by Danny Haiphong
The fire that killed an unknown number of mainly Black and Asian Londoners has plunged Britain’s right-wing government deeper into crisis. Brits are connecting the capitalist dots. “Parliament has spent years enforcing austerity cuts on every public service that exists as a safety net for poor and working people,” leaving housing projects like Grenfell unsafe and unsound.
The Ghosts of Grenfell: Genocide in the Mainland of Capitalism
by Danny Haiphong
“It brings up memories of the US government's response to Hurricane Katrina during the height of the Bush II Administration.”
The now torched Grenfell Tower was once the home of hundreds of mostly African and Asian residents in the UK. It went up in flames on June 14th. Grenfell Tower was structurally unsound and neglected by the UK government. Corporate media outlets have intentionally under-reported the death toll. But the tragedy must be called what it is: an act of genocide inherent in the relations of global capitalism. As if Theresa May and the Tory establishment were not disgraceful enough, the ghosts of Grenfell will forever haunt the ruling capitalist elite in the UK.
Anyone with an ounce of humanity understands that it wouldn't have cost Parliament much at all to bring the Grenfell Tower up to fire safety standards. This would have prevented the tragedy that ensued. Instead, Parliament has spent years enforcing austerity cuts on every public service that exists as a safety net for poor and working people. Grenfell Tower was left to rot. And there wasn't enough invested in the response system to save the victims.
The UK and its allies in the corporate media are managing the facts to avoid a potential mass uprising. The BBCreports a mere 79 people have been found dead. Yet over 500 are reported “missing.” Family and community members cannot identify their location. Many close to the situation claim that they died in a fire that was caused by the negligence of the capitalist state. Reality asserts that nothing else could be true.
“Seventy-nine people have been found dead, yet over 500 are reported ‘missing.’”
The Grenfell genocide isn't the first of its kind. It brings up memories of the US government's response to Hurricane Katrina during the height of the Bush II Administration. Hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and poor residents were drowned and displaced by the storm. Reparations were never paid to the victims. Instead, the Lower 9th Ward was used as an experimental site of privatization and gentrification. Today, over ninety percent of schools in the area have been converted to privately operated charter schools.
A similar process has occurred in the case of Grenfell. Local and state officials have for years been selling "social housing" to private firms. The rental market has boomed as a result, all at the expense of the UK's poor and working class. Poor African, Arab, Asian citizens have been disproportionately affected by the UK’s austerity regime. Yet the corporate media is less interested in the broad impact of global capitalism in the UK than it is about covering up the number of people who died in the Grenfell fire.
The cover-up is necessary to the preservation of capitalism, as the fire has come in an intense period of crisis for the system's political apparatus in the US and West. Labour's Jeremy Corbyn stripped the Conservative Tories of their Parliamentary majority in the recent election precisely because of the conditions that led to Grenfell. Corbyn spoke to the sentiments of the working and poor majority who are sick of cuts to housing, healthcare, and public services generally. He also related to a growing popular distaste for the West's lust for war and genocide abroad. Grenfell has become a stark indicator that capitalism in the UK doesn't just commit genocide in far off lands. The wars have a number of domestic operations as well.
“Labour's Jeremy Corbyn stripped the Conservative Tories of their Parliamentary majority in the recent election precisely because of the conditions that led to Grenfell.”
Global capitalism itself was birthed as a Western phenomenon, now led by the US-state. Parliament has decimated the social welfare state in service of the profits of Wall Street bankers and multinational corporations based in Downing Street and Washington D.C. Poverty has only grown in the midst of plenty. That plenty has accumulated from centuries worth of wars against the oppressed around the world, which have been financed in large part by the US, UK, and their parasitic allied states. What was once the mighty British Empire has taken barking orders from the US ever since the end of World War II.
The UK Parliament and the US government have become nearly indiscernible when it comes to war policy abroad. As housing has been decimated by austerity, the UK’s military brass has been busy destroying the lives of people in Africa and Asia. Tony Blair's enthusiastic support for the criminal Iraq war left over a million Iraqi's dead. The UK has greatly assisted the US and NATO in its criminal war of regime change in Syria that intensified in 2011. And the UK has collaborated with the US in its criminal support for Rwanda's Kagame regime, which is primarily responsible for a genocide that has killed 6 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1996.
“As housing has been decimated by austerity, the UK’s military brass has been busy destroying the lives of people in Africa and Asia.”
Grenfell's ghosts join the millions of others that have been produced by the abundant mass graves of US-UK imperial policy. The struggle for justice for the hundreds of Grenfell residents who lost their lives in the fire is felt beyond the borders of the former British Empire. It is felt in the daily law enforcement murders of Black Americans in the US, which culminated in the acquittal of Philando Castile's uniformed murderer just two weeks ago. It is felt in the millions of displaced and deceased Syrians struggling to maintain their independence from US-NATO, Israeli, and Saudi-sponsored invasion. It is felt in the DPRK, Cuba, and Iran, where criminal US -led sanctions continue starve the people of their right to life.
Imperialism is a global manifestation of capitalism in its monopoly phase. The rule of the banks inherent to this stage of development has reached a crisis point. US and Western governments are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the resentment and misery of the masses. Internationally, the world's people are increasingly leaning on Russia and China to fulfill human needs that the US and West are unable to meet. What comes next is unclear. But what is clear is that the system of global capitalism will have to face the wrath of the ghosts of Grenfell and beyond whose spirits flow through the millions of oppressed people currently living through the gravest capitalist crisis in the system's history.
Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area.Hecanbereachedatwakeupriseup1990@gmail.com
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