Meeting a stone-throwing migrant with bullets

A strange headline, of course. First of all, in what respect could an immigrant, or any other person, throwing a stone be defended? It cannot, of course. Perhaps throwing a stone in self-defense against someone who is shooting bullets at him, if he has nothing else in his hand...

The world can have a thousand and one kinds of circumstances; one should not squeeze these circumstances into a single example.

But why would a refugee who has come to take shelter in a country to seek asylum, to save his life, throw a stone for no reason? US President Trump, speaking about the thousands of migrants advancing toward the US border through Mexico, said, "If they want to throw stones at our military, our military will respond."

Please note, the migrants have not yet thrown stones; Trump therefore said "if they want to throw stones."

Does this not clearly mean threatening every refugee who comes with being killed by gunfire from the outset? You prepare the pretext for killing in advance: he had a stone in his hand, he either threw it or was about to, just in case, he deserved death.

Refugeehood is a debt upon all of humanity, an inescapable burden, but especially a debt upon those who owe their prosperity to colonialism.

To close one's door to the refugee, especially a refugee who has fled a disaster, is a crime. In the prosperity of affluent states, people who have not been able to attain prosperity of course have a right. Especially if these countries are ones whose past and present involve imperialism and colonialism, the waves of refugees flowing in are coming to claim their rightful dues from them. They cannot escape paying this debt.

The globalizing world gives the people of these countries the ability to go anywhere they wish with ease. That is why it is called globalization. But the gilded face of globalization has a back side too, in which this possibility and this right cannot be used equally by everyone. An American can go anywhere he likes, but a Mexican cannot go to America whenever he feels like it. That is why globalization is globalization for some people, while for some people it continues to be a square tray (a tray with four corners) as yet.

That societies of a high level of prosperity, though they owe this prosperity largely to these colonial practices, keep their doors closed against the very societies they have exploited to the marrow, and build insurmountable security walls between them, is an important indication of their continuing irresponsibility toward humanity. While the other side of the world they have turned into hell is ablaze, they think they can sustain their own prosperity in this way forever. Yet this fire, unless they learn to share, will sooner or later burn them too, one way or another.

How much longer can they stop the Mexicans?

How long can they hold, in these conditions of oppression and poverty, the oppressed black people of Africa whose identity and personality have been ignored and whose wealth has been plundered, and the suffering peoples of the Middle East who have been condemned to live under the tyranny of dictatorships imposed on them?

Either where they are or at their own borders, they will come knocking at their doors to claim these debts. They fear their anger because they know very well their credits and the rightfulness of their claims. They attribute a stone to their hands because they know they have no weapons other than their broken hearts and a stone, and they still do what they will do, answering a broken heart and a stone in hand with their highly disproportionate weapons.

While the days are being counted down to the midterm elections in the USA, these words and attitudes of Trump are seen as an election investment.

Worse than the fact that a US president who has been the subject of intense criticism from circles sensitive to human rights thinks he can score points with these words is that he really can score points.

Unfortunately, xenophobia and hostility to refugees, once scratched a little, are an important material of populism that can find resonance everywhere. The fact that everyone in America has refugeehood or immigrant status in their past does not change the situation. Those who came a generation ago after great hardship can now begin to ignore the hardships of those arriving, to regard them as foreigners, and to reward the idea of closing the country to themselves.

What makes America America, though, is that it is a country of immigration. If you take out those who are not immigrants or refugees, you would find no one in America today except the Native Americans left over from the genocide. In fact, that is why preserving a certain sensitivity toward immigrants in America has been a state policy, even an ideology.

Today, together with Trump, this state ideology is being hollowed out. A populism based on xenophobia has resonance everywhere. Those who are making similar provocations against Syrian refugees in Türkiye today are playing populistically to this same level that Trump has reached.

Sadly, the quality of humanism of humanity is not as high as we think or as some philosophers have tried to suggest to us. We have arrived at a point where we see that man is wolf to man.

If this is a fact, then of course a law must be secured to prevent the wolves from devouring one another. And the politician's duty is first of all to watch over, protect and keep alive that law. Not to incite it, saying "I'll get two votes," and open the way for people to wrong one another.