The Theological Roots of Geopolitics

"God provided the foundation (Grund) for their enterprise... God is thus used to legitimize actions that modernity would consider merely secular... [T]hey needed to control native imagery by replacing it with a new religious worldview." — Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas. Elipse of the Other and the Myth of Modernity. (p.49)

This passage, by Argentinian-Mexican philosopher Dussel, is fundamental for growing our understanding of current processes because it exposes the mechanism behind the birth of modernity and capitalism. A process still relevant today. It reveals how a worldview is harnessed to legitimize acts of violence that would otherwise be seen for what they are: secular, brutal, and unjustifiable.

Conquest is never just about the seizure of geographical space or the reduction of people to resources. It requires the (almost) total replacement of one narrative with another. (The Western ruling strata do and did not succeed in this endeavour but still…) You must colonize the imaginary to control the physical.

However, this process isn't limited to distant colonies. It never was. As philosopher Silvia Federici argues in Caliban and the Witch, this discipline was applied internally within Europe during medieval times just as it was externally in the Americas. It is about the control of resources, human, natural, or otherwise, regardless of whether they are inside or outside the "kingdom."

However, the method is not monolithic. There is a (Western elite-specific) meta-framework for justifying domination, exploitation, and extraction (to themselves and others), but the application is specific. The creation of an "Other" or an adversary is never identical; there is always a tailor-made hate or phobia designed for the specific cultural, historical, and social context of the target.

I am currently working on essays that will dive deeper into these topics.