It was November 29th, ten days from now, and 78 years ago.
I’m not sure if looking at pictures of it remind me of Dr. Strangelove because of the black and white photography and 1940s styling, or because of the immense evil that room was able to unleash. Horrors and terrorism that they couldn’t possibly have conceived of then: that with their fleeting votes they would ultimately usher in the world’s first live-streamed genocide. Not to give them too much credit, as they were flippant enough about the forthcoming Nakba which, when it came resulted in some 750,000 Palestinians being ethnically cleansed from their homelands.
When it didn’t stop there - because genociders never stop, they must be stopped - papers were filed, speeches made, concerns raised, but the horrors continued. At any point in the past 78 years, the UN could have circled back to its initial creation of Israel and taken actual steps to combat it. But it never did.
And on Monday, November 17th, the UN security council voted unanimously - with Russia and China abstaining - to accept the US plan for Gaza, which is nothing short of continued ethnic cleansing and essentially a slow moving genocide. Palestinians were not included in the vote. Because they never are.
With this decision, the UN once again showed its foundational ideology, it’s raison d’etre: if colonialism is the battering ram for capitalism, the UN is the sandpaper ensuring those being bludgeoned to death don’t get any splinters.
For instance, it’s worth noting that while the U.S. has a seat at the UN, the hundreds of Indigenous tribes even recognized by U.S. law do not. Sweden has a seat at the UN. The Sami, whose ancestral lands negate the borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, do not. India has a seat at the UN. Kashmir does not. Indeed, the UN has since 1947 (fateful year, that) been discussing and debating what it calls the India-Pakistan question - you’ll notice that Kashmir is not even mentioned. And still, no action has been taken with regards to using international pressure on India.
The UN is a colonial project built of nation-states which ultimately seeks to protect and defend the colonialist structure of the nation-state. It created Israel, after all. And while there are of course good intentions and righteous people who work within its confines, the problem is in fact those confines. It is the global nation-state conglomerate that doesn’t just allow for atrocities to take place, but demands it. The creation and upkeep of nation-states must be violent, as it is based on the colonialist framework of othering, bordering, and supremacy, all of which are imposed structures that can only be imposed with violence.
The UN was never for the oppressed. It was never going to be an escape hatch from the cyclical violence of nation-state upkeep. It is a part of that violence, even when it attempts to rein it in. It legitimizes that violence by engaging with it as a foregone conclusion of our world, the best we can do, what we’ve always done. It is therefore also engaged in the violence of abolishing memory, of protecting and uplifting the ways in which we have built and thrived outside of the nation-state paradigm. When it comes to justice and liberation, at best, the UN is useless, at worst it whitewashes and excuses the true nature and intentions of the colonialist and imperialist network it serves.
Again, this is not to say that the UN does not do good work. It is the charity event in a capitalist framework. Charity events and organizations can also have very clear and positive effects on the people who are deemed worthy enough to receive. But the framework that charity hides is grotesque, and their cover-up is likewise so.
In short, the UN as part of the architecture of our oppression will likewise be part of the ashes of empire if and when we rise from them. And the fires are already burning. As we stare down climate chaos and the continued destabilization of the global nation-state conglomerate, we will see more and more that the imperial core will dig deeper and deeper to its roots, for it knows only one way to solve problems and that is through more violence, more oppression.
It is therefore vital that we do more than fight, leaning back on our heels. Our goal must be to abolish the entire architecture of this global oppression. This requires understanding of distinct but parallel histories, of so-called modernity, of heritage buried beneath the rubble, and lots of imagination. It requires the solidarity of the shaken where we with broken hearts and maddened minds confront an unacceptable reality and every day, in small fractured ways, make worlds.
We are not alone in this. We have lessons from many people in many places, in many times. We must dig to find them, to find each other, and to never look to those aiding our oppressors for liberation.
I don’t think I’ve seen a more concise and direct calling out of what the UN actually is than what you present: “The UN is a colonial project built of nation-states which ultimately seeks to protect and defend the colonialist structure of the nation-state.” It got me thinking of so much that’s wrong with the UN on a structural level - wrong, that is, from the standpoint of movements for liberation - and specifically of how we really need to define the role of someone like Francesca Albanese, a woman so many of us admire and who’s been the target of death threats for speaking truth to power. It’s a hard thing to face, but is she not, in this framework, anything but the ‘good cop’ in a ‘bad cop’ system? I wonder what she’d think about that portrayal, herself, but I have a notion she wouldn’t disagree. I also think we’re still much better off with her doing her thing, as long as we recognize the structural limitations that preclude her fact-based critiques from being transformed into a true process toward peace.
"My naiveté was believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper, and they can be reinterpreted for political expedience. They are the rules made by the ruling class, and if those rules don't suit what it wants to do, it reinterprets them".
"In the case of the U.S., we angered one of the constituent powers of the U.S. - the Intelligence Sector, the Security State. It was powerful enough to push for reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution, 1st Amendment".
-Julian Assange