Shahid Bolsen on Separatism, Revolution & Empires

You know, there's a comment that I've gotten a few times, on the videos that I've done about Europe and how there's the demographic decline, and there's the the fact that the owners and controllers of global financialized capital are turning their attention away from Europe and looking to the East, and how the future of Europe is quite dim compared to its recent history. Its recent history being already, an anomaly in its overall history. Meaning, the brief period post World War two of, peace and security and prosperity and stability and all of that, that's an anomaly in European history. The future looks much less like that seventy, eighty years of history. And it's gonna start to look a lot more like the overwhelming majority of European history, which is, a lot of deprivation, a lot of strife, a lot of war, lot of conflict, poverty, and feudalism.

That's basically what the future of Europe looks like. And so I've gotten comments on those videos where people have said, well, no wonder The UK wanted to leave. You know, pro Brexit comments. And whenever I see those comments, it always makes me remember a conversation that I had a very, long time ago, over twenty years ago, with my then boss at an Islamic organization that I worked for in The US. At that time, there was the, there was the war in Chechnya.

And the the Checheny and Mujahideen who were wanting, to separate from Russia. And, of course, back then, you know, I'm young and energetic and zealous, and I was all for it. You know? I was all for the war in Chechnya. Not the war, but the the independence and the separation of Chechnya from Russia.

Russia is, you know, this, evil, atheistic country. And Chechnya is Muslim, and they wanna be Muslim. They wanna have Sharia, and so they should be free and independent. And the conversation that I had with this brother who was my boss really made me question the the idea of separatism because this this is something that was going on at that time and it's something that's going on until now in many Muslim places where Muslims are saying we want to be free, we want to be independent, we want to have our our own law, our own government, and so on. Sovereignty, autonomy.

You have Mindanao in The Philippines, you had at that time, not so much now, but at that time you had Aceh in Indonesia, Xinjiang with the Uighur and China and so on. Kurdistan, you know. And at that time, I was in favor of all of these things. I was in favor of all of these separatist movements. But the conversation that I had with him made me rethink all of that because at the end of the day, what sort of separation are you going to really have?

At the end of the day, you're going to be a tiny, weak, and economically dependent, little state statelet. Where's the independence? You're not really gonna have any independence. If Xinjiang, for example, if Xinjiang separates from China, say they give them the independence, what benefit will that bring you? You still don't have independence.

You'll be still completely dependent on China, on Beijing. Except now, anything that they give you, any financing, any funding, any aid, that they give you comes at a cost. It's not their responsibility to give you aid. It's not their responsibility to, build your infrastructure. It's not their responsibility, to provide for you in any way.

And the same goes you know, that's just an example, but the same goes for any state that wants to be independent. You're not thinking far enough ahead, and it's just like with The UK. The Brexit was a separatist movement. Brexit was a separatist movement, wanting to divide and separate The UK from the body politic of Europe. Europe was essentially like the Soviet Union.

The EU is essentially like the Soviet Union. It's a confederation of states under a central government of Brussels, and that is the problem that all of the the local governments, the national governments, that's the problem that they have. That's why Brexit had an argument to make because we're surrendering our sovereignty to Brussels. Okay. And if you don't surrender your sovereignty to Brussels, who will you be surrendering it to?

Because you're not really strong enough to go it alone. I know that's hard for The UK to hear, but when there's something called The United States, an economic superpower, a military superpower that has no real rivals in the world, you're gonna fall under the sphere of influence of somebody who's bigger than you. If you're not under the sphere of influence of Europe, you will be inextricably under the sphere of influence of The United States, which is what has happened. The UK separated from Europe and it did not become independent. It became a client of The United States.

I mean, it already was to a certain extent, to a great extent, but now forget about it. Now it's being ravaged by The United States. It has no power whatsoever. It has no recourse. It has no shield of any kind, And Europe owes them nothing.

Europe doesn't have to do anything to support The UK. That's just The UK, but the point is that all of these separatist movements have to deal with that problem. All of these separatist movements have to deal with the fact that if you're not big enough on your own, if you're a if you are a periphery state of a larger state or confederation of states and you go out on your own, you're not gonna be on your own. You're gonna be you're gonna belong to somebody else. You're gonna be dependent and reliant and subordinate to somebody else.

See, is a problem with separatist movements and the same problem in the thinking applies to the, like, revolutionary movements. The the movements, like, say, that wanna topple the government in Sudan or that wanna topple the government in Egypt or in Syria or in Libya or or or or. Your aspirations for your country are not just aspirations for your country, but they're aspirations about the external world, meaning your hopes and dreams rely upon you being able to dictate to the external world how it deals with your country. Or in other words, your your hope is based on the idea that your country can somehow proceed as if it is in a vacuum and there are no external powers that have interests in your country. So for example, if your country has some oil, like there's some, oil and gas in Xinjiang for example.

So if you go independent, if you separate from China or again it doesn't have to be Xinjiang, it could be any country. If you have some kind of natural resources and you separate from the larger country that you are currently incorporated into, you will be negotiating with corporations whose budget eclipses your GDP. You're going to be negotiating contracts with companies that could buy your entire country many times over. In other words, you have no negotiating power. Terms will be dictated to you, and you will agree to those terms ostensibly to protect your independence.

That's the irony. You will agree to the terms that are dictated to you and tell yourself that you're agreeing to those terms willingly, voluntarily, and, optimistically for the purpose of securing your nation's, economic sovereignty and political independence. When the fact that you have no choice but to accept the terms that are dictated to you means that you have already completely surrendered your economic sovereignty and political independence. So countries have to think about this, Yani. Governments have to think about this.

Separatist movements, you have to think about this. What is your future really gonna look like if you're independent? What is your future really gonna look like if you separate from this much larger power that currently maybe is in your mind or in reality oppressive to you, is tyrannical, or what have you. But how are you actually going to improve your situation by being separated from them? Are you going to actually improve your situation by separating from them, or will you just be at mercy and become prey for other large, powerful, tyrannical superpowers?

You have to do that calculation because the independence that you will achieve through separation, is more more likely is going to just be enslavement to somebody else. I mean, there's a lot to say about this really because the whole nature of we're stuck in the thinking about borders. We're stuck in the thinking about nation states and national, boundaries. And so you want to be independent, meaning you want to draw your own borders and you want that those borders to delineate your country, which is independent and sovereign. But actual power doesn't conform to the borders.

Actual real existing power doesn't conform to borders. There are it's sort of a porous spheres of influence. So the empire, an empire doesn't have borders now, and it doesn't belong to a nation. It can it it it is wherever it has influence. An empire rules wherever it has influence, regardless of whether or not they have troops there, regardless of whether or not they have, their citizens there, and so on.

They have their companies there. They have influence there, economic influence, political influence, geostrategic influence. So there are different realms of power. There's the the sort of now what is now sort of an archaic version of one realm, which is an actual physical dominion, physical boundaries of a state. That's one version of an entity.

But power doesn't operate like that anymore. Power isn't confined by borders. Power is expansive and it moves and it floats above borders. So real existing sort of empires. Like for example, we talk about American imperialism.

Except for a few examples, I mean, except for the fact that they do have military bases everywhere. But we don't consider every place that has a military base, a US military base, to be under American occupation and to be, you know, part of the American empire and American imperialism. We think about American imperialism as countries that are under the undue influence of The United States culturally, economically, politically, and of course, militarily. But it doesn't have the the the American empire doesn't have borders. It's not like in the old days with the British empire where they could say, we we we have India, we have this country, we have this country, we have this country, or the Dutch or the French, or the Spanish.

You have spheres of influence, that sometimes overlap with other spheres of influence. The the whole concept of empires is different now than what it used to be, But the actual power that empires today have, particularly the empire of capital, is greater than any empire that preceded it. So, for example, I mean, continuing on this same train of thought, the Khilafa as an Islamic empire was going to be dismantled one way or the other. I mean, we can all be mad at Ataturk and blame him even though, practically speaking, much of the Muslim world had already been colonized by the time did what he did. It was almost a by dismantling or by announcing the end of the it was just sort of formalizing what had already taken place on the ground.

And that was something that was bound to happen because with in the modern world, empires don't function the way they used to. The British Empire was dismantled, French dismantled, Dutch dismantled. Every empire was gone in the twentieth century By the old definition and the old understanding of what an empire is, all of them ended in the twentieth century. The the physical manifestation of empire ended for everybody in the twentieth century, not just the Muslims. Every empire, every traditionally defined empire ended in the twentieth century.

But they continued to exist. British influence continued and continues to exist in its previous colonies. French influence continues to exist in its previous colonies. Muslim influence obviously continues to exist in all of the countries that were under the Khilafa. We're all still Muslim Islam is still our religion, our culture has remained Islamic, our belief, our practices, and so on.

Our law remains in terms of the law that that individuals adhere to. There's the state law, there's the law that's on the books, and even in most Muslim countries, the laws that are on the books say on paper, that they are inspired by or based upon their foundation is the sharia. But even without that, what the people themselves follow is the sharia as much as they can just like they always did. So functionally, not much has changed. It has just evolved in the same way that every empire has evolved to where it's now no longer about, you know, an official sort of formalized this territory belongs to us, this territory belongs to them, this territory belongs to us, and so on.

It's where you have influence. I mean, the Muslim empire just evolved like everybody else's empire. We had the formal statement that the Khilafa is over, but it was already over functionally, and it was bound to be over. That's the way things evolved in the twentieth century. But the spheres of influence remain a more real form of empire and imperialism for good or for bad.

And so, going back to the original thought, in separatism, in a separatist movement, how separate can you be? Because when you separate from this one, you're gonna be joined to that one. One. Well, that one's gonna be joined to you one way or the other because you don't actually have the resources, the power, the economic, military, political strength to actually be, alone and dictate your terms to the world. And when whenever there's a revolutionary movement or a separatist movement that says we want you know, either way, it's the same in a way.

Separatist movement and a and a and a revolutionary movement within a country. It means we wanna overthrow the current ruling system and have a new ruling system. So a a separatist movement says we wanna have a ruling system other than the central government over there, and a revolutionary movement says we want to have a new, government as opposed to the one we have now. So it's kind of the same thing. And either way, in both of those, scenarios, the people who are pushing for that are not considering the sphere of influence that their country is in and will remain in after their separation, after their separatist movement succeeds or after their revolution succeeds.

You're still going to be within that same sphere of influence that you are now.