Civilized Futures

How dare the so-called civilized West accuse Muslims around the world of terrorism when they wage their own jihad in plain sight?

Declaring Who is Civilized

This is the biggest lie of our era.

All day, every day, Western countries lecture the world about being civilized, respecting human rights, and spreading democracy. American Presidents go on TV to instruct the rest of humanity on how to conduct elections, practice the rule of law, and be moral.

But do not pretend that these wealthy countries with their robust institutions came into being through morally superior behavior. In fact, just scratch the surface of colonial history, and this so-called civility falls apart.

Much of Western wealth was built on the backs of people and resources stolen from the rest of the world. Countless lives were exploited and destroyed. Countries that we now call part of the Global South were starved, invaded, occupied, and violently deprived of wealth and power.

Consent of the Colonized

The outrageous part is not even the history lesson. We know about imperialism. What’s frightening is how little accountability there is for these crimes today.

Empire does speak back – but too seldomly

Instead of taking responsibility, Western countries sanitize imperial violence and call it humanitarianism. Mass bombing campaigns are carefully called “peace operations.” Occupation is a “security intervention.”Even today, phrases like “humanitarian responsibility” and “global security” are code for controlling other countries and their people.

From Wealth to Want

Take the example of Bengal.

In the 1600s, Bengal was one of the wealthiest places in the world. Thanks to booming production in textiles and agriculture, and to trade with other regions of Asia and Europe, this South Asian nation led the world in GDP per capita.

The British put an end to all that.

Using both violence and free-market tricks like dumping heavily subsidized textiles on the market, Britain choked out local industries. They plundered wealth on an unimaginable scale and triggered or didn’t work to stop famines that killed tens of millions.

By 1947, just hundreds of years later, Britain left behind one of the poorest regions in the world.

India and Pakistan were partitioned along new religious lines, ensuring that Muslim-majority East Bengal would struggle to gain economic or political footing while British-created elites took power.

Divide and Cheat

You think this sounds familiar? It should. Because what happened to Bengal would happen again.

To the Jews

First Palestine.

Jews had lived in Palestine for centuries as one of many ethno-religious groups. But when Britain conquered the region in World War I, it imported millions of Jewish refugees from Europe, promising them land and a nation-state of their own.

Wars were fought. Borders were drawn with little regard for the people who lived there. Calls were both made and ignored. And then violence broke out.

Western countries came storming back into the Middle East. Only this time, they were the good guys trying to save everyone.

How Don’t Destroy Countries

This method of invasion and rescue, which few ever admit, has become standard operating procedure for the West.

By the turn of the 20th century, the United States would take Britain’s place as leader of the Western bloc. It absorbed many of the same patterns of control: playing different factions against each other, imposing compliant leaders, and using religion as a tool of division and interference. All while maintaining a moral superiority complex about what it was doing.

Targeting Muslims

This process really accelerated after World War II, when the US expanded its reach into the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If you’re Muslim, chances are your country was targeted. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran…  The list goes on, but you get the point. Countries were invaded. Sanctions were imposed. Regimes were overthrown. Lives were destroyed.

Civilizations were bombed back into the Stone Age.

Christianity and Militarism

The sad part is that this sort of imperialism often has a devoutly Christian accomplice waiting in the wings. Prominent Christian nationalists in the US have made it a point to wage their own war on Muslims. “Muslim extremists” are existential threats who need to be neutralized. Violence against them is terror (“Islamic terrorism”), but violence by Christians is God’s will.

Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims for millennia, became the shiny prize that alliance of money and religion could not resist. Calls for Christians to take up arms in defense of their faith are met with applause from American politicians like Mike Huckabee.

Meanwhile, Muslims are dehumanized en masse. They are suspected terrorists, enemies of the people, or cannon fodder in great power competition. All while Western politicians justify wars as part of the “fight against Islamic fundamentalism.” That’s not happenstance. It’s by design.

Old Allies, New Conspiracies

What we are seeing is the formation of a tacit global coalition of powers between Western nations, Israel, and Hindu nationalist India. There’s no treaty. They don’t need one. It works something like this: If Muslims are trying to gain greater rights or autonomy within your country, we’ll see what we can do.

You’ll get spies. Military aid. Cover for your repressive policies. Maybe even a coup to install a friendly leader. Democracy is wonderful… as long as it produces politicians we like.

Silicon Imperium

Of course, the newest tool in the imperial toolkit is technology. Gunboats have been replaced by data centers and algorithms. The latest soldiers in America’s empire aren’t even people.

Companies like Palantir, Oracle, and SpaceX are all playing a part in fueling America’s wars and human rights violations around the globe. From militaries that deploy AI against civilians to mass surveillance programs that catalog the whereabouts of every single person on the planet, tech is being weaponized.

Who Benefits?

There are a few more than Elon Musk.

The man owns satellites. He owns one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. And he also runs the Twitter platform that is used to spread hate and help militarized police identify racialized protestors.

Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon – you name it. All of these corporations build either the hardware or the software that powers American war crimes abroad and domestically. The problem is, they only really benefit a select group of people: white people.

Empire 2.0

It wasn’t this way when Britain and Spain were colonizing the world. Indigenous peoples were murdered by the millions so Western nations could “discover” America, Australia, and other settler colonies. Western nations solved a labor shortage by kidnapping Africans from other continents and forcing them into slavery.

Schoolchildren in the Global North learn about colonialism as if it were something relegated to the past. But it isn’t.

If anywhere comes close to matching the militarism and human rights abuses of the US, it’s Israel, which rules over Palestinians with an iron fist. Couple that with roughly 750 military bases in 80 countries on six continents, and you’ve got a recipe for total dominance.

Declining Behind Imperialism

The United States sits atop the largest empire in human history. And it’s running out of excuses to justify its size.

America is a debtor nation. China and Russia are calling for alternatives to the dollar as a reserve currency. The infrastructure is falling apart. Political polarization has ripped the country in two. So instead of building guns, America builds more fear.

From Russia? China? Buy Greenland!

And if that doesn’t work, we sanction, destroy, and bomb countries into submission. Venezuela lost its entire oil industry. Iran’s civilians suffer because their government won’t bow down to American terrorism. Asian countries and Europe can’t even try to resist without punishment. Americans can’t boycott Israel without being prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws. Think sanctions aren’t violent? That’s because they’re meant to be.

Empire 1.0 vs Empire 2.0

Ask your great-grandparents how they invaded countries, and they’ll say with soldiers. Today, America does it with debt. Facebook, Google, and PayPal can simply cut off your country from the global financial system. Americans travel with drones in their bags and turn them on at will.

Want to interfere in my country’s elections? No problem! Kicked out of the UN. Too corrupt to police itself. Or cares about the ICC only when its enemies are on trial. Come take your steel or nuclear deals elsewhere, Xi.

Old Empire. New World.

Large-scale war could break out any year now. If it doesn’t start this year, it’ll start next year. Everyone knows it. No one is doing anything about it. And until they do, states will continue to pose an existential threat to human survival.

A Future Worth Fighting For

“What is civilization if not power?” Oleksandra Matviichuk would say if you asked her. She is the head of the Ukrainian human rights NGO Center for Civil Liberties. She believes that human rights aren’t just something that institutions can provide for us. We have to advocate for them ourselves.

This legal career path started with empathy. Violence crushed her soul. So she studied law to fight for people’s lives and dignity. In 2007, Oleksandra began working to reform Ukraine’s legal system and build civilian oversight. Since then, her organization has worked tirelessly on human rights, youth activism and education, and solidarity movements with Ukraine’s OSCE neighbors.

When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, the Center for Civil Liberties was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. “We are human beings. We are capable of feeling each other’s pain.”

Oleksandra Matviichuk, Power vs Humanity

It’s time we stopped pretending that power is the same thing as humanity.

Empire is just modern colonization. Sanctions replace gunboats. Armed drones don’t need pilots to kill. You want to know who controls this system? Elite white people. You want to know who is in control? Everyone else.

And until that changes, we are dooming ourselves to a cruel world of injustice.