A Spectacle Of The Macabre In New York

Nate Bear

What’s unfolding in New York is a show of breath-taking degeneracy, a depraved spectacle exposing the illegitimate imperial order and the institutions on which it is built.

At the UN general assembly meeting, world leaders, included wanted war criminals, have been getting up on stage, one after the other, and bragging about genocide, war crimes and mass slaughter. Liberal leaders, complicit in the delinquency of empire despite their professed humanitarian credentials, have excused or downplayed those crimes, while others have celebrated facilitating them.

First there was Trump, who began by threatening an apocalypse on Iran, moved on to flaunting the illegal blockade of Cuba before triumphantly mocking Venezuela over the US theft of its oil, declaring that “to the victor belong the spoils.” In a little over half an hour, during which he also demanded the ICC be disbanded, Trump succinctly outlined why the US is the largest terror organisation the world has ever seen. It was a sickening display. But rather than stand against Trump’s vision and version of a world ruled by a wanton lust for violence and control, liberal leaders either made excuses for it, or doubled down on his vision.

Mark Carney, when asked about Trump’s language, shrugged it off, saying “well, there’s a war underway, and he’s speaking the language of war.” After normalising threats to commit war crimes, he went on to label the country targeted for imperial annihilation as “one of the greatest threats in the current world and an existential threat to Israel and its allies.” Carney, the great liberal conscience and supposed redeemer of western values laid the rhetorical ground for Trump and Israel to commit further ultra-violence and mass murder against Iranians. Carney, who mere months ago was being lauded for standing up to Trump, centered the rights and security of a state committing genocide, rather than the one being threatened with genocide. Carney is, as I have written about previously, a monstrous individual.

Then there was Mark Rutte, former prime minister of The Netherlands and current head of NATO, who proudly stated that “it would have been impossible to do operation epic fury without having Europe as a power projection platform for the US.” He said that “five thousand planes have taken off from European bases in support of epic fury since February 28th this year. Country after country made them available.” Yes he used the words “power projection platform” without a hint of self-awareness, all while confirming a level of European involvement that Europe has tried to deny. A Europe which, in Rutte’s own words, exists merely as a “platform,” a vassal continent from which imperialism is propelled eastwards. The same Europe which has just handed over Greenland to Trump and the Americans to serve as an extension to this “platform.”

Then there was Netanyahu, the butcher of Gaza and wanted war criminal, who boasted proudly of the ultra-violence his terror state has overseen. Before he spoke the language of genocidal violence from the podium of an organisation designed, ostensibly, to rid the world of such violence, he was provided with a huge police escort by the mayor of the city who previously made arresting this criminal a central element of his election campaign. In July, to pre-empt accusations of betrayal, Mamdani said his team had examined the legalities and he couldn’t command the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu. Perhaps not. But he could have commanded them to not arrest anti-genocide protestors yesterday. He could have ordered them not to provide the wanted war criminal with a huge protective police motorcade through the city. He could at a minimum have joined the protests himself. Mamdani is a coward, a traitor to Palestine and Palestinians who, on genocide, has betrayed many of his voters. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to say that an article I wrote about Mamdani in January has been vindicated on more than one occasion during his mayoralty so far.

The only leaders speaking in condemnatory tones and attempting to shake the moral conscience of the world were the targets of imperial crimes, but they are treated by the western political and media establishment as savage enemies, their words and warnings ignored. Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, for example, who summed up the absurdity of the imperial order well when he said that “the nuclear bombs are in Israel, but the inspectors are in Iran. Israel commits genocide, yet Iran is sanctioned.” Pezeshkian also delivered the most sensible, statesman-like and human message of the meeting so far, saying “we must not build a world in which military power replaces legitimacy, sanctions replace diplomacy, terror replaces politics, and war replaces dialogue.” His appeal was a stark contrast to the genocidal ravings of Trump and Netanyahu, yet you’ll struggle to find these words in any mainstream western reporting, complicit as they are in the war against Iran, western hegemony, and the slide into an ever-deeper dystopia.

As for the Palestinian victims of genocide and apartheid, well they had their visas revoked before they could even step on a plane. A disgraceful act by empire, but not a surprise, given that for eighty years the west has tried to deny Palestinians platforms from which they could demand justice and accountability. Or merely platforms from which they can tell their stories at all.

There have been numerous defining moments for western liberalism in the last few years, but this feels like a season closer. A brazen show of inhumanity, another nail in the coffin of international law and the mythical rules-based order. The good news is that a myth can’t die. The only thing that can die is our conception of the world that the myth created. This world was, we now see, nothing more than a presentational fiction, a parody of order designed to coat the western conscience in a soothing balm. A facade designed to hide the true nature of our political realities. Nothing real existed, so nothing can be mourned. We should, however, be furious at those who constructed this facade of liberal humanitarianism as a cynical mechanism to forestall true progress and justice. And we should scorn those who still refuse to see through the bullshit and the lies, or who insist these developments are new and a gentle nudge can put us back on the right track.

The truth is clearer than ever.

Trump is not an aberration. The genocide of Gaza is not an aberration. The attack on Iran is not an aberration. Mass death in the service of empire is not an aberattion.

This death flows, as it has since the dawn of colonialism, from the minds, values and ideologies of western elites. The firewall of liberal gentility that prevented such feral, inhumane values from being pronounced at the UN podium has fallen. Never have the vaunted institutions of liberalism, and liberal democracy itself, been so exposed.

And never has the need for revolutionary thinking, politics and formations that can help remake and replace these systems and institutions been more necessary.

Source: ¡Do Not Panic!