At the time I am writing this, Donald Trump is getting a lot
of flak for imposing tariffs on allied countries, skipping the G7 environmental
meeting, and treating “dictators” like Kim Jong Un with more respect than
Justin Trudeau and Theresa May.
Trump, of course, deserves all the criticism directed at
him. But is a man who pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement skipping a talk
shop on ecology any worse than a known rapist attending a meeting on women’s
empowerment? Is imposing tariffs on allies any worse than the entire G7- via
the Trade In Services Agreement – imposing a marketisation of public services
around the globe? Respecting Kim that much different than cozying up to
Netanyahu and Mohammad Bin Salman, both engaged in active ethnic cleansing and
genocide?
The G7 hates Trump, not because his policies are much
different from theirs. On the contrary. It should now be obvious to everyone
that the promise of corporate-led globalization is not the breaking down of
barriers, not “free” trade or “free” movement, but, as a Quebec demonstrator
put it nearly 18 years ago, the enclosure of bodies, hearts, and minds.
Trump’s trade barriers exist alongside the walls separating
Palestinians from Israelis, the chain-link fences segregating detained children
from “legal” Americans, the deadly salt water between refugees and Salvini’s
Italy, and the police barricades separating those protesting the G7 from the
leaders in their suits and ties.
Trump’s racism, his “othering,” his creation of different
classes of people in the minds of his supporters, is no different from the
sexist violence of the business delegates – many of whom doubtlessly have
attended events like the notorious “President’s Club Dinner” in Britain. It comes
from the same basic mentality as Erdogan’s creation of “terrorists” out of the
YPG and YPJ in Afrin, or Macron’s division of the French people into “slackers”
and entrepreneurial ambassadors of his dystopian “start-up nation.”
Today, the final enclosure – the final walls- are being
built. In the words of the Invisible Committee -we are capital, not just in the old Marxist sense, but our
thoughts, our movements, and our subconscious have all been monetised, analysed
by companies like Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and Google, and sold to the
highest corporate bidder. There is no identifiable aspect of human life,
thought or the earth that has not been or is not being currently transformed
into a product under the logic of capitalism.
The G7 appears like an internationalist project, when it is
the opposite. It is the slicing and dicing of ecosystems, nations, peoples,
families, bodies, and even genes into fragments of coal to be burned in the
furnace of industrial capitalism.
Which is why it is heartening to see so many people continue
to protest the event, in the face of militarized police, media gaslighting, and
repression. Not just in Quebec, not just in Canada, but in the ZAD, in trees
blocking the Mariner East 2 pipeline and Bayou Bridge pipeline, in underground
meetings in the city of Moscow, and in the commune of Rojava.
Recently, a manifesto has been making the rounds online
stressing the creation of in-person struggles, occupations and connections for
a better world, and indeed, a future world at all. While summit-hopping may
seem like a hoary exercise to many, the relationships built, the lessons
learned, and the media attention given to such events spread these ideas and their
importance around the world. At this moment, images of burning flags, menacing police
with AR-15s, red smoke, and colourful protest signs, show the signs of a struggle
that is, unlike the G7 itself, truly international and truly human.