Marco Rubio's Munich speech was a declaration of war wrapped in nostalgia for the old white "supremacist" world order.
The unprovoked, illegal, and barbaric war launched against the Islamic Republic of Iran by the U.S. and the zionist entity (aka the State of Israel) was in no way shocking, surprising, or astounding. The months of U.S. military mobilizations in the Middle East and the rhetoric of high-ranking members of the U.S. and zionist entity’s governments all acted as a specter for aggression as part of a rapacious desire to establish and maintain Western influence and control of Arab and Persian Middle Eastern states, their people, and their natural resources. Yet for all the bluster coming from the likes of Trump and Netanyahu, it was U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio who signaled to the world an incontrovertible mandate for Western aggression and imperialism through a lens of white “supremacy” and Euro/Anglo hegemony.
While speaking at the Munich Security Conference last month in Munich, Germany, Rubio did not mince words and used white “supremacy” as the pretext to announce to the world the U.S.’s intention to maintain and expand its empire. At one point during his verbal manifesto, Rubio proclaimed, “We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.” It’s notable that Rubio omitted any mention of how this so-called Western civilization required the extermination of Indigenous peoples of the “Americas,” and the pillage and forced labor of African bodies to establish its hegemony as part of its “shared history.”
Rubio went on to state, “It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born. It was here in Europe where the world – which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution.” This anglocentric and revisionist summary of history ostracizes the contributions of non-white civilizations, such asalgebra, which was developed by a Persian mathematician. This oversight was clearly intentional and meant to continue the dehumanization of non-white people and the invisibilization of their contributions to the world as part of a larger rationalization to murder, subjugate, colonize, and oppress the non-white people of the global majority. However, Rubio exposed himself and the larger hubris of white “supremacy” ideology when he said that Europe is the continent that produced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones - two bands that are known to have been inspired and influenced by Black “American” musicians whose songs they performed. But it was Rubio’s specific reference to Christianity that was the tell, and this reference is playing out in real time as the U.S. and the zionist entity continue their warrantless wars against Iran and Lebanon.
According to journalist Jonathan Larsen, numerous U.S. service members lodged complaints against senior officers who allegedly told them, “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, asserted, “commanders celebrating how ‘bloody all of this must become’ in order to align with ‘fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology’ may be violating constitutional and military law, and further stated that any senior officers professing this ideology should be prosecuted pursuant to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. These allegations continue a pattern of religious fundamentalism of high-ranking U.S. officials, including Rubio in Munich and, more recently, U.S. ambassador to the zionist entity, Mike Huckabee, who, during an interview with conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson, suggested that Israel has God given rights to all of the lands of the Middle East.
With no legal or rational reason for its attack - and, in fact, attacks potentially ordered illegally, the U.S. is desperately spinning the narrative of a barbaric and uncivilized Iran that is ruled by religious zealots while literally invoking white Christian internationalism with a dash of Christian zionism as a primary reason to continue Western aggression and interdiction of the self-determination and sovereignty of foreign nations from Venezuela, to Cuba, and Iran while also sanctioning a Greater Israel project that is in full effect and extending from Gaza, to the Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria - geographies that have all been subjected to zionist military aggression in the last three months.
The North South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) reminds us that this variety of human rights is a political project of, by and for oppressed people that, “names the main enemies of human dignity and rights: the Pan European white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy and all forms of human oppression that flow this material reality.” To this end, it’s clear that the main adversaries of international law and global civilization are not the Iranians, but the Western colonial aggressors and specifically the U.S. and the zionist entity who have once again brought the world to the brink of a world war. It could even be argued that we are already in the throes of a world war as we are observing people in the region taking up arms against U.S.installations in Pakistan and Iraq.
From Rubio’s white supremacist proclamation to the U.S./zionist entity’s provocation, the masses are witnessing desperate acts of crumbling empires whose global influence is in a state of atrophy. We are not only seeing this in the Middle East, but also on the continent where a new generation of anti colonial leaders and alliances including, but not limited to, the Alliance Sahel States who are affirming their self-determination and sovereignty. Even more conservative African governments like South Africa who led the effort to prosecute Netanyahu and other zionist entity war criminals, are taking positions and carrying out actions they likely never would have just five years ago.
Rubio’s call in Munich for rebuilding and reforming the “global institutions of the old order” may prove to be feckless and impossible - for as the true intent of the aggression against Iran has been exposed, that is, re-establishing and affirming an unstable and unsustainable global white “supremacy” hegemony, the Western aggressors appear to have opened a pandora’s box of global anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism that can only be closed by liberated people armed and enshrined with PCHRs and self-determination.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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