Gaza genocide: Why Aime Cesaire's work is more relevant than ever

In 1950, Martinique-born poet and politician Aime Cesaire published his famous Discourse on Colonialism, one of the founding documents of anti-colonial thought.

Cesaire’s sharp indictment of the European colonial system not only mercilessly dissected its excessive brutality, dehumanisation and oppression, but also exposed European hypocrisy - which persists to this day - on being the bastion of civilisation from which the rest of the world must learn.

His Discourse is thus anything but a historical document of a bygone era. Rather, his analysis enables us to understand Europe, from its colonial ambitions in the second half of the twentieth century, to its unconditional support for the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people.

The Europe that Cesaire exposed five years after the end of World War Two was a continent desperately looking for a way to keep its colonial possessions. 

The six founding nations of European integration were aware that their continent would not be viable given Europe’s size, lack of resources, and insufficient population, and that it was therefore essential to maintain the African colonies.

In 1957, in the Treaty of Rome, the founding document of European integration, these nations infused their colonial agenda into the concept of “Eurafrica” - a concept that, while still little known today, shows how European integration had a clearly colonial character from the outset.

While announcing a new beginning in their relations with African nations, the founding states made it clear that they regarded large parts of Africa as a natural extension of the European continent that would supply Europe with land and labour, and enable the establishment of white settler colonies on African soil.

Indisputable truth

From the outset, Europe’s much-praised integration project therefore meant peace within Europe and continued (settler) colonial oppression for Africa.

Three-quarters of a century later, not a lot has changed.

Despite all its colonial crimes against indigenous peoples, despite its neocolonial exploitation in Africa and elsewhere, and despite its repulsive complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Europe - in its boundless self-satisfaction and self-righteousness - still claims to be the spearhead of civilisation.

Europe's plan does nothing but offer carte blanche for the next Zionist genocide of Palestinians, hidden behind the supposed 'recognition' of their state

In his Discourse, Cesaire went straight to the heart of this colonial hubris: “And I say that between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.”

This is an indisputable truth. 

Whatever Europeans have done to others since the beginning of their colonial invasion of the world in 1492, the claim that it was done in the name of “civilisation”, or alleged universal values, served only to justify both their atrocities against other peoples whom they considered inferior, and their stealing of foreign land and resources.

Cesaire drew the right conclusions from the colonial reality he observed: “The colonialists may kill in Indochina, torture in Madagascar, imprison in Black Africa, crack down in the West Indies. Henceforth the colonized know that they have an advantage over them. They know that their temporary ‘masters’ are lying.”

This astute observation has lost none of its relevance and persuasiveness to this day, as becomes clear with a slight modification: “The Zionist colonialists may kill, torture, imprison and crack down in Palestine. Henceforth the colonised Palestinians know that they have an advantage over them. They know that their temporary ‘masters’ are lying.” 

Zionist mouthpiece

Today, not only Palestinians, but millions of people worldwide following Israel’s genocide on social media know that the Zionist butchers and their European accomplices are pathological liars.

Instead of behaving in a “civilised” manner and respecting universal principles, the EU and almost all European governments - supported by their liberal mainstream media - not only defend the Zionist genocide of the “uncivilised”, but have made themselves the mouthpiece of the perpetrators by shamelessly repeating even their most obvious lies.

Thanks to Gaza, European philosophy has been exposed as ethically bankrupt

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If the Holocaust was considered the first industrial genocide, inspired by the slaughterhouses of Chicago, then what we are seeing in Gaza and throughout Palestine is the first AI-driven genocide, inspired by big tech companies that have enabled the Zionists to carry out this historically unprecedented extermination of a civilian population.

This is the impressive moral progress that Europe has undergone since Cesaire’s razor-sharp anti-colonial critique. 

It took Europeans not just 23 months of genocide, but also 17 years of siege on Gaza and 77 years since the Nakba to come up with a “plan” for Palestine; but even this “plan” is not the result of moral considerations based on universal principles. It is merely an expression of Europe’s duplicity, as analysts Ali Abunimah, Soumaya Ghannoushi, Noura Erakat and Shahd Hammouri have shown.

Europe’s plan does nothing but offer carte blanche for the next Zionist genocide of Palestinians, hidden behind the supposed “recognition” of their state - just as the continued colonial exploitation of Africa was once hidden behind “Eurafrica”.

Nothing changes. Zionists are rewarded for their genocide, while Palestinians continue to be subjected to colonial oppression and control after a genocide. This is what the Europeans call a “plan”. 

Tricks and lies

Instead of ending the genocide by severing ties with Israel, demilitarising the inhumane regime and ending Zionist colonisation, we are once again witnessing an insidious attempt by the Europeans to use tricks and lies to secure continued control over a non-European region, just as Cesaire pointed out in his days.

In all the decades since then, neither the mentality of white supremacy nor the European continent’s desire for control and colonisation has changed.

'A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization'

- Aime Cesaire, poet and politician

Cesaire exposed the hypocrisy with which Europe trumpets the supposedly universalist character of its values to the world, while limiting them to white Europeans.

“And that is the great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism: that for too long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of those rights has been - and still is - narrow and fragmentary, incomplete and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist,” he noted.

In order for Europeans to live, non-Europeans must die. 

Given Europe’s role in the Zionist genocide, Cesaire is still right to this day: “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization… Europe is indefensible.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.