Thread by @NadavEyalDesk

1/Some thoughts on what we are witnessing in the US in recent days.
The context is that we are experiencing a new age, an era of Revolt.

2/I published a book in that name in Hebrew, arguing that similar forces and ideas are now operating on humans, and they are leading to a similar uprising; Trump is only the beginning of this age.

3/Understanding this sentiment is crucial in order to encompass the variety and speed of current developments. People are revolting against power structures and the conventions these maintained, globally. These hierarchies are sometimes seen as hollow. Or Corrupt.

4/Or Racist. Some of these power structures have lost relevance in our societies because of technological leaps. They hold the pretense of serving people's needs, while being incompetent. In some places, power mechanisms are seen as not democratic enough.

5/In others, people feel these power brokers have lost touch with their community and identity. What unites these different protests is a growing sense of that power is misplaced, misused. The era of stability after WW2 was but a brief pause, sanctifying the rational discourse.

6/Now, sentiment politics has returned - and with a vengeance. Revolt is not just a tool for a cause, it is also a perpetual condition. The Revolt is more about the destruction of current power structures than on the fine details of building new ones.

7/We are seeing what is happening in American cities, and these pictures bring to mind a forgotten truth. Racism and exploitation are not an anomaly of the liberal order. Empire, Racism and subjugation have gone hand in hand with liberal politics.

8/Sometimes these forms of oppression were presented as a civilizing mission, white man's burden, and others as a commercial endeavor. It usually stemmed from greed, and the context was racism.

9/When Voltaire argues with one of his opponents who rails against hedonism, whom he blames in self-righteousness, he tells him - the coffee you drink came from this plantation, the silverware from Central America, the whole universe worked for your coffee cup.

10/Voltaire obviously lied; it's not the universe that worked for the global consumerism he identified, but enslaved people, people of color.

11/The globalization that Voltaire introduced relied on exploitation, and it is the same Voltaire that provided foundations for the age of enlightenment.
I look at the statues going down across the world now, and think of a statue much needed, one of Vincent Oge.

12/He was a free man living in Saint-Domingue, the slave colony that is today Haiti. Oge naively believed that the values of the French Revolution were meant to people of color too. He demanded the right to vote.

13/Shortly after the revolution started taking form, he came to France and tried to convince the newly formed National Assembly to apply its values to all the people under France's reign. Yet the liberal revolution was never meant to people like him - not white.

14/Upon his return to Haiti he began a revolt that ended in his torture and his execution on the wheel. Haiti's slave revolt was finally successful, but the young republic was boycotted by the Americans, the French and the British.

15/The colonialist project and the inherent injustices it entailed, the most apparent is the crime of Slavery, never became a real issue for Western election politics. Since the alliance of liberalism and empire was denied, slavery was seen as a relic of the past.

16/And so, the symbols and language of General Lee and of King Leopold could simply become part of the culture.
Yet liberal ideals are more powerful than the sometimes-reactionary liberals who propagate them. Those statues are going down.

17/And the unsustainable order built by globalization is disintegrating. And it's all about power. The era of a Security Council with no representatives from Africa or Latin America - it is also over. They just don't know it yet.

18/The revolt has many faces, sometimes its identity, fundamentalist tones, or nationalist agendas; But its deeper significance is the collapse of a consensus of lies. A stability built on turning a blind eye to corrupt symbols and a decaying liberal argument.

19/Everything is swirling now. The question now is not how the statues will go down. The question is what will replace them, and how those who actually believe in liberal values, in the tradition of Oge, can make sure these would not be replaced by other monstrosities.
End