The Fractional Imperialist

Asian Provocation

My family immigrated to colonial Australia, just as the English, the Irish, the Scotts, the Welsch, Italians, Germans, Dutch, and the Polish decades earlier, eating up the exported Western myth of modernity and progress. We were swiftly inducted into the lore of the loyal ANZACs, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and their sacrifices for Her Majesty. Yet, if the truth were our guide, it would reveal the terrors of Imperialism, of which the Anzacs were nothing but mere pawns on a chessboard they scarcely understood, mere cannon fodder to ensure victorious landgrabs and expansionism.

Years unfolded, and the theatre shifted to the jungles of Indochina. The neo-colonialist project of the United States found themselves entangled in a proxy war not too different from the masters they fought to free themselves from. Guided no longer by a monarchical society of sincerity (Moeller & D’Ambrosio, 2018), it cast itself as the world’s savior, embarking on a quest to extinguish the specter of communism, a mission predicated on the illusion of eradicating evil. A crusade fueled by a collective hysteria, a paranoia that blurred the lines between reality and fantasy, projecting onto the other the vilest facets of America’s own insecure psyche—its insecurities, a nation under money, with liberty and justice for none.

And so, the Empire conscripted its own once more, unveiling the deep divides that plagued its very core, for the question of slavery remained unresolved. Both white and black young men were sent across the world in echoes of the ANZAC’s journey to its sacrificial slaughter during the First World War. In contrast, for the Neo-Confederacy (O’Neil, 2017) and the Five Eyes intelligence network, absent is the glue of a monarch, an emblem of a motherly figurehead, and the myth of Western democracy fractured fragilely. At home, civil rights protests ignited, laying bare the long-standing issues of hatred, envy and prejudice; it became abundantly clear that the enemy was not the “Communist Gooks”, for “No Vietnamese ever called me N*****.”

The advent of photography helped circumvent censorship and questioned the validity of the empire’s propaganda. Images of the atrocious violence gazed back at the so-called democracy that the empire was so eager to project. People spoke up and protested violently, for civil disobedience is a moral obligation if one has a conscience.

I met a woman once in Munich; she showed me her university, where ideas of Western philosophy and inquiry were taught. She showed me the square where the members of the White Rose questioned the principles and policies of the Nazi regime. She told me about the infamous Sophie Scholl, who gave flyers at the Ludwig Maximilian University. She showed me the atrium where stacks of leaflets detailing the atrocities and crimes of the Nazi party were flung from the top floor down. But it was Jakob Schmid, a janitor at the university, who informed them of the Gestapo, which led to their eventual arrest and, ultimately, public execution.

Sophie Scholl assumed full responsibility in an attempt to protect other members of the White Rose. During her trial before the People’s Court on 22 February 1943, Scholl stated, “Was wir sagten und schrieben, denken ja so viele, nur wagen sie nicht, es auszusprechen.” (So many people think what we said and wrote, but they don’t dare say it.)

Where is my friend now? Where are the students and descendants of Sophie Scholl? Where are the Germans who are against fascism and totalitarianism, who have supposedly been educated about the horrors of their past? Where are the peace-loving Germans? Where are the Germans who fight for democracy, for justice, for freedom? What happened to the bastion of democracy, of free speech, of truthful journalism, as we sit silently watching the prosecution of our contemporary White Rose, Julian Assange? Have these ideas been coopted into nothing but empty memes to sell vacuous t-shirts and parties? Is it depression, or are your chemical imbalances simply a result of cowardice and self-hatred?

And where are we today? The spirit of Neo-colonialism, the latest chapter of Imperialism, has liberated itself from its throne. The new decentralized, fractional imperialist allows the modern Jakob Schmid to tap into the enjoyment of white supremacy for all. The United States has been pouring billions into the settler colonialist state of Israel, paying for its latest iterations of high-tech surveillance genocidal technology. But let’s not fall into the same trappings of the fervent paranoid fantasies of white supremacy; it is but a fantasy of fragility, after all. What fuels the paranoia is not that perhaps there is a boogeyman behind the other, but the real devastation is that there is nobody behind the mask. The nightmare reaches its fever pitch when one wakes and realizes that the evil is, in actual fact, one’s own fantasy.

The difference between the senselessness of the Vietnam War, the abomination of the Holocaust and the genocide of Gazans is that today, the IOF willingly floods the internet in real-time, its bombastic psychotic and enjoyment, whilst the willful ignorant recipients of white supremacy apologists guard and denounce what little privilege they have from the empire from itself. Instead, it sublimates its sense of guilt and projects the negativity onto the other: Hamas, Muslims, immigrants, Russians, the Chinese, Africans, terrorists, queers, anti-semites.

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny died on the 16th of February, 2024. New York Times published an op-ed of an Oscar-winning film, supporting the martyr as if being the only hope for Western democracy and a sacrifice against the evil empire of Putin’s Russia. This is the same ultra-nationalist Navalny, who was quoted saying, “Everything in our way should be carefully but decisively removed through deportation,” and he was filmed dressed as a dentist, comparing immigrants to rotten teeth, which must be forcibly removed. In 2007, there was a video of Navalny railing against the “cockroaches,” referring to Muslim men that were on the video. This is the Islamophobic Navalny who took part in a video released by his Russian National Liberation Movement, portraying him shooting an actor wearing a keffiyeh who simulated an “attack.”

During the same breath of martyring Navalny’s death, western mainstream news outlets and those espousing democracy are quiet about the trial and extradition of Julian Assange. Not only is Assange not a political opposition, but he is the most high-profile political prisoner detained in the empire’s history, who has revealed the depths of the atrocities committed by the empire and its accomplices.

Before the binary trolls deem me as a Putin supporter, are we unable to remember that we are gravely close to midnight on the Doomsday Clock? How many times has the West pushed and betrayed not only its colonies but also other Superpowers? Who is it precisely that has created its villains over and over so that it can continue to scare its populous into funneling funds from feeding itself for “record profits?”

While all this is happening, clowns continue to spout “bring them home,” referring to the hostages held by Hamas, whilst the IOF has attacked and destroyed all hospitals in Gaza with an annual $3.8 billion US military aid, which supports 169,500 active personnel and 465,000 reservists, 2200 Tanks, 530 artilleries, 339 combat capable aircraft, 142 helicopters, 49 coastal ships and five submarines. This is not a war, for Gaza is an artificially formed human cage. Gaza is not a country. It is a choke point where Israel has cornered its population, ready for extermination, approved and supported by Western tax dollars.

Many Westerners excitedly expressed their support during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong Protests. But from which position came their sympathy? Does the West care about democracy and justice in the ex-British colony? Did they actually care about judicial rights and unlawful extradition, or does this apply only to what your state implies as enemies? Where were those voices of support when it came to the Rohingya genocide when the military of Myanmar murdered 25,000 Muslims? It is glaringly obvious and embarrassing that so many whites still long for the memories and power they gained from colonialism. They mourn not for the people of Hong Kong but for their already diminishing and fractionalised inner imperialist. From whom shall they receive their foot massages and pedicures if it weren’t for the empire?

In 2017, I visited Xinjiang in Western China. There, I saw firsthand the systematic ideological expansions of Beijing. I visited the schools, for which they were excited to demonstrate the expansion of Han culture and language. Students were drilled in nationalist rhetoric and taught gratefulness for the eradication of terrorism and evils.

But who were these terrorists from which they were saved?

The school employed military security. I was confused as to why the primary school students required military support with assault rifles around the clock. Who were they protecting them from? Then, it occurred to me that the infantry were not facing outwards. No, their turrets were pointed inwards. This was an education camp. A prison. The school was also equipped with large screen OLED panels, to what felt like a mini Times Square, from which it played on repeat propaganda videos, not so different from 9/11 sentimental ideals. But what was the Chinese 9/11? Terrorist attacks against the state. Beijing substantiates the necessity for control and “peace” on its peripheries to continue resource extraction. However, it didn’t take long for me to ask, are these children themselves, not the “other,” the Muslim outsiders who threatened the Han hegemony of Beijing?

As I left the school tour, I saw that the guard formations contained a double tier. The inner formation of the three was of light-skinned Han, most likely transferred from Eastern parts of China. The guards were layered with an additional three men who were hired muscle from the local Muslim community and shared similar features as the children. These were the “terrorists” that the propaganda videos were warning them against. The hired locals were not provided with assault rifles but nailed baseball bats, which reminded me of weaponry that is improvised in zombie apocalyptic films. These security measures pointed their weapons and their gaze internally into the school grounds at the children. This was not a school. This is an indoctrination center, a Petri dish cultivating a self-hating cancer that seeks to eradicate the “other” from within.

We walked around the town. An eerie feeling of constant surveillance was nothing but subtle. Every cafe, every bank, every shop had x-ray machines and security checkpoints, where one must provide documentation and explanation of one’s purpose and existence. We were led to an “art gallery,” where they displayed national geographic-styled images of the beauty of China and Han culture. It promoted peaceful existence and reminded us of the beauty of minority tribes and their exotic clothing.

There, I met a local artist. We agreed to meet for a drink at a cafe. After surrendering my passport and insisting that I was not a journalist at the cafe checkpoint, we shared food and stories. She told me about her people, diminishing in numbers. There are less than a thousand people who speak her mother tongue, as they are forbidden from doing so. They must speak the official Mandarin at all times. Their passports have been confiscated. There are rumors that those who dissent are sent to reeducation camps. Integration. Interrogation. Assimilation.

That trip haunts me to this day. I realized I was witnessing epistemicide (Hall & Tandon, 2017) and soft genocide (Roos, 2002). But there’s nothing “soft” about it—a systematic elimination and assimilation program with efficiencies that make the work of the Nazis look like “barbarians.” A year later, western media outlets began to accuse China of genocide. Oh, and how Westerners got excited to repeat this soundbite.

How do we analyze the objectality and subjectivity of our critique?

Day after day, the world has been subjected to, ironically through the technology of the empire, its self-condemning actions in Gaza, supplemented by an absolute disavowal of its complicity in deafening silence. With each subsequent war waged by the empire since the collapse of the Second World, the Soviet Union, the West has revealed its hypocrisy and corruption with no guidance but greed. The Western bourgeoisie has been unable to awaken itself from drunkenness and senselessness since the defeat of its sworn ideological enemy. In its hubris, it clings desperately to manufacturing more consent and fantasy. Anyone with the slightest sense of sobriety and conscience can see through the absurdity of the Western heralding of Navalny, the nationalist and populist, as a Free speech icon while simultaneously prosecuting and torturing Julian Assange, labeled as a “National security threat.”

In perfect Hegelian fashion, the collapse of the empire, like all empires, is crumbling from within. I think back to the white woman who asked me, but what do I need to be saved from as a white woman? Very quickly, we are witnessing the starvation of the vampire drying out as it drains the last drops of life from its colonies. And with her last breath, she will still be asking, why?

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