Orville Taylor | Ukraine: Jah Jah knows

On the 19th day of February the troops and tanks finally crossed to the other side of the border. The head of the invaded state knew it was going to happen. He begged the international community to act; but the world did little to stop it. Exasperated, “aggression had been committed in violation of international treaties”. He continued, “I pray to Almighty God that He may spare nations the terrible sufferings that have just been inflicted on my people.”

This was not Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine. It was Haile Selassie I in 1936, who had been pleading with the powerful nations since 1935, when the Italian fascist government began unprovoked aggression against Ethiopia. An invasion that began in October 1935 and ended in February, it is remarkably congruent with the current timeline from October 2021 to February 2022. Jah Jah complained about the nonchalance as his people suffered, “my delegates address to the League of Nations had remained without any answer”.

My Rastafari brethren, who ‘sight up’ Selassie I as God incarnate, can easily understand the prophetic words His Majesty chanted in June 1936. The Man said, “I decided to come myself to give Europe a warning of the doom that awaits it, if it should bow before the accomplished fact.” Because it did not directly affect them domestically or they were too keen on their own self-interests, or perhaps something more insidious, the skin colour of the victims, little was done.

In many ways this enabled Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini who, along with his evil ally, Adolf Hitler, perpetrated some of the worst atrocities in the modern history of man. Fully empowered because of the failure of the greatest nations on earth to act decisively, the latter systematically murdered around six million Jews. I will not countenance the current fracas surrounding Whoopi Goldberg and her comments whether Jews are a race or ethnicity. However, what matters at that time was that for some strange reason, despite the obvious phenotype of the Europeans who self-identified as Jews, Hitler saw them as a separate ‘race’ from his superior Aryan race.

BEFUDDLED

Looking retrospectively at history one can only be befuddled, because early decisive action by the Western democracies could have stopped it much earlier. Hitler’s racist agenda was well known when he hosted the Olympics in 1936. America, France and England should have boycotted that dumbshow. In fact, it is often not publicised that the then Soviet Union had signed a surreptitious non-aggression agreement with Hitler, which made him believe he could have invaded Poland without reprisal from Moscow. The point is here that all one needs for evil to succeed is for good men to either be passive or compliant. Thus said John Stuart Mill in 1867, two years after the American Civil War and assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

When the Germans invaded Poland in literally a week after the agreement, the response by the British and French was admittedly swift, though inadequate, as they declared war against a Nazi Germany, whose military had been in rehearsal for years. Had America not literally dropped arms but had dropped arms, Hitler would have been made to fight in the past tense. In 1941 when Japan, the next part of the ‘triumvate of evil’, bombed American ships in Pearl Harbour, it was essentially because the US had never sent the proper message to that triad.

History is an excellent teacher, when taught by truthful historians, and Jah Jah was right. Truth is though, the America, which could have saved millions of Jewish lives, had its own issues to handle domestically.

A nation divided among itself is weak, and in the 1930s to early 1940s it was not only the lateral divisions based on race as America remained terribly segregated. Rather, the chasm between rich and poor was also very wide with a beleaguered President Franklyn D. Roosevelt remarking that “The forces of ‘organised money’ are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.” At the same time, just as it was in the Anglophone Caribbean and culminating in Jamaica, labour militancy was on the rise. After several major strikes between 1936 and 1938, more than eight million additional workers joined unions by the beginning of the war.

NOT DIFFERENT

It is not different today. During the Trump presidency, the fault lines in America became the sharpest they have been in three decades. With an administration that downplayed the power, aspirations and threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he more than got the memo that he might be untouchable. Some warm bodies up north failed to show Putin how strong Uncle Sam is.

His Majesty reminded us in 1963 as he addressed the UN, “My words went unheeded, but history testifies to the accuracy of the warning that I gave in 1936.” His words are no less prophetic today.

Hear the man! “… two particular issues ... are of deep concern to all men: disarmament and the establishment of true equality among men.” Funds dedicated to the arms race could be “devoted to the amelioration of man’s state”. Finally for him, equality lay as the linchpin of true peace.

You know the rest, as popularised by Bob Marley. We will have wars until inequality, inequity, racism and all forms of discrimination are greatly minimised with the powerful taking the reins.

The greatest nation on earth must fix this and lead; otherwise Putin will not be the only one who rises.

Rastafari liveth.

Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.