The Most Important Historical Betrayal You Never Heard About
One of those things that has me frustrated again and again in the context of leftists discussions is, that a lot of leftists do not know a whole lot of colonialist/imperialist history, and due to this being incapable of seeing the bigger picture surrounding a lot of modern events.
And I feel there is not a single example of this that is more notable than the Sykes-Picot agreement secretly signed between England and France in 1916.
There is a good chance that from everything that happened back then, the only person you even have heard about is a certain Thomas Edward Lawrence. Or as you might know him, Lawrence of Arabia. The bastard child to a British landowner. And a queer (probably asexual homoromantic) man.
Lawrence is a very interesting historical person. Because I am assuming you are genuinely going to be surprised if I tell you that, indeed, he was a fairly based person, who actually did put the fate of non-white people over the power, riches, and influence of his own homeland.
Long story short: Lawrence, despite being a bastard, got a good education and excelled in languages. He spend some time in France, made friends with some rich and influential people, and got to go to the Near East as an archeologist. And he loved it. There is a bunch of artifacts that you will probably know, that have been found by excavations that he was a part of. And, compared to a lot of the other British people at the time, actually did try to find a solution to... you know. England just grabbing everything and putting it into the British museum.
During those digs, he also started to become enarmored with Arab culture, and history. He learned Arabic, and made friends (and possibly a lover) among the Arab people.
Archeologists today will also cuss about him to no end, because he was so completely uninterested in Christian and Roman history. So there are a bunch of dig sites in the Near East, where he was digging, found Roman stuff and told the people: "Roman stuff? Ew, boring. Dump it into the next river. Let's see if we can find Assyrian/Mesopotamian stuff underneath!"
When World War I started, he signed up to the military, and ended up being deployed in the Near East. In the Near East the opponent of the British was obviously the Ottoman Empire, and Lawrence, who was fluent in Arabic and had good relations with several groups there. A whole lot of cultures in what remained from the Ottoman Empire at this time wanted independence. And so Lawrence managed to negotiate with those groups, that the French and British would work together with them to defeat the Ottoman Empire, so that Arabian independence could happen.
And this is when the Sykes-Picot agreement happened. In secret.
Because you see, the English and French did never actually intent for Arab independence to happen. Of course not. After all, by this time it was well known that the Near East was rich in certain geological resources, and if the Arab nations were independent, well, they would actually have control over those resources and that would be very inconvenient, would it not be?
So, they decided to fairly distribute the Arab land between themselves. Who cares about the Arabs, right?
This is the map that has been agreed to back then. And I mean... You can see just the typical colonial thing of just drawing fairly straight lines. Borders that were not natural, but decided on while looking at a map.
Lawrence together with some of the Arab leaders tried to petition against this, but like in so many other regions, the European leaders were absolutely not swayed. Because they never cared for the Arab regions and the people living there.
As the Ottoman Empire was defeated, the region was distributed between the Brits and French. There was some concessions in the form of allowing several countries to exist, but the borders of those countries were drawn in a way that they divided tribal territory, and forced people into a country, who historically had been enemies. It also denied several groups from the area their own homeland at all, most notably the Kurds. And this was done knowingly, as the people knew that a warring region would be easier controlled, as the people fighting one another would have no mind to fight the Brits and French, while they got natural resources from there, often buying them with weapons that then were used in those inter-Arabian conflicts.
The one thing that might or might not have been intended was the Sauds. Another tribe who - if things had gone the way the Arab tribes had agreed to and which Lawrence had petitioned for - would have gotten a homeland of their own. Now this was not happening, but it just turned out that their leaders were good military leaders, who also understood how to use western weapons in their advantage. This lead with them taking over several other places, and forming what we now know as Saudi Arabia.
And of course this basis is also what allowed a certain other thing to happen. You know which one.
Because Great Britain controlled a chunk of the land, they also had the ability to give this land away, when it was politically convenient.
A lot of people have talked about how Israel mostly happened because the western who won WWII did not want to have all those Jewish refugees in their own countries. If you go into the history of Jewish refugees during WWII you know the stories of how those people got turned away again and again.
And of course, the idea of Zionism was popular among a certain subgroup of Jewish people (though this group was not necessary the same that struggled to find a safe haven), so given that the Brits controlled the land, and some of the Zionists were already petitioning for a land of their own, Israel was founded. And I think we have talked about the violence originating the founding of that place more than enough.
Now you might ask: "Okay, but according to this meme, this lead to President Trump. How?"
Well, the truth is that pretty much everything that went south in politics during the second half of the 20th century and now the first quarter of the 21st is because of Sykes-Picot. I am not even kidding. Even Epstein, in the end, happened because of Sykes-Picot, from what we can slowly reconstruct.
Of course not in the way that someone in 1916 planned for this to happen. It is simply that the destabilization of the Middle East led to a whole lot of bullshit happening.
This is the theory of Keynesian economics. If you follow me for longer, you might have seen me yap about it. Basically: when people talk about the good old days, and stuff, all they remember so fondly was because of Keynesian economics. Keynes was a capitalist, but other than most capitalists he was not dumb. He had correctly identified certain relationships between the market and its participants.
Basically he realized, that big companies profited a lot from stuff that generally the state was providing. Stuff like infrastructure and also education and healthcare. Because, you know, if you do not have education, the people who work for the companies will be less capable. And if you do not have healthcare, the people will be sick and less prodcutive. And if you do not have infrastructure, the companies would need to build it themselves. Obvious stuff, really. He also realized that people who are well paid and have a minimum standard of living, will actually have more money to spend on stuff, which is good for the economy in general. So, basically he said: capitalism works best, if you take care of everyone and make sure nobody get left behind. Galaxy brain shit, here.
Now, you might ask: what does this have to do with Sykes-Picot?
It turns out. A lot. And this is where it gets dumb.
See, there were always people who disliked Keynesian economics. Because those said that, you know, a state should probably regulate the market to some degree, and also employees should be treated somewhat well, and there probably should be some social safety nets and all that. And like the very rich people hated that, because they wanted to actually abuse people a bit more to become more rich.
But so far Keynesian economics were working, so most people were not willing to give up on this working method.
And... this is where Sykes-Picot comes and naps us all in the butt.
Because remember: the Arab nations were already destabilized because of Sykes-Picot, and also because of Sykes-Picot Israel existed. And this all together created the powdercake that most of us Millennials, Gen Z and younger have been taught to associated with the Near East.
Enter the Six Day War, followed by the Yom Kippur war.
So, you need to understand one thing about Islam in relationship to Sykes-Picot. Remember how I said that there had been borders drawn right through the middle of tribe territory, splitting tribes apart and pushing others together who were not of the same tribe, and often were from different Islam subgroups (like Shia and Sunni)?
Yeah, the thing that happens in those cases is called Shismogenesis. Frankly, my favorite anthropology word. It basically means: when you are close to someone who is not quite like you, human cultures love to double down and become less like the people you are in close proximity with. So, if you have two different cultures living closeby, they will often put an emphasis on their differences. And this will often lead to them becoming more radical. (You can see that in a smaller way in youth culture a lot.) It literally means: "Origin from differentiation".
And this created a scenario, where the Arab nations started to really hate on each other on the basis of Shia and Sunni Islam. And of course the one thing they could agree on was that they all did not like that the west did a genocide in form of the Nakba to put Israel on their doorstep - Israel, that everyone knew existed mostly for western nations to have a military presence in the middle east.
And that is why there was conflict with Israel, in form of the Six Days War, and then the Yom Kippur war. And, well, frankly: Israel won. And it was not even close. Because Israel had all the fancy weapons from the west. And the Arab nations knew that.
And that was when the OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (which at the time was mostly Arab nations) decided they were no longer selling Oil to the US. Because the US was supporting Israel. And that... well, made the US economy tank. Hard. Like really had. It was bad. I cannot stress how bad it was. A lot of people lost their jobs, people could not afford things that had become normal, and in the USA, a state that had been used to getting everywhere via car by this point (this was the 70s) gas was no longer affordable.
And people hated that. And people were generally not quite aware enough to understand the historical context. They did not know that Sykes-Picot happened, that the Arab nations had absolutely reasonable issues with the west, and that this had lead to this decision. All the people knew was: the economy was suddenly no longer doing well. Shit.
And the people who were unhappy with Keynes and all that stuff used that. They leveraged this social upheaval to get the people on board to throw Keynesian economics away, and push for a deregulation of markets. One of the first effects of this was, by the way, the deregulation of the financial markets, that at this point already guaranteed that 30 years later the housing market would crash. I am not even kidding, like some few people already saw that coming, but then everyone closed their eyes and pretended that issue was not coming.
Obviously, this also related to Reagan being elected, and we know that Reagan was basically Trump, just without social media.
Like, Reaganomics obviously created the entire political scenario of deregulation, and hypercapitalism, which then created all those other problems.
And obviously the same was true in other places as well. Thatcher was a result of the same political climate as well.
And it all would not have happened, if Sykes-Picot had not happened.
Sykes-Picot might not be the single thing that ruined the world. But it is definitely up there.
And nobody fucking knows about Sykes-Picot. Because nobody is being taught about colonial history, especially not about the colonial history of the near and middle east.
Sure, due to the genocide happening in Gaza right now, some people have this vague idea that the founding of Israel was somewhat connected to British colonialism in the region, but even they do not know of Sykes-Picot and the greater context, and how the countries in the Middle East even outside of Israel were created in a way that would ensure political instability and a radicalization of Islam.
I mean, fuck. You know this one? Right?
I mean, fuck. This all happened because of oil. Sykes-Picot is because of oil. It is all because of oil. Not just climate change. EVERYTHING. It really is as if we found that eldritch god, and people went fucking insane over it.
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