Tiger Beatdown: Occupying Europe, when the colonizer reclaims wealth
My latest at Tiger Beatdown.
The European Union’s wealth is the wealth of Empires. Mainly the British, Dutch, Spanish, Belgium, French, Italian, Austro-German and Portuguese empires. This is the wealth built on the backs of the African slave trade and the colonization of lands as distant from each other as the African continent, the Americas, Asia and Australia. This wealth is made of unspeakable suffering and economic deprivation for those in the colonized territories. This wealth is also made of resource depletion and subjugation of native populations. This wealth that never belonged to Europe to begin with.
And yet, people talk of “Occupations”; which come to think of it, Europe invented as the very foundation of “modernity” to begin with. So what exactly does it mean to “Occupy” Europe in this context? What does it mean when the citizens of a super power of Europe’s magnitude talk of “Occupations”?
I suspect many will not be entirely happy with the tenor of this piece. Alas, I publicly claimed my right to be the bearer of flame throwers already so, this will be just one more record in my already incendiary status.
For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you. Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.