Europe was never the sun
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Dear Beloved,
On October 18, 2024, the president of Finland Alexander Stubb gave a lecture titled “The new (dis)order” where he discussed the death of an “old order” as he spoke on the West’s decline. He said, “You could argue that Brexit or the election of Donald Trump or a lot of populist movements in Europe [was] the moment when the world wasn’t looking up to the West.”
My eyes rolled so far up the back of my head, I swear I saw the inner linings of my skull. It baffles me how clueless Europeans are in their tall ivory towers, how disconnected many are from their history of colonization and carnage, and how obtuse they are to their present-day destructive policies.
The world has never looked up to the West.
By “the world,” I suppose he meant the Global Majority. His assumption that we have ever looked up to “the West” - Europe and its colonial projects - or that indeed the West is worthy of respect is odd. After all, what is there to respect?
Why would the world look up to thieves who still hoard ancestral remains and cultural treasures? Why should we admire an entity that made its wealth off stealing land, people, and resources? What is there to admire about colonizers?
Why would the world, pillaged and raped by Westerners’ ancestors, still exploited by the West today, want to be like the West?
“At a moral level, I don't think we have any lesson to learn from Europe.”
- Sembène Ousmane
The West has shown time and again its refusal to offer basic humanity to a designated “other.” For all of Nordic exceptionalism, Finland’s hands are covered in blood up to their elbows like the rest of the West: Stealing Sami children and putting them in Indigenous residential schools, continuing its extraction from Sami land, perpetuating white supremacy in its educational institutions, and funding the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.
Tell us again, Stubb, what is there to look up to?
While researching for a book series I’m steadily making progress on, I learned about one of the West’s premier colonizers - the self-titled “sun king” Louis XIV. Famously quoted as referring to himself as “the state,” Louix XIV was no different from other Euorpean monarchs that saw their rule as a “divine right” but had a uniquely arrogant flare to his ruling. He compared himself to the Greek sun god Apollo and chose the sun as his person emblem. His legacy is one of blood and murder, as he expanded the French colonial empire throughout Turtle Island, Africa, and Asia.
Centuries later, this arrogance and entitlement to other people’s lands and bodies persists in France as Macron pushes the French language’s usage across Africa and continues to extract from former French colonies while happily courting the anti-immigrant far right to maintain power. Likewise, the rest of the West continues its neocolonial projects through US-sponsored coups in North America, far-right riots in Britain, and “unconditional support” for a terrorist state in Western Asia.
Contrary to Wester exceptionalism, there is nothing special about continuing a legacy of murder and exploitation. When I first heard Finnish president Stubb’s comment about the world “looking up to the West,” I was reminded of this interview of cherished Senegalese writer and filmmaker Sembène Ousmane.
Europe was never the sun.
Europe’s wealth comes from plundering the world, and its security is ensured by Britain’s brutal child the United States. The base of Western medical knowledge comes at the price of grave robbing and worse, the medical exploitation of living people - even children. Much of Europe’s most revered cuisine wouldn’t exist without the loving stewardship and cultivation of Indigenous people and their stolen seeds. Europe’s Age of Enlightenment came long after the Islamic Golden Age, and Islamic scholars wrote about natural selection a thousand years before Darwin was born. English, Spanish, and French would not be so wide-spoken without colonizers forcing their languages down the world’s throat.
Stubb, however, was right about one thing: the old order is finally, thankfully dying. But my God, Beloved, how it is kicking and clawing on the way out.
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”
- Octavia Butler
We are entering a new era of consciousness. Through decentralized information and education, mass communication, intersectional social movements, and everyday acts of resistance and protest, our world is changing.
But a new world will not just appear. Promise of progress as a slow but steady inevitable is merely a sleeping draught. It’s time to wake up. The revolution is here.
Seeds for Change
Read Aimé Césaire’s critical Discourse on Colonialism.
Join the BDS Movmenet to boycott, divest, and sanction the Zionist terror state. Learn how boycotts not only support our kin in Palestine but improve your daily life by reading this wonderful article “Decolonizing my daily life: life lessons from Palestine and beyond” by
We take care of each other! Here is a guide for you and your neighbors on how to start an anti-racist neighborhood watch.
Why read this zine? The title is self-explanatory: We Can’t Be Abolitionist & Conflict-Avoidant
Learn about community herbalism in Solidarity Apothecary’s podcast, The Frontline Herbalism Podcast. This episode is an interview with community herbalist Rasheeqa Ahmad.
Call for Mutual Aid: Help My Palestinian Neighbors in Seattle!
Good news, Beloved! My new Palestinian neighbors are much closer to their goal! Together our community has raised over $14,000 to help them get settled in and send funds to their loved ones in the West Bank. The organizer of their fundraiser had this to report:
“Thank you thank you to everyone who has contributed! The family is overwhelmed by the generosity and immediately called their family members in the West Bank with the news of how much money has been pulled together so far. Everyone is incredibly emotional and grateful and it's an honor to be part of a community that is so selfless in their solidarity with our neighbors.”
They just need a little more help to reach $20,000. Will you donate and share this campaign?
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Excellent read! You weave together many different connections in such a concise and digestible way. Thanks for writing this, and for including my latest essay!