New racism, old uses

Global inequality demands explanation. Regardless of political outlook, we all have some theory of why the world is so materially imbalanced – some explanation for the profound differences in wealth between different lands and people.

Not long ago biological explanations were quite acceptable. Those who conquered and carved up the nineteenth century felt free to claim it was their racial destiny to do so. Bolstered by a dire misreading of Darwin, Europeans imagined it was their biological superiority that underwrote their global dominance. Verbal accounts of European ministers, officers and troops are shamelessly racist, deep into the twentieth century. Empire was clearly a God-given right, the natural dominion of the superior over the inferior. There was a moral obligation to ‘intervene’ in the affairs of ‘lesser’ peoples, to save them from themselves.

Of course such views are far from dead, often lurking only inches below the surface of more politically correct verbiage. Now however it simply doesn’t do to attribute inequality to biology. Since science disproved such explanations, and Nazism discredited them, different reasons have had to be found to justify global inequality. The current rendering is that it is the culture of the poor that holds them back, in this great meritocratic game of life. While different races may be endowed with the same capabilities biologically, some social groups remain culturally stunted: Tribal loyalty, voodoo, medieval Islamism, ingrained respect for demagogues, Gansta Rap – these are the new acceptable reasons to blame the poor for being poor.

This new claim of western culturally supremacy is justified using the very same tautology employed by the old-school racists: The west must be best because the west has won. Nothing more needed. If it isn’t the case that non-Europeans are biologically inferior then they must be culturally inadequate – how else would they have come out of things so badly?

Before accepting this conclusion however a vital question has to be asked – was the competition a fair one? Firstly, did each competitor have an equal start, or did external factors favour the chances of some parties? Secondly, whatever the game, some rules of conduct must apply. Few would accept the victory of a football team that resorted to using firearms on the pitch or took to kidnapping and torturing its opponents, whatever the final score.

Unless the great game of life is simply a slugging match there must be some rules of play. Bullying and forming alliances with tyrants must be ruled-out before one can justly claim that merit won the day. Indeed this surely is the concept of superiority the new supremacists would like to claim for the west. While many quietly admire the ‘order’ brought to society by fascism, generally such tactics are scorned. The ‘might is right’ of Rome and Nuremberg is not the path to honourable victory, victory on merit. The patriotism that puffs western chests is the thought that success came from superior planning and a superior moral outlook, rather than rape and pillage.

Regarding head-starts there is little doubt. Prehistorically, each human group simply did not start out with equal external opportunities. As Jared Diamond spells out in Guns Germs and Steel the geographical location each race found itself in 11,000 years ago varied massively in terms of opportunity for growth, sharing of technology and eventual dominance and exploitation of other peoples. Climate, crops, livestock, the very shape and axis-orientation of the different continents – such factors biased the world in the favour of the humans of Eurasia, rather than Africa and the Americas.

And once the ball was rolling in Europe’s favour other factors followed in turn. The first mass societies of Eurasia experienced the first mass epidemics of disease. Although devastating at the time, surviving generations had far greater immunity to such disorders. More than guns and bayonets, this was the most lethal weapon in the white-man’s arsenal. Mere contact with the invaders was enough to devastate the populations of the Americas, and any other isolated populations they encountered.

And of course technology begets technology. Once you have steel you are that much closer to steam, and bayonets, and bombers – should you choose. A small head start can quickly be consolidated, particularly if its advantages are ruthlessly seized.

Which brings us to the second test of fairness: Did the west play by the rules? Did it win on merit? By any meaningful standard, clearly not. To this day every attempt by poorer nations to compete fairly has been met with an iron fist. Every effort has been made to smash democracy and self-determination in the developing world. From Saud to Saddam, Somoza to Suharto, the west has maintained its dominance through brutality, not cunning.

It would be hard to find firmer proof than the treatment afforded Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah during his state visit last week. The very same British government that blames Islam for the state of the world then bows and scrapes before this Wahhabist autocrat, and arms his regime to the teeth. As Iran discovered in 1953, the last thing the west wants is democracy near its oilfields.

Global inequality is perfectly explicable without recourse to biological or cultural inadequacy. The claim of cultural inadequacy is just a means for supposed progressives to support old style imperialism. The main factors that ensure western dominance today are the same as in the nineteenth century – military superiority and alliance with the most brutal elements within client states. The west is not so much standing proud on the winner’s podium as scrabbling up a greasy pole, only staying on top by kicking the heads of those below. It is not superior culture but clinically applied barbarism that keeps western capital in control of the world.