UN anti-racism conference

[James Heartfield]

The WEEK 
ending 1 September 2001

'SUCH LANGUAGE IS UNACCEPTABLE AT A GLOBAL CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM'

Hedy Fry, the Canadian secretary of state for multiculturalism and the
status of women was responding to the chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organisation's refusal to refrain from criticising Israel,
currently waging a war against the Palestinian people. 

The United States' policy of ambushing conference delegates with the
charge of anti-Semitism succeeded. Disguising themselves as the Jewish
victims of prejudice - lifelong catholic Mary Robinson even protested
that she was a Jew - Western leaders have succeeded in robbing their
critics of the moral high ground, or at least in obscuring it from
sight.

While British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks stormed out, protestors outside
the conference tried to get their 'people's manifesto' in. Already
destabilised by the United States' high profile brinkmanship in the run-
up, the Durban conference has demonstrated that the issue of race
provokes more heat than light. Race today is an issue so highly-charged,
but equally ill-defined that a government minister can play the part of
the outraged victim, while lecturing a nation under violent occupation
that its protests are "totally unacceptable to Canada".

For the developed nations of the West, race has been a potentially
explosive issue. As if to underline the problem, the Australian navy
repelled hundreds of Afghan refugees forcing them to float miles
offshore; Sympathising with the Australians, the British Government
arrested 43 immigrants walking through the Channel Tunnel (whose owners,
Eurotunnel have already spent three million sterling on security
measures, as if it was their job to prevent people crossing the
channel).

Forty-four years ago, third world nations challenged white supremacy
directly at the Asian and African People's Conference in Bandung. But
since then the unity of the oppressed nations has diminished, while the
Western elite's learning curve over challenges to its power has steadily
climbed. Western leaders know now that the best way to trump the
challenge of anti-racism is to turn the charge against their critics.
Though early accusations of 'inverse racism' against anti-colonial
revolts sounded forced, the art of championing victims of racism against
third world nations has been refined.

When European colonialists made a straightforward argument of white
supremacy, the argument was at least clear. But today charges of
discrimination, ethnic cleansing and even of holocausts are regularly
laid against third world states - the better to obscure the West's own
continuing record of domination.

Tragically, the West's critics were hopelessly wrong-footed by the
manoeuvre of hiding American military domination behind the persecuted
Jew. The Palestinians' attempts to insist that Israel's policy
discriminates on racial grounds can be portrayed as little more than
ethnic posturing because the struggle against US domination of the Arab
World has ebbed, leaving the Palestinians to fight alone. Arab leaders
endorse the Palestinian struggle while getting on with making their
peace with the US. 

-- 
James Heartfield