9/11 25th Anniversary: Rousing the sleeping dragon

Exploitation; racism; humiliation; bad old memories of colonialism: all brew up a rich sludge, perfect for pumped-up religious fundamentalism to breed in — the result is deep rage for vengeance, writes Frances Letters.

ONE SPRING NIGHT twenty-five years ago, I switched on the radio and chanced on something fascinating. Two men were probing the causes of world poverty. Calmly they laid out one blunt fact after another.

The rich feed on the poor…

The program was ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing. The speakers were Father Brian Gore and the British economist Michael Rowbotham.

While I listened intently, chopping vegetables and stirring pots on the stove, across the world nineteen grim-faced men were making their way to airports in the eastern USA. It was 11 September 2001.

Some hours later I switched on the TV and, gaping, saw the shocking result. With barbaric majesty, two great towers in their death agony slid down into clouds of chaos.

One truth bellowed out. The radio broadcast and this horror were two sides of the same dark coin — inseparable. A cold, relentless march from cause to effect had ended in this…

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It was winter 2001 when the Tampa hullabaloo blew up: the watershed moment when decent agreement shrivelled away.

The rich feed on the poor. Resentment at the injustice seethes among those forced to the fringes. Exploitation; racism; humiliation; bad old memories of colonialism: all brew up a rich sludge, perfect for pumped-up religious fundamentalism to breed in. The result is deep rage for vengeance.

Nothing in recent history has so fiercely roused the half-sleeping dragon of racism and religious bigotry as al-Qaeda’s cold, wild violence that day. As the World Trade Center towers collapsed before our eyes, all the swirling, coloured shards of the world kaleidoscope jolted into a new pattern.

I once knew an American woman who gave me a startling glimpse into the penthouse layer of the world where most of us in the prosperous West live. Like many Americans you meet, she was open-hearted, kind and sincerely religious.

She fit perfectly the description that George W. Bush gave of his countrymen in his second acceptance speech:

"...sturdy and honest, and hopeful as the break of day."

With innocent delight she told me about her wonderful luck in business. She and her husband lived in Florida; they owned a furniture factory in the Caribbean which earned them extraordinary amounts of money. They were very rich. God had guided and protected them all the way.

"It’s amazing!" she marvelled. "We are so blessed! You know, we hardly have to pay the workers anything!"

We hardly have to pay the workers anything! That innocent, happy exclamation about nature’s bounty could be a chorus for the whole affluent white world.

Aware of it or not, most of us live daily with just this blithe, blind egotism. How could it not stoke smouldering resentment “out there” on the other side of our sound-proofed, complacent walls? Add memories of colonial shame, governments slyly in league with global finance, a hyped-up religious fundamentalism and a few tighter turns on the screw… and you have a time bomb.

Growing up in the world 9/11 left behind

It’s been almost 25 years since 9/11, but its consequences continue to shape the world inherited by a generation born in its shadow.

Would suicide bombers have attacked the World Trade Center that day if an American president, leader of the rich world, had stood before the United Nations and with passion and humility pledged to try and put things right?

Vowed to move heaven and earth for a new global economy that would be truly fair to all?

I doubt it. If action had followed that vow, the World Trade Center would have lived up to the implied promise of its name, and become a symbol of fair dealing for everyone.

For years, on the anniversary of 9/11, the roll call of that day’s dead has rung out with names that come from all over the world. One thing, though, has been missing: evidence that fair benefit from the daily work of those 9/11 Twin Tower victims had ever spilt out to “trickle down” across the globe.

It seems that, like the powerful all through history, we in the prosperous West have been blind to the most fundamental of truths: that all human beings truly are of equal worth. Without this knowledge rooted in blood and sinew and bone, we’ve taken it for granted that somehow, we matter more than the rest.

So we’ve fallen into what is, in fact, exploitation.

At very least we benefit from it, however blind and blundering we may be. Know it or not, much of our wealth comes to us passed from hand to hand along a worldwide chain that starts in poor places far away.

It’s our politics, our financial grip, our alliances propping up squalid governments that keep the conveyor-belt whirring, laden with good things for us…

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Historic economic growth and productivity gains have largely failed to translate into broadly shared benefits to working people.

Not that we exploit cruelly, of course. We may truly pity the poor; even weep for the hungry. From the kindness of our hearts, we may reach down to offer them charity.

But our rights are not their rights; the storehouse of our intrinsic human worth is not to be broken open, its blessings shared with all and sundry — for we are special.

September 11 was a wake-up call.

These days the whole world can watch on screens as we, the privileged, feast and frolic.

Fewer and fewer of those who feel poor, exploited and second-class are disposed to kowtow; and who knows how many of their brothers and sisters in religion, politics or national identity – even the rich and educated – stand right up there with them?

Pragmatism, if nothing more decent, warns us to think seriously about how the world economy might be rejigged; and since condescension and "charity" are poison to justice, to do it eye-to-eye, listening to all as equals.