The Invisible Peoples and the Soulless
+ At Christmas, let arms cease and peace triumph
Today I am providing again my English translation of two articles, originally in Italian.
The first one is an article by Franco Maloberti, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Wednesday 18th December 2024. (Bold emphasis mine, italics original).
The Invisible Peoples and the Soulless
When I was a boy I used to read a lot, late at night. My favourite were the American novelists: Fitzgerald, Hemingway and others. I was very fond of the descriptions of the American society of sacrifices, of people who fought for their economic and social growth and who ran into so many contradictions. One day, I don't know how, a book arrived at the house (perhaps a free gift for a magazine subscription); it was by a black American writer (Ralph Ellison).
The title of the book was Invisible Man. I started reading it: it was quite difficult and no doubt very different from the literature I was used to. I could not finish it, but the part that I managed to read, with difficulty, left a strange impression on me. It told of a nameless black man who lived in a big city (New York); he lived, worked, walked, ate, performed all the actions that characterise a living person and had the impression, or rather the certainty, of being invisible. Invisible to fellow white people. He tried to communicate, to attract attention, to show off: without success.
The whites did not see him, did not perceive him. Everyone, indistinctly, behaved as if he did not exist. If in the street there was him, a black person, and another, white, next to each other and they passed a third, white, that one would hint, perhaps, at a greeting but only to his fellow, white. The black man, even if he was dressed funny, even if he wore a strange hat, if he had a bleeding head wound, or if he was on the ground, he was still invisible.
That impression of living in a non-existent world, complementary to the real one, without having any interaction with the real inhabitants, often comes to mind when I see at an intersection a non-EU man looking for a windshield to wash. Many of the motorists he harasses do not perceive him and keep their gaze, fixed and absent, on the red light. If he tries to make himself conspicuous, they regard him as a fly that suddenly flies in front of their noses.
It is a strange fact, but if we think about it for a second, we realise that the technique of the invisible man is not an effective defence against the inappropriate, but, more sadly, it is the sublimated form of a vicious racism. One believes oneself to be superior and destined to lead, but the inferior race is not persecuted, but totally ignored.
Nevertheless, not seeing the joy or suffering of others, if anything martyred by true racists, is like being soulless. To have a soul is to connect with others, to feel feelings, emotions, to perceive those sensations that make real life understood. To make invisible a part of what surrounds us is to lose the soul.
Now, the phenomenon of the invisible man, also due to the growing popularity of artificial intelligence - which is a soulless thing - has also spread to peoples. It is no longer a question of racism that discriminates against certain ethnic groups, it is indifference, the removal, even acoustic and visual, of what happens to others, thought to be inessential.
It is a new ugly characteristic of a part of humanity that is made up of soulless people, who do not see or hear those whom they, in their hearts, consider inferior. Those, they have a good deal of screeching, fretting, dying in lakes of blood, showing stumps of arms or legs, digging in the debris of demolished houses, weeping. No one in the advanced West hears or sees them. And it is just like keeping your eyes fixed and absent on the red light... I say West, because, precisely, it is the West that is populated by soulless people. Not all of them, of course, but the vast majority.
The soulless ones don't have feelings, at least in words. There are many politicians who show great affection for their children. One of them [Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister of Italy] even took them to the swearing-in of the [Italian] government. He has a new companion (this is how they say it to indicate the new sweetheart) and says to curious journalists: “I am ready for another child. For night wakings, feedings and nappies. I'd like that. I'm not like a mum of course, but I'm an active dad, I try to do my best. Of course, at 51, I have glasses, a bad back and can't lift weights for long, but we are ready, maybe for a boy”. Another one [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni] shrieked: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” and the video broadcast on YouTube has amassed more than six million views [this has 13m views, but is a “remix” - the original one has ~2m views]. Another politician [Graziano Delrio?], father of nine children, flies high, indeed very high, speaking of peace and recalling Article 11 of the Constitution that promotes international organisations to foster peace and allows limitations of national sovereignty for this purpose (i.e. sending arms to foster peace).
Another political component, (of the pseudo-left, for the sake of parity) declares that it is necessary to “Stand on the side of families means building a solid network of services, fighting for women's freedom and self-determination, fighting against all discrimination and inequality, including social inequality, multiplying opportunities, affirming the rights of all and everyone”. Let us then not talk about journalists, the vast majority of whom serve and appear to be soulless.
They all say fine words but when they look around Palestine, Lebanon or Syria, they see nothing: those who live in those parts are invisible, and so are the dead children, the weeping women, the cities reduced to rubble, the destroyed hospitals, the bombed schools, the demolished churches and mosques. Those are invisible peoples and, rightly, the soulless see nothing.
But there are also those who foolishly claim that the soulless feel something. There is a short video [here] on X about a six-year-old boy, Mohammad Saeed, with both legs amputated and dragging himself through the dust of the refugee camp, helping himself to a roller skate. In this regard, there is an article in French that speaks of absolute moral failure, and says:
This genocide has been going on for so long that amputee children all over Gaza are studying strategies to survive without their limbs.
A recent study found that almost all children in Gaza believe their death is imminent, and half of the children surveyed said they would prefer to die.
But their lives go on. Even without limbs, often amputated without morphine or anaesthesia, their lives go on. Dragging themselves to muddy tent cities, they go on living. Every day they find a way to get through it.
This kind of story might inspire you as passive witnesses and not victims of the Western power structure on which you depend. For those of us living in the shadow of the centralised US empire, it is a little more emotionally complicated than simply telling a story about the indomitable determination of the Palestinian people, because this story also reminds us of our own inability to stop this violence.
When we see Mohammad Saeed dragging himself through the earth on his stumps using a roller skate, it is our civilisation being thrown in our faces. It is the genocidal dystopia of absolute moral bankruptcy. This is what we have become. ...
Vain speech, the outburst of one who does not understand. He doesn't know that that is an invisible child. Children, the ones the soulless see, are well dressed, cared for with nightly vigils, eating tasty baby food and playing with clever toys. Mohammed's mother is also invisible. It is not known whether she is alive or dead, but she is certainly incorporeal. Perhaps she will believe to be a woman, a mother, a Palestinian, and a Muslim! Come on, for her, freedom and self-determination are forbidden things. Peaceful weapons will caress her!
In reality, there can be moments of disgusting visibility, such as those recounted by Ralph Ellison in the prologue of his book:
One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near-darkness he saw me and called me an offensive name. I lunged at him, grabbed the lapels of his coat and asked him to apologise. He was a tall blond man, and when my face approached his he looked insolently up at me from his blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot on my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down on the top of my head, headbutting him as I had seen West Indians do, and I felt his flesh tear and blood gush, and I shouted, “Apologise! Apologise!” But he continued swearing and flailing, and I hit him again and again until he fell heavily, on his knees, bleeding profusely. I kicked him repeatedly, in a frenzy because he kept uttering insults even though his lips were foaming with blood. Oh yes, I kicked him!
Crazy stuff! To be punished severely, that's why the West sends bombs and cannons.
The second article was published on Movisol.org on Wednesday 18th December 2024. (All emphasis mine).
At Christmas, let arms cease and peace triumph
In its final weeks in power, the Biden administration's leadership team is working overtime to foment conflict and colour revolutions around the world in a futile attempt to maintain control over an illusorily unipolar world and its bankrupt financial system. Just last week, the White House announced a new National Security Memorandum, which aims to disrupt cooperation between the four nations: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, called the “quartet of chaos” for the occasion.
As we reported earlier, on 20th November [2024], Pentagon Strategic Command spokesman Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan publicly stated that it is possible for the US to “win” a nuclear exchange with Russia and maintain its supremacy. The commanding general of the Marine Corps, Eric Smith, boasted at a conference on 6-7 December of US military superiority over China, as the US military has built a “culture of combat warfare” through participation in wars, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) lacks experience and “can only bluster”. As for Syria, the mainstream media is going out of its way to portray the former Al Qaeda group, Hay'at Tahr-al-Sham (HTS), as “democracy- and diversity-loving jihadists”.
Donald Trump has suggested to both Russia and China to wait until he takes office before taking drastic measures. The question is: how much power will the new president actually wield, assuming, as he claims, that he wants to end the wars and renew dialogue with Putin and Xi (see next item)?
As far as European nations are concerned, both France and Germany are mired in government crises, while all are plagued by severe economic collapse. Nevertheless, the EU foreign ministers, meeting with their Ukrainian counterparts on 16th December [2024], issued a new round of sanctions against Russia, while the EU's stance towards China remains very aggressive.
In this situation, the voice of the international Schiller Institute [SI] is increasingly heard, with its calls for the West to abandon its arrogance and pretensions and join the global South, to ensure development for all. This was the main message from the 7-8 December [2024] SI conference, the highlights of which were covered by the mainstream Chinese media. We again invite our readers to watch the proceedings in full at https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2024/12/06/conference-in-the-spirit-of-schiller-and-beethoven-all-men-become-brethren/.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche called for full mobilisation over the coming festive season of all those opposed to the politics of war, to demand ceasefires in Ukraine, Palestine and elsewhere, and renewed efforts for peace.
WOW Ismaele you have uncovered the darkenss in the 'soul' of white people who pretend to be Christian..
his a formidable piece of writing and I will re-stack and re-stack.
Colonial society described in its exactitude, in the Dutch case if a woman gave birth to a child that child belonged to the foreigner not the local born Inhabitant, that is the modern day expression in the so called developed world that Ismaele describes, inshallah it will change.