I boken argumenterar Lindqvist för att Förintelsen av de europeiska judarna, snarare än som unik, måste ses som en kulmen på en rasistisk ideologi om europeisk överhöghet som präglat hela den europeiska kolonialismen från den spanska erövringen av Kanarieöarna på 1400-talet och framåt.

Titeln Utrota varenda jävel är hämtad från Joseph Conrads roman Mörkrets hjärta. Dessa tre ord har, i Conrads berättelse, kolonisatören Kurtz klottrat som "ett utkast till metod" till sin egen uppsats om den europeiska civilisationens uppgift i världen. Det engelska originalet lyder Exterminate all the brutes.

Lindqvist presents a unique study of Europe's dark history in Africa, written both as a travel diary and as a historical examination of European imperialism and racism over the past 2 centuries, and confronts the roots of European genocide.

https://www.arenes.fr/livre/exterminez-toutes-ces-brutes-2/
Raoul Peck ( )

En intercalant trois récits (le voyage qu’il fait en Afrique alors qu’il écrit ce livre, Au coeur des ténèbres de Joseph Conrad et l’histoire des colonisations et du racisme institutionnalisé) Sven Lindqvist éclaire l’histoire moderne de façon terrifiante.

La partie historique est glaçante, elle raconte comment l’Europe s’est appropriée toutes les richesses du monde en spoliant, massacrant, torturant, délocalisant, trompant… (j’arrête ici car tout à été commis).

Une histoire des crimes de l’humanité, de la loi du plus fort (des navires, canons et fusils) et de l’aveuglement volontaire, des justifications odieuses, des complicités des états, du clergé et de scientifiques.

Un livre parfois difficilement soutenable qui pourtant ne fait que démontrer comment toutes les richesses occidentales se sont bâties sur un génocide planétaire ( )

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has Kurtz at his end exclaim “The horror! The horror!” but the real horror is finding out how much of Conrad’s novella is based on real events. Real events that Lundqvist brings to light, lifting his title from Kurtz’s scrawled note on his beloved pamphlet - “Exterminate All The Brutes!”

How does genocide become “to be regarded as the as the inevitable by-product of progress?” (115)

And Lundqvist has certainly heightened my view of multiple H.G. Wells’ works (see notes added to War of the Worlds)

Some reviews point to other atrocities in an attempt to show Lundqvist’s book as one-sided, but many of those examples are internecine or nearly so, not one nation reaching halfway around the globe to subjugate or exterminate another peoples.

I’m not so sure I completely buy into Lundqvist’s wrapping up in stating the Nazis “lebensraum” was their attempt at colonialism. But I do agree with his idea that the Germans got into the colonizing game later than other nations, and his parallel that as such they didn’t get a prime spot at the watering hole like the early arrival animals did.

And I agree with his idea that the Nazis studied how other nations had gone about conducting their genocides to use as a model to cleanse Europe (see notes on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee). As well as his contention that “We want genocide to have begun and ended with Nazism. That is what is most comforting.”

I also find the current uproar about CRT (critical race theory) curiously interesting as though it’s something new. Read Lundqvist’s book and it’s apparent that much of what CRT speaks to was around a century ago. ( )