Lhe deconstruction could have been the subject of a short story by Borges. A retired professor would have spent his nights in his library, carrying out research whose conclusions would be systematically questioned every twenty-four hours. Whatever their nature, context or veracity, the facts would disappear, by a magical, systemic, implacable effect. In his documentary Exterminate all these brutes, Raoul Peck offers a “counter-narrative” of the West where the facts would be read according to, roughly, a desire for domination by “Whites”, since the author has not stopped using this word since their arrival in South and North America. From the massacre of Amerindians at Auschwitz to slavery, the use of artillery and colonization, there would have been only one step, only one idea, only one will: to submit in the name of superiority.
A stupid reflex would be to contest this work in the name of a contradictory ideology, to belch against the endless reproaches formulated against a West responsible for the wounds of humanity since its creation. Let’s admit, for the time of an article, that this is history and that, as the author says, there are no alternative facts, but a reality, pleasant or not, by nature good to say. These criteria made it possible, for example, to find Fanny Glissant’s documentary devoted to slavery exceptional. Exterminate all these brutes is not a caricature of the history of the West, it is a dream, where the talent of the author vies with confusion, error, alas, with dishonesty.
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The American reading of racial and social relations produces untruths, faulty equivalences and even nonsense. For example, if it is said and repeated, rightly, that the English colonies of North America exterminated Indians to increase their power, are not evoked – one wonders why insofar as the fact is famous – the first French travelers to the Great Lakes region. The latter certainly did not exterminate the Indians; they traded with them, carried out exchanges of individuals, one coming to the court of France when the other lived among a tribe of natives (the term is an anachronism). The French bought goods that they could resell in Europe when they sold, or exchanged, arms to Indian tribes at war with other Indian tribes. The enterprise of domination – and the massacres – begins with the arrival of Christian missionaries. We refer on this point to the fascinating and brilliant books of Gilles Havard, among others phantom america. To put it another way: the Indians fought among themselves and had no need of Europeans to discover the war. This does not detract from the atrocity of the acts committed by the first Americans but which reminds us that this history is radically different from those of the first French colonists. The equivalence is wrong.
No serious conclusions can be drawn from “white supremacy” applied to Europe.
In reality, and this is the most embarrassing in the first two episodes of this documentary, the Christian religion, its Catholic, Protestant form, the Whites, the Europeans, the Americans are all different subjects which deserve as many different treatments. No serious conclusions can be drawn from “white supremacy” applied to Europe. It is an inoperative neologism. We want as proof of this the evangelization, brutal to say the least, of the Scandinavian territories, towards the Xand century, and that of the Baltics, from the 13thand century. The so-called pagans were just as white, if not more so in coloring than the Catholic missionaries. The methods were as brutal as those employed in South and North America. Race effectively has nothing to do with Christian imperialism and thus becomes an artificial concept. We refer, on this point and among others, to the brilliant work of Sylvain Gouguenheim.
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As for imperialism, presented here as a European idea, it is still false. Empires, as we learned from the fascinating works of Gabriel Martinez-Gros, are not the only fact of Rome, there were Persian, Islamic and Athenian empires. They too carried out massacres, produced abuses linked to a desire for domination. As for slavery, is it necessary to recall that Muslims practiced it in Africa in considerable and inhuman proportions? Which does not excuse Europe, of course, but it does redefine the phenomenon, exclusive to any civilization or essence of any nation. This is why the cord stretched between the conquistadors and the Nazis does not hold. Imperialism is not racism; religion does not sum up a civilization; Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy cannot be confused; skin color, finally, is not enough to justify the eternal, prehistoric, ancient desire for domination of human civilizations in a position of strength. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.
Right intuition, partially wrong result
In this game, the Europeans have distinguished themselves, of course, but they have not innovated. Finally, what about the dubious links established between a project of white domination and, for example, the atomic bombs sent to Japan by the United States? As if race had had any part in this enterprise. The Japanese, Asians, massacred the Chinese, Asians, in Nanjing. Even if the use of the nuclear bomb obviously deserves to be questioned, even if Nagasaki and Hiroshima are not obvious warriors, that it raises a moral question, the fact remains that it is a fact of war.
However, Raoul Peck’s intuition is correct. Yes, ethnocentrism has led to a faulty reading of history, has highlighted the stories of the victors instead of the testimonies of the vanquished; yes, the history of Europe deserves to be rewritten sometimes. It is the course of history because it is the course of science to be, indeed, deconstructed, so true is the maxim: to build, one must destroy. Historians, we have quoted some, are hard at work. There would however be a magnificent story to tell, like the works of Romain Bertrand, those of the new worlds read from the writings of the natives, and not those of the conquerors; that of an unrecognized slave, embarked on Magellan’s expedition and who was, in fact, the first man to circumnavigate the globe. It was, moreover, the subject of a bold and unexpected book, clever, so literary in the strongest sense of the word, Who went around what? Excesses very often lead to errors, which disqualify reasoning. Similarly, essentialism is antithetical to reasoning, diverts intelligence from its primary object. Races do not exist. Skin colors are no guarantee of peace or war.
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The XIXand and XXand centuries have seen Europe sink into an inept and barbaric racialism, it is a fact; is it for all that a summary and an avatar of this civilization? Is it necessary, in the name of an alleged revelation, to state facts without establishing a hierarchy between them, to go against elementary logic by speaking of the white race when this same white race has been killing each other for five centuries, imagine a European corporatism whose members have made themselves famous by destroying each other, deliberately confusing religions, skin colors, slavery, colonization, exterminations, genocides? There is a kind of healthy, explosive, almost joyful revolt of the order of revelation in this documentary. Basically, something from adolescence where, convinced of finding what humanity would have hidden from us for so long, we replace enthusiasm with knowledge, argument with indignation, nuance with the absolute.
Book references
Gilles Havard, phantom americaParis, Flammarion, 2019.
Gabriel Martinez-Gros Brief history of empiresParis, Threshold, 2014.
Romain Bertrand, Exploration of the world, another story of great discoveriesParis, Threshold, 2019.
Romain Bertrand, Who went around what?Paris, Verdier, 2020.
Documentary reference
Raoul Peck, Exterminate all these brutesParis, Arte broadcast, 2022.