The Natives Are Restless

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Do we not find ourselves living with a scenario in which the liberal elites consider themselves to be the wise, cool minds overseeing and running things. Do they not look upon those who oppose their agenda as being a “savage,” “uncivilized” set of local people, natives, “deplorables”, who must be subordinated to the elite’s will to power?

Are empires good or evil? When the question is put as bluntly as this, most people would probably respond that they are evil. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, an empire is “a political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority”. Until recently, the only people likely to defend empires were those who are usually called “conservative”. A certain type of conservative might claim that the benefits brought by the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana, outweighed the problems associated with imperial power. Similarly, the conservative consensus in Victorian England was that the benefits brought by the British Empire, the Pax Britannica, outweighed the problems caused by the global exercise of power, politically and economically, by the United Kingdom.

Times have changed. These days, it is those who are called liberals, progressives, or socialists who are the defenders of Empire. To be sure, they don’t call their imperialism by that ugly word, but an empire by any other name is still “a political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority”. Today, it is the so-called “left” which supports globalism and globalization, the centralization of power into the hands of unelected plutocratic global and corporate elites. It is the so-called “left” which supports the strengthening of the European Union by empowering the unelected European Commission over the elected (and therefore “unreliable”) European Parliament. It is the “left” which supports giving more power to the imperialists in Brussels by taking power away from the member states, the latter of which are in danger becoming little more than colonies of the Euro-Empire. It is the American “left” which supports giving more power to the imperial government in Washington DC by taking power away from the states, the latter of which are in danger of becoming little more than colonies of the Federal Government.

Now, however, and ironically, the natives are getting restless. It is ironic because the phrase is usually associated with the superciliousness of older imperial powers, such as the British Empire, and is seen as being racist by a website that specializes in calling for the cancellation of “non-inclusive” words and phrases.

Let’s look at the “progressivist” rationale for avoiding the phrase as a means of showing how the progressives of the “left” have become what the British imperialists once were with respect to treating the natives with dismissive contempt.

According to the self-appointed arbiter of what words and phrases should be included or excluded from the language, the phrase “the natives are getting restless” has racist colonial origins:

It sets up a scenario where wise, cool minds are overseeing and running things. And there is a more “savage,” “uncivilized” set of local people, the natives, who are seen as subordinate….

Plus, it suggests that the natives should be happy with the rule, and that if they’re getting restless, some small thing should be done to appease them. But not that the fundamental unfairness, exploitation, and power inequality should be resolved.

It’s deep stuff based on hundreds of years of European countries behaving really badly and extracting resources and exploiting (and often just murdering) local people in countries they colonized.

So yes, in a business context, or really any context, it is best to avoid saying or writing “the natives are getting restless”.

Now that we’ve let the “progressive” define the phrase, let’s ask some intriguing questions in the light of that definition.

Do we not find ourselves living with a scenario in which the liberal elites consider themselves to be the wise, cool minds overseeing and running things. Do they not look upon those who oppose their agenda as being a “savage,” “uncivilized” set of local people, natives, “deplorables”, who must be subordinated to the elite’s will to power?

The fact is that the natives are getting restless, whether or not the elites or the language-Nazis want anyone to say it. The natives of Europe voted in the recent European elections against the power of the Euro-Empire. In addition, the natives of France have just voted for a “nativist” party to represent them against the interests of european and global imperialists. And three of the smaller nations in the European Union (Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic) have just formed an alliance to fight for the democratic right of small nations within the EU. Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, criticized the Brussels elite for resisting the mandate for change given by the voters in the recent election. “The Brussels elite do not want change; they want to maintain the status quo,” he said. Like the evil European imperialists of the nineteenth century, to quote our progressive arbiter of language, the new Euro-imperialists believe “that the natives should be happy with the rule, and that if they’re getting restless, some small thing should be done to appease them. But not that the fundamental unfairness, exploitation, and power inequality should be resolved.” Exactly. Why then, do the “progressives” support the Euro-imperialists?

The new Austro-Hungarian-Czech alliance has promulgated a “Patriots’ Manifesto for the Future of Europe,” which criticizes the European Union for turning against the interests of its nations and regions, driven by globalist forces and unaccountable bureaucrats. “The recent European Parliament elections were of generational and existential significance,” the manifesto states, highlighting the divide between those advocating for a centralized European “superstate” and the native populations fighting to preserve and strengthen European nations through the rejection of any further erosion of national sovereignty by European imperialist institutions.

As for the situation on this side of the Atlantic, a recent comment by Joe Biden during his debate with Donald Trump is telling. Discussing the reversal of Roe v. Wade during the Trump administration, Biden objected to the issue of abortion being decided at the state-level by saying that it would be like deciding the issue of “civil rights” at the state-level. It is curious that Biden should equate the freeing of slaves with the killing of babies, suggesting a defective understanding of anthropology. As a Catholic, Biden is called to believe in the inherent dignity of every human person, rooted in the fact that they are made in the image of God. This means that every human person is equal, whether they are black or white, or young or old. The institution of slavery was an abomination because it enabled one human person to treat another human person as mere property, rendering the other person powerless. The institution of abortion, or systemic infanticide, is an abomination because it enables one human person to treat another human person as mere property, rendering the other person powerless and, in this case, dead. In this sense, there is no difference ethically between slavery and abortion.

The foregoing being said, the reason for the inclusion of Biden’s comment within the context of the present discussion is his belief that really big problems need really big governments to solve them, whereas, in fact, it is usually the really big governments which cause the really big problems in the first place. Roe v. Wade is a case in point. It institutionalized on a nationwide scale the killing of babies. In this case, the restlessness of the natives was solved by the extermination of the natives before they reached their nativity.

Let’s conclude our conversation on the restlessness of natives by continuing our engagement with the language-Nazi. “It’s deep stuff based on hundreds of years of European countries behaving really badly and extracting resources and exploiting (and often just murdering) local people in countries they colonized.” As one who believes that natives should be restless when they are oppressed, I agree with my “progressivist” friend that European colonization of other parts of the world brought a great deal of injustice. Where I disagree with him is his ethnomasochistic presumption that this is about race, not power. The European nations were empowered by technology to exploit those who did not possess this technology. As is always the case with those seeking self-empowerment, the selfish abuse of power leaves others powerless, especially the weakest. This is true of the owning of slaves, the killing of babies or the employment of technology to empower those who have it at the expense of those who don’t. Ultimately, it’s not about race but about pride.

And here lies the root of the problem. The “left” advocates pride and prideful self-empowerment but cannot see that it was advocates of pride and prideful self-empowerment who colonized the world. Instead of seeing pride as the problem, the “left” has chosen a racist final solution to the problem. They have found a scapegoat in the colour of a person’s skin, of which they are guilty from birth, irrespective of their own actions. White people are collectively guilty for the prideful self-empowerment of those in the past who exercised the will to power. As for those who wielded the power, it wasn’t because they were proud and used the competitive advantage provided by technology to subjugate others to their will but was simply because the colour of their skin was white. This is why the ”inclusive-language” Nazi insists that “in a business context, or really any context, it is best to avoid saying or writing ‘the natives are getting restless’.”

On the contrary, we should write about natives getting restless against the encroachments of globalist imperialism whether the natives are black, white or brown, or whether they live in Europe, Africa, Asia, the United States or anywhere else where Empire rears its ugly head.

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The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.