What If Libyan Civil War of 2011 had been Approached as Racial/Ethnic Tension Instead of Freedoms and Power Struggle?

A recent criticism of the American/UN "neoliberal" intervention in Libya back in the early 2010s got me reading a little more into the Libyan Civil War of 2011.

The Libyan Civil War seemed to boil down to a lot of racial/ethnic issues: Arab anti-government forces were angry about black labor & government corruption (since those jobs could have been given to Arabs in the country. . .sound familiar?). I generally see the Left criticism of the US intervention to be around "neoliberal" economic criticisms, not race or ethnicity (then again, the Establishment Left doesn't address those aspects much, either, considering that could go against the Establishment narrative). These alternate narratives combined with more often than not ignoring the racial/ethnic aspect makes me wonder: How much aggression in the world revolves around racial/ethnic tensions versus the official narratives of all the different viewpoints?

What would happen if intervention wasn't bombings or invasion, but working to get the everyday people of countries & areas to engage in pluralism, to learn about each other, to appreciate each other, to even learn to contribute to each when wanted? Build pluralistic educational systems that got people to engage in other cultures, had them experience different perspectives through literature, drama, dance, and other art forms, listen to each other humbly and learn from each other.

Arguably, there might an aspect of colonialism there, which could make it be an aspect of neoliberalism, instilling too much of an individualistic character into a culture that might not have so much individualism or want it. With space and resources running out, though, I think the human race has reached a point where pluralism has become one of our only choices.

Frankly, I can respect things like the modesty of Muslim women and their right to wear a burqa if they want, or if they don't want to be modest or wear a burqa, they don't have to. I beleive that a modest burqa-wearing Muslim woman can be strong, make her own decisions (or not, if she doesn't want to), and so forth. I'm against her being forced into modesty, but I have nothing against he being modest because she wants to be.

I'm also fine with people of different cultures, ethnicities/races, religions, sexual orientations, etc. having safe spaces to call their own. My limit to pluralism is when it comes to violence, killing, and the erasure or getting in the way of people exercising their culture. That's where I put my foot down. I generally have to be tolerant about eating animals, animal products, and using animal products, but that's generally because the norms of today just aren't there yet (though if I'm at a certain level of intimacy with people, I might poke some fun at you for your proclivity for utilizing animals for your own needs). When it comes to causing suffering and extinction in others, though, that's too much for me.

Having those exceptions articulated, I believe the spread of a pluralistic education can benefit the world, whether stopping person-to-person violence or ethnic/racial and other group violence or even bringing people closer together, trusting each other, and creating more joy and good will. Science has shown the literature and poetry lead to people being able to deal with new, novel situations in more adaptive less stressed out ways, allows people to empathize and connect with others and more, and, as we all now, to more intelligence and being able to learn better. Yet we have a video game industry that focuses a lot on the military and violence, which could even be considered something of a propaganda machine for the military, police, and violence. I wouldn't hesitate to say that part of the movie industry gets in on this part of the propoganda effort, probably because of the money and use of equipment and locations.

I hate to say that I agree with the current White House Administration on a point, but even one of their consultants, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman argues that video games are training players to kill. I think Grossman lauds state-sponsored killing too much, but his book, On Killing: The Pyschological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society illustrates a lot of ambivalence about the whole issue in which he suppresses the side that I would agree with.

A couple months ago, I would look askance at the video game training killers argument, but nowadays. . .I kind of wonder how much reading and engaging in pluralistic fiction, poetry, drama, and a more liberal arts curriculum/culture has acted as a counter influence on the gamers that I know who play violent video games. They also read a lot and engage in activities that encourage pluralistic thinking. These aren't people who just game all day, every day, all year long. These are people looking for a variety of experience, have an interest in different perspectives, and interact with a variety of people frequently.

The ethnic, racial, and group violence has to stop (I won't even get into the individual violence, even though I believe a pluralistic education could help that, too). The human race needs to stop creating situations for it occur, and where we have milieus of group violence, whether through establishment governments or through informal groups. Some of the best examples include: Africa after the European decolonized; the Middle East after the Ottoman Empire was broken up after World War I -- before then, Iraq was three regions: Kurds and Christian Assyrians up north, Sunni's had one strip, and the Shia's had another section; Europe didn't really try to become a pluralistic place until the European Union until really the early 1990s, and the EU didn't seem to get into too many tensions until the Great Recession of 2008 AND all the refugees that started coming after The Libyan Civil War and the Syrian Civil War; Israel and Palestine; and a few instances of group violence occurred in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down and countries split. I'm sure we can all come up with plenty of other instances that I haven't mentioned.

Now look at the United States with the buffoon maniac in office who wants to establish an isolationist United States at the cost of pluralism. The United States of America is guilty of cultural marginalization since it's beginnings, but pluralism seemed to gain some traction in the late 1800's and get a good grip in the 1990's. The people with the real power in this country and their supporters make me feel ashamed about the United States, and I'm trying to do everything nonviolent in my power to contribute to the fighting back of these forces of evil, suppression, and marginalization.

Much of this violence comes from groups trying to squelch the culture and group expression of other groups. It especially gets annoying when the dominant group plays a smoke and mirrors game of making it look like the marginalized group just wants power. All the while, the marginalized group has suffered years and years of oppression, want to be able to exercise cultural group expression, and want to be treated as people.

Per the approach implied by the use of the neoliberalism term, though, the intervention into Libya came from the standpoint of capitalism in opposition to socialism/communism. The US and other interveners wanted someone in charge who would give corporate interests cheaper and easier access to resources at the expense of the people of Libya. I will start by acknowledging that neolieralism does and has occurred. I criticize using the term neoliberalism in the way that many on the Left euphemistically do (and I'm on the Left!) because I feel that it oversimplifies matters down to power relations onto two levels: those with the power and those without power.

Throwing around the term neoliberalism makes me think of Karl Mannheim's theories of Ideology and Utopia, Karl Marx's theories on false consciousness and ideology, Jurgen Habermas's Critical Theory, Antonio Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony. Honestly, all those theories felt too formalized, too clean, and too many of the details figured out. It just took one real-life ambiguity or piece of data for those whole theories to just fall apart and become useless. It all feels lifeless and doesn't accurately depict reality to me.

It fails to take into account the human factor and the complexity of humanity. The attempts at realizing socialism and communism has many examples of the atrocities that can occur by trying to apply this theory and only believing in the theory, at the expense of the humans living under the rule of communism. Frankly, violence is inherent in communism. Marx and Engels in their Manifesto argued that scientifically, a revolution of the working class will occur at some point in the future to take control.

Admittedly, capitalists and democratic leaders have done the same but not to stay loyal to some theory. Rather such atrocities occurs in the hands of capitalists and democracy out of greed and corruption, not necessarily because of the principles of their ideology. Adam Smith even argued that human's moral sentiments would restrain capitalism from its worst possibilities in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Evidence from the last few centuries disproves Mr. Smith (and part of my project has touched upon Scottish Common Sense philosophy that argues for this kind of sentimentalism, but I'm not goig to start getting into these things), but at least Mr. Smith had some belief that capitalism would believe that understanding capitalism would help the welfare of humankind.

Such strong belief in the "scientific" yet eschatological theory of scientic socialism (I've always preferred Marx's more artsy utopian socialism phase) leads to ossificaition and refusal to acknowledge that the Marxist/Engel conception, the Leninist/Stalinist vanguardist conception, the Trotskyist conception, the Maoist conception, etc. might just not bring the prosperity that was promised. People are showing too much individual expression and disagreement with the system. Resolution: kill them or send them to a labor camp! People can't disagree or have different ways of life. Everyone refusing to follow the Workers Party or the Farmer's Party refuse to accept the truth, so they need to suffer the consequences!

A governing economic system with a disregard for humanity makes sense during those times. I'm not very familiar with the lived lives of Marx or Engels, but I know at least Marx had anti-semitic sentiments, much like many non-Jewish people of that time, and Marx defended the South when it came to seceding from the United States and defended their right to have slaves. Those times in history had a lot of war and fast changing occurring, changes that likely led Marx and Engels to believe that the powers that be didn't have a sense of humanity for the suffering people who couldn't keep up with changing times. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all made some fast changes, too, that caused a lot of death, imprisonement, and forced labor for what they believed was the greater good. They all believed that after all is said and done, all the suffering and death, communism would lead them to the brightest tomorrow. I don't know much about the revolutionary communism since those characters of history, so I won't go further there.

Not seeing too many (democatic) socialists before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez skillfully discuss that class and race [and other forms of group identity] can't be divorced doesn't surpise me, though her phrasing sounds more sophisticated:

“I can’t name a single issue with roots in race that doesn’t have economic implications, and I cannot think of a single economic issue that doesn’t have racial implications,” she told the magazine the Nation last week. “The idea that we have to separate them out and choose one is a con.”

Socialism came from a time when most people believed that race against race was the norm, religion against religion was the norm, that war was a constant thing wthout end (even though I believe that at least Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth were on the cusp of pluralism as a lot of Europe was using ethnicity in the fascist form as organic unity). In a time of group against group, it makes sense that one of the most put upon group with some of the least amount of power, the working class, should try to get into the action to gain power and try molding the world into something of a paradise.

In a way, I believe in the paradise, of sorts, but I believe that it needs to encapsulate and consider more than just class and economics. I do believe that corporations and politicians corrupted by them have grown too acquistive and manipulative without consideration for the people that are in different lands. Neoliberalism, as a phenomenon, is bad. Socialism, however, does fall short by not acknowleding the importance of pluralism, too. As we saw in Libya and even in other places that don't involve socialism, failing to foster Authentic Empathy in populations will undercut any efforts to crafting our world, together, into a paradise.

Even if people have economic equality, without authentic empathy, our irrational human nature will cause us to take competition too far and will support malignant prejudice and bigotry. Different groups will become jealous of each other over the littlest slight or the littlest advantage. An inevitable part of human nature, unless we work to blunt it, are our individual and group egos that will arise if we don't understand each other's perspective and empathize with it. We stop thinking of each other as human, rather looking at each other as dehumanized entities that get in way of us getting what we want or want to take what we have, at whatever cost.

Us regular everyday people on the "outside" now can come together, we can resist the neoliberals, the kleptocrats, the autocrats, the oligarchs of the world, we can humble them out of their positions of power. We need to do it with authentic empathy and pluralism, however, not just by redistributing wealth so that it's more equal. Money is just numbers and math, not heart. We need heart, soul, and kindness. Once we have this state of being and existence, though, we have to continue fighting for it in humbleness, in our souls and in our societies. Hate and domination will always exist, in us and outside of us, and we always have to stay vigilant, participate in our society and politics, exercise our empathic muscle and expose ourselves to varieties of experience and perception. We have to keep on with it to keep the world kind, trusting, empathic, and pluralistic, which will bring us joy.

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