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Imperialism Quotes

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Imperialism Quotes

“99 percent of the world's warzones are the legacy of white, western imperialism. Until you get your head around this simple fact, your views, your opinion, your advocacy, all are worthless to the peace struggles of these "westsploited" nations. In the modern age no other country has wrecked more nations than America. Like father, like son - first it was England, then it's its rebellious runaway child America. That's why China is such an enemy in the westwashed narrative of the world - because when one nation has somewhat maintained an autocratic control over the planet since the 1800s (under the banner of "Manifest Destiny"), it would never want that control be undermined by another budding power - particularly when that power is far superior in infrastructure. Sure, the state of China tries to influence every move of its people, that's the first unwritten rule in the handbook of "democracy" - but Uncle Sam has been manipulating the moves of every single state for over two hundred years. Now tell me, which state should you be more cautious of? No country is free from human rights violation, but America's share in global transgressions is right at the very top. America is the top exporter of humanitarian crisis in the world, and as such, US is the least qualified nation to be the moral guardian on anything. It doesn't matter whether you are white, colored or martian - denial never solves nothing. To treat a disease we must first acknowledge the disease. And what is the disease? Is it white people - is it whiteness? No - whiteness is not the disease, but white imperialism is. And how do you treat this disease? You gotta strip yourself of all the privileges of skin, and make yourself one with the world - you gotta denounce the privilege of your whiteness and embrace the responsibility of your humanness. Only then, shall there be peace in the world - only then, shall there be integration - only then, shall there be a civilized world to begin with.”

Civil RightsAmerican HistoryImperialismWhite SupremacyGeopoliticsWar And PeaceHuman Rights ViolationChristian NationalismManifest DestinyWhitewash
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Tracker Marks was of a different opinion. Though he seemed more white than a white man, he had no time for their ways. For him his dress, his deportment was no different than staying downwind in the shadows of trees when hunting, blending into the world of those he hunted, rather than standing out from it. Once he had excelled at the emu dance & the kangaroo dance; then his talent led him to the whitefella dance, only now no-one was left of his tribe to stand around the fire & laugh & praise his talent for observation & stealthy imitation. The whites have no law, he told Capois Death, no dreaming. Their way of life made no sense whatsoever. Still, he did not hate them or despise them. They were stupid beyond belief, but they had a power, & somehow their stupidity & their power were, in Tracker Marks’s mind, inextricably connected. But how? he asked Capois Death. How can power & ignorance sleep together? Questions to which Capois Death had no answer.”

RacePowerIgnoranceCivilizationStupidityAustraliaColonialismWhite ManImperialismRace RelationsWestern CivilizationAboriginalAboriginal CultureAboriginalsTasmania
Author:Richard Flanagan
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“Such an increase in supply price [i.e. raw materials from the Global South], however, creates serious problems for capitalism. These arise not because of a diminishing rate of profit or a slide towards a stationary state as Ricardo had feared. Such fears relate in any case to long-run prospects. Increasing supply price, in so far as it gets translated to an increase in price, undermines the value of money, and that is a very serious and immediate issue for capitalism. If wealth-holders believe that the value of money in terms of commodities is going to fall over time, then nobody will hold wealth in its money-form.”

CapitalismColonialismImperialismRaw MaterialsValue Of Money
Book:The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
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“I have no sense of Steven's words; all I know is that if he is the spokesman for empire, then empire is an ugly, dissolute thing. His voice is like the whisper of the devil. Sugarcoated words, designed to make what is evil palatable so that more evil can be committed. Listening to him is like listening to the clean, efficient turning of the wheel at my uncle's bacon factory.”

ImperialismStatismEmpireStatistImperialist
Book:Leopard at the Door
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“Protectionism, such as what U.S. president Donald Trump was attempting, amounts in effect under these circumstances (that is, in the absence of any significant expansion of state expenditure financed either by a fiscal deficit or by taxes on capitalists) to an export of unemployment to other countries. It can work only if the other countries do not retaliate. If they do, then it gives rise to a competitive “beggar-thy-neighbor” policy that only worsens the crisis by creating further uncertainties and reducing investments further.”

TrumpImperialismProtectionism
Book:Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
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“Some say the idea that the world's trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit, and through that by political action, the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures might be more readily explained.”

CultureHistoryProgressSustainabilityImperialismColonizationIndigenous AustraliansAustralian Aboriginal
Book:Dark Emu
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“The fusion of economics and politics is a critical part of this model and is something early liberal theorists missed. States consistently seek to protect 'their' capitalists all over the world. Whether in the form of taxation, trade policy, or foreign policy, capitalists always rely on politicians to provide them with opportunities for profit-making abroad. Lenin, who in 1917 wrote that imperialism was the 'highest stage' of capitalism, realized that this fusion of state and corporate power would make it even harder for poor states to catch up with rich ones. While this fusion of corporate and political power is largely hidden within modern capitalist economies, historically it was understood to be a central component of imperial power. We have already seen how early capitalist states sought to govern the world economy through corporate sovereigns like the East India Company. The Nazi Party also encouraged the creation of 'trusts, combines and cartels' on the basis that doing so would support the German state's imperial power at home and abroad. Unions, and any other threats to corporate power, were destroyed, and a law was passed to 'force industries to form cartels where none existed.' Unchecked corporate power -fused with that of the state- was a key component of Nazism.”

DemocracySocialismColonialismImperialismPolitical ScienceCapitalismeNeocolonialism
Book:Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
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“Fleecing the Third World has been a reality for decades if not centuries. Mineral-abundant Third World nations, which should be some of the richest on Earth, are all too often among the poorest. Many argue that the poverty of these nations can usually be blamed on wars strategically engineered by developed nations and Superpowers – wars that are also armed and funded by the developed world.”

WarImperialismWarsThird World Poverty
Book:The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
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“The naming of a virus is a controversial matter. In 1832, cholera advanced from British India toward Europe. It was called ‘Asiatic Cholera’. The French felt that since they were democratic, they would not succumb to a disease of authoritarianism; but France was ravaged by cholera, which was as much about the bacteria as it is about the state of hygiene inside Europe and North America. (When cholera struck the United States in 1848, the Public Bathing Movement was born.) The ‘Spanish Flu’ was only named after Spain because it came during World War I when journalism in most belligerent countries was censored. The media in Spain, not being in the war, widely reported the flu, and so that pandemic took the name of the country. In fact, evidence showed that the Spanish Flu began in the United States in a military base in Kansas where the chickens transmitted the virus to soldiers. It would then travel to British India, where 60 percent of the casualties of that pandemic took place. It was never named the ‘American Flu’ and no Indian government has ever sought to recover costs from the United States because of the animal-to-human transmission that happened there.”

RacismImperialismCovidSpanish Flu
Author:Vijay Prashad
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“Yeah, well, time marches on. Getting caught up in causes don’t interest me. Not anymore. Especially when you see the scope of what this is.” He took the Heinz ketchup bottle from the condiment holder. “That’s the thing: Most people don’t understand this. The ingredients, what it goes on, where the energy comes from to create it, the ways the world’s gotta be directed and coaxed and violated and controlled to get this one little fucked bottle. And once you see how ketchup relates to imperial maintenance it’s tough to not get an overwhelmed quality to your thinking. Like one of them Magic Eye thingamajobs—hard the first time, but once you get it, you’ll never unsee it.”

CapitalismClimate ChangePlasticImperialismClimate CrisisPetroleum IndustryPetroleum PoliticsPetrostate
Book:The Deluge
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“Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use—in or out of 'context'—of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war in Cuba. Does this count as history? Just try and find any reference to it, not just in textbooks but in more general histories and biographies. The Anti-Imperialist League has gone down the Orwellian memory hole, taking with it a great swirl of truly American passion and intellect, and the grand figure of Twain has become reduced—in part because he upended the vials of ridicule over the national tendency to religious and spiritual quackery, where he discerned what Tocqueville had missed and far anticipated Mencken—to that of a drawling, avuncular fabulist.”

HistoryUnited StatesRacismImperialismAmerican Civil WarMark TwainHuckleberry Finn
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Arabs & Garbage" Strange is the Arab story with garbage— who told them, who taught them to toss waste carelessly, wherever and however they please? When will Arabs understand that putting garbage in its proper place could solve half of their environmental and societal woes? And the other half? That too would vanish if they stopped casting away their human gems— their brightest minds, forced to serve others abroad. When will they stop discarding their best in favor of foreign refuse they glorify simply because it comes draped in white skin and blue eyes, boasting skills they claim Arabs can’t survive without? When will they grasp that real change lies in placing all garbage— be it those who govern them or those they import— exactly where it belongs?”

EnvironmentAwarenessPollutionColonialismImperialismArabic PoetryInferiority ComplexArabic LiteratureBrain Drain
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election.”

TruthTimeHistoryPowerUnited StatesDemocracyCrisisRussiaBritainCold WarSoviet UnionImperialismElectionsBritish EmpireAmerican ImperialismWinston ChurchillConservative Party Uk
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Wir revolutionnären Marxisten haben keine Veranlassung zum Verzweifeln. DIe Epoche, in die wir eingetreten sind, wird unsere Epoche sein. Der Marxismus ist nicht besiegt. Im Gegenteil: das Brüllen der Kanonen al allen Enden Europas verkündet den theoritischen Sieg des Marxismus. Was verbleibt denn nochy jetzt von den Hoffnungen auf "friedliche" Entwicklung auf Abstumpfung der kapitalistische Gegensätze, auf ein planmäßiges Hineinwachsen in den Sozialismus”

ImperialismKriegMarxismusSozialismusInternationale
Book:Der krieg und die Internationale
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“As such, phrases like ‘first world problems’ assume that those in the first world live such stress-free and luxurious lives that any problems they have are considered when compared with those from the rest of the world. Not only are such assumptions false, but they also function as myth generators by giving the people of the first world the impression that they – and their problems – are superior to everyone else around the world. Likewise, it misleads people outside the first world into thinking that the first world is full of joy and happiness, which is false by all measures.”

PowerRacismPropagandaColonialismImperialismDecolonizationLanguages And CultureFirst World ProblemsMythmaking
Author:Louis Yako
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“Another word we hear repeatedly is ‘tolerance’. Many people use this word positively in situations like ‘tolerating difference’… If you simply search the linguistic meaning of the word, the first definition you will get is (tolerance: noun): ‘to allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of something that one does not necessarily like or agree with without interference.’ In this sense, using this word is disturbing because it suggests two things: first, the person who is doing the tolerating has the upper hand in everything; that they ‘tolerate’ others out of the kindness of their hearts. Second, it gives those doing the ‘tolerating’ the right to change their mind and stop ‘tolerating’ others any time they please, which could make them commit violence against those they deem ‘intolerable’, since they have the upper hand on matters. In brief, this leaves no voice, power, or agency to the tolerated. I never understand how any native English speaker could thoughtlessly use ‘tolerate’ as a positive word in such situations. How could they use the same word to tell us that they tolerate a medication, an immigrant, or another religion? We need a culture that teaches us to appreciate, to love, and to affirm others not to tolerate them!”

InspirationalWisdomRacismToleranceColonialismImperialismAmerican CultureDecolonizationLanguages And CultureLinguistic Hegemony
Author:Louis Yako
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“Totalitarian propaganda perfects the techniques of mass propaganda, but it neither invents them nor originates their themes. These were prepared for them by fifty years of imperialism and disintegration of the nation-state, when the mob entered the scene of European politics. Like the earlier mob leaders, the spokesmen for totalitarian movements possessed an unerring instinct for anything that ordinary party propaganda or public opinion did not care or dare to touch. Everything hidden, everything passed over in silence, became of major significance, regardless of its own intrinsic importance. The mob really believed that truth was whatever respectable society had hypocritically passed over, or covered up with corruption.”

PropagandaImperialismTotalitarianismFake News1969Post TruthTotalitarian MovementTotalitarian Propaganda
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“Colors" A long time ago our national IDs had the word “wheat” next to the “skin color” category… Some people’s colors were associated with olives and chocolate… Eye colors were described as honey and pistachio colored… There was also the chestnut-colored hair – all descriptions reminding us that we are gifts from the same source: Mother Nature’s womb! As for the racist West, it insists on reducing humanity and painting it with politicized colors of which only one color matters! As for other colors, they are made to be equivalent to nobodies and nothingness… They insist on turning this world into a snow-covered wasteland Into one blank page and no more… [Original poem published in Arabic on October 31, 2023 at ahewar.org]”

HateCultureRacismColonialismImperialismDifferenceExclusionArabic PoetryDecoloniality
Author:Louis Yako
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“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”

WarEthicsTerrorismActivismAnti WarColonialismImperialismNoam Chomsky
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“Arabi Azadi Ashiqui (The Sonnet) The more you persecute a certain community, the more you'll find me your fiercest enemy. Defending that community with my last breath, I shall remind you of your own utter futility. The more you dehumanize a certain people, more you'll find me your uncorrupt impediment. The people will be safe, even if I'm annihilated - In the process, world will witness your impotence. More you criminalize a certain community, more in my eyes you lose right to dignity. Honor is earned through behavior, not by excuse of throne, scripture or nationality. Systemically propagate fear all you want - In the end, you're at mercy of my civilian judgment. Belonging is my bible, conscience is my koran - Behave like a bully, and I'm your celestial guardian. Whenever intolerance raises its fangs, hiding behind menorah, saffron or crucifix, Every Samaritan must become Samurai - Every Civilian - Arabi, Azadi, Ashiqui!”

Social JusticeActivismImperialismZionismHuman Rights ViolationFar RightIslamophobiaChristian NationalismHindutvaWar Crime
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“Decir estudiante hoy en día no significa na, pero en una América Latina con los ánimos exaltados por la Caída de Arbenz, por el Apedreo de Nixon, por las Guerrillas de la Sierra Maestra, por las cínicas maniobras sin fin de los Yankee Pig Dogs —en una América Latina ya entrada año y medio en la Década de la Guerrilla— ser estudiante era algo, un agente de cambio, una secuencia de quantum vibrante en el universo serio newtoniano.”

StudentsActivismDictatorshipImperialismStudent Organizing
Book:The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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“We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism-and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capital-instruments of domination-arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.”

WorldShouldMindKindEndsLastsNationsFreedomResponsibilityStruggleShareStageMaterialsArmsBearsCapitalismLaborDestructionAbsolutesFoundationInstrumentsAll KindsArticlesDefeatedOppressedDependenceImperialismDominationStrategicConfrontationRaw MaterialsTechniciansCheap Labor
Book:Guerrilla Warfare
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“Russia is now recognized as the center of the global 'mutiny' against global dictatorship of the US and EU. Its generally peaceful .. approach is in direct contrast to brutal and destabilizing methods used by the US and EU. The world is waking up to reality that there actually is, suddenly, some strong and determined resistance to Western imperialism. After decades of darkness, hope is emerging.”

WorldRealityUsedStrongDarknessApproachDirectWake UpMethodWesternDeterminedDecadesRussiaResistancePeacefulWakingContrastDictatorshipBrutalImperialismEmergingMutiny
Author:Andre Vltchek
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“Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”

WorldHas BeensStageDevelopmentCapitalismImportanceInternationalFinanceDivisionTerritoryCapitalistGlobesImperialismMonopolyDominanceStages Of Development
Author:Vladimir Lenin
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