John Cleese insists he isn’t racist but….

John Cleese insists he isn’t racist because he believes “some cultures are better than others”. This colonial mindset is a relic of the ‘glorious days’ days of Britain. An idea of Britain which has never existed.

This rhetoric has been prevalent in the west since the Iraq war where Imperialism attempted to manufacture consent of invading and pillaging the middle east.

His point of ‘culture not race’ is a distinction without much difference. Especially in the manner himself and Rupert Lowe discuss it.

From a class perspective, cultures are not floating ideas that emerge in isolation. They are shaped by history and material conditions. Poverty, colonialism, war and exploitation leave their mark on societies just as prosperity and stability do.

Cleese points to female genital mutilation and beheadings as though they are defining characteristics of entire cultures. Not talking about the actual beliefs of the cultures/denominations of the people he attacks. Just that of the most extremist elements of it.

He completely ignores who promotes these extremists and why they exist in the first place.

Let’s look at the Middle East. This is obviously where he is referring too. The most warring state is the wests strategic partner Israel. Some of the most degenerative atrocities committed in the region were perpetuted by the zionists, but that isn’t what he’s talking about.

Islam is what he means and only the extremist part of it. The most reactionary Islamist movements did not emerge in a vacuum. Time and again they have been created and armed by the very imperialist powers that now point to them as evidence of a supposedly ‘inferior culture’. Britain and the United States have spent decades backing monarchies, dictators and sectarian forces whenever it suited their strategic interests, while crushing any revolutionary movements that threatened western dominance.

This is a long practiced strategy.
Reducing millions of people to the worst examples that imperialism itself has helped cultivate isn’t an explanation. It’s propaganda.

The working class has nothing to gain from ranking cultures. It has everything to gain from understanding why societies develop as they do, who profits from division, and why the same ruling class that lectures us about ‘civilised values’ has spent generations nurturing the very reactionary forces it now uses to justify war and repression.

The question was never which culture is “better”. The real question is who created the conditions, and who benefits from keeping them that way.