Ukraine invasion: When white lives bear a heavier burden on global conscience
Many of the reactions to Europe's latest refugee crisis remind us that in the post-colonial and post-Hitler era, the colonialist and supremacist discourses are just hiding in the subconscious psyche. They come out with minimal instigations
Amidst the reckless Russian aggression, Ukraine's Deputy Chief Prosecutor David Sakvarelidze is overwhelmed and sad at the inhumane display of the Russian military forces. That is a very logical and humane reaction for anyone who denounces war and hope for a peaceful world. However, Sakvarelidze's response expressed to BBC has another dimension to it.
To quote him, "It's very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed". To make things more evident, CBS News' Kyiv correspondence was more categorical in his Eurocentric fetish, "This isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan who has seen conflict rage for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European […] city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it was going to happen."
Al Jazeera (a platform known for its relative non-bias) English presenter Peter Dobbie is his version took the chance to dehumanize the refugees and found it unjust to impose war on "any European family that you would live next door to." He adds, "These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the middle east that are still in a state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa".
Even the Bulgarian Prime Minister's apparent openness and sympathy in accepting those who are fleeing from Ukraine strikes our imagination, "These are not the refugees we used to have, these are people who are Europeans, so we and all other EU countries are ready to welcome them."
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This is just the tip of the iceberg of the resurfacing white-supremacist, Eurocentric discourses that are resurfacing on the backdrop of Russian recent military operations in Ukraine. We can clearly see a few old binaries of colonial-era- we/they, civilized/uncivilized, third world/first world- are back along with some new ones like poor refugees/un-impoverished refugees.
Such colonial xenophobia without the basic knowledge of European history and politics will remind us that in the post-colonial and post-Hitler era, the colonialist and supremacist discourses are hiding in the subconscious psyche. They come out with minimal instigations.
While Ukraine is suffering from a severe political crisis, instead of calling for global solidarity against war and expansionism, such a pervasive colonial mindset among Westerners will again kindle the xenophobia among the Europeans regarding the global South. Such divisive politics might lead to harsher treatment of the existing refugees from different African and Asian countries.
We have seen the perils of statelessness during different totalitarian regimes in the first half of the twentieth century, and the recently constructed hierarchy in the refugee status (poor vs civilized refugees) will further dehumanize the siting refugees. We need to keep in mind that the global refugee crisis is the Western warmonger's evil creation.
Joined in the club are some Asian and African ruthless rulers. Again, Bulgarian Prime's analogy between the existing (read: Asian and African) refugees in Europe and "people with obscure past, maybe terrorist" is very disturbing and has the same draconian implication as Indian Home minister Amit Shah's calling of Bangladeshi migrants "termites". Such discourses render human lives vulnerable and turn them into "sacrificial" entities.
Any renewed justification for exclusion in the name of so-called European/Western White solidarity will lead to the world to another crisis around the globe; such exclusionary politics amidst ongoing Russian aggression will only aggravate the homelessness around the globe and will justify war, famine and violence only on the Black/Brown people. We don't want any reconfirmation of Samuel Huntington's thesis that in a post-Cold War era, the religious and cultural identities will be the primary source of international contentions that he (in)famously called "clash of civilizations".
The Ukrainian Deputy Chief Prosecutor's notion that the suffering of "blonde haired" and "blue eyed" people are not justifiable somehow resonates Hitler's necropolitical and vicious doctrine of a Germanic race ("Aryanism") according to which the ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall. If Nazi Racism is arguably absent from the European political firmament, a more overarching othering politics is gradually becoming visible, the consequence of which might be more pervasive and inhuman.
We also noticed with awe that African and Asian students fleeing the Russian invasion were prevented from crossing to Poland due to a "Ukrainians' first" policy (Business Insider Africa 27 Feb, CNN March 1)which endorses the selective humanitarianism informed by race and color of skin. While some decisions and statements emanating from the Ukrainian government and their state officials were criticized for their loaded xenophobia and racism, Ukraine's ambassador to India played his Islamophobic card to cash Indian support against Russia. His provocative comparison of Russia's military campaign against his country to the "massacre arranged by the Mughals against Rajputs" (The Hindustan Times, 2 March) might please the Indian PM, it will only instigate further religious tension in India.
Although Al Jazeera underestimates such attitude calling it a "double standard", this is evidently a biopolitical concern which will definitely affect not only the refugees and the immigrants but also will tarnish any decolonial project. Western media coverage of the Russian invasion might be a concerted effort to revitalize The West vs The Rest debate in order to weaken the Russia-China nexus, but as collateral damage, it will also reinforce the validity of imposing war or sanctions on the non-blue-eyed, non-blond peoples of the world.
Discourses are dangerous, and so are colonial discourses. When repeated and realized in praxis, such supremacist discourses will give rise to neo-Nazism across, in this case, Europe.
Any peace-loving and a humane individual will be compassionate with the Ukrainians who are undergoing a form of imperial invasion. However, the so-called Ukraine-sympathisers (including some Ukrainian and Eastern European dignitaries) on Western media will only worsen the crisis by their Eurocentric and supremacist narcissism.
Kazi Ashraf Uddin is a PhD scholar at UNSW Sydney
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.
