Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

The government is trying to prevent a "re-evaluation" of our imperial past. What doesn't it want us to see?
In this thread from last year, I list some of the skeletons it is seeking to keep in the closet.
Quick, look the other way!

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1273132740142120961

Here's another thread on the UK's hidden colonial atrocities and their connections to today's power structures, which intersects with the first one, but draws on more examples:

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1314447444172779520

Behind these histories lies an even bigger and more sacrilegious truth. It's that the system we call capitalism, which exists vaguely in our minds, but that most people see as "something to do with buying and selling" is really a system of global theft.

As Guaicaipuro Cuautemoc points out, if the precious metals stolen from Latin America between 1503 and 1660 were treated as loan for European development, and subject to compound interest, Europe would now owe a stack of gold and silver that exceeded the weight of the planet.

Similarly, Britain extracted $45 trillion from India, using it to fund its own industrial revolution, and to expand its empire, grabbing land, labour and resources from yet more people.
aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/…

As @jasonhickel points out in The Divide, systemic looting continues today by other means: leveraging debt to grab local wealth, using secrecy regimes to evade tax and effectively get natural resources for nothing, extracting present wealth at the expense of future generations.

Let's imagine there'd been no theft. No gold, silver and land stolen from Native Americans, no people stolen from Africa, no wealth stolen from India and the other colonies, no ransacking of our life support systems. How successful would this system we call capitalism have been?

How rich and powerful would nations like ours have been?
I would guess: not very.
Capitalism is not what it claims to be. It is not the great success story its beneficiaries proclaim.
It is the ideological structure we use to shield ourselves from brutal truths.