Faced with so much caucasusism, can we still believe in human solidarity?
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
Caucasian? A term in informal language that designates the audacity with which the feeling of white superiority is expressed. Recent examples of this Caucasianity have outraged me.
First of all, allow me to situate my reflection. It already seems very difficult to me to deal with the stress resulting from the pandemic or from news such as the publication of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which announces the acceleration of the crisis climatic.
Added to this stress is the realization that the effects of such crises are exacerbated by pre-existing social and racial inequalities. The IPCC also stresses that the climate crisis is likely to be particularly severe for populations living in vulnerable contexts, all because of phenomena such as colonialism.
In all coherence, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia saddens me just as much because I perceive there, too, the effects of unequal powers exercised in a destructive way.
Feeling helpless, I try to let go. But I don’t quite get there.
Because the caucasus is the straw that made my vase overflow. In recent days, the war in Ukraine has been the scene of many gestures and words suggesting the superiority of people of European descent.
On Wednesday, I learned that a former Canadian Armed Forces sniper named Olivier and nicknamed “Wali” had traveled to Ukraine to fight against the Russians as a volunteer combatant.
In interview at The Press this week, he said: [je] am not very keen on the idea of shooting at the Russians. It is a Christian and European people. It’s weird to say, but there is a certain affinity. Intuitively, it’s the world that looks more like us. I don’t hate them. »
Wali is therefore reluctant to kill people who look like him, but other peoples do not deserve the same consideration in his eyes.
After two deployments to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011 to fight the Taliban, Wali went to Iraq on his own to fight the Islamic State in 2015. In an interview in 2019 on TVA, he exposes his war anecdotes in a disturbing way. Holding between his fingers a bullet cartridge that he keeps like a trophy, he says to Denis Lévesque: “I’m the one who shot that one. That’s a teenager I shot. That was originally made for shooting an elephant, elephant hunting. » 1 I don’t invent anything.
Are we to believe that the Christian peoples of European culture deserve greater sympathy than other peoples? This point of view would not disturb me enormously if it were only the responsibility of an isolated individual.
That said, while the Canada Research Chair in Surveillance and Social Construction of Risk believes that volunteer fighters like Wali are not an example to follow, he spreads his word and promotes himself on multiple platforms, as if his words and gestures were banal. How is it possible ? How about an Arab person participating as a volunteer combatant in the Middle East?
Caucasity, I say, which also manifests itself through a number of comments by French journalists and analysts speaking about Ukrainians:
— “It will undoubtedly be a high-quality immigration, on the other hand. They will be intellectuals. »
“And we’re not talking about Syrians fleeing the bombardments of the Syrian regime supported by Vladimir Putin. We’re talking about Europeans, who go to their cars that look like our cars, who hit the road and who just try to save their lives. »
— “There is a difference between the Ukrainians who once again participate in our civilizational space with populations who belong to other civilizations. »
Similar comments were made on the American channel CBS, where a reporter spoke of Kyiv as a city, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, “relatively civilized, relatively European […] where one would not expect, or hope that[un conflit] arise”. A comment that, among other shortcomings, ignores the hundreds of wars that European territory has experienced.
Finally, it is difficult to ignore that among those trying to flee Ukraine, especially to Poland, there are many African, Indian and Arab nationals, most of whom are students. However, many of them report being subjected to racist treatment and being prevented from leaving the borders of Ukraine. Their lives matter less, don’t they?
At a moment in our history that invites us to the greatest solidarity, people who are not of Christian and/or European heritage are receiving many messages that they belong to an inferior race. And these messages are conveyed with uninhibited audacity. That’s what shocks me. What hope, then?
Wednesday night I saw the play At the top of the mountain, featuring Didier Lucien as Martin Luther King Jr. Inspired, so I watched the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered a few hours before his death, before writing these lines. In this speech, MLK talks about the progress he sees despite the racism that is rampant in the United States. This speech encourages me to dare to believe in our common humanity, despite the caucasus.
1 I saw this interview on the Instagram account of Hamza Abouelouafaa, whose account has been deactivated against his will since its publication.