Any suggestion that the “Third World” is invading America is obscenely ahistorical and needs to be confronted and dismissed
We are interrupting the loose schedule of topics about which we normally write pertaining to the US empire and militarism. While we do try to highlight issues of racial justice and white supremacy, as well as their deep connections to the US empire, we also fully acknowledge our privilege as white males that these issues almost rarely affect our lives in substantive ways. However, this past week while I was running (Matt speaking) around Southern Bergen County, a politically liberal area, a sticker caught my eye that immediately, and ever since, left me with a feeling of palpable discomfort. As I passed down Carlton Avenue in East Rutherford, I noticed a traffic sign which had a small blue sticker posted on it. This sticker was tattered with the words, “Stop the Third World Invasion of America.” As far as evidence of an author of the statement, it was signed by the “NJEHA.” A short Google search will reveal that this is the New Jersey European Heritage Association. This level of bigotry needs to be confronted, defeated, and its proponents rendered marginalized. To that end, it is necessary to illustrate the statement itself is not only bigoted but also revelatory of an immense ignorance of American history.
What is the “Third World” Anyway?
While the author of the above mentioned statement was obviously using “Third World” in a derogatory manner, it has not always been expressed that way. A more accurate term for the Third World would be the formerly colonized world. The ceaseless appetites of industrial capitalism saw the European nations and the United States come to control 80% of the earth by 1914. While the imperial powers weakened each other by engaging in a wholly senseless act of mass murder in World War I, the seeds of anti-colonialism grew in the colonies. The high minded discussions of valuing “Self Determination” put forward by people like Woodrow Wilson at the end of the Great War were revealed to be deeply hollow when put to the test. Members of non-white nations, in what would later be known as the “Global South,” were seeking autonomy from their imperial overlords. Unsurprisingly, they were dismissed and ignored by the Caucasian powers. Exemplary of a dynamic that would be repeated in the next 70 years, a young Ho Chi Minh pleaded with the US president Wilson for support in the Vietnamese push for independence from their French colonizers. His pleas fell on deliberately deaf ears. This pattern of the emerging great power of the United States standing against nearly all decolonization of the colonized world would be the standard operating procedure for the rest of the 20th century. This was evident in the United States’ full support to the imperial powers of France, Portugal, and Britain in attempts to recolonize territory in Indochina, Africa, and Malaysia as the peoples of these regions sought decolonization.
Far from being a slur, “Third World” itself was a term that offered hope. After World War II, nations of the previously colonized (and non-white) world collectively aspired to and organized for a more egalitarian world order. This would be a world where the non-white nations had an equal seat at the table to their European and American counterparts in the decision making capacity for global affairs. It is worth noting that the large majority of the world’s people would have been represented in this category, so equal representation to their white counterparts would actually be an objectively unfavorable balance for the nations of the formerly colonized world. Notable events such as the Bandung Conference represented hope for a more equitable global future, one in which self determination and autonomy were prioritized over extraction of the Earth’s resources for maximized profit of the imperialist nations. This hope was expressed by Indonesia leader Sukarno at the 1955 conference:
“Let us remember that the highest purpose of man is the liberation of man from his bonds of fear, his bonds of human degradation, his bonds of poverty – the liberation of man from the physical, spiritual, and intellectual bonds which have for too long stunted the development of humanity’s majority.”
“Majority” is the operative word in Sukarno’s closing remarks at the conference and highlights the actions that the United States took to thwart these aspirations. It cannot be overstated that the US supported wars, coups, and electoral interference that characterize it’s foreign policy of the Cold War were objectively antithetical to the interests and aspirations of the majority of humanity. As historian Vijay Prashad has explained, the Third World is not so much a place; it is a project. That project (that later became the Non-Aligned Movement) has been subject to antagonism by the West through the entirety of its history. To view it any other way is ahistorical and ignorant.
The Projection is Real: We Built This City on a Hill on Invasion and Genocide
How does the NJEHA actually believe the United States came into existence? They cannot be so ignorant as to not understand that the land we currently occupy in New Jersey, and more broadly the United States, was inhabited by indigenous nations from coast to coast for tens of thousands of years. If we accept that the NJEHA does understand this, it becomes obvious that their objection to invasion is not an issue with the practice at large but rather one of who is doing the invading. The entirety of the prehistory and history of the United States has its foundation in white invasion. This was true from the first white colonizers of Virginia and Massachusetts in the 17th century to the wholly unjustified US invasion of Mexico in 1846 that resulted in the expansion of US territory to the Pacific. The invaders of the American West that we colloquially refer to in sanitizing terms as “pioneers” or “settlers,” would be more accurately labeled as conquering hordes of white Americans slaughtering and displacing the indigenous occupants. New Jersey is not unique. Just like every state of this nation, the Garden State owes its existence to the invasion of indigenous lands, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of territory.
The very fact that the organization is named the New Jersey EUROPEAN Heritage Association should point to the obvious irony. They are rejecting the practice of invasion in a land some 5,000 miles from the continent to which they claim heritage and pride. Unless the NJEHA is willing to condemn the very existence of the state and nation they claim so much pride, they should clarify that their objection to invasion is one infested with racism, white supremacy, and jingoism. This becomes even more evident when we examine the global dynamic between the United States (and the West at large) and the Third World with regards to the the practice of invasion.
United States Invades the Third World Constantly and the Reverse has Literally Never Been the Case
Were the statement authored by the NJEHA not loaded with a not so veiled racism, it would be easier to just point out the obvious irony. This needs to be underscored though. The idea that the United States has to “Stop the Third World invasion” almost demands that anyone with a passing knowledge of US history respond to it. The desire for perpetual growth necessitated by industrial capitalism of the European powers created the disadvantaged Third World. This was done through resource extraction to the tune of trillions of dollars throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The era that followed since 1945 can be characterized by the Western World, led by the United States, still constantly intervening militarily in the affairs of the Global South.
Let’s really examine the word “invasion.” The idea that it is the Third World invading the United States is no less ludicrous than saying that it is the antelope that relentlessly hunts the lion. There has quite literally not been an invasion of the United States by a foreign power since the War of 1812 (and even that is quite complicated). Contrarily, throughout its entire history, it has been the United States conducting invasions of the nations of the Global South with astounding regularity. Although since its founding in 1776, the United States has been invading other autonomous states, one only needs to examine the past 132 years for the statement by the NJEHA to be rendered ridiculous. For a short, non-exhaustive list, since 1898 the United States has invaded:
The Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, The Dominican Republic, The Soviet Union, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen.
Surely, The People of these Far Away Lands were Uplifted by the American Invasions though… Right?
It can be said with no exaggeration that the cost of these invasions has been the deaths of tens of millions of people in the Third/Developing World/Global South. These include some 7 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians killed in the United States’ wars in South Asia of the 1960s and 1970s. It includes roughly a fifth of the North Korean population killed during the “Forgotten War,” a name that betrays the extreme degree of American exceptionalism in our recounting of history. It includes some 2-3 million people killed in America’s Middle East invasion of the 20th century, allegedly in service of a war waged on “terror.”
Lasting Effects: Death Tolls Are not the Full Story
The death tolls alone do not fully encapsulate the tragedy and horror that the United States has wrought on the civilian populations of the Global South through its invasions. For example, Americans really need to reconcile with the long term effects of the fact that their government (with tacit support from the populace) dropped over 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,000 tons of napalm over the Korean Peninsula from 1950-1953, this killed some 2-3 million Koreans and destroyed literally every major city and town in addition to totally crippling civilian infrastructure. Citizens of the DPRK know this history, yet somehow Americans are perplexed by the fact that the “hermit kingdom” is distrustful and paranoid in its dealings with the nation that inflicted apocalyptic terror on their nation less than 70 years ago. Historian Charles Armstrong offered some clarity to the understandable worldview of leaders and citizens of the DPRK when he explained, “The American air war left a deep and lasting impression” and “more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats, that would continue long after the war’s end.” It is hard to imagine how the United States would approach its relationship with the outside world were any small fraction of the mass violence visited upon the DPRK ever to be directed at the US. Rather than attempting to understand the American authored devastation inflicted on the nation, Americans actually have been convinced to fear the very nation that had been subjected to their government’s extreme, borderline genocidal violence. This fear of the DPRK is a microcosm of the type of ludicrous paranoia expressed by the NJEHA with regards to the Third World at large, while living in the country that is the leading perpetrator of violence against the formerly colonized peoples.
Invasions of the United States’ War of Terror
Magnifying the absurdity of the nativist sentiment of the NJEHA is the present reality. The fact that as they propagate fear of invasion, their own beloved nation currently occupies Afghanistan (10,000 miles away,) as a consequence of the totally unjustified invasion of that poor country 19 years ago. Aside from highlighting the hypocrisy of nativist fears, Americans should be made aware that its invasions of the War on Terror have inflicted unspeakable terror on the citizens of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. Aside from the tremendous cost in lives, there is the residual trauma from the extreme violence inflicted by the United States. Children in Pakistan are reportedly afraid of clear sunny days as they identify these as the most likely time for US drone attacks, a phenomenon which had reaped devastating tolls on the civilian population of the Waziristan region. The United States’ 1991 invasion of Iraq saw the deliberate bombing of civilian infrastructure. This combined with a decade long sanctions regime resulted in the deaths of more than half a million children. Are there even metrics that can calculate the trauma that hundreds of thousands of parents endured from the horror of having to watch their children die from otherwise preventable disease and malnutrition? In the following decades, children of Iraq who were raised during the American invasion of 2003 and subsequent occupation suffered severe rates of mental health disorders. These include PTSD at rates nearing 30%. Aside from the mental trauma from the US invasion and torture of Iraq, there are the real residual physical tolls of the invasion. These are evidenced in dramatically elevated cancer rates in Iraq due to the United States’ use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions. Specifically, there are the examples of cities that have been subject to extreme US bombardment, such as Fallujah. Here, not only have cancer rates (including childhood cancers) skyrocketed, but so too have rates of miscarriages and birth defects since the two US attacks on that city in 2004. A chemist who investigated the US inflicted health crisis of Fallujah characterized the situation as, “The highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.”
Generational Effects
In the case of South Asia, the death tolls alone are severe indictments of the US invasions of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. However, if encountering a person that can somehow look at these affairs and still justify past US behavior, have them consider this: The victims of US aggression in that region have been, for decades, people who were not even alive during the conflicts of the 1960s and 70’s. Unexploded cluster munitions (products of the USA) from these wars still kill and maim South Asian children regularly. In the tiny nation of Laos alone, more than 2 million tons of bombs were dropped by the United States, so this outcome of unexploded ordinance still killing Laotians in 2020 is hardly surprising. In Vietnam, the United States’ use of 5.1 million tons of the herbicide, Agent Orange, decimated the environment of the South Asian nation, destroying some 4.5 million acres of forest. The heavily polluted solid and water in these regions of the nation renders them unrecovered from chemical’s use. More tragic, five decades after “Operation Ranch Hand” the use of the herbicide still causes children to be born with birth defects generations after the fighting ended. That is all to say, even if someone can somehow justify the initiations of these wars by the US (a ridiculous position to begin with), they should then be pressed to explain how a US cause for war and invasion 50 years ago justifies the fact that Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians still suffer from these wars. They will be unable to present a coherent rebuttal because there is none.
Irrational Fears Borne out of the Hard Realities of US Empire:
Articulated above was a brief and very incomplete history detailing the extremely one sided relationship between the United States and the Third World with regards to the practice of invasion. Of course, members and supporters of the NJEHA might accuse us of a straw man argument here. It is unlikely that many Americans actually believe that the US is going to be subject to the military of a formerly colonized country attacking or invading. Therefore, we should acknowledge the fact that the NJEHA are not likely warning of an “invasion” of the United States by the Third World in the traditional military sense (such a thought is ludicrous) but rather an invasion in the sense of migration. Their concerns are demographic in nature, reflecting a racist paranoia of a mythically noble White America becoming polluted with inhabitants migrating across borders from perceived inferior nations and cultures.
First off, to refer to migration of people into the United States as an invasion dilutes the meaning of the word. It sanitizes the actions of the US military and other imperial invading powers of the past by lumping those actions in with the actions of desperate people in search of refuge. But what about the actual people of whom the NJEHA possesses such an irrational fear? It is likely, given the rhetoric of political figures including the current president, the alleged “invaders” are actually desperate people fleeing Central America and Mexico. Also given that Trump is the current figurehead for nativism in the United States (a movement NJEHA is clearly a part of), it is worth examining other groups that the president has deemed threats to the homeland. Aside from his fear mongering about Mexicans and Central Americans, he has also ratcheted up an already virulent anti-Muslim sentiment amongst his followers. This has manifested in among other actions, attempts to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Now what is it that the primary targets of current nativist anger seem to all have in common? What links are shared between the nations and people of Central America and the people of the Middle East of whom we should allegedly be so fearful of migrating to our very pure nation in large numbers? Too often, even in liberal circles, immigration is discussed from a vantage point of the actions taken by those fleeing their country of origin; Did they go through the proper channels, do they have legitimate claims for asylum, did they take unnecessary risks for them and their children, etc.? However, this is a punching down, shaming of the powerless lens of viewing migration patterns. This is all to say that the people fleeing Central America and the Middle East are fleeing their home nations often as a direct result of actions taken by the United States in their regions.
A Not So Good Neighbor
The history of the United States meddling overtly and covertly in Latin America (with disastrous effects) is far more expansive and bloodier than can be detailed here. Needless to say, the pattern of interference in the affairs of our hemisphere neighbors is foundational to the current and recent waves of migration. For generations, in Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, the United States supported brutal right wing regimes that maintained feudal societies where the majority of citizens lived in abject poverty. When there were peasant revolts against the grossly unequal societies in Guatemala and El Salvador in the 70’s and 80’s, the United States provided weapons, intelligence, and military training to the armed forces and death squads working for those governments. This allowed these regimes to carry out mass killings, rape and torture against their citizenry, and of course further destabilized these societies. Simultaneously, after the brutal right wing dictator Somoza was overthrown in Nicaragua in the 1970’s, the United States devoted its efforts to destabilizing the leftist government of that nation. This was accomplished through funding and arming right wing rebel terrorists (the Contras) and mining the Nicaraguan harbor. Through the 1950’s to the 1980s, the United States took the side of right wing factions, both in the form of governments and dissident groups that fueled civil war and destruction of civil society in these small nations. Devastated economies, political repression, and cycles of violence are all the result of US interventions in the region.
In keeping with the tradition of US meddling in the region, the 2009 coup in Honduras that overthrew reform minded president Manuel Zelaya, also created US bound migration. Since Zelaya’s forced departure, both violent crime and drug trafficking have dominated the nation, again adding to the push factors that result in “caravans” of refugees appearing at the US border.
The concern over Mexican migrants is rendered even more ridiculous when accompanied by a basic overview of US history with its Southern neighbor. Do nativists of the United States understand that nearly a third of their nation was Mexican sovereign territory until 1848? Do they know that this territory that includes most of the western states only changed hands because of a blatantly imperialistic and unjustifiable invasion of Mexico? More recently, US economic policies, such as NAFTA, flood Mexican markets with cheap American goods putting local farmers unemployed and searching for work on either side of the imaginary line that divides the nations.
Lighting the fire and Barricading the Exits
What about the fear that produced Trump’s attempt at a Muslim ban in 2017? This emanates from an extreme xenophobia toward the Muslim world, once again a fear rendered absurd when accompanied by a brief survey of the facts. Since 2001, the US has invaded, overthrown governments, supported proxy wars in half a dozen Middle Eastern and North African countries. Brown’s Costs of War Project estimates that a minimum of 37 million people of the Middle East and North Africa have been displaced due to America’s now two decade long War on Terror. Interestingly enough (or predictably?), the countries from which US bound travelers were most affected by the Muslim ban were Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. All four of these countries have been subject to US aggression in the form of outright military violence (Libya, Somalia, and Yemen), destabilizing proxy wars (Syria and Yemen), or economic warfare (Iran, Sudan, Syria and again.. Yemen). The destructive capabilities of US military and economic power has effectively lit the region on fire. Proponents of nativist immigration policy are effectively arguing that the victims of said fire should be forced to remain trapped in the proverbial inferno that the world’s most prolific geopolitical arsonist had set ablaze.
A Silly, Untenable Worldview
The New Jersey European Heritage Association should be worried. Their manufactured ideal of a predominantly white America is one that should always be in peril. More (although not nearly enough) people today are alert to the white supremacy that has permeated this society. Borders are more porous, and we are more globally connected. Challenges such as the climate crisis are going to present a need for the West to engage with the Global South/Developing World/Third World in a more egalitarian way. If the aforementioned man made hardships authored by the United States have created the migrations that the members of NJEHA believe is an “invasion” of migrants to the United States, these nativists are totally unprepared for what is coming. They will have their worldview forcibly destroyed when rising sea levels and ecological destruction create refugee crisis (as climate scientists predict it will) like the world has never seen. The choices the nativists have to make will be to either give up notions of national, ethnic, or racial superiority in the near term or be forced to deal with the consequences of the lack of cooperation with the Earth’s people in the future.
The racist, jingoist views of the NJEHA need to be rendered obsolete through direct engagement, confrontation, and if possible, discussion. The view should in theory be immediately dismissed as illogical as it cannot even stand on the foundation of its own logic. It is predicated on an obvious contradiction. The authors of the sticker live in the nation built on the practice of invasion, that itself invades the non-white nations constantly. They do this all while living in fear that those same peoples aggrieved by their nation might eventually be arriving in our society due to the conditions created by the US. These contradictions should be highlighted but it may prove fruitless. As evidenced by this group’s very existence, retrograde attitudes regarding race and nationalism still have some significant purchase. The realities of US domestic and foreign policy remain obscure to enough people that nativist/racist groups feel comfortable enough to propagate their jingoist and also illogical views in liberal Southern Bergen County.
What is most prescient, but less tangible are the implications of the statement on the sticker. What does it suggest to residents of Bergen County, New Jersey, who themselves and their families find their origins in the “Third World?” Are they welcomed in our communities? Is admittance to American society conditional on maintaining a favorable balance to European descended Americans vs. non-white descendants? This is an extrapolation from the original comment left on the sticker but a logical line of questioning that members of our Bergen County community will and should demand answers to if presented with the hateful statement. The reality is, there are not coherent answers to these questions that don’t immediately rely on notions of racial or cultural superiority. There is not a “both sides” argument for why the NJEHA’s views need to be heard or given time of day.
Sadly, the NJEHA is but another note in a longstanding tradition of white supremacy, nativism, and racism in this nation. This essay was a mere initiation of contact with the group. At the moment, we are not sure exactly what path is to be taken. Moving forward we will continue to draft ideas for action of how to confront and marginalize this ignorance.