RandomWalkInScience

You argue that the present generation of modern British taxpayers should not be held financially liable for the brutal actions, colonial plunder, and chattel slavery of past centuries. The problem with your lazy argument is that it completely collapses into a spectacular contradiction the very second you realize that this exact same present generation of taxpayers comfortably enjoys, inherits, and builds their lives upon the massive wealth, infrastructure, and resources that Britain violently plundered across the globe. Indeed, the private provincial banks that eventually merged to form the modern Barclays Bank today were heavily tied to the transatlantic slave trade. Almost all of the past governors and founding directors of the Bank of England, the very institution that constitutes the UK's sovereign Central Bank, personally owned enslaved people or held massive, lucrative financial stakes in brutal slave plantations across the Global South. The entire modern insurance industry in Britain today, most notably Lloyd's of London, built its multi-billion-pound global empire specifically by underwriting slave ships, financing colonial expeditions, and insuring chained human cargoes as mere disposable maritime property. The bloody list, of course, is endless. The modern taxpayers in Britain, whose money you are loudly proclaiming should never go toward paying reparations, are actually making their daily living, funding their public healthcare, and building their stock portfolios based entirely on the wealth violently plundered, extracted, and laundered across the Global South. Virtually all of the biggest, most prestigious conglomerates in Britain today, both private and public, trace their foundational capital directly back to colonialism and chattel slavery. This begs the question: why on earth would you willingly stand on the altar of such embarrassing contradictions just to aggressively defend the historical atrocities of your colonial masters? This clearly, undeniably shows that the British establishment is deliberately pushing expendable, black-faced political puppets like you to the frontlines to lie, deflect, and gaslight the public just to avoid paying reparations. It is not that Britain cannot afford the reparations. They can, and it is a financial check they could easily, comfortably afford to write if it were strictly about wiring the money. But genuine reparations involve far more than just cash. True reparations demand formal, unconditional state apologies, official legal admissions of historical wrongdoing, and a binding requirement for Britain to submit detailed, comprehensive plans of restitution. It would legally force them to return the thousands of stolen cultural artifacts, sacred bronzes, and looted treasures currently sitting in the British Museum. A formal reparation would also hold Britain legally and financially responsible for providing massive medical, psychological, educational, and institutional aid to the very nations they systematically plundered and underdeveloped. Furthermore, a genuine reparation from Britain would inevitably be followed by strict legal and structural state reforms to permanently prevent these imperial injustices from ever recurring. This total loss of imperial prestige and legal immunity is exactly what Britain is desperately avoiding, not just the raw money they would be legally required to pay. This is precisely why the British government will never, ever issue a public, genuine, and official state apology for the horrific atrocities they committed in the name of chattel slavery and colonial conquest. Instead, they cowardly choose to hide behind legally non-binding diplomatic language, constantly expressing "profound sorrow" or "deep regret," but never an official, actionable state apology. And this is exactly why they continue to deploy willing Western stooges and political meat-shields like you, Kemi, who will happily absorb the public outrage and the rightfully deserved backlash for their refusal to pay reparations, allowing the British establishment to completely evade being held legally, morally, and ethically responsible for their generational sins.

I am thoroughly exhausted by the intellectual gymnastics and extraordinary moral cowardice that emerge whenever Africans and people of African descent raise the question of reparations for slavery and colonialism. Every time we discuss the transatlantic slave trade, someone rushes to remind us that Europeans were not the only people who enslaved Africans. There was the Arab slave trade, they say. Africans sold other Africans, they insist, as though they have just unearthed some extraordinary historical revelation capable of absolving Europe of centuries of organized human exploitation. And what exactly is the argument here? That because several people participated in a crime, none of them should be held accountable? That the involvement of an African merchant somehow diminished the suffering of the African who was sold? What a spectacular bankruptcy of moral reasoning. Yes, some Africans participated in the slave trade. Some African monarchs, merchants and elites profited from the trafficking of human beings. These are historical realities that deserve serious examination. We can even discuss the Afro-Brazilian returnees who settled along the West African coast. Some were formerly enslaved Africans who had obtained their freedom in Brazil, returned to Africa and subsequently participated in the very trade that had once deprived them of their own liberty. Joaquim d’Almeida, for example, was enslaved in Brazil, obtained his freedom, returned to West Africa and became a slave trader. Francisco Félix de Souza, a Brazilian-born merchant, built an immense commercial enterprise around the trafficking of enslaved Africans from Ouidah. We can examine the royal families, merchant dynasties and political institutions that benefited from this commerce. We can investigate the fortunes accumulated, the properties acquired and the privileges transmitted across generations. I have absolutely no objection to holding African historical actors accountable for their participation in slavery. But now that we have identified some of the sellers, can we please return to the people who were SOLD? Can we talk about their descendants? Can we talk about the millions of human beings whose bodies became commercial merchandise, whose children were born into captivity and whose descendants were subsequently denied access to land, education, property, political equality and economic opportunity for centuries? The participation of an African king in the slave trade does not absolve the European merchant who purchased human beings, the shipowner who transported them, the banker who financed the enterprise, the plantation owner who extracted their labor or the governments that legalized and protected the entire system for centuries. And then comes my favorite exhibition of historical illiteracy, the claim that Europeans today cannot be expected to pay for the sins of their ancestors. How convenient! Apparently, nations can inherit the wealth of their ancestors, the institutions of their ancestors, the territories acquired by their ancestors, the commercial advantages secured by their ancestors and the accumulated prosperity produced by centuries of exploitation. Oh they can even compensate the slave owners for freeing their slaves. But the moment we discuss the obligations attached to that inheritance, history suddenly becomes irrelevant. You can inherit the estate, but apparently the debts buried beneath its foundations must remain with the dead. What an extraordinary understanding of justice!

The western left marched against Franco, Hitler & Mussolini’s bombing of Republican cities in 1930s Spain. But there are no left marches against Russia’s terror bombing of Ukraine. SHAME! Putin’s latest bombardment on Saturday, hit energy infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without power. War crime! bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c64g…