Dehumanisation Of The “Other ”
By Ghali Hassan
18 August, 2004
Information Clearing HouseWhether in the US, Britain or in Australia, the common “enemy” is the same kind of human who must be despised and excluded. Today it is the “Arabs”; at other times it is the Vietnamese. Negative images of the “others” are fuel for Western colonial war machine.
The US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq is not dissimilar from other invasions and occupations of defenceless nations by colonial powers. They all have one thing in common; invasions and occupations are based on lies and dehumanisation of the native population. Dehumanisation is central to Western colonialism, for the purpose is to portray the “others” as unworthy of human qualities.
Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary who is said to be the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, has spoken of “snakes” and “draining the swamps” in the “uncivilised parts of the world”. Paul Bremer, America’s Proconsul in Iraq, described the Iraqi resistant to US Occupation as “dead-enders”, “die-hards” and “terrorists”. The killing of innocent civilian in Fallujah and Najaf was boasted by US soldiers as, “killing rats in their nest”. It is the same kind of fascist crimes committed on Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Western liberals who opposed the war and now adopted the argument of “moral responsibility” remain silence in the face of continuing US atrocities in Iraq. Where are those defenders of morality and human rights? If they are concerned about morality and human rights, why don’t they condemn America’s terrorism in Iraq, and particularly in Najaf?The barbaric attack by US forces on Najaf is an attack on the heart of Islam by the forces of evil. Can you imagine a Muslim army, be Syrian or Iranian, violently attacking the Vatican, and besieging its population for more than a week?
Dehumanisation of the “others” forms part of the West worldview. ”Experts” and publishing houses are in free ride modes to project the manufactured and distorted images of the “others”. Anti-Arabs and anti-Muslims fictions are bestsellers in the West, providing thought free education in racism to rich and softened audience. A young female, Norma Khoury, from Chicago was able to fake her identity, write and publish a fake story, and obtain asylum in Australia thanks to her dehumanisation of Arabs and Muslims.
It should be borne in mind that in the US, not in the Muslim World, between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of women killed, are killed by their husbands and boyfriends, but such murders of course are no longer even called ”passion” crimes, much less “honour” crimes. Of course, it is much easier to dehumanise Arabs and Muslims, and get rich quicker than telling the truth.
It is a sad and worrying trend when this kind of people found a receptive audience for their distorted assumption of Arabs and Muslims, while hundreds of Arabs and Muslims women and their children are incarcerated in Australian detention centres. This corporate picture of dehumanising the “others” is a depressing and misleading one.
According to the Australian reporter, John Pilger, “much of this modern imperial racism was invented in Britain. Listen to its subtle expressions, as British spokesmen find their weasel words in refusing to acknowledge the numbers of Iraqis killed or maimed by their cluster bombs, whose actual effects are no different from the effects of suicide bombers; they are weapons of terrorism. Listen to Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister; drone on in parliament, refusing to say how many innocent people are the victims of his government”. The situation in Australia is not different from that in Britain. The foreign minister, Alexander Downer, is the Pentagon spokesman in the Pacific, and the Australian government is the most obedient and obsequious to US.
The 9/11 attacks provided a useful pretext for conscious racism against Muslims and Arabs in particular. In Australia, distorted images of defenceless refugees and asylum seekers from Muslim and Arab countries dishonestly used by the right-wing government and its “messianic” leader to inflame ugly prejudice and intolerance. The “enemy is reimaged to make it into an appropriate of hatred and struggle”, writes the Slovenian Philosopher and Psychoanalyst, Slavoj Zizek. The Australian media, a small fishpond with few big sharks, is the driving force behind this distorted image of Arabs and Muslims.
The US and its allies are masters of dehumanisation. A senior British officer in Iraq told a reporter about the attitude of the U.S. military toward the Iraqi people, “[m]y view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as ‘untermenschen’. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life”. ‘Untermenschen’, a Hitler-derived term used by the Nazis to describe Jews as inferior human beings. So, the West hasn’t really changed very much. The Jews of yesterday are the Arabs of today.
Today the Iraqi people are dehumanised and considered enemies by US-led occupation forces for no other reason than opposing this fascist Occupation of their country. The Iraqis have a legitimate right to oppose this Occupation of their country and resources.
In order to paint a glossy picture of the Occupation and brainwash people in the West, and particularly Americans, the US piggybacked a group of expatriate criminals and thugs from Chicago and London, and drafted them to act as embedded spokesmen and propaganda agents for its occupation of Iraq.Thanks to a pliant and spineless media, there is very little hope that the American people will be able to influence their government thinking and stop its atrocities. The Iraqis have a legitimate right to oppose this Occupation.
The Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire has noted that the measure of any civilisation must be the way in which it treats its most powerless and vulnerable members. This is because, in our own vocation to become more fully human, we must ensure conditions that enable others to do the same. To accept injustice and the distortion of the humanity of others is to fail to observe our own humanity.
For if we are taught and accept to despise our enemy as inhuman, we will – if we get the chance – cease to be humans ourselves. It will take a miracle to wake up Americans.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be contacted on: [email protected]
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