We didn’t learn from Anton de Kom
At the moment, especially in the Netherlands but also in Suriname, there’s a hype around Anton de Kom and his book “We slaves of Suriname.” Unfortunately, it all looks more like ‘virtue-signaling’ and ‘lip-service’ given the fact that there is little evidence that people have actually understood Anton de Kom’s message, let alone that they have adjusted their daily choices and actions accordingly.
For example, most people still celebrate the so-called “abolition of slavery” while De Kom was clear about the fact that slavery has never really been abolished, and that on the contrary, we have only made a transition to a ‘harder’ form of slavery.
In his book De Kom not only tells about the poor living conditions and torture that slaves were forced to endure on the plantations in Suriname in the past, but also shows how the transition slowly took place to the form of slavery in which we still live today. He had already realized back then that the people had been misled, and that slavery was simply being continued in a different form by the colonialists. That is why he wrote: “[…] even though every year on July 1st, the day of liberation is celebrated in Suriname with display of lots of joy. Let them show us that the Surinamese people are free in the true sense of the word, that they are no longer forced to sell their labor, albeit in a different way than during the era of slavery.”
Today’s slaves (‘citizens’) believe that they are free and that they work for themselves, but still have to hand over a large portion of the fruits of their labour under threats of violence (‘taxation’) to the overseers (‘commissioners,’ ‘ministers,’ ‘president’ etc.) in the criminal government. In his book De Kom discusses some examples of how the extortion and abuse of slaves simply continued through ‘taxation’ in “the new order of colonial society,” where the individual plantations were eventually consolidated in the gigantic plantation Suriname. He also describes how the slaves were abused and punished when they did not allow themselves to be extorted and robbed by the tax collectors. We are still trapped in this system of slavery.
If today you refuse to provide forced labor to the criminal government and refuse to let them extort and rob you, you will soon discover how ‘free’ and ‘independent’ you really are on the plantation Suriname. After you are first terrorized with letters (attacks on your [right to] life) from the tax ‘service’, you will eventually be robbed of your possessions and may even end up in a jail cell. Not much of a difference compared to the slaves of the past. On top of that, today’s overseers have the red carpet rolled out in front of them, just like in the past before the king or queen, and let themselves be addressed with titles like “His/Her Excellency,” all while being responsible for, and living off of, large-scale extortion and robbery and thus actually being criminals. The white colonialists on the administration of the plantation have simply been replaced by coloureds who aren’t any better.
In a previous article on Starnieuws, I had already warned that regardless of which political parties would win on May 25th 2020, the people would once again turn out to be the big losers. That is exactly what we see today. The new overseers in the criminal government have started to extort the slaves much more intensively through ‘taxation’ (and there’s more to come). Where “the savior” before the elections of May 25th 2020 had indicated that “they would fix everything” and that it would be the criminal government that would have to make sacrifices, and not the slave population, we see that the slave population has been fooled in the same way for the umpteenth time in the last 100 years. Indeed, as Edward Belfort said in a recent interview on Apintie, the current criminal government is even 4 times worse than the previous one.
What would the reaction have been of the Maroons of the past if someone had told them that their descendants 200 years later, would oppress their own people exactly like the white masters of that time? They probably wouldn’t want to believe that person and would probably even declare them crazy. Today, descendants of those Maroons are on the administration of this system of slavery against which their ancestors fought in the past, and they participate just as much in the large-scale oppression and abuse, while also being proud of it! And the few who dare to speak the truth, and see the reality for what it is, are forced “into a corner” and end up in the Emergency Room.
We all want to have progress in our lives and want to look forward to better times. Unfortunately, this will only be possible in a sustainable way when we have the courage to acknowledge and accept the truth, and more importantly, act in accordance with it. Exactly like how Anton de Kom during his time, no matter how difficult and painful it was, and no matter how politically incorrect and dangerous it was, had the courage to publish his vision of the reality of the time in his book.
Comments
There are 7 responses. Follow any responses to this post through its comments RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.