Random Quotes

Troy-Anthony Baylis (born in 1976) is a Jawoyn Aboriginal from northern Australia. He is an artist, curator and writer.

Troy-Anthon Baylis (15.04.2014): The art of seeing Aboriginal Australia’s queer potential. In: The Conversation.

Troy-Anthon Baylis researches gender diversity and has found that there are indigenous names for non-binary genders on the Australian Tiwi Islands (The Hook Up 2018). Non-heterosexual concepts such as “two-spirit” in North America, were part of sexuality in many pre-colonial societies. These were viewed by the Christian Church and colonialists as immoral reprehensible and therefore forbidden. In the Catholic Church, homosexuality and non-procreative sex were condemned as early as the Third Lateran Council of 1179 (Boswell 1981, quoted from Federici, 2014: 47) as a sin against nature (Spencer 1995, quoted from Federici, 2014: 47).

*The Hook Up (2018): What do we know about queer Indigenous history?
*Silvia Federici (2014): Caliban und die Hexe. Frauen, der Körper und die ursprüngliche Akkumulation. Wien: Mandelbaum.
*Pearson McKinney (2016): Before European Christians Forced Gender Roles, Native Americans Acknowledged 5 Genders.
**Arabmediasociety.com, 21.01.2009: Book Review Desiring Arabs.

Dirk-Ekkehard Niebel (born in 1963) is a former German politician (FDP). He was Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development from 2009 to 2013. He has been working as a consultant for the weapons and automotive supplier Rheinmetall since 2015.

FAZ (Manfred Schäfers, 20.11.2009): Entwicklungshilfe muss sich nicht überflüssig machen.

According to Niebel, his ministry was not a “world social agency” (Herter 2010). An example: In 2001, the Kaweri coffee plantation opened in Uganda with investments from the German company Neumann (NKG). The NKG demanded that the land be uninhabited. Residents should be resettled with compensation. Resettlement was left to the Ugandan government, which forcibly displaced 2,000 people. When the expellees started a campaign against this with the NGO FIAN, Niebel took a protective stance in front of the German company in 2013: “The Kaweri plantation is the largest German investment in Uganda and has the attention and goodwill of the German government” (Die Zeit, August 13th, 2013). 2013). At the end of 2019, the Ugandan state offered the displaced persons compensation (FIAN, February 17, 2020).

*FIAN International (2019): Human Rights violations in the context of Kaweri  coffee Plantation/Neumann Kaffee Gruppe in Mubende/Uganda.

Annual report of the Governor General of the Belgian colony of the Congo.

Nzula et al. 1979 quoted in Henry Bernstein (2000): “Colonialism, Capitalism, Development.” In: Tim Allen and Alan Thomas (Eds): Poverty and Development into the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 264.

European colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America economically exploited people and their labour, together with nature and its resources. In addition to direct enslavement and the compulsion to work (e.g. through the introduction of taxes), colonisers always tried to morally justify forced labour, e.g. as character forming. Still today, many people are forced into quasi-slave labour, both in Europe (e.g. 145.000 people in Italy in 2016, GSI) as well as in Asia (e.g. 3, 8 million people in China in 2016, GSI). Conditions in US prisons are also dire. For example, working conditions
for inmates in the former Louisiana plantation known today as “Anglola”
are little better than slave labour (peopeoplesworld.org, May 4th, 2018).

*Henry Bernstein (2000): Colonialism, Capitalism, Development. In: Tim Allen / Alan Thomas (Hrsg.): Poverty and Development into the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, S. 241–270.
*GSI Global Slavery Index (2016): Country reports

Chief Powhatan, 1545-1618, whose actual name was Wahunsenacawh, leader of the Algonquian-speaking Native Americans in what is now Virginia, where British colonists landed in the late 16th century.

Howard Zinn (1980/2003: 13).

The historian Howard Zinn wrote about how Native Americas in Virginia were initially friendly to European settlers, with some Europeans even living with them during a famine in 1610. However, Zinn also described violent retaliation on the part of the British: ‘When one of them [Native Americans] stole a small silver cup, Grenville [the leader of the British settlers] burned an entire village’ (Zinn 2003: 12). According to historian Edmund Morgan, the Europeans’ strategy was to exterminate the Native Americans. As the latter knew the area better and were difficult to make contact with, the English held sham peace negotiations, allowed the Native Americans to settle, and then killed as many as possible, burning their crops just before harvest (Morgan 2003: 100). Chief Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough led the resistance against the British.

*Glen Sean Coulthard (2014): Red Skin, White Masks. Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
*Edmund S. Morgan (1975/2003): American Slavery, American Freedom. New York: Norton.
*Howard Zinn (1980/2003): A People‘s History of the United States. 1492 – present. New York: Harper Collins.

John Ball (1335-1381) was an English priest who was excommunicated. He fought for social justice and was the intellectual leader of the English Peasants’ Revolt. Arrested several times, he was once freed by farmers. Ball was executed (hanged, disembowelled and quartered) by order of King Richard II.

R. B. Dobson (1983: 371) quoted by Silvia Federici (2004: 35)

However, there was resistance to feudal rule and the power of the church throughout Europe. The 1324 uprisings took place not only in England, from where the quote comes, but also in Ypres and Bruges (Federici 2004: 34), and their demand was for a social position equal to that of the nobility. In Bremen, too, peasants refused to pay their taxes and were punished by the bishop in 1234 (ibid.: 34). In Florence in 1379, textile workers seized control of the city and set up a workers’ government which was defeated in 1382 (ibid.: 43). In most cases, insurgents did not limit themselves to demanding better working or living conditions, but aimed for the creation of a completely new social order (ibid.: 46).

*Silvia Federici (2004): Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Automedia.

Calle 13 is a Puerto Rican rap duo known for the song Atrévete-te-te! (“Dare yourself!”). The band consists of René Pérez Joglar and his half-brother Eduardo José Cabra Martínez. Their songs are often political and critique US policy towards Latin American countries, amongst other things.

Calle 13 (2010): Latinoamérica. In: Entren Los Que Quieran. Sony Music Latin.

Many social and indigenous movements in Latin America have long opposed privatisation and the sale of natural resources. In Bolivia, for example, water rights were sold to the US company Bechtel. Prices rose by 300 percent and people were even banned from collecting rainwater. Resistance against this attempt at water privatisation was successful despite the great repression it was met with.

*Democracy Now (05.10.2006): Bolivian Activist Oscar Olivera on Bechtel’s Privatization of Rainwater and why Evo Morales should Remember the Ongoing Struggle over Water.

Hwang Kum-Ju (born ca. in 1920) was a Korean forced into prostitution in a brothel for Japanese soldiers. She had been promised work in a factory, but was instead deported to Manchuria.

Quoted in Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro; recherche international e.V. (2008: 111). Original from Hwang Kum-Ju (2002/2003): Script for the Korean Council for the rehabilitation for victims of violence during WWII as well as Interviews on 20.10.2002 and 03.12.2003, Seoul. The Year (2002) is an approximation.

Forced migration in Asia is often associated with Japanese colonial rule. By 1910, Korea had been fully colonised by Japan, with colonial rule ending in 1945 with the end of World War II and Japan’s surrender. During World War II, Korean women were abducted and enslaved as forced prostitutes for the Japanese army. According to estimates by Asian NGOs, between 1932 and 1945 the Imperial Japanese Army abducted a total of 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, East Timor and Indonesia and sent them to work in military brothels. In 1991, the Korean Council was formed to investigate the sexual abuse of conscripted women by the Japanese military. In 1993, the Japanese government apologised, but rejected claims for compensation (Rheinische Journalistinnenbüro & recherche international e.V. 2008: 109).

*Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro & recherche international e.V. (2008): Die dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Unterrichtsmaterialien zu einem vergessenen Kapitel der Geschichte.
*Björn Jensen (2015): Forgotten Sex Slaves – Comfort Women in the Philippines. Dokumentarfilm, 46min.

Hendrik Witbooi, actually ǃNanseb ǀGabemab (ca. 1830-1905) was, from the end of 1888, the captain of the Orlam people, the Witbooi, who were related to the Nama.

Der Spiegel 13/1985.

Theodor Gotthilf Leutwein was commander of the Kaiserliche Schutztruppe and governor of German South West Africa. Hornkranz (in today’s Namibia) is known for a colonial massacre which took place in 1893 in which 80 Witbooi fighters were killed and 40 women and children abducted under Leutwein’s command. Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi is viewed and celebrated as the first African leader to mount armed resistance against the German colonialists. What is interesting in this exchange of letters is that in Leutwein’s replies, those affected by colonisation are held equally responsible for the brutality that was part and parcel of colonial conquest. Leutwein describes Witbooi’s “stubbornness” as irrational behaviour that endangered peace in the German protectorate. In this way, Witbooi is also held responsible for the war and murder of the Witboois. Then as now, the strategy pursued was one that sought to preserve prosperity and peace in Germany at the expense of the Global South. Even today, resistance to colonial rule is hardly discussed in local history books and is therefore not given the value it deserves. Instead, the fairy tale of equal trade relations and voyages of discovery is still being told. Witbooi died in 1904, in fighting against German colonial power.

*Reinhard Koesseler (2007): Genocide, Apology and Reparation – the linkage between images of the past in Namibia and Germany.

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) was a German Marxist, women’s rights activist and KPD parliamentarian until 1933. She was a gifted orator and arch enemy of Paul von Hindenbrug, then President of the Reich, whom she described as a servant of capital. She died in exile in Moscow.

Clara Zetkin (1924): Die Intellektuellenfrage. In: Protokoll. Fünfter Kongress der Kommunistischen Internationale, Bd. II, S. 946-982.

The workers’ movement put pressure on the German imperial government, especially in the 19th century. Chancellor Bismarck introduced reforms and improvements for workers in an attempt to placate them. As a Marxist, for Zetkin there was a connection between the prosperity and emancipation of workers in the Global North and the exploitation of workers in the Global South. Marxist historians like Silvia Federici and Walter Rodney further claim that the industrial revolution in Europe would not have been possible without slavery and the plantation system in the Global South, the enslaved workers and export-oriented production (Federici 2014: 129, German edition). Rodney described European workers as being bribed with “colonial profits” (Rodney 1972).

*Walter Rodney (1972): How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
*Maria Mies (1986): Patriachy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Women in the International Division of Labour. London & New York: Zed Books.
*Silvia Federici (2014): Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Automedia (auch in deutscher Übersetzung)
*Anne McClintock (1995): Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.

Interview partner:in Iman in an article by Alisha Qamar (2020). Alisha Qamar is a medical student in Bochum and an activist in the field of human rights, including with “The ONE Campaign”.

Thieme.de (Alisha Qamar), 12.08.2020:“Black Lives Matter – Racism in the healthcare sector“

Due to colonial continuities, Black people are still inadequately considered in medical care today and often receive poorer care.

At that time, terrible acts of enslavement were justified and justified by the fact that black skin was supposedly thicker and more resistant to pain than white skin. Medicine is still influenced by this idea today. The scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” from the USA published an article on the unequal treatment of black patients back in 2016, stating that the majority of doctors prescribe less pain medication to black patients than to white patients (57% to 74%). The study by Staton et al examined the different perceptions of pain among patients by doctors. In the study, the underestimation of pain felt by black patients was 47%, compared to 33.5% for white patients. On average, black patients wait longer in the emergency room and their concerns are not taken seriously. (Thieme 12.08.2020)

BIPOC are also exposed to stigmatizing diagnoses, such as the so-called Mongolian spot or Mediterranean disease. These stigmatizing diagnoses can sometimes have fatal or health-damaging consequences, as sometimes serious clinical pictures can be detected too late and preventive measures can only be taken inadequately(Ärztezeitung, 21.04.2015). This question of representation is closely linked to the fundamental issue of global inequality in the distribution of medical care, which has become particularly evident during the coronavirus pandemic.

*The New England Journal of Medicine (LaShyra Nolen), June 25, 2020:“How Medical Education Is Missing the Bull’s-eye“

Chief Luther Standing Bear (1868-1939) was a chief of the Oglala Lakota (or Oglala Sioux), author and philosopher. He contributed to our understanding of indigenous cultures as holistic and respectful of nature.

First People: Chief Luther Standing Bear

It was not only in relation to the Americas, from where this quote comes, that Europeans developed the idea of nature as an unknown, and of people and ways of life as wild. This quote suggests that this was by no means the case for the Lakota Sioux, to which Standing Bear belonged. Standing Bear continued: ‘He knew that a man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence’ (ibid.). As Paula Gunn Allen (1979, quoted in Booth 2003) put it: ‘The land [nature] is a part of ourselves.’

*Annie L. Booth (2003): We are the Land: Native American Views of Nature. In: Selin H. (eds) Nature Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht.

The Federal Centre for Political Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb) was founded in 1952 to make a German contribution to education in the service of democracy. It is part of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The bpb creates and publishes materials, organises events and promotes other political education institutions.

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2007): Afrika Verstehen Lernen. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, p. 148.

This quote is based on the colonial and racist argument that without Europeans, Africans would have no education or health systems, nor any form of infrastructure. Behind this lies the idea that Africa did not have complex social structures before colonisation. This logic also justifies “civilizing” colonial intervention from outside. By contrasting the supposedly positive with the negative, the bpb conceals the fact that colonial infrastructure was created primarily for the exploitation of resources.

*Walter Rodney (1972): How Europe underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
*Chimananda Ngozi Adichie (2011): Narratives of Europe. Stories that matter.
*David Harvey (2000): Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils.

Paul Mecheril (born 1962) is a German education researcher. He researches education in the migration society from a racism-critical perspective.

Paul Mecheril et al (2010): Bachelor | Master: Migrationspädagogik. Weinheim: Beltz, p. 77ff.

Mecheril criticises intercultural competence as diversity management from a dominant perspective. Within it, it is considered desirable that (usually white) people acquire so-called intercultural competence through further training and stays abroad. Paradoxically, however, migrants and people of colour are usually not recognised as having these intercultural skills. Why is it that migrant strategies for surviving in a racist society are not understood as intercultural competence?

*Paul Mecheril et al (2021): Regimes of Belonging – Schools – Migrations: Teaching in (Trans)National Constellations. Wiesbaden: Springer.

Germany, Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Martin Luther is considered a radical reformer of the medieval Protestant church. His posting of the 95 theses on the castle church in Wittenberg, in which he questioned the infallibility of Catholic authority, led to the division of the church. Luther’s theologically based anti-Judaism branded the Jews as the worst enemies of Christianity who necessarily incurred God’s wrath. Parts of his resentment were reactivated in the modern anti-Semitism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

On the Jews and their Lies, first edition Wittenberg 1543, 92.

Hungary, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)
Herzl is considered a central figure in modern Zionism. He was born in Pest, today’s Budapest, in 1860 to an assimilated Jewish family. With his work Der Judenstaat, published in 1896.

Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat, Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question, Leipzig / Vienna 1896, 12-22.

Attempting to find a modern solution to the Jewish question, Herzl reacted to the apparently anti-Semitic trial against Artillery Captain Alfred Dreyfus that had taken place in Paris just two years earlier. Within the Zionist movement, Herzl’s writing advanced to become a pioneering vision of a Jewish state to be created in Palestine.

Theodor_Herzl_-_Der_Judenstaat.pdf (literaturdownload.at)

Mary Clarke, (date of birth unknown – 1984) was a Koori Aboriginal activist. The quote comes from a speech recorded at a meeting with journalists. The meeting was organised to speak out against the eviction of a woman and her children of multiracial decent from their home in Framlingham Settlement, Victoria, Australia.

Original source: Newspaper Melbourse Argus (22.02.1951). Reprinted in: Jan Chritchett (1998): Untold Stories: Memories and Lives of Victorian Kooris. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, p. 4.

Australia was one of Great Britain’s settler colonies. In 1770, James Cook claimed eastern Australia for the British Crown. He also put forward the idea of a prison colony to relieve overcrowded British prisons. In 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip landed in Sydney with 1,500 prisoners. It is estimated that between 1788 and 1900 up to 90% of Australia’s indigenous people were killed by introduced diseases, land dispossession and violent conflict. There were mass shootings, people were thrown in groups off cliffs or offered land poisoned with arsenic or other substances (Behrendt 2012: 274). George Reid, a politician from the Free Trade Party, said in an election speech in 1903 that ‘we should have a white Australia’ (he became Prime Minister in 1904). Forging a white Australia was a key political goal not only for him, however, but for European settlers in general over the centuries. The protests of the Aboriginal population also go back a long way. In 1938 a silent march was held to commemorate 150 years of land grabbing and colonization (creativespirits.info).

*Foley, Gary (1999): ATSIC: Flaws in the Machine. The Koori History Website.
*John Harris (2003): Hiding the Bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Australia. In: Aboriginal History Journal. Canberra: Australian Centre for Indigenous History, S. 79-104.
*Larissa Behrendt (2013): Indigenous Australia for Dummies. Canberra: International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, S. 53f. (Rezension)
*creativespirits.info: Aboriginal timeline: Protest.

Mohsen Lihidheb (date of birth unknown), Tunisian fisherman and artist, founder of the Museum of the Sea.

Deutschlandfunk (02.07.2020): Geflüchtete in Tunesien
Die Toten von Zarzis.

Every year, thousands of people make their way from Africa to Europe to flee from poverty, war, discrimination and climate catastrophe. During some periods up to 2,000 people arrive in Lampedusa in a single day (Der Standard, 11 May, 2021). The frequently deadly borders of Fortress Europe are made up of the Atlantic Ocean around the Canary Islands, the Greek border at the Evros river and, above all, the Mediterranean Sea. People on the move are used by politicians for geostrategic purposes (Deutschlandfunk, 29 December, 2021), pushed back by coast guards (Graf 2021), exploited by farmers (globalslaveryindex.org) and interned in camps (Arte TV, 1 December, 2021). But there are also solidarity initiatives and self-organisation by migrants and individuals like Mohsen Lihidheb, who draw attention to the structures of exploitation and push for change to the migration regime.

*Der Standard (11.05.2021): Fluchtbewegung im Mittelmeer: Der jährliche Teufelskreis.
*Deutschlandfunk (29.12.2021): Geflüchtete an der polnisch-belarusischen Grenze. Tote im Schnee – und ein grünes Licht der Hoffnung.
*Laura Graf (2021): Pushbacks dokumentieren. Ungehorsame Beobachtungen von Grenzgewalt auf der Balkanroute.
*Global Slavery Index (2018): Country Study Germany.
*Arte (2021): Lager der Schande. Europas Libyen Deal.

Anonymous interviewee, Andean highlands of Peru, interview by Susanne Schultz.

Schultz, Susanne (2006, in German): Hegemonie, Gouvernementalität, Biomacht. Reproduktive Risiken und die Transformation internationaler Bevölkerungspolitik. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, p. 11.

Between 1995 and 1998, under the Fujimori government in Peru (1990-2000), around 300,000 women and men were sterilised, especially in poor districts and among the indigenous population. While many women initially used the programme as a means of voluntary sterilisation, it gradually became a coercive measure. International population control programmes have long deployed and continue to deploy various means to try to achieve maximum demographic impact. For example, by sterilising as many women as possible or by inducing them to use contraceptive methods (preferably long-term), be it through “incentives”, i.e. gifts via quotas in the health system or, as shown in this quote, through direct coercion and deception.

*The Quipu Project.

Franz Müntefering (born 1940) is a German Social Democrat. From 2005 to 2007 he was Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs.

Quote: Katharina Schuler (11.01.2010): Hartz IV: Arbeiten fürs Essen. In: Die ZEIT.
Picture: Wikimedia

With the introduction of a new unemployment benefit (Arbeitslosengeld II, also called Hartz IV) in Germany, many unemployed people were exposed to severe control and repression. According to the unemployed workers’ initiative Basta!, the widespread ‘lie of the lazy unemployed’ plays into the hands of those who benefit from underpaid work on the one hand, and the intensification of everyday work on the other.

*Wilhelm Heitmeyer; Kirsten Edrikat (2008): Die Ökonomisierung des Sozialen. Folgen für „Überflüssige“ und „Nutzlose“. In: Wilhelm Heitmeyer (Hrsg.): Deutsche Zustände, Band 6, S. 55-72.
*Guardian (01.01.2013): „’Hartz reforms’: how a benefits shakeup changed Germany“

Palestine, Gregory of Nyssa (around 335/340 – after 394)
Nyssa was born in Caesarea in the 4th century. He was ordained bishop of Nyssa in 372 and enjoyed the reputation of a saint and doctor of the church in the Orthodox Church.

Gregor von Nyssa, Patrologie grecque de Migne, 46,685; quoted in Leon Poliakov, History of Antisemitism, Vol. 1 From antiquity to the Crusades, Worms 1979, 21.

His doctrine of God became known primarily through the merging of Christian and Platonic thought. His main work, the “Great Catechetical Prayer” emphasizes the correctness of Christian teaching towards Jews and Gentiles.

Gregor von Nyssa – Wikipedia