The Disposable Community

A lesson from the Latins.

In the Roman world of yonder lore, the mysterious “East” served a powerful function in the national mythology. For the average Roman, the East was simultaneously a land of great kings and conquerors, as well as cruel tyrants and wretched decadence. Romans both feared becoming like that strange land of the East, and wished to emulate its ideals, in any given era of their history. Oh certainly, they liked their great men, standing tall like Troy of yonder years. But they feared the transformation of a Great Man of Rome becoming some effeminate king decked in makeup and gold, seated atop a grand sepulcher. It was the ancient equivalent to calling someone a “soyboy”. Mark Antony is perhaps the best known archetype of these fears, presented in HBO’s Rome quite appropriately as a broken man with eyeliner and effeminate living, Corrupted by Cleopatra’s eastern feminine guise.

A common tabloid fear that came along with these accusations was the fear that said degenerated Roman man would use his authority to move the capitol from Eternal Rome to some despotic Eastern metropolis, leaving the denizens of the eternal city forgotten about and thrown away - reduced to a disposable population - just one city of many in some grand empire.

This fear would, ironically, come true under Constantine - drawn East by both religion, family, philosophy, and incredible wealth.

It’s a bit ironic, as by the time of Augustus, the Romans themselves had begun to view themselves as heirs to the East. The mythology around the founding of Rome shifted from Romulus and Remus to that of Trojan survivors come to the west to rebuild their kingdom. The East truly was all things to Rome: The source of political legitimacy, and delegitimacy, for whatever the sentiment was at any given time. But regardless of what mood the average Roman had to the East at any given time, the fear remained the same: The fear of becoming a dispossessed people. If they felt weak, the strength of the East was to be admired. If they felt strong, the decadence of the East was to be avoided. The East was that thing which directed the common man’s self-image.

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For the average American, the world across our southern border serves a similar number of functions in political mythology. It is a land of gangs and conquistadors - of Caudillos who save the people, and oligarchs who crash generational wealth - the Socialists are somehow scarier, the capitalists are somehow wealthier. Latin America is whatever America needs it to be, but always anchored to the American fear of losing their own nation. I have written previously about the likelihood that America’s recent love of strongmen is a direct import from Latin America, and a sure sign of a growing Latin influence. However, in this piece I wanted to purposefully import a few terms from Latin America, as I sense it contains a great vision if it were to become mainstreamed. That term is:

La Comunidad Desechable.

Or, in English: The Disposable Community.

The term originates from infighting within the Latin Left. Specifically, Populist left-wing politicians created the term “Extractivism” in their criticisms of Neoliberal policies. Neoliberals will claim they are sensitive to the environment - so that is why they must strip-mine Lithium and destroy the Amazon rainforest to fuel the green revolution. Don’t mind the billions they make in the process.

One of the requirements to mine lithium is “sacrifice zones” where pollutants are dumped. Lithium is a salt, and often found with sulfides and arsenic in rock cores and brine. To extract and purify, all that arsenic and sulfur has to go somewhere, and the sacrifice zone is where. In doing so, that region becomes toxic to human habitation for decades. Extractivists call the people in those sacrifice zones “disposable communities” in the charters for mining, and generally end up being native reservations or poor people - people who, when hurt, do not merit a high political cost. There is a cruelty in Extractivism, which Compares the prestige and profits against people’s lives and livelihoods. They regards the injury to the native as an inconsequential cost - a kind of progress tax, or a payment for entry into earning billions from the operation. The GDP line must go up, even if one must pay a tax in blood to get it to. When the local worker inevitably becomes sick or infirmed from these conditions, “Besides”, the Extractivist say, “If they don’t want to work, they can simply be replaced with a more profitable worker”. Sound familiar?

As the locals became ill and unable to work, they were blamed for their own misfortunes caused by the environment created for them. As they died or became invalid, new populations were brought in - fresh meat, healthy and able-bodied. Of course, there’s only a matter of time before those men got sick too. Thus, a vicious cycle was created. It didn’t take long for “Sacrifice Zones” to expand in scope - soon the “sacrifice” was not just ecological, but demographic as well. This economic engine ran on blood, and when the old blood got muddied, new blood was brought in to oil the gears. Demographic replacement was the exhaust of running this kind of economic engine.

La Historia

While this hijacking of the Green movement by Neoliberals likely feels familiar with our own politics, the difference is that this was a challenge Latin America faced decades ago. To use an analog, they’ve already developed political antibodies to these mental viruses. We could use an injection of those antibodies, before it forms a full-blown infection.

Prime example: Nayib Bukele’s ascendancy can be viewed as a kind of immune response to Neoliberal aggression. Interestingly enough, he comes from the Latin Left, and yet his biggest fans in the United States are from the Anglo Right.

I’m generally critical of the American Right accepting the frame of the progressive left in their debates. However, I would feel it worth pointing out the “Old Left” - Unions and labor protection - has gradually become within the so-called Right Wing in America. Given the Latin Left’s tendency to reject Progressive talking points in favor of native protectionism, I think sharing some parts of the frame may be useful in this particular context. Perhaps, more accurately, their terms in this area should be hijacked and repurposed. Thus, the purpose of this article is to flesh out these Latin Left terms which, I believe, can be repurposed for our politics in North America. They are rather strong terms that have great overlap with the concerns of Americans today. I hope you find them useful and make a place for them in your own political machinations.

-Through to be frank, I can throw out all those arguments and speak simply: Environmentalism is inherently Right Wing. Any pretend Left Wing claim to it is revealed as a farce in their mismanagement of the Environment.

To give a general overview, the earliest use of the term appears to be in an article of Mexico’s Proceso Magizine from 1982. They drew up the term as a kind of anti-imperialist attitudes against what Europe called the “Poor Continents”, where the people were treated as disposable. The author attempts to make connections with supposedly liberal views of modern states essentially practicing the exact same colonial practices as imperialists long ago. Anti-imperialism becomes, itself, Neoimperialism. However, Over time the term developed to describe any community considered unimportant in the process of gaining and maintaining power.

One contemporary source sums up of the criticisms of Neoliberalism as follows:

Sovereignty, wars and industrial production are elements that have linked lithium and the energy transition since its origins, initially, as representatives of two opposing discourses and, currently, as allies of the same cause.

( paraphrasing notes on nuclear transitions from Kazimierski 2019, p. 25)

And another:

As a consequence, what has been called “green” sacrifice zones are being created in the region. That is, territories that are seen as strategic for obtaining key raw materials for the energy transition, in which the eco-social impacts of the unfair distribution of the effects and wealth obtained from the extractive process for communities persist and are accentuated. human and non-human (Olivera et al. 2022, p. 46)

Mordorification

Let’s pause here to look at a real on-going example in “The West”

Within Environmentalist Topics, there is increasingly a preference for a library of terms called “The Anthropocene”. The concept is that humanity has become developed enough as a global scale that we have become our own geological layer of sorts - that is to say, if we all died today, any alien visiting the Earth could clearly see our geological layer across the planet. To quote Dr Breen from Half Life:

Are all the accomplishments of humanity fated to be nothing more than a layer of broken plastic shards thinly strewn across a fossil bed, sandwiched between the Burgess shale and an eon's worth of mud?

Dr Breen, here, is speaking about the Anthropocene - Our unique material legacy left in the Earth’s many layers.

However, rather than bore you with in-depth scientific definitions, I would rather simply use images to get the point across. If you google “Anthropocene”, you will eventually find a series of photos labeled “Mordor”:

These photos are not from Mordor, but from the Mordorification of Europe - that is, Europe’s open secret: The world’s largest open pit mine, in Germany: Der Hambach. Now you may ask, what on Earth are they mining for?

Beneath Germany are the remains of one of Earth’s oldest and largest forests, Der Rotliegend, or simple the “Southern Permian Basin” in more scientific terms. This forest’s corpse some 800 meters beneath the surface is largely why Industrialization was possible in England, Germany, and Belgium. The amount of Copper, Coal, and other industrial materials that are embedded in the corpse of this forest has enough energy to power Europe for centuries more, if needed. Despite Europe’s legendary regulatory efforts, the Hambach remains open and operational in those efforts. You can still find caves all across Europe where ancient armored trees of a forgotten world remain fossilized memorials. Many early minors thought they had found the temples of the Nephilim when they initially found these armored columns.

Now, Dear Reader, pause to think about this: If the Anthropocene is Earth’s Geological Era corresponding to humanity, what kind of a geological layer is it that eats other layers? Well, Dear Reader, it is not just that the Anthropocene is Humanity’s geological layer. It is also Earth’s first Carnivorous Geological Layer. But as Geological layers are records, it must be emphasized: The Anthropocene doesn’t just eat Space. It eats Time. It eats History.

We thus have something of a definition for the Anthropocene: Any sufficiently large activity or movement of humans can be calculated as a geological force. The movement of peoples is akin to an ice age, desertification, or deforestation. Now consider: If any force can be weaponized, what is an Anthropocenic Weapon?

It is any weapon which destroys not only space, but time as well. Any weapon which destroys history as a byproduct of human activity.

It follows - and it is not a far jump to say - the weaponization of human activity is, itself, a kind of weapon of mass destruction - with as much environmental effect as a nuclear bomb. In the natural order of things, the sun gives life. Weaponize the forces that allow it to, and it brings forth death. The same goes with human activity.

Furthermore, there is no reason why the destruction of history ought be limited to geological history…

As the Hambach mine grows, it consumes - on the surface, as much as the depths. Churches, towns, roads, farms, all consumed by this ever-growing maw.

The German Government, using this Anthropocenic Weapon, commonly deems anything in the way of profits as “Disposable”. Of course, the towns people have not exactly taken kindly to being labeled a “Disposable Community”…

You can imagine who replaces these native Germans when they become sick and infirmed from this Anthropocenic Weapon…

This is not necessarily to say this is a “new” kind of weapon. After all, the Romans militarized large scale human migration in a similar fashion. If one analyzes where Barbarian tribes were settled, it was almost always to cripple competing aristocracies to Rome, or lawless gangs in the countryside. Gaul, in particular, became host of many settlements in order to over-burden the Gallic nobility. We Americans may also be familiar with the purposeful settlement of populations throughout our history - We either dumped entire city’s worth of populations into random corners of North America to close off land from other European powers, or to curtail uppity Whites by overburdening them with foreigners to compete with. You may also be familiar with the settlement of large African American slave communities in areas deemed prone to rebellion. Today, we see the Federal Government settling migrants in areas where the impoverished Whites are most uppity. This is a very old sword in the government’s armory. But in the past, these were very minor efforts: A riverbed here, a mining town there. Today, this has gone up to geological scales

Whether it’s the destruction of little European towns by mining, or by migration, these are weaponized geological forces. They are Anthropocenic Weapons. The forces of the Anthropocene that created the Hambach mine are the same forces that created the migrant crises across the West. The Anthropocene is a carnivorous geological layer, eating away at both Geology, and Biology, for its own nourishment. All that’s happened, is that now it’s becoming weaponized by elites with the power to do so - and they will use it to destroy not only your land, but your culture and history too. All for a few fractional percentage growths in GDP.

At what point will we be ready to admit this is a weapon of mass destruction built by our elite, turned against their own citizens? Furthermore, if we go extinct, it will only be a matter of time before our replacements are fell to the same fate, and yet another population is brought in to replace them when they become sick from these conditions. It’s a carnivore, constantly looking for new material to consume - be it geologic, or demographic. Only when we’ve developed the political antibodies against this monster, will we be able to find the proper people who will be our immune response.

If you’d like to learn more about the Anthropocene, and Latin America’s immunization of these mind viruses, here are some links:

https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/1765/2208

https://geoconfluences.ens-lyon.fr/glossaire/extractivisme

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Territorios_y_memorias_culturales_Muisca/1hJ_DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Comunidad+desechable&pg=PT85&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nada_m%C3%A1s_que_mercados_y_leyes/GsNcDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22Comunidad%20desechable%22

https://www.google.com/books/edition/No_mas_gente_desechable/IeqEkYPIHpIC?hl=en&gbpv=0

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-10-19/we-have-to-start-questioning-what-systems-we-are-participating-in/

https://www.planethomeliving.com/about/responsible-building