With Nuclear War Haunting The Horizon: Reflections on Western Civilization's Relentless Cruelty

Settler Colonialism & Horror... GAZA

The Resurgence of Evil: Reflections on Western Civilization's Relentless Cruelty-Settler Colonialism & Horror... GAZA

This morning, I find myself confronting a truth that has been gnawing at my consciousness for months, years perhaps—the recognition that the evil I thought belonged to history's distant shadows has returned, manifesting with horrifying clarity in the streets of Gaza. The genocidal machine that once ground through Europe's Jews, that once blessed the Spanish Inquisition's fires, that once sanctified Cortés's brutal conquest of the Aztec Empire—this same machinery of Western civilization's darkest impulses operates today with American backing, American weapons, and American diplomatic protection.

The numbers are staggering in their brutality. As of July 2025, over 55,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, with women and children comprising 70% of the verified fatalities. The United Nations has documented that 1,410 Gazan families have been completely erased from existence. This is not merely warfare—it is systematic annihilation, carried out with the precision that Western civilization has perfected over centuries of colonial exploitation and racial violence.

Yet what perhaps disturbs me most profoundly is not just the scale of this genocide, but America's enthusiastic complicity in it. The United States has provided Israel with a staggering $17.9 billion in military aid since October 2023, making this the highest annual military aid package in history. American taxpayers have funded the very bombs that have obliterated entire neighborhoods, the artillery shells that have targeted hospitals and schools, the weapons systems that have turned Gaza into what Human Rights Watch calls "inches closer to extermination". The Biden administration approved over one hundred military aid transfers to Israel, expediting weapon deliveries from strategic stockpiles. The Trump administration has now promised another $4 billion in fast-tracked military assistance.

This is not aberrant behavior—it is the logical continuation of a pattern that has defined Western civilization for half a millennium. The same extractive, exploitative mindset that drove European colonization across the globe, that justified the systematic murder of indigenous peoples, that built empires on the bones of the conquered, now operates through the machinery of American hegemony.

Consider the historical continuum: The Spanish Inquisition, lasting 350 years, resulted in the persecution of over 400,000 people, with estimates of 30,000 executed. The Inquisition's methods—torture, public humiliation, systematic dehumanization—were not mere medieval barbarism but calculated instruments of social control and religious purification. When Tomás de Torquemada assumed his role as Grand Inquisitor in 1483, he oversaw what historians describe as "extreme violence" and "public executions," creating an "environment of fear and oppression". The Auto-da-fé ceremonies were theatrical spectacles of state power, designed to terrorize populations into submission.

The pattern repeated itself across the Atlantic when Hernán Cortés encountered the Aztec Empire in 1519. The Spanish conquest was not merely military victory but systematic cultural annihilation. The alliance-building, the manipulation of indigenous rivalries, the introduction of devastating diseases—all served the primary objective of resource extraction and territorial control. The Spanish colonial system that emerged was designed, as one scholar notes, to "repatriate the profits to the so-called mother country" through "consistent expatriation of surplus produced by African labor out of African resources". This was colonialism in its purest form: the systematic transformation of human societies into resource extraction operations.

The Nazi Holocaust, which claimed six million Jewish lives through industrialized murder, represented the culmination of these same Western impulses toward systematic dehumanization and elimination. The machinery of genocide—the legal frameworks, the bureaucratic systems, the ideological justifications—all drew from centuries of Western experience in colonial violence and racial hierarchy. The Nazi crimes were not an aberration but a logical extension of Western civilization's fundamental relationship with the "Other."

What connects these historical atrocities to the current genocide in Gaza is not merely their scale or brutality, but their systematic nature and their service to larger projects of domination and control. Western civilization has consistently demonstrated a capacity for organizing violence on an industrial scale, for developing legal and ideological frameworks that justify mass murder, and for creating institutions that perpetuate these systems across generations.

The United States today serves as the primary inheritor and enforcer of this Western imperial tradition. Since 1798, America has launched 469 documented military interventions, with 251 occurring since 1991 alone. This represents an average of nearly eight military interventions per year during the post-Cold War period. The Congressional Research Service data reveals that the United States has intervened militarily in "the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single county in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent".

American interventionism follows the same extractive logic that characterized earlier phases of Western colonialism. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 established American dominance over the Western Hemisphere, leading to a century of military occupations, economic exploitation, and political manipulation throughout Latin America. The Spanish-American War of 1898 handed the United States control over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, establishing America as a colonial power. The subsequent occupations of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) demonstrated America's willingness to use military force to maintain economic and political control over sovereign nations.

The post-World War II period saw this imperial logic expand globally. American military bases now number over 730 worldwide, serving as instruments of deterrence and control. The United States has used its military and economic power to maintain global dominance even as its relative economic competitiveness has declined. This has resulted in what scholars describe as "an inherently unstable system of governance" based on force rather than consent.

The current genocide in Gaza represents this imperial logic in its most concentrated form. Israel serves as America's primary military proxy in the Middle East, receiving unprecedented levels of military aid and diplomatic protection in exchange for advancing American strategic interests in the region. The systematic destruction of Palestinian society—the demolition of civilian infrastructure, the displacement of populations, the creation of uninhabitable "buffer zones"—follows precisely the same patterns of territorial clearing and resource appropriation that characterized earlier phases of Western colonial expansion.

International legal experts have concluded that Israel's actions constitute genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The Convention defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These acts include "killing members of the group," "causing serious bodily or mental harm," and "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction". The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Yet the United States continues to provide military aid, diplomatic protection, and political cover for these genocidal actions. This is not merely passive complicity but active participation in genocide. American weapons systems are being used to target civilian populations. American intelligence assets are providing reconnaissance for military operations. American diplomatic power is being used to shield Israel from international legal consequences.

The silence of the American public in the face of this genocide is particularly troubling. Where are the mass protests that should be shutting down cities across the country? Where is the moral outrage that should be forcing political leaders to end their complicity? The absence of sustained resistance suggests that American society has become so thoroughly militarized, so completely indoctrinated in the logic of imperial violence, that even genocide fails to provoke meaningful opposition.

This brings me to the fundamental question that haunts my thoughts: Is Western civilization itself the problem? Are we witnessing not merely policy failures or moral lapses, but the logical outcomes of a cultural and political system that has consistently demonstrated its capacity for systematic violence and exploitation?

The historical record suggests that Western civilization's defining characteristics—its emphasis on racial hierarchy, its commitment to resource extraction, its development of systematic technologies of violence, its creation of legal and ideological frameworks that justify mass murder—have remained remarkably consistent across centuries. The Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the Americas, the Holocaust, and the current genocide in Gaza all reflect the same fundamental impulses toward domination and elimination.

The United States today serves as the primary vehicle for these impulses. American military and economic power underwrites systems of oppression across the globe. American weapons systems enable genocide. American diplomatic influence protects war criminals from legal consequences. American cultural and ideological hegemony normalizes violence and exploitation as necessary instruments of maintaining "order" and "stability."

Yet I find myself wondering: How many more must die before we recognize the pattern? How many more Palestinian families must be "erased from the civil registry" before we acknowledge that this is not accident but design? How many more billions of dollars in military aid must flow to genocidal regimes before we understand that this is not aberration but policy?

The evil that I thought belonged to history has returned because it never truly left. It has simply found new forms, new justifications, new technologies. The machinery of Western civilization's violence has been refined and perfected, but its essential character remains unchanged. It continues to serve the same masters, to advance the same interests, to produce the same outcomes.

This morning, as I write these words, Palestinian children are being killed with American weapons. Palestinian families are being starved with American approval. Palestinian society is being systematically destroyed with American support. This is happening not in some distant historical period but now, today, in my lifetime.

The evil has returned, and I am living in it. We all are. The question is not whether we will recognize it, but whether we will find the courage to confront it before it consumes what remains of our humanity