Why do they keep interfering?

SO LAST week, European Union (EU) lawmakers called for an end to EJKs (extrajudicial killings) in the Philippines, and the Duterte administration predictably responded by telling the Eurocrats to shove it. We’ve been here before, and we’ll probably continue to be here in the foreseeable future.

But putting aside the issue of EJKs for a moment, let’s focus on the other side of the issue here. Why do Western leaders and bureaucrats keep telling other countries what to do?

The kneejerk response to that question is Western arrogance. Some might even say, White arrogance. Western leaders like to interfere because in their minds, they still rule the world. This is one explanation, but as with most political issues, that answer is only half true.

What many Filipinos need to understand is that the type of Western politicians who complain about human rights, democracy, freedom and a bunch of other buzzwords are the same types of politicians who call for military bombings in the Middle East because of alleged human rights violations. They are also the same politicians who are pushing mass immigration, globalization and neo-liberal principles in their own countries, thus undermining the demographic integrity of their own nations.

Now, you might wonder, what motivates them to do these things?

Well, the answer is that they believe in an end of history, an end to nations and a kind of universal morality based around ideas of equality. They are ideologues.

This might seem confusing, but let’s unpack this carefully. According to the ruling neo-liberal ideology of the West, all human beings have the same basic equal rights. Those rights are not derived from the nations or states which different peoples belong to, but rather from their inherent nature as human beings. This is the rationale behind human rights, liberal democracy and globalization.

The problem with this rationale, however, is that it is complete nonsense. Human beings don’t have any inherent rights. They are given rights by the state, in accordance to the law, and secured by armed men with guns. Human rights don’t work because there is no army or state of “humanity” to enforce and uphold such rights.

There is the United Nations (UN), of course, but their armed forces exist at the pleasure of participating states. The neo-liberal ideologues in the West and their supporters are aware of this contradiction, which is why they are trying to turn their countries into universal states, countries that don’t have any specific national or historical characteristics. This is also the implicit goal of the EU. They plan to achieve such goals by importing millions of immigrants thereby creating a multi-racial melting pot, a universal nation.

The rationale here is that by eliminating the West’s ethnic, cultural and linguistic specificity, the West becomes the nation of “humanity” as opposed to just being another civilization or group of nations. Thus, Western armies become the armies of “humanity” and in their minds, because they have become the “nation of humanity” they will be able to tell the rest of humanity what to do, and consequently, export their ideology onto the rest of actual “humanity.”

This may seem convoluted, but this is how neo-liberalism (which is more or less the official ideology of Western and Western-aligned elites) work, and it is this ideology which drives many Western elites (barring nationalists of course) to “interfere” in the affairs of other nations.

This is why Western elites like to position themselves as arbiters of good and evil, because in their minds, their ideology gives them the license to do so. (jdr456@gmail.com/PN)