The creation of closed technological state and corporate clubs, the development and implementation of new measures to limit access to digital technologies, as well as restraining competing cultural and civilizational communities and states in the development of their own digital technologies has in fact already become a reality of international interaction.
The tasks of seizing someone else’s land and enslaving the peoples living there, which during the so-called “Age of Great Discoveries” was conducted by Western (then still exclusively European) civilization required legal, ethical and moral justification.
One of the first attempts to understand the right of Europeans to conquer and enslave the natives was made by Juan Ginés Sepúlveda, the historiographer of Charles V and Philip II.
Sepúlveda portrayed the natives as savages and barbarians in order, citing Aristotle, to deprive them of all basic rights. At the very beginning of the conquest of the New World, the argument was put forward that the Indians made human sacrifices and, accordingly, were idolaters, cannibals and criminals. A very common reference was to Aristotle and his “Politics” that barbarian peoples are “slaves by nature.”
This interpretation of Aristotle’s non-humane argument is based, however, on a certain idea of humanity, namely, on the idea of the higher humanity of some, and, accordingly, the lesser humanity of others.
However, there was another approach developed by Christian theologians. St. Augustine said that the Aborigines are people and therefore have an immortal soul. The final statement of this principle is associated with Francisco de Vitoria, who in his “Lectures” rejects the aforementioned argument of the classical Greek philosopher as pagan and concludes that “peoples, although barbaric, are nevertheless human.” De Vitoria, thus, equates non-Christians with Christians in international legal terms, but... for some reason, Western thought always requires this “but”.
Contrary to apparent logic, de Vitoria does not declare the great Spanish Conquest to be unjust. On the contrary, he uses the “just war” argument to achieve exactly the opposite result.
According to de Vitoria, if barbarians violate the laws of hospitality, oppose free missions, free trade and free propaganda, then they violate the corresponding jus gentium right of the Spaniards. Then, if peaceful exhortations do not bring any benefit, this is a reason for a “just war”, which in turn serves as a justification for the annexation, occupation and subjugation of the American peoples. Not to mention the right of the Spaniards to intervene to protect Indians who had already converted to Christianity.
Despite well-known progress in the understanding of humanism, such moral dilemmas have not departed the modern Western world. At the same time, as a result of immigration processes resulting from decolonisation, the issue of equality of representatives of different peoples is no longer solely a problem of justifying new conquests and maintaining dependence, since in the current historical moment, these problems are resolved by other, mainly economic instruments.
Now, among other things, this is a practical question of the possibility of coexistence of representatives of different nations within the framework of one state or supranational entity. There have been attempts to solve this problem through the implementation of multiculturalism as a policy, however, as Kenan Malik’s article “The Failure of Multiculturalism” in Foreign Affairs convincingly shows and as we see in Thilo Sarrazin’s book “Germany: Self-Destruction”, it was not successful.
In a sense, these findings only confirm the correctness of the assessment of James Blaut, who stated in his article “The Theory of Cultural Racism” that cultural racism has replaced the biological concept of the “white race” and is a theory of cultural rather than racial superiority.
In his work, Blaut traced the evolution of ideas of racism, noting, among other things, religious racism. At the same time, for our part, we note that, as before, there is some “humanisation” in the development of this phenomenon. It is difficult to say how meaningful this process is, but throughout history, Western civilization, in defining its approach to the concept of a “human being,” seems to simultaneously follow two different directions.
On the one hand, there is a consistent declaration of the equality and dignity of every human individual, regardless of origin and other characteristics. On the other hand, we see the existential need to assert the superiority and the rights of the first nations, albeit among “equals”.
Blaut explains the theory of “modernisation”, designed to replace the now irrelevant theories of religious or biological racism with cultural racism, which is based on the idea that “non-Europeans” are inferior to Europeans not racially, but culturally. This is supposedly predetermined by the very course of history and cultural evolution, and this is the reason for the poverty of “non-Europeans” who are “obliged to follow, under European patronage and ‘tutelage’,” the European path as the only way to overcome backwardness.
It is also interesting that in all these discussions, few European thinkers pay attention to the true source of European prosperity – the centuries-old exploitation of the peoples oppressed by Europeans. For example, the American sociologist and political scientist Samuel Huntinton spoke about this without hesitation and with unequivocal frankness in his book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order”: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
All theories of superiority, one way or another, were designed to ensure the ethical and ideological primacy of the Western world within the framework of colonial and neo-colonial policies. A kind of “agreement of accession” to the financial and political infrastructure of the hegemon of the Western world, based on a rigid hierarchy, expressed in the subordination of national interests to the interests of the Western approach to globalisation, is used at the present stage as a practical tool for ensuring this “agreement”.
Today, the Western world does not have enough cultural racism to justify its exclusivity. The economic successes of the countries of the Global South, accomplished quite independently in the last 20-30 years, call into question the Europeans’ claim to any advantage in history and culture that predetermines their economic wealth, which requires the West to formulate new theoretical structures to justify its superiority.
Political racism
At the November 2023 APEC summit in San Francisco, US President Joe Biden was again asked if he had changed his mind about whether Chinese President Xi Jinping was a dictator. Biden responded:
“He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.”
This statement, of course, caused a diplomatic uproar. However, in our opinion, it has not received enough attention, since such recognition is exclusively symptomatic in the context of the genesis of a new form of racism, used to justify the superiority of the Western world.
Winston Churchill’s famous statement that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried” has long been made by the so-called collective West as an absolute and ideological postulate.
First, it assumes that there is only one acceptable form of government – a democratic republic. Moreover, it is acceptable only in the form of the political regime recognized by the West – liberal democracy. Both are the fruit of Western political thought, the institutions of which were formed during a long European historical process that absorbed mainly the Catholic and Protestant religious heritage and Western philosophy.
Second, only the collective West itself, expressed both by specific representatives of a given large space and by various collective associations, such as the G7, the European Union, NATO, etc., is an authoritative arbiter which is allowed to judge the compliance of certain states or specific processes to be named “ideal”.
This is exactly what President Biden meant, perhaps being a little too candid about what was on his mind. Any political regime that differs from “ours”, by definition, does not meet the criteria for an equal, and is accordingly backward.
From a practical point of view, political racism is not a belief about the superiority of some individuals over others, due to biological or cultural-historical factors, as before, but about the superiority of some communities over others on political grounds.
Not just any specific people are designated as unequal, but, for example, all citizens of a certain state. You don’t have to look far for examples. Any sanctions and restrictions by Western powers that directly affect citizens of the Russian Federation are clear examples of discrimination based on political racism.
For example, in accordance with Article 3i of the Council Regulation of the European Union No. 833/2014, the purchase, import, transfer (directly or indirectly) into the European Union of goods that bring significant income to the Russian Federation and are listed in Annex XXI to Council Regulation of the European Union No. 833/2014 are prohibited, if such goods are produced in Russia or exported from Russia. At the same time, Annex XXI to Council Regulation of the European Union No. 833/2014 contains a wide list of goods for personal use, including laptops (code 8471) and mobile phones (code 8517). In fact, these measures represent a ban on the possession of certain things by Russian citizens. Such a measure could well be imagined within the framework of the apartheid regime that reigned recently in South Africa or in the United States. Perhaps the European bureaucrats were afraid of themselves, since the decision of the Council of the European Union No. 2023/2874, adopted within the framework of the 12th package of sanctions, introduced certain exemptions for personal items. It’s not entirely clear, however, what to do if the same phone or laptop is, for example, a corporate one. At the same time, the vector of thought of the European legislator remains unchanged.
Or take, for example, the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the opinion expressed by the colourful American publicist and political commentator Ben Shapiro on X. Shapiro said, addressing, presumably, a Western audience: “Not everyone thinks like you do. Hamas does not share your values or even your general outlook on a worthy life.”
Is the reverse also true? Do only those who think like you (i.e. the Western audience) understand the value of life? This logic lies at the basis of the justifications for Israel’s actions today. Within the framework of political racism, the bearer of the “correct” values seems to be a little more human than the one who does not share them. This is where monstrous doublethink arises in assessments of war crimes by one and the other side of the conflict.
Digital racism
The geopolitical sense of one’s own exclusivity and the exorbitant ego of the Western cultural and civilizational system, which in the 19th century, through the mouth of Friedrich Nietzsche, proclaimed the philosophical maxim about the death of God, soon after that, by the beginning of the 20th century, finally took shape in Kipling’s “white man’s burden”. Apparently, now they will take on completely unexpected forms and features.
The concept of political racism certainly retains significant potential for development. However, as it has been used most actively by the West over the past thirty years, political racism has encountered objective growth limits. Faced with opposition, current forms of Western racism will obviously continue to mutate. As noted by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Russian People’s Council, “Russophobia and other forms of racism and neo-Nazism have almost become the official ideology of Western ruling elites.” Actually, in addition to political racism, which is relatively young and full of destructive forces, digital racism may become a new form in the future.
Digital racism can be understood as a form of discrimination against social communities and their representatives (individuals and legal entities), in which the hardware, technical or algorithmic advantage in the field of the latest digital technologies of a particular civilizational space, state or community will serve as a justification for leadership ideas, exclusivity and superiority in relation to any other social communities. In this sense, digital racism can develop in two key dimensions: technological and algorithmic.
Technological discrimination as a facet of digital racism will be based on the ideology of superiority based on the principle of possessing the latest technological solutions in the digital field, ranging from semiconductor products and microcircuits to quantum technologies and advanced data transmission technologies.
The creation of closed technological state and corporate clubs, the development and implementation of new measures to limit access to digital technologies, as well as restraining competing cultural and civilizational communities and states in the development of their own digital technologies has in fact already become a reality of international interaction.
Just look at the US attempts to limit the technological development of the PRC and the implementation of a set of measures for the relocation of high-tech industries to the US. It is the competition with China for technological leadership in the field of digital technologies that is one of the key driving forces of the current stage of the geopolitical crisis around Taiwan.
However, if technological discrimination, as a type of digital racism, has already become an entrenched and, most importantly, controlled phenomenon, then the new and potentially uncontrollable algorithmic feature of digital racism, which is anthropogenic in nature, can lead humanity to a tragedy of epic proportions. We are talking about artificial intelligence (AI), which, like the old principle of Deus ex Machina, is capable of jumping onto the world stage and most dramatically influencing the development of human civilization and scientific and technological progress.
AI, or a generative neural network (i.e., an algorithmic model of machine learning without a teacher), can develop along unpredictable trajectories and scenarios, which lays the foundation for a fundamentally new form of digital racism – algorithmic discrimination (which would probably be poorly controlled even by its creators). The basis for such racism may be the current specifics of the development of AI technology.
First, modern, advanced AI algorithms are developed by representatives of Western civilization. So who can guarantee that the algorithmic model at the initial code stage will not be derived from guidelines and prohibitions that reflect the cultural norms of the West?
Second, even if we assume that such guidelines and prohibitions aren’t intentionally incorporated into the algorithm during the creation and development of AI, the algorithmic model is English-centric (since the creators of systems like ChatGPT model are predominantly English-speaking specialists with corresponding worldview and way of life). It cannot be ruled out that for objective reasons, for the purposes of self-development, they will turn to predominantly Western databases and corresponding information and cultural layers, which, for obvious reasons, are meaningfully saturated with various forms and manifestations of a racist perception of the world. This worldview is fixed at the level of linguistic, historical and artistic images and symbols.
Third, due to these two circumstances of the development of generative neural networks, the question arises about the extent to which the heritage of the non-Western part of human civilization (including Russian and Chinese culture) will be used from the point of view of constructing a balanced AI model, for example, in matters of ethics and morality. That is, in other words, how humane and human-centric will the resulting AI model be, and how developed will it be in terms of mechanisms to protect humanity from the uncontrolled behaviour of AI?
Let’s remember one incident. In 2018, Firaxis Games released a computer game, Civilisation VI, where the player is given a civilisation and the objective of taking over the world. For the sixth edition, it added the Cree – a real North American indigenous tribe, currently living in Canada. However, the head of the Cree people, Milton Tootoosis, opposed the inclusion of his tribe in this game, and here’s why: “It perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land. That is totally not in concert with our traditional ways and world view.”
Will it turn out that an algorithmic AI model developed without taking into account these features will become a digital copy of the “black man” or Faust of Western civilization, incorporating numerous prejudices of Western-centric ideologies, including the ideas of racism in all its forms? This scenario does not look fantastic, especially since over the past few years, against the backdrop of the explosive development of AI, scientists, thinkers, politicians and even businessmen have launched a heated debate regarding the threats to humanity posed by AI.
This view of the issues of digital development of humanity mediates a whole range of fundamental problems: from monitoring the progress of the development of neural networks to issues of AI’s humanisation. In fact, today international interaction in this area has been reduced to a minimum, which lays the real foundation for the emergence of digital racism as a new form of international discrimination.
It is no less interesting that, for example, in the logic of technological competition and the consistent implementation of Nietzsche’s thesis about the death of God, as well as the final elimination of morality and ethics based on the West’s Catholic and Protestant heritage, one of the main Western heralds of the future world order, Yuval Noah Harari, predicts that all modern religions may be replaced by religions created by AI.
Questions about the exceptional (i.e. “right”, “good”) and secondary (i.e. “wrong”, “evil”) within the practice of digital racism will arise both within such a new digital religion and, for example, in the context of the theory of “dataism”, developed, among others, by the same Harari. In general, today the idea of a digital AI religion is just a forecast (albeit from a thinker and creator of ideological narratives among Western intellectuals), but such a view of the scenarios for the development of AI, coupled with the potential threats posed by it to humanity in the future, can give the problems of generative neural networks an eschatological flavour, taking, among other things, the problems of algorithmic discrimination beyond the brackets of a purely philosophical and political science dimension.
In any case, racism is only a form of realisation of the claim to exclusivity, providing a practical goal – justification for the dominance of a certain civilizational community. The world is becoming more complex, and along with it the form is becoming more complex. Outright violence is replaced by a more sophisticated manipulation. However, as long as the very idea of superiority on any basis is alive, the ideologies that ensure it will also be ineradicable.
