Chandran Nair

Asian Angle | The world is woke to Western posturing and global white privilege

The West’s disingenuous position on Israel and its coordinated attacks on China have blown the cover of the liberal narratives it uses to hide a postcolonial, imperialist agenda

Its hypocrisy has been further exposed by its hoarding of coronavirus vaccines and the systemic racism that prompted the Black Lives Matter protests and fuelled attacks on people of Asian descent

Reading Time:6 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

A woman at a protest following the killing in the United States of African-American man George Floyd. Photo: AFP

Chandran Nair

Published: 5:00pm, 29 May 2021Updated: 5:00pm, 29 May 2021

A tipping point has been reached, even if it has hardly been discussed within societies and by political leaders. Across the non-Western world, there is growing awareness and rejection of the hypocrisy, insincerity and insecurity embedded in the Western world with regard to its relations with the global majority.

Western narratives and propaganda took hold across the world over the last 200 years as a result of colonisation and imperialism. Mind capture was a necessary tool of oppression to subjugate people. And despite decolonisation, mental colonisation became the new frontier and remains a key strategy of postcolonial imperialism. Citizens of former colonies remained receptive to Western ideas, having been indoctrinated for so long, and this influence is still actively cultivated via Western soft power as well as through Western education and its global media.

Today, much of the Western world retains the mentality that their nations and “white people” are superior, with the singular goal of retaining global economic dominance. This, even though the rest of the world is acutely aware of the dangers of extreme forms of “White People First” as manifested in Donald Trump and his tumultuous presidency. Yet we still see efforts to actively preserve white privilege, which goes well beyond egregious acts of racism against people of colour.

The rest of the world is acutely aware of the dangers of extreme forms of ‘White People First’ as manifested in the tumultuous Donald Trump presidency, writes Chandran Nair. Photo: DPA

What has changed though is that for the first time in hundreds of years, there is no longer a shared view – as misplaced as it might have been or carefully manufactured – of the wisdom of the West and its right to lead. This change is a seismic global shift.
Several contemporary examples have blown the cover of liberal narratives used to hide deep animosity towards others rooted in the fear of being treated as equals and sharing power without entrenched privileges.

The first is the way in which Western governments and media typically respond to the plight of people fighting Western-led oppression. The plight of the Palestinians says it all. This is not the place to go into the details of a complex conflict, but simply to say that the West has found it almost impossible to call out Israel about what decent people across the world recognise as large-scale oppression through an apartheid system. Why? It believes it has to stand together as a white Judeo-Christian tribe against people seeking liberation, and continue the denial, because giving in is to acknowledge a shared history of centuries of oppression and occupation, which is the true genesis of violent resistance. The people of the oppressed nations of the world mostly got their freedom by fighting for it – India, Vietnam, Mozambique, Cuba, the list is long. Those who could not were completely marginalised, such as the First Nation peoples of Australia and Native Americans. The second reason is to demonstrate to the world it is united and has military might, thereby sending a strong signal that it is solely in charge of global affairs, which is critical to thereby reinforcing and maintaining its economic hegemony.

Countries which remember their history recognise that the fence-sitting by Western powers about the Israeli position towards Palestinians and the unconditional support given by the United States is the same thing they experienced during their struggle. Atoning for crimes committed by Western civilisation on Jews, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust, is critically important. But it should not be confused with giving the modern state of Israel a free pass to oppress millions for decades. The people of Israel, like the Palestinians, deserve better and it is only the West – led by the Americans – who can stop this cycle. But they refuse.

An apartment block in the Gaza Strip that was destroyed in an Israeli air-strike. Photo: AP

The world, however, is not fooled by disingenuous arguments which say that support for the Palestinians is support for “terrorists” and a call for the destruction of Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state. These were the same arguments used to uphold indefensible positions of colonial powers – including genocide – when they were confronted by their oppressed subjects, be it in America, Algeria or Angola. The reality today is that most of the world would not tolerate a scenario in which Israel is not also safeguarded in a deal that frees Palestinians from decades of oppression. These arguments are in fact rooted in racism: a belief that the rest of the world is backward, does not possess values, can be talked down to and will buy such superficial and untenable reasoning. The current position of the West reminds the rest that, what can be simply called white settler colonial behaviour, is in fact hard-wired into the Western psyche. This has been exposed to the world, which for decades gave the West the benefit of the doubt.