December 9, 2023In the aftermath of the latest Palestinian uprising (polling shows the militant resistance group, Hamas, is supported in Gaza by a majority of the population)[1], the mainstream media in typical knee-jerk gringo/MAGA/fascist fashion, resurrected the ancient colonial practice of creating the “savage.”
Dime novels arrived during the heyday of America’s Civil War and the final genocidal clean-up program of Indian removal to reservations (1860-1900). They sold a national manifest-destiny story, revealing the dominant American attitudes toward Indigenous peoples. These sensationalized romance and adventure sagas became wildly popular in both the United States and in England, where they were known as “penny dreadfuls.” The nickel or 10 cent books were simple in appearance, bound in cheap paper with a brightly illustrated cover.
Because of their cheap price, dime novel publishers geared these books toward the uneducated poor, producing stories with simple, formulaic plots that opened “new worlds” to their readers. Storylines were straightforward, no mind games or psychoanalysis in the novels, only simple story telling.[2]
The first of these stories were about the American Indians, but when Indians were placed on reservations, the public’s fascination with them began to fade. Consequently, the novels morphed into stories of cowboys in the Wild West, outlaws and bandits, and train robbers.
There is no equivalent of this genre of genocide-prep literature in the global South (formerly called “the third world”).[3] The imperial core needs these cheap dime novel narratives to fill the void/souls of their settler-citizens, who for centuries have survived by sucking off the lifeblood of other cultures. In their lust for the adventure they are not getting at home, they must dehumanize the exotic populations they encounter. When the indigenous population is not obedient to the white man’s desires, they are then referred to as “two-legged dogs” and terrorists.
Examples of the racist foundations of Zionism are highlighted by Indian writer Arundati Roy in her Come September speech given in 2012[4]:
In 1937 Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians: ‘I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place’. That set the trend for the Israeli state’s attitude towards Palestinians. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said: ‘Palestinians do not exist’. Her successor, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, said: ‘What are Palestinians? When I came here [to Palestine] there were 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was desert, more than underdeveloped. Nothing’. Prime Minister Menachem Begin called Palestinians ‘two-legged beasts’. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called them ‘grasshoppers’ who could be crushed. This is the language of heads of state, not the words of ordinary people.
The most recent ‘savage’ story told by a high-ranking statesman was from America’s very own President Joe Biden:
“I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said in an Oct. 11, 2023 meeting with Jewish community leaders. Administration officials later were forced to walk the false assertions back, telling reporters Biden was referring to unconfirmed reports from news outlets and Israeli officials about alleged child decapitations.[5]
The BBC, whose coverage bias against the Palestinians is well established[6], recently mistranslated an interview with, and maligned, a Palestinian prisoner.[7]
The western media intentionally reduces the indigenous people to a subspecies, so they are easier to wipe off the face of the earth, and/or turn into a servant class, and/or loot and impoverish. Check all these boxes for the ultraviolent Zionist project of Israel.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party’s communications minister proposed emergency regulations that would punish Israeli citizens for spreading information perceived to undermine the country’s morale or give ammunition to its adversaries.[8]
This past week, rumors of sexual violence and mass rape by Hamas have made headlines despite there being zero verifiable evidence presented. Because world opinion has turned on US and Israel with a vengeance the past two months, the Zionist propaganda machine has had to up their “savage” story-telling game; read all these salacious allegations against Hamas as a last ditch, Hail Mary effort to justify genocide.[9]
So the counter narrative has had to come from Palestinians themselves via social media and tellingly from indigenous people around the world organizing protests and speaking out. 132 indigenous activists, artists, and intellectuals signed a statement of Indigenous Solidarity with Palestine on Oct. 27.[10] Here is an excerpt from that:
The settler states that dispossess and occupy our lands support Israel in dispossessing and occupying Palestine.
We see and feel the strength of Palestinian families in the face of the quotidian violence of the Israeli apartheid regime. Colonized peoples have the right to defend themselves and to resist colonial violence. We support Palestinian liberation and their right as an oppressed people to resist colonialism and genocide.
[1] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-show-majority-gazans-were-against-breaking-ceasefire-hamas-and-hezbollah
[2] https://www.history.org.uk/student/resource/4512/american-dime-novels-1860-1915
[3] If there are any fables told in the East, they are that roads are paved in gold in America. It is true that many from the Global South migrate willingly to the West/America in pursuit of rich dreams, but this should NOT be confused with American dreams. They are not here for some advanced culture, in fact many find the food, fashion, and social life rather insipid and colorless. They are here for economics, but even that, if you look at it a different way, might be an effort to retrieve a small portion of all the goods and services the West stole from them and continues to steal via neo-colonial embargos, sanctions and ‘third-world’ debt-collection practices.
The Westerner should not be fooled that immigrants come to America for its superior culture. The happy smiling “we love America” immigrant is just patronizing – placating the frontiersman’s xenophobic ego. Of course, this is to mention nothing of the Black populations who had zero choice in their journey to America.
[4] https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~peer/arundhatiRoy.html
[5] https://www.factcheck.org/2023/10/what-we-know-about-three-widespread-israel-hamas-war-claims/
[6]https://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&context=honors_capstone
[7] https://www.arabnews.com/node/2416101/media
[8] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-war-facts-misnformation/
[9] https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/despite-lack-of-evidence-allegations-of-hamas-mass-rape-are-fueling-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/
[10] https://therednation.org/statement-of-indigenous-solidarity-with-palestine/
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