The story goes that when Mahatma Gandhi was asked about Western civilisation, he quipped, “It would be a good thing.”
Gandhi was right that the ‘West’ needs to be civilised, but he was wrong to imply that there is no such thing as Western civilisation, or that it is a good thing.
The re-election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States in the backdrop of Israel’s savage war on Palestinians and almost every country in its neighbourhood should be a clarifying moment. Both follow the intrinsic logic of ‘Western civilisation’ and indicate quite clearly what the world is facing.
I put the words ‘West’ and ‘Western’ in quotes because they are terms used without a shared meaning of what they are. They are not specific geographical terms to be sure, unlike Europe, Latin America, or West Asia. All of these, themselves, have vague borders, but at least you can take a look at a map and say, “This, generally, is Europe.” It is not possible to do so with ‘the West’ because it is a little hard to shove Australia and New Zealand into the transatlantic region. It is also worth noting that apartheid South Africa was a part of the ‘West,’ but post-apartheid South Africa is not.
Making the definition of the ‘West’ even more complicated is the fact that not all colonised countries, even those whose legal and political systems were thoroughly shaped by European colonial interventions, are part of the ‘West.’ This is especially striking of the Americas. Canada and the United States are very much identified as part of the ‘West’, Mexico and countries south, not really. What distinguishes the two is which country colonised which part, and the laws that they imposed. Canada and the United States were colonised by the British, whose laws had no place for indigenous inhabitants. Mexico and the southern American states fell under the control of the Spanish Crown, which (however racist and cruel it might have been) chose to extend land rights to the local populations (in order to raise taxes, primarily, and also to win converts).
Combine these facts and one other – that apartheid South Africa was considered part of the ‘West’ but post-apartheid South Africa is not – and we come to a fairly clear view of what the ‘West’ is: European colonial countries and its settler colonies that negated the equal rights of people other than their own.
It is for this reason that Israel fits well into ideas of the ‘West.’ Not only did early Zionist leaders, whether Herzl or Jabotinsky, explicitly identify it as a colonial enterprise, they did so by appealing to the ‘West’, and the old hokum of bringing civilisation and technological progress to a benighted land populated by savages needing to be ‘civilised’. This is why commentator after commentator, whether it be somebody like Bari Weiss or a ‘comedian’ like Bill Maher, justify the conduct of Israel’s current war as a “defence of Western civilisation.”
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
It is a vicious irony, therefore, that the end result of this type of thinking was found in German concentration camps. Germany, a late entrant into European colonialism, which based its Race Laws on the American treatment of its former slaves, carried out the exterminationist logic within Europe, holding that the law was applicable on for the rule of a Master Race, and the lives and property of all else were forfeit. While the industrialised slaughter was an innovation, the logic underlying it was not. It was the shock of such actions within Europe itself that led to the calls of “never again,” and an understanding that everybody needs to be bound by law equally, that we cannot have a hierarchy of rights for different people. This is what led to the birth of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and it is this understanding that is now under attack by those who believe they have superior rights, that they have a right to superior rights, over all else.
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Let us be clear, the idea at the heart of the ‘West’: that some people are more equal than others, is not unique to European colonial states. Islam has the concepts of Dar ul Islam and Dar ul Harb, the land of peace/Islam and the land of war, respectively. Chinese civilisation disdained the rights of any other to have a set of laws, since China was the first land under heaven. And South Asia has its hierarchy of rights in the caste system. Unequal treatment under law, or even declaring some as ‘outcastes’ unprotected by law, has a long history in many parts of the world, based always on the idea that the rising/dominant civilisation was technologically, and thus morally, superior. The unique thing about “Western civilisation” was not this, it was in the fact that unique to earlier empires, the European colonial states managed to impose themselves, although briefly, on the whole world.
Donald Trump in a screengrab from a promotional video uploaded to his X channel. Photo: X/@realDonaldTrump.
For many in the “West” this was the high point of glory, of total dominion, of a “greatness” that cannot be divorced from the pseudo-science of racism that undergirded the thinking of these conquerors. When Donald Trump fraternises with racists and other dregs of society like himself, and calls for Americans to Make America Great Again, it is very clear what he is calling for. It is also why there is such fury when Israel is accused of war crimes at par with organisations such as Hamas, or the utter dismissal of the idea that American or European leaders should be criticised (forget tried and punished) when they commit war crimes. For all the work of civilising the ‘West’ after the Holocaust, it is still based on the overriding idea that the ruling caste can commit any crime and lose nothing by it, as exemplified when Trump casually stated, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
As relative power, based on relative wealth, has shifted, other nations now also claim that the rules do not apply to them in the same way. Russia’s flouting of international law, China’s unwillingness to be held to account over the Law of the Sea, or even India’s alleged willingness to undertake murders abroad, show us very clearly the way the world is headed. Trump and his many like-minded bigots in Europe and its settler colonies, believe that the assertion of the ‘West’ will turn the tide, that somehow the heyday when ‘White Men’ enjoyed all the privileges of law and paid none of the price can be recovered. This is, of course, nonsense, and the ‘West’ needs to be confronted and defeated, but it can only be defeated, can only be civilised, by the idea that all of us enjoy equal rights, and that requires confronting the other tinpot dictators who wish to enjoy impunity for their crimes as well. There are no heroes here, only villains.
Omair Ahmad is an author and journalist.
