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Boko Haram – An Image From The Future

Internationalist Observer | 04.05.2014 15:02 | Analysis | Culture | Social Struggles | World

The future, according to the book, begins only when the false totality of the present is no more. If there was no such thing then there would be no such discontinuity, but since there is there is. On the other hand, the past is not over until the false consciousness of capitalism becomes a totality, and if it does not go away for that it may have something in common with the former. The pivot on the false totality that the two can pursue together, as the tell-tale narrators of market ideology would describe it in their vocabulary, is already a reality putting severe pressure on the military-industrial complex. With Boko Haram having entered the global war on capitalism with a doctrine of open tactical mimicry of the useless suicide army, it became an undeniable fact that the Atlantic Divide is not merely an European matter, but an African one as well. Otherwise it would have to be called Northatlantic Divide but obviously that is not the whole truth. The divide also finds expression in the fact that internal divisions which are remarkably dominant on the American side do not play any role on its Pangaean one. The nervous reactions of canary factions in the military-industrial complex demonstrate that from the Southern side as well, it is not merely a local rejection of imperialism but one yearning for it to be cleared out of the entire hemisphere. If imperialism was a patient, which it is not – it is the disease and Earth is the patient – then its military bases could be seen as hospitals. But even in the few instances where they are, actually they are not, since they do not heal it.

The African sovereignty movement cannot be discussed without an explanation of the word that names what it is up against. “The rejection of the book,” that is the rejection of the colonialist approach towards cultural relations and with it the rejection of the colonialist deformation of any culture it is attempting to appropriate for its morbid greed, is best expressed by the fact that the word “boko” itself is not an African word. It is the English word “book,” as sung in the melody of an African language whose transcription into the Latin alphabet ignores its significant tonal dimension. And this expression describes what is the problem that can only be solved by avoiding the cultural contact altogether: The deprecation of the own culture by its distorted representation in the other. It is not that the other culture was any more evil than it is under the influence of this phenomenon, but that the distorted representation of what is not allowed to get plagiarised, when it comes back to the original is worse than nothing and therefore requires the elimination of its source.

In any instance when imperialism is challenged with a distorted representation of its hierarchies, it reacts with remarkable repressions against anyone daring to ridicule its claims for human possession and displays itself bent to extinguish at any cost these who played around with them. And the hierarchies of imperialism certainly are the last thing that could claim any universal immunity against anything. It is only consequential that imperialism shall be measured by its own criterion and if it cannot abstain from producing distortions of what rightfully claims immunity against it, it shall be destroyed, and its hierarchies be forever extinguished with all suitable means. For instance, if it cannot respect the fact that a minority population chooses its language to be incompatible with an external representation that generates distorted feedback, and insists not to be besieged with mirroring tactics, the necessity to end the unsolicited intervention requires the destruction of the origin of the wrongdoing.

It is only the fact that at this point this becomes an external problem of imperialism which makes it appear as a clash of cultures rather than as political malfunction that has befallen one culture and from there is attempting to spread to others. As an internal problem of imperialism, the distorted appropriation of the deliberately incompatible has begun much earlier, and its solution from the point of view of an external interest includes the internal solution as well, since the mere destruction of the befallen culture in its entirety would only bring about fresh problems rather than stop what has long spread too far from its source to disrupt it in an early stage. Rather, a systematic solution requires the identification and removal of all such forcefully misappropriated representations, regardless of whom or what they have been targeted against. The saying goes “boko haram” and not “book haram” because it is not the technology of writing and multiplication of text that is inherently evil, but its abuse for a purpose it is not made for, in this case the production of a replacement narrative that is controlled by the perpetrators rather than by its true originator.

If that it is too abstract an explanation, there is a simple practical analogy: Once the food chain in a territory is contaminated with genetically manipulated potatoes, the cry “no potatoes” means “no manipulation.” But for all practical purposes it would still be no potatoes because a wanderer picking a surplus potato from a harvested field could not make a meaningful distinction. Likewise, it is necessary to discard imperialist culture if it cannot be determined without harm whether that particular instance is a result of repressive distortion or not. Yet that tactics of ambiguity can only be an interim solution until the biological contamination is entirely removed from the species, and potatoes can be trusted to be what they seem to be. For that to happen it is necessary to provide shelter to the natural fruit in its pure form where it can remain untouched by any attempts of manipulation. The species of plant in the example can be exchanged with any other facing the same challenge, but the paradox does not change: Only when these who stay with the plant and those who go without it remain united in their goal across their different languages, or even only different tongues in the same word, they can end the reign of distortion and arrive at meaningful criteria under which circumstances it might be safely used.

In a scenario where random books in the market must be assumed to be the cultural equivalent of genetically manipulated organisms, or may be more likely to be repressive distortions than not, it is the same: On one hand, all these “forged books” must be completely eliminated, not necessary in spectacular fires but left on the compost heap of culture for rot, respectively be recycled in a manner which makes them useful for that purpose, but on the other hand only the fresh sowing of uncontaminated books can sustainably remove the contamination. Of course the book is just an example for all forms of communication, yet one with particular qualities: The written word is more vulnerable to theft than any other form of information, because in the context of a culture using it it has established an existence independent of its originator. In case it is stolen and distorted and the distortion sown out instead, for the culture to regain its mental health it is absolutely necessary to root out the repressive distortion, as much as is the true preservation of the original so something real can grow of it once the distortion is abolished.

As the value of independence commands that a technology only be relied upon when the same can also be done without it, the user of the technology of the conservation of the written word for later reprocessing and publication, in case of an attack of repressive distortion must be able to reproduce its intended purpose without the use of that technology, to avoid getting devastated by any effects of the tactic. The document can never entirely be depended upon without an ability to get things done without it. This is a fact knowledge of which is necessary to ensure that repressive distortion and reductive imitation are not mistaken for an unstoppable will of Nature but identified as the human – inhumane – wrongdoings they are. In principle, any good that can be done by means of the accumulation of the written word can also be done without it, and this includes the reversion of a genetic contamination of a culture.

Such as the evil of genetic manipulation is not that genes do change, they do that naturally, but that this is manipulated outside the biological cycles specifically existing for that purpose, the evil of repressive distortion is not the specific form of content as what it masquerades, but that its ingredients are forcefully being taken under abuse of the political system rather than freely evolving. When it is necessary to remove the forgery and for that purpose develop universal methods to identify and deconstruct it, meaningful decisions can only be made based on the coming about of the content not on the content itself. The same book, at least in the sense that there is no meaningful distinction available to an external observer, who would be learning something new from it, can either be an autonomous expression or a repressive distortion, only depending on the hierarchies that brought it about or absence thereof. If a book contains anything the military-industrial complex respectively its spies have stolen from someone else, then it is without any doubt repressive distortion, not matter what the content, because it was brought about as a result and part of a crime against humanity, the worse the more it is attempting to masquerade as something else.

For this to be reconstructed without any doubt or error, it is necessary to pursue the coming breakdown and breakup of the military-industrial complex as a matter which includes a vast cultural dimension. The task can be imagined as a targeted electromagnetic pulse – but while the atmospheric pulse makes a distinction between written and digital documents, eliminating only the latter, the cleansing of the culture befallen by repressive distortion requires to draw that line between the sovereign and the repressively distorted document, and implement the all-encompassing vanishing of the latter in order to avoid its deprecating feedback effects on the former. The so-called “Western” cultures are to be understood as examples in which for a long time the repressive forgery had a stronger weight than any original creativity. But on the other hand it has little meaning to talk of a virtually non-existent construct as if there was any unity between the populations it is referring to.

The satellite states of imperialism in the Pangaean hemisphere may attempt to masquerade both as these they repress and as their own imperialist seducers and oppressors, yet it is visible to the unaided eye that they continuously fail to achieve even their own objectives. In the worst case they talk of austerity as if they were on the rightful end of it, in the best they coffer the literally crazy sponsoring of the multinational corporations for their own purposes rather than these of others. As much as they are putting any military above, around or into Africa, the removal thereof is a necessity of equal value to the cultural decontamination, which without reaching at the core of imperialism can only treat reoccurring symptoms on a surface level. The attention for the military aspect of colonialism is useful to find who approves of it and hence is to be held liable for it, as the same can only be said with much greater uncertainty about particular instances of repressive distortion.

But there already were hopeful and inspiring instances of instructive retaliation. In one recent example, when regime psychopaths of the hopelessly depraved variety were enabled to pursue a suicide attack against a major indymedia site whose abuse of individual identities left a virtual bloodbath there, the African resistance responded appropriately with a similar attack against a central bus station. Certainly it is heartbreaking to use the daily lives of a city as a blackboard and explosives as chalk, but if that is the only means available to teach a confused public about the true nature of an abusive regime it cannot be reasonably condemned any more than the regime attack it responded to, which if not countered accordingly would bring about much worse devastations. Of course it would have been preferred to see the perpetrators attacked directly, but if they cannot be reached entrenched in the lies of the regimes that employ them then the problem must be tackled gradually. The unstoppable law of cause and consequence works that way, and like a river swollen by heavy precipitation will simply go into another direction if it is blocked in one. Either the regimes forever cease their attacks and open up to the higher justice that retroactively is going to define all of them as wrong, or they will be entirely destroyed, down to the last person working with them, there is no interest or possibility to coexist with them and they appear to have huge difficulties getting used to the fact.

The same happened when the Nigerian group evacuated a school in a showpiece of a false flag attack. Here the guerilla was masquerading as the military, pretending to preempt an impending guerilla attack. This was much less of a lesson to these pupils, who would rather expect the military to lie to them than it being exposed as a lie, as it was to a broader public that such large scale false flag attacks on the infrastructure of the opposition movements within the befallen cultures are a daily routine, and the African pupils are only learning what would expect them were they natives of Europe or North America. Again, Nigeria has been the blackboard and Boko Haram the chalk drawing an explanation what is perpetrated by the regimes humanity is up against. The images of the devastated bus terminal or of the frightened pupils are from the present, they represent what is invisibly happening in the written narratives of the internet, like the small stones in the pocket of the herder wandering the plains represent its flock . The image from the future is the greater picture which arises when all these events are being put in context to each other – the emancipation movements on the inside and on the outside of imperialism joining perspectives for abolition.

It also illustrates the role of Africa in the Atlantic Divide: The immature reaction of the Washington regime, which complained against the attack although it knew that it had been triggered by its own agents proved to be a quite instructive case for the African people, all the more when it comes to unacceptable North American claims to deploy itself into the Indian Ocean, where it has even less of an appearance of a legitimate role than anywhere else. The same goes for its client or satellite states or however they like to be called. Geopolitically, India, with its religion remaining on the leash of its industry due to its incomplete emancipation from colonialism, is a comatose giant that should be taken care of by a Pangaean emancipation movement. It is in fact in the focus of a severe “boko” situation or repressive distortion – the Washington regime has named its killer robots after a Hindu deity, speculating the distinction between the two could be repressed at some point, a lie so far even Moscow has been swallowing. The outlook to end up as an useful idiot on the leash of the insane serial killer in Washington has not quite yet woken up India to the catastrophe of imperialism, and worst of all it does not seem that its befuddled religion was not dominated by corrupt bigots of the kind of the sewage animal that is just attempting to shout out the mining mascot in Delhi.

It is true for all the East of Asia as well, as the hasty invasions of the Washington regime there prove: If Eurasia – Europe plus the Western part of Asia gravitating with it – and Africa – as in the Pan-Africanism of the past century – would not pursue an anti-imperialist consensus encompassing the entire hemisphere – and leaving room for the other to develop its own – in the middle term India might suffer even more abuse by the heir of the colonialist oppressor it already got to know, and then West Asia could not find peace as well. The specific European interest to get permanently rid of the manipulated regimes is only one factor in that equation, although the knowledge that this can only happen for the entire metacontinent does factor out a lot of other scenarios. Self-determined exchange between Europe and Africa has been a reality for a very long time, so the conclusion that it is not possible to keep away imperialism from one place but not from the other is self-evident. Washington and its accomplices, after all, find themselves contained in the sick joke of their own making, increasingly incapable to unload their grotesque death spasms upon others.

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See also:

- Why is the Nonproliferation Treaty Failing? (9.1.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/514650.html
- The Death of the Inclusion Policy in the East Asian Shelf Waters (16.1.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/514789.html
- Triple Treason in the Caucasus (23.1.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/514946.html
- NATO. Obituary to a Nukepool (27.1.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/01/515002.html
- Obey or Die - The Pathology of Organised Treason in Europe (21.2.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/02/515538.html
- The Suicide Attack Against indymedia and its Cause (28.2.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/02/515677.html
- What does the Invasion of Yalta Mean for the European Peninsula? (8.3.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/515828.html
- Why is Poland a Nazi Client State? (15.3.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/515949.html
- Palestine, the United Nations and the Refugees (21.3.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/516041.html
- The External Cost of Spying (28.3.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/516118.html
- How Deep Is the Atlantic Divide Really? (8.4.) -  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/04/516271.html

Internationalist Observer
- Homepage: https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/12/514459.html

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  1. And yet ... — Reality Check