Night-Vision: Illuminating War & Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain

265 Pages·1993·5.315 MB·English

by  Butch Lee, Red Rover

IISBN 1-883780-00I-4
II
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9 781883 780005
NIGHT-VISION
Illuminating War & Class on
the Neo-Colonial Terrain
Butch Lee and Red Rover
VAGABON~RESS
496A Hudson St.
Sui. . E14
New Vorl,, N.Y. 1001 4
Vagabond Press
496A Hudson St.
Suite E14
New York, N.Y. 10014
First U.S. Edition June 1993
Copyright © 1993 C.D.S.
All rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Vagabond Press, together with the Cooperative
Distribution Service.
ISBN 1-883780-00-4
Printed in the U.S.A.
Our predicament at the present time throws up new
questions. Neo-colonial man is asking a different set of ques
tions than the old colonial man. Sometimes if a person gets
trapped in a previous moment of history, you find it hard to
carry on a conversation with him or her because they are ·still
out to defend something that you're not against, but you're not
with because it is no longer the relevant thing. Why should we
get caught up in malting tremendous tirades against the mis
sionaries or saying the Europeans were terrible fellows, look at
how these fellows exploited us? Why should we continually
speak in this grand singular - the Mrican is this and the Euro
pean is the other? That was a formulation that was necessary at a
particular point in time, when we were still within the whole
identity crisis, when we were trying to evolve a peoplehood.
But the moment we move beyond that, neo-colonial man can't
talk about the Vietnamese in the singular or the African or the
Guyanese, etc.· We must look at real life.
In real life, Guyanese live in certain different ways, have
contradictions among themselves, have a relationship with the
rest of the world. We must try to deal with the resolution of
those contradictions. And that is also the case in Africa.
WALTER RODNEY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface: Old Reality vs. New Reality ........................................ i
Chapter 1: Realism Of Race & Gender ..................................... 1
Made in the "u.s.a." .................................................... 11
A Prerequisite: Empty the Continent....................... . .. 25
Chapter 2: The Making OfNations ........................................ 33
Chapter 3: Imperialism & The Anti-Colonial Revolution ......... ..49
The Anti-Colonial Revolutions Came From New Classes ... 67
Chapter 4: The Political Economy OfNeo-Colonialism ......... 91
The Key Commodity Is Woman ................................. 104
Globalization: New Stage In Capital Concentration ..... ll4
Fallout From Globilization ........................................ 118
The Future Is Now. .................................................. 123
An Overview of Class ................................................ 128
Primitive Accumulation Masked as "Charity" .............. 139
The Industrial Proletariat: Gender & Race,
Slave & Semi-Slave .................................................... 145
'
Macho Nationalism & Finance Capital.. ..................... 154
Chapter 5: The Changer And The Changed ......................... 161
Desettlerizing the "u.s.a.": Crises at the Center. ........... l64
Multiculturalism Won't Save Your Life ......................... l74
Chapter 6: Deto:xlilg ............................................................ 180

PREFACE:
OLD REALITY VS. NEW REALITY
There is a restlessness among those who seek root change
because we're at the turning point where an old reality is giving way
to a new reality. Both are still present & true at one and the same
time. Combining but increasingly colliding. Especially in our
minds.
Home videotape allows the fascinated world to watch as a
mob ofw hite L.A. cops club & kick a Black man over and over into
the hospital. Old reality. At the same time, amerikkka puts another
Afrikan-Amerikanmanincommand ofr eorganizing its military. Its
elite combat units in Panama & the GulfWar, such as the 82nd
Airborne, are half-New Mrikan. In a resurge of white pride, the
most requested video on MTV in 1991 is a Black lesbian singing
a pop version of the white man's national anthem. New reality.
A car full ofklansmen shoot a New Mrikan man in a drive by
& three loser skinheads ambush gays and lesbians outside bars. Old
reality. At the s~e time, NYC's Black mayor holds onto the
headlines by helping Irish gays &lesbians crash the St. Paddy's day
parade; marching with them at the rear, while white cops charge
into the Fifth Ave. crowds to arrest white men hurling beer cans at
the mayor. New reality.
We've seen hip hop group Run-DMC accused of anti
semitism because of the mockingly stereotyped portrayal of a Jew
in their movie ~a movie written, directed & produced by their Jewish
Night-Vision ii
male business partner. "Black anti-semitism" is now another business,
really. We've seen white lesbians joining city coufl.Qls,.on Wall St.
corporate boards, even in the u.s. senate. New reality, ready or not.
While Black Genocide is shooting up in the backyard.
The old reality is colonialism, while the new reality is neo
colonialism. Not replacing or eliminating our old reality,. but
merging with it and taking it over.
The transformation to a neo-colonial world has only
begun, but it promises to be as drastic, as disorienting a change as
was the original european colonial conquest of the human race.
Capitalism is again ripping apart & restructuring the world, and
nothing will be the same. Not race, not nation, not gender, and
certainly not whatever culture you used to have.
In this wrenching transformation, national empires, national
borders &national economic rivalries are becoming less important
to the international ruling class. To them, nations are less like the
fortified bases of monopoly they used to be, but more like mere
provinces, commercial suburbs, places of convenience for their
multi- national corporations. Nations are being subdivided, built &
torn down at an increasing tempo by capitalist evolution itself.
Nations aren't seen anymore as fixed, eternal, god-given -which
was all delusion - but as ambiguous and subject to the class
struggle.
But when the oppressed call themselves a nation they mean
freedom from imperialistic power and its involuntary nations to
build their new culture, their own economy, a new try at civiliza
tion. For example, for their way of life to thrive, Indian peoples
must have their Nations- how can they survive if imperialism
owns the land & sovereignty? Can you become a free people based
on bingo games & being a tourist ghetto?
Many peoples were involuntarily submerged to make
larger nations/e mpires (and in places lilce India and the late Soviet
Union we see opportunistic politicians and stunted capitalistic
classes scrambling to tap that popular feeling).
tal------·
LA11 CIIY FINAL
O'Connor rips radical feminists