European Union

The ill-posed question of the "migrants" who come to the European Union

The reactions to waves of refugees in the EU confirm that the European elites have learned nothing of their past and recent history.

Alberto Rabilotta

15/09/2015

Opinión

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The reactions that the migratory waves of refugees coming from the Middle East, from Syria and other countries are causing in countries of the European Union (EU) confirm the fact that the European elites have learned nothing of their past and recent history, and that for this reason they are incapable of thinking and proposing solutions to crucial problems that afflict and will afflict their region.

These elites have learned nothing of the consequences of colonial and imperial policies for the peoples of other continents, nor for their own peoples.

The rigidity of the "gold standard" and the ultra-liberalism that launched an imperial grab and led to the Great Depression, to fascism and the Second World War, is reproduced with the euro, that is provoking economic depression and social disintegration in Greece and other EU countries with unpayable debts..

Nor have they learned the lessons of the past, not to flirt with fascism, as can be seen in the support (without stirring up problems of conscience) of the oligarchical-fascist regime in Ukraine which is carrying out the anti-Russian policies of Washington.

Because they learn nothing, in order to follow the same policy, they do not want to see that the flows of refugees who disembark on the coasts of Greece or Italy, after having left a horrifying mass of shipwrecked and dead in the Mediterranean, are the direct result of the policies of the EU and the United States, of the creation of extremists and religious fanatics to struggle against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and later in Chechenia, and more specifically with the military aggression that destroyed secular regimes in Iraq and Libya, and that is destabilizing and destroying the economy and secular society in Syria.

Nor can these neoliberal elites remember that, historically and repeatedly, the great European powers and the US have prevented, for the benefit of their monopolistic companies and their geopolitical objectives, that there was an endogenous socioeconomic development in the countries of the Middle East, Africa and Our America, which in the 60s and 70s formed the non-aligned movement, proposing the creation of a New World Economic Order in the UN.

The countries of the Empire, to give them their correct name, go on without changing their policies, as we have seen recently in the abstentions and oppositions in the UN, after the Argentinian proposal to create an international framework for a more just and secure renegotiation of sovereign debts (1).

From our side, in the countries of America, we are well aware of the causes of the flows of migrants, since for two centuries we have been "receivers” of these migrations that brought millions and millions of Europeans fleeing from hunger, war, political persecution and the periodic destructive economic crises of capitalism.

Moreover, before these well-defined migrations of the 19th and 20th centuries, European colonial powers brought millions of enslaved Africans to our Continent so that they could work like beasts in the plantations (if I don't work they kill me, and if I work they kill me, as Nicolás Guillen said); but this does not appear to form part of European consciousness when they speak of massive population movements, of forced migrations, preferring in many cases to see this bloody stage in the history of Africa as the epoch in which the European "white man carried on his back the heavy burden of civilizing the African Continent".

Not to speak of the colonial era when the European powers and the US caused so much damage and social destruction in the countries of America, in particular to the societies of indigenous peoples. And need we mention what these neocolonial and imperial policies still cause in our peoples, in the unhealed wounds that we still bear, from Puerto Rico to the Malvinas?

In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, the brotherhood among peoples forged during the struggles for independence taught us to avoid wars between our peoples; and those that did occur (ask the Paraguayans) were well prepared by foreign interests and carried out by creole lackeys, that we still haven't eradicated.

And even though we have not eradicated racism and racist policies from our countries, it is the massive mestization and the awakening of native peoples that characterizes the recent history of many countries of Our America.

The revolution led by Fidel Castro that created the present Cuban society has shown us the direction of a vanguard of a humanity that proclaims itself pacifist, that looks to resolve problems through dialogue rather than weapons, that struggles for progress without social exclusion, that struggles against racism.

The political and intellectual elites of the capitalist empire must assume the past of a long history that for hundreds of years was based on the imposition of capitalism through wars, invasion, colonization, slavery and the destruction of peoples in various continents.

What the elites of the Empire still refuse to see, is that the forced migration of refugees from military conflicts or due to the lack of means of subsistence, who come to the coasts of Europe or to the southern frontier of the USA, will continue to exist and will increase unless there be an end to the present economic and military policies.

But as we already know, the nature of the capitalist system does not admit changes. In place of resolving problems they will get worse, both in the exterior and in their own societies, as happens in the final stages of imperial decadence.

As everyone sees, the EU now practices colonialist plunder within its frontiers, as is shown in the case of Greece. In this context and recalling that imperialism resolves everything with bombs, it is difficult to anticipate real change, through pacific means, destined to make it possible that no one, in the Middle East or Africa would have to risk their lives to migrate or ask for refuge.

No one likes to emigrate if he or she lives in a peaceful, organized society, with an inclusive culture and an economy at the service of the general interests of the population. This truth we heard from the mouths of our grandparents who came from Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland and other European countries, and who came to Our America expelled by poverty, economic crises, wars and religious, ethical or national persecutions that have marked European history.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Alberto Rabilotta is an Argentine-Canadian journalist.