{"id":40723,"date":"2020-08-15T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2020-08-15T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=40723"},"modified":"2020-08-14T19:05:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-15T02:05:17","slug":"everyday-erinyes-228","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/15\/everyday-erinyes-228\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #228"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\r\n

Back to history this week. It has been obvious for a long time that the Versailles Treaty got the world into World War II. I learned that in school. But it’s less obvious how much of a factor it was in getting us into the mess we are in today. Let’s look.
================================================================<\/p>\r\n

How the failures of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty set the stage for today\u2019s anti-racist uprisings<\/h1>\r\n
\r\n
On May 27, 1919, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian President Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and American President Woodrow Wilson met May 27, 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference. Lee Jackson\/Topical Press Agency\/Getty Images)<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n

Elizabeth Thompson<\/a>, American University School of International Service<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n

The racism that is now the target of protest across the globe<\/a> is rooted in the tragic choices of leaders seeking to roll back change a century ago.<\/p>\r\n

Nearly all historians now agree that at the end of World War I, the choice to return to an imperialist world order by the victorious Allied, or Entente, powers \u2013 France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States \u2013 was a historic error. It not only prepared the ground for the rise of fascism in Europe, but also sparked decades of political violence in Asia and Africa by people denied their rights<\/a> and humanity.<\/p>\r\n

As World War I ended in November 1918<\/a>, the Spanish Flu pandemic swept across the globe, killing more than 50 million<\/a> people. Most vulnerable were soldiers<\/a> living in crowded barracks and their families back home, where hunger weakened immunity.<\/p>\r\n

Like today, the effect of pandemic was aggravated by economic recession and unemployment<\/a>. Worse, the people of the defeated German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires suffered chaos under political collapse<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Amid these multiple crises, the Paris Peace Conference<\/a> opened in January 1919. American President Woodrow Wilson personally traveled to Paris to ensure that the conference would make the world \u201csafe for democracy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Wilson had promised a new era of peace and justice in his famous Fourteen Points<\/a> statement of war aims, which included an end to secret treaties, the curtailment of colonial empires, the right of all people to choose their own government and a League of Nations to adjudicate international conflicts.<\/p>\r\n

In 1920, like 2020, race became the pivot of a historic turning point. In both moments, world leaders faced a choice: to restore the previous status quo that had produced the crisis \u2013 or to embrace the need for a new world order.<\/p>\r\n

The European members of the Entente powers at Paris \u2013 Britain, France, and Italy<\/a> \u2013 ignored Wilson\u2019s call for world order based on law and rights. With the implementation of the Treaty of Versailles<\/a> in January 1920, they chose to restore a racial hierarchy across the globe, extending their colonial rule over territories once held by the defeated German and Ottoman empires in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.<\/p>\r\n

The treaty, which included establishment of the League of Nations, betrayed not only Wilson\u2019s ideals, but also the Entente\u2019s nonwhite allies and the colonial soldiers who fought in the \u201cwar to end all wars.\u201d The racial injustice of the 1919-20 peace settlement sparked decades of political violence \u2013 not only in the colonized Middle East, Africa and Asia, but also in the United States.<\/p>\r\n

\"Portrait<\/a>\r\n
NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois went to Paris to try to ensure that racist laws like the U.S. had would not be imposed in Africa to the detriment of African rights.<\/span> Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n

Journey to Paris<\/h2>\r\n

In January 1919, activists from around the world traveled to Paris despite risks to their health<\/a>. They embraced Wilson\u2019s Fourteen Points as a chance to remake a broken world system of imperial rivalry that had led to World War I and the deaths of 10 million soldiers and 50 million civilians<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Among those activists was NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois<\/a>, who had fought against the spread of racist, segregationist Jim Crow laws from southern states to the North. He now feared that a similar legal double standard might be imposed in international law, to the detriment of African rights.<\/p>\r\n

Du Bois asked to join the American delegation at Paris, but the Wilson administration refused him. Wilson feared that Du Bois\u2019 call for racial equality<\/a> might spoil his negotiations with the other conference leaders \u2013 prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy \u2013 who ruled most of Africa as colonies.<\/p>\r\n

Claiming rights<\/h2>\r\n

Undeterred, Du Bois organized a Pan African Congress<\/a> to defend Africans\u2019 rights. He understood, as others did in Paris, that racial inequality was the foundation<\/a> of the old imperial world order.<\/p>\r\n

Like Du Bois and his African allies, Arabs and Egyptians<\/a> claimed their right to sovereignty. But they found that the Entente leaders also considered Arab Muslims a lower species of human, unfit for self-rule.<\/p>\r\n

Prince Faisal of Mecca gained entry to the conference because his Arab army had fought against the Ottoman Turks alongside Britain, with the understanding that Arabs would gain an independent state<\/a>. But the British broke their promise and denied independence to Faisal\u2019s Syrian Arab Kingdom. They instead joined French colonialists to divide Arab lands<\/a> between them.<\/p>\r\n

Asians, too, were regarded as an inferior race. Japan had fought alongside the victorious Allies and had won a leading role<\/a> at the conference.<\/p>\r\n

But when the Japanese delegation proposed a racial equality clause for the Covenant of the new League of Nations, the conference\u2019s white leaders rejected it<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

\"The<\/a>\r\n
The Japanese delegation, shown here, proposed a racial equality clause for the charter of the new League of Nations. The leading powers rejected it.<\/span> Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n

Racial inequality codified<\/h2>\r\n

The Covenant of the League of Nations, drafted by those same leaders at Paris in 1919<\/a>, codified the inequality of races in international law. Article 22<\/a> denied independence to Arabs, Africans and Pacific Islanders once ruled by the Ottomans and Germans.<\/p>\r\n

In the condescending language of moral uplift, the article designated them as \u201cpeoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.\u201d Therefore, they would be placed under temporary European rule as \u201ca sacred trust of civilisation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

In other words, the League of Nations would administer temporary colonies, called mandates, to tutor uncivilized (nonwhite) people in politics. Racial inequality was enshrined in the very institution, the League of Nations, that was to ensure the governance of international law.<\/p>\r\n

The mandates were imposed by gunpoint, with no pretense to respect self-determination. In July 1920, the French army occupied Damascus<\/a>, destroyed the Syrian Arab Kingdom and sent Faisal into exile<\/a>. Likewise, the British battled mass opposition to claim its mandates in Iraq<\/a> and Palestine<\/a>. Meanwhile, South Africa imposed a brutal racist regime upon southwest Africa.<\/p>\r\n

Racial exclusion from the club of so-called civilized nations provoked anti-colonial movements for the rest of the 20th century.<\/p>\r\n

The president of the Syrian Arab Kingdom\u2019s Congress, Sheikh Rashid Rida, foresaw violent consequences in his 1921 appeal<\/a> to the League of Nations.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cIt does not befit the honor of this League, which President Wilson proposed to include all civilized nations for the good of all human beings,\u201d he wrote, \u201cfor it to be used as a tool by two colonial states. These states seek to use this Assembly to guarantee \u2026 the subjugation of peoples.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\"Prince\r\n
Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference.<\/span> Wikipedia<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n

Rida prophetically warned that \u201cSyria, Palestine, and other Arab countries will ignite the fires of war in both the West and the East.\u201d The bitter sheikh turned against European liberalism and inspired the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

In the later 20th century, this racial exclusion of Arab Muslims inspired the violent Islamist movements that<\/a> drew the United States into seeming endless conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\r\n

Jim Crow stays<\/h2>\r\n

In the United States, racial hierarchy was similarly reimposed by violence. Black veterans returned from Europe to confront lynching and race riots<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

[The Conversation\u2019s newsletter explains what\u2019s going on with the coronavirus pandemic. Subscribe now<\/a>.<\/em>]<\/p>\r\n

The link between the American racial order and the new world order was made explicit by President Wilson\u2019s adviser, Colonel Edward M. House<\/a>. He advised Wilson that racial equality would cost him votes in the South and California. Worse, such a clause could empower the League of Nations<\/a> to intervene in the United States against Jim Crow laws.<\/p>\r\n

In March 1920, the U.S. Senate rejected American membership<\/a> in the League of Nations precisely because clauses on transnational law enforcement and collective security threatened U.S. sovereignty.<\/p>\r\n

It is no accident that the current crisis in the U.S. has come to focus on racial injustice. Among its several sources are the decisions made 100 years ago by white men from powerful countries who believed maintaining their dominance was more important than seeking peace through justice.\"The<\/p>\r\n

Elizabeth Thompson<\/a>, Professor and Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, American University School of International Service<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

================================================================
Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>, Wilson (a racist himself) probably did not envision what we would envision today as a “world order based on law and rights.” That’s nothing new. When the Magna Carta was signed, the barons who forced it did not envision a world in which anyone other than the nobility would have the rights it prescribes. When the Constitution was written and adopted, our founding fathers almost certainly did not envision a world without slavery. Even after we abolished slavery, few envisioned a eorld in which women had rights. Historically, freedom has a tendency to spread and to embrace groups those writing the rules never considered. It would be most interesting if we were able to follow the history of a parallel world which did rally behind Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and see what would have been different.<\/p>\r\n

On the other hand, I was looking at some numbers – I cannot call what I did crunching because I wasn’t rigorous, and made adjustments based on guesses. I took as a starting point the premise that 30% of Americans still support Trump. I made an assumption that, while we all know that black racists, and female misogynists, and Jewish anti-Semites exist, their actual numbers would be small enough to disregard. I looked up the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in America, and learned it was a little under two-thirds. Well, 30% is almost one-third. I concluded that, as a very rough estimate, half of all the whites in the United States are racist. And we will be stuck with them long after Trump* is gone. And they vote, and they reproduce. On the bright side, without doing any math, I feel strongly that 50% is a lower percentage of racists among whites than it was in the fifties So I think there is hope. Dear Furies, help us build it better.<\/p>\r\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3729,3866,3748],"class_list":["post-40723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-furies","tag-history","tag-racism","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}