World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [130]
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And from Michel Fortin of Africana Plus:
The World Trade Centre was a symbol of the scandalous thirst for profit on the part of the Western countries, which practice a one-way commercial traffic. It was attacked by terrorists who wished to humiliate the Financial Monster, the leader of the modern world. Whatever the background, this attack deserved of course the strongest condemnation. . . . Yet we have to recognize that this deplorable act of aggression may have been, at least in part, an act of revenge on the part of desperate and humiliated people, crushed by the weight of the economic oppression practiced by the peoples of the West.
It is therefore the interference of the West in the economies of the Third World which has produced the underdevelopment which it was supposed to be curing. . . . Development agencies are becoming increasingly aware that multinational companies are siphoning off the wealth of poor countries.
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These excerpts are representative of literally thousands of similar statements from inhabitants of the developing world. Much less representative is the following defense of America from the November 2001 Internet issue of Brazzil magazine after a slew of post–September 11 anti-American diatribes:
The reaction of Brazilians to the attack on the United States by Muslim terrorists portrays the dubious nature of [the] human mind. [The] United States is the country that the government and people of Brazil try to imitate as much as they possibly can, not to mention the ever-present long lines of Brazilians waiting to obtain their travel visas at American Embassies and Consulates all over the country.
If the people of the United States and their government are such bad people that deserve to be slaughtered as on September 11, 2001, I wonder why anybody would want to visit the country. I don’t see the same long lines of Brazilians in Iraqi, Iranian, Libyan, and Saudi Arabian embassies waiting for visas to travel to those countries.
My theory regarding the reactions of Brazilians and, in fact, of people in many other third world countries is that those reactions are a mixture of envy and frustration. These are countries that have failed to move forward in economic development. Even though Americans are always the first to arrive with help at a scene of disaster anywhere in the world, that is not what people think about when they think of the United States. They just want to live the way Americans live without realizing that Americans worked hard to get to where they are, and still work hard, and do things the right way to stay there. The dubious nature of [the] human mind makes these people feel good when the so-called mighty is brought down because they somehow irrationally believe that that would make everyone equal.
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In sum, the vicious, passionate, often self-contradictory anti-Americanism experienced by so many among the world’s poor is strikingly analogous to the resentment directed against market-dominant minorities around the world. The difference is that in this case America is a global market-dominant minority. Like resentment against the Chinese in Southeast Asia, anti-Americanism is not always active. But it is an ever-present vein of hatred, waiting to be mined, whether by a charismatic demagogue or a triggering event.
Still, it is important to keep in mind that justifying or even praising the September 11 attack after the fact is not the same thing as participating in it. Most people, however frustrated or angry, do not kill others, however “arrogant” or resented. Indeed, until relatively recently, anti-Americanism