the British Vice-king of Egypt had promised also them a country. Meanwhile the British minister of Foreign Affairs promised the Jews free settlement in Palestine. All these areas had been Ottoman for a longtime, and went after the British victory on the Ottomans into British control. Jordan, Saudi-Arabia and Israel are all three artificial creations born out of negotiations with the colonial power. Yes it were mainly Jews from Europe who took the initiative to found Israel, but the oriental influence was strong from the beginning, in a way that Hannah Arendt felt estranged with Israel officials. Anyway, Israel was born out of anticolonial terrorist activity against the British colonizer. Next point is that Israel became a refuge for Jews from all other countries from the region, already in the 1970’s most Israelis were born in the region and not in Europe. Yes, US-American Jewish organisations were – and are – financing a lot of those resettlements, but we are talking about people from the region. I do not think that the share of Jews in the whole Middle East population is higher today than under Ottoman Rule. Where do you see a colony? Yes, there where evictions and murders which justify Nakba as a Palestinian description of what had happened. But by now Israel is there for 75 years, if we should want to reverse all border changes of the last 75 years, we should talk about Tibet for example. The Israelis have the right to have their own country, as the Kurds should have one. Yes, the colonization of the West bank should be reversed, yes the actual Israeli government shows no concern for civilian rights in Gaza at the moment. Yes the actual government should be critizised. But as much as we critizise Russia without demanding the dismantling of Russia and we critizise Rwanda for its war in the Congo without demanding the dismantling of Rwanda, we should also critizise Israel without calling for its dissolution. Independently of how bad the actual Israeli government behaves, Israel has the right to stay an independent country. Following Arab propaganda of Israel as a colony is following the same people who refuse the Kurds their own country, following Hamas terrorists and their warcrimes. Both sides break international law here. Engagement from outside does not help if it chooses sides. The only two sides one could try to support are the civilians on both sides and international law. My great-grand-mother was expelled from Silesia, as a result of the Second World war. No way that I would demand restitution. My family has made their living elsewhere. Why Arab countries still keep Palestinians in “refugee camps”, 75 years later instead of having integrated these people into their societies long time ago? Half of the Syrians who came to Germany in 2015 are already 10 years later integrated into the German labour market. It gets far too long for a Facebook post, and i should have mentioned the PLO’s attempts to overthrow the Tunisian, the Jordanian and the Lebanese governments, I should have mentioned that Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy more political freedom than in any Arab country and still a lot more arguments to go. But I have to finish. Middle Eastern History is to complicated to be judged by Europeans in two-minute-slogans.Those smell also a little bit like neocolonial attitude…”

Malte Woydt, reply to a Facebook post…, 23.7.24

Abb.: Vardit Goldner: Swimming Lesson, 2021, im Internet.

“Otherworldliness became spirituality, an Indian cultural essential that promised her a future cultural perfection unattained in the West. Passiveness became at first passive resistance and later nonviolent resistance – the age-old Indian character thus provided a revolutionary technique by which to bring on that future perfection. The supposed penchant of India to accept despotism led Gandhi to reject the state entirely. The backward and parochial village became the self-sufficient, consensual and harmonious center of decentralized democracy. An absent national integration turned into the oceanic circles of a people’s democracy. Insufficient Indian individualism became altruistic trusteeship, and inadequate entrepreneurial spirit turned into non-possessiveness. This ‘affirmative Orientalism’ owes much to Europeans like the vegetarian Henry Salt, the Theosophist Annie Besant, the Hindu convert Sister Nivedita, the simplifier Edward Carpenter, and the champion of spiritual nonviolence, Tolstoy, all of whom employed these positive stereotypes against a modernized, aggressive, capitalist, materialistic, and carnivorous Europe for which they bore little love. …

Gandhian utopia reacts against negative orientalism by adopting and enhancing this positive image. It therefore ends up with a new Orientalism, that is, a new stereotype, of India, but an affirmative one, leading to an effective resistance. …

Orientalism did not only serve European domination. Affirmative Orientalism furthered the resistance by Europeans to Western capitalism and modern industrial society.”

aus: Richard G. Fox: East of Said. In: Joan Vincent: The Anthropology of Politics, Main Street Maiden MA, USA u.a. 2009, S. 147/148.

07/24

“‘Paternalism’ is the name generally given to the sort of phenomenon we had noticed among the missionaries. I am not sure that the word is not, in most cases, too favourable ; affection and a sense of kinship, two important elements in a really paternal attitude, were both lacking, as far as I could see, in Belgian feeling towards the Congolese. The people we saw on these excursions were ‘the best Belgians’, among the few who had come to the Congo for another motive than that of enriching themselves. These missionary priests and nuns had dedicated themselves to the good of the Congolese and they led, without complaint, a hard and dangerous life for the sake of these Africans. They would do anything for them, short of actually liking them. …

If the attitude of the Belgian administration and the industrialists and missionaries had been genuinely paternal – as some of the British administrators in some other parts of Africa had been – there would have been much to be said for it. A good parent, after all, wants his children to grow up. He does not want them to stunt their intellectual growth ; he encourages them to take on responsibilities progressively ; he steps aside, and stays aside, as soon as he reasonably can. There is little evidence that Belgians in the Congo generally were paternalist in this good sense. The priest who, in the presence of Congolese colleague, emphasized not only the gravity but also the ineradicable nature of Congolese defects, was ‘paternalist’ in the manner of a father who enjoys sneering at a son’s awkwardness, and keeps impressing on him that he is congenitally and incurably defective. I found this form to be, on the whole, the prevalent type of paternalism in Katanga.”

aus: Conor Cruise O’Brien: To Katanga and back. London: Four Square 1965 (1962): 172/173.

Abb.: Katlego Tlabela: Tableau vivant III: Oasis, 2020.

06/24

“SNOB … stands for Social Naiveté of Behavior or Simple Necessities of Business, depending on which side you’re looking at. Those who espouse the SNOB theory hold dear the motto ‘Nothing so Blind as a Colonized Mind’. …

SNOB’s guiding principle is that human beings tend to imitate those they perceive as their social superiors. … With transnational capitalism, SNOB began to creep across frontiers … The goal of the practicing corporate (or development agency) SNOB is to enroll Third World bourgeoisies in the brotherhood …

Modern SNOB’s wouldn’t dream of using bombs and napalm when training programs, foundation grants, marketing experts, and mass media work so much more effectively. The fun of the game is to make the victim want your _______________. The blank may be filled in with ‘dangerous pharmaceuticals,’ ‘plastic shoes,’ ‘infant formula,’ ‘soft drinks,’ ad libitum, and easily extended to include ‘hospital based health care,’ ‘educational system,’ ‘agricultural techniques,’ etc.

This has proven almost too simple. The only element that adds spice and subtlety to the mind-colonizing game is this: The target population must be encouraged to abandon its own authentic culture in favor of a lower-middle class, Western, wholly commercialized ersatz. Third World elites must not, with very rare exceptions, be allowed to witness of to participate in the culture of Western upper classes, for the very reason that this upper class culture is often uncannily close to the one the conditioned victim must learn to despise as ‘backward’ and ‘inferior’ in his own country, for obvious commercial reasons. …

‘Savages’ breastfeed, as the quoted African doctor puts it. Western masses and nouveaux riches (and not so richs) Third Worlders bottlefeed with infant formula. Upper-class, educated Western women breastfeed.

‘Natives’ are thin because they work hard and often go hungry. Lower and middle class Westerners are often obese – as are rich Third World wives – living proof their husbands can afford to stuff them. Rich Westerners are slender – indeed they may spend as much money losing weight as putting it on. …

I believe SNOBism is here to stay. That is why I propose … that we encourage Third World imitation of Western modes, but that we make some effort in the direction of social equality … with volunteers from the best families … [devoted] to the display of authentic upper-class Western lifestyles. Trendy New York hostesses could lecture on how they serve unpolished rice and perfect vegetable terrines … Their husbands would explain that ‘nobody’ watches television or buys anything plastic when a natural substance is available …

Who knows? Western corporations could lose a few marginal markets, but Third World elites might begin to feel secure in their own traditions.”

aus: Susan George: Ill fares the land. Essays on food, hunger, and power. Washington D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies 1984, S.91-93, siehe auch erweiterte 1990 Internetversion.

Abb.: US government map, shown at Aids 2026, the 26th International Aids Conference in Rio de Janeiro, july 2026.

04/24

“People trying to hide behind the shield of satire are interesting. For me, who makes a living making fun of race, making fun of white people, it’s hard to say what exactly is acceptable and what works and what doesn’t. It’s like the old ruling on pornography where the judge says I can’t define it but I know what it is when I see it.

You don’t really have to be that smart to tell when someone’s satire is coming from a place of intelligence and not a place of hate. It is so hard to disguise the hate that comes out of people who try to call it funny.”

aus: Baratunde Thurston: How to be black. New York u.a.: Harper 2012, S.230

Abb.: Helmut Smits: Prking for white cars only. Installation, Brüssel, 2006. Im Internet.

03/24