Cynthia McKinney (USA-Bangladesh) – an American politician and activist, former member of the US House of Representatives and the Green Party's nominee for President in 2008.

Making Our Multipolarism Our Own

Remarks On the Occasion of the First Global Conference On Multipolarity

Thank you very much for allowing me to participate in this very necessary Virtual

Conference.

I have spent the entire day teaching and am only just now arriving at home and have been asked to make my presentation and I have not had very much time to prepare. So, with that having been said, I’d like to beg your pardon in advance for not having slides or prepared remarks.

I guess I should start where I just left off with my students. I teach them that we live in a neocolonized world. And I introduce the works of Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Jose Maria Sison, and Edward Said to them. I want them to know that there is a vast struggle that has been going on for hundreds of years and that struggle is for freedom, for liberation from oppression, for sovereignty. And that very few states in this world of today can truly say that they are sovereign and free—despite what their Constitutions might say. I allow them to see for themselves the placement of U.S. military bases around the world; how the United States stepped in to rescue the colonial powers—which was a multipolar world—from the united cries against repression and theft and all that colonialism represented. I teach them that engaging in this struggle is like having a conversation around the dinner table and that without understanding fully the content of the conversation that preceded their entry, they are likely to select the wrong leaders, the wrong values, the wrong actions to model. Therefore, it is incumbent upon them to understand the history of the people who sat at the table before them; what they accomplished; what they left unfinished; and to understand themselves and their values, so that they know fully well what they are doing when they engage in the conversation around the dinner table of life that is the struggle for sovereignty freedom and dignity. I share with them what my values are and I encourage them to set out now to contemplate what values are important to them and what kind of leaders they want to be. And so, while it is an Introduction To Political Science 101 course, I ask them to dig deeply inside themselves and to think about such matters because they are being groomed for leadership. The question is what kind of good leader will they be: Transformational or Transactional and what values will motivate them as they assume their seat at the table.

They are young, but they seem to enjoy such discussions. So, I ask them to examine their own cultures and societies and communities and see where the vestiges of colonialism are alive and well and who actually is keeping the structural and cultural violence of colonialism’s violent conquest period still alive. And, they admit that, in many respects, it is  they who are doing so, including their parents and grandparents who cling to attitudes formed as mechanisms of survival during the periods of direct violence associated with colonialism. They come to understand that what they experience in a neocolonized world is only a limited kind of freedom. Limited sovereignty, as Kwame Nkrumah learned, is still no sovereignty at all. And so, I ask my students to engage with me, not in the textbook world, but in the real world of réalpolitique. Thus, after introducing them to these great freedom thinkers, I ask my students to re-engage in their own communities, but with opened eyes to look at the structural and cultural phenomena that tend to create what we call, “The Great Culling Machine,” that culls the best of the best of young brains that could- be freedom fighters and channels them into the “best” jobs that are always considered to be the local satellites of European and U.S. corporations and never seemingly their own! Then, I say to them:

“Let The Games Begin!”

I created a game that I call “Sovereignty Or Suzerainty?” In which they literally become representatives of the U.S., China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Israel, and this semester—for the first time, at the suggestion of the students—Palestine.

I give them ample background information about each state/country and let them get busy, replicating the kinds of leaders that they see in the real world, warts and all. But, in the exercise, they learn statecraft and diplomacy and the real pressures that constrict freedom of policy choice including in their own country. Most importantly, they get to see that their old way of thinking, of leaving their home country and basically fleeing to the metropole, is really the backbone of the exploitative system that we currently have. And that we will never have the kind of change that lifts all equitably and respects the dignity of all, including Mother Earth, by feeding a system that perpetuates and exacerbates global wealth inequality. By the end of this exercise, they are actually hopeful about change in their own country, although they understand its difficulty.

In their final exercise, they are tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of organizations like Our Bolivarian America (ALBA), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and more. By the end of the semester, I send them into the real world to join the real political conversation that takes place at dinner tables all over the world. I hope that I have achieved my goal with them of having a fuller understanding of the exigencies of leadership, power, and politics. My hope is that I have inspired them to discover a real foundation for themselves that will prompt them, when called upon, to make decisions that are not only better for themselves, but that also contribute to the changed world that they would like to see.

This all leads me, however, to ask a question that I suppose I should not ask in this setting. But, of course, the reason you’ve invited me to participate is because someone knew that I could be counted on to ask the inconvenient questions. So, here it is from me:

Suppose the not-so-invisible hand of “The Globalists,”—I don’t know what else to call them in this setting—the very people whom we struggle against for their totalitarianism, are also directing our movement of multipolarism? Suppose we are doing all of this heavy lifting only to be furthering the same cause against which we struggle?

So, I think I have just suggested a research topic for myself to see if I can have an answer to my own question by the time we reconvene in our Second Global Conference On Multipolarity. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak and share my thoughts with you: May OUR Multipolarism Truly Be Our Own!