[News] Iran and the Psychopathology of White Supremacy

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Iran and the Psychopathology of White Supremacy
<https://blackagendareport.com/iran-and-psychopathology-white-supremacy>

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
<https://blackagendareport.com/author/ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and
columnist>
04 Mar 2026


[image: Pete Hegseth]
<https://blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2026-03/11%20845x400.png>
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Dan Caine speak during a news conference at the Pentagon.

*Western threats against Iran and other nations reveal the persistence of
white supremacist ideology.*

The sincere belief that the sadistic brutalization of the Palestinian
people would sever their connection to their land; that a sixty-year siege
on Cuba would compel its people to abandon their revolution; or that
assassinating Iran’s revolutionary and spiritual leadership would force the
country to surrender its sovereignty to its historic tormentors in the
United States and the Zionist ethno-state of Israel—these are not simply
policy miscalculations. They are manifestations of what I call the
*psychopathology
of white supremacy*.

This psychopathology is not reducible to individual prejudice. It is a
racialized, narcissistic cognitive disorder embedded in the ideological and
institutional architecture of Western power. It centers Europe and its
settler extensions as the apex of human development and renders its
adherents incapable of perceiving objective reality when confronted with
non-European resistance. While rooted in the historical experience of
Europe and its encounters with non-European people during the expansion of
European power,  it can affect anyone socialized within the ideological and
cultural mechanisms of the Pan-European colonial project.

As a non-material conceptual frame, it nevertheless produces material
consequences. Since the first sustained contact between emerging European
powers and the non-European world, this affliction has shaped policies that
devastated societies, cultures, and millions of lives. It ensures that
Western decision-makers repeatedly construct strategies that are
counterproductive even to their own long-term interests when dealing with
non-European peoples.

The disastrous decision to attack and escalate against Iran exemplifies
this dynamic. It reflects arrogance and hubris born of centuries of assumed
supremacy, temporarily reinforced by episodic tactical gains elsewhere such
as Venezuela. Yet this posture ignores profound global shifts in power.
Western policymakers are unable—or unwilling—to recognize that the
conditions that once enabled them to impose their will unilaterally no
longer exist. They act as if the world remains frozen in the immediate
post-Cold War moment, when U.S. hegemony appeared uncontested.

This cognitive distortion is inseparable from white supremacy itself, which
operates ideologically and structurally. Ideologically, white supremacy
posits that the descendants of Europe represent the highest stage of
civilization, that their institutions, religions, and social systems are
inherently superior. Structurally, it is expressed through global
institutions and arrangements that reproduce Western dominance: the
International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, NATO,
the global banking system, and dollar hegemony. These institutions function
as material instruments for maintaining global white power.

Following the Second World War, the Nuremberg Principles and the United
Nations Charter affirmed that all peoples possess the right to peace,
sovereignty, and self-determination. States were not to interfere in the
internal affairs of others. These commitments were framed as extensions of
Enlightenment liberalism. Yet for those subjected to colonial conquest and
racial capitalism, these ideals were always contradicted by practice.
Liberal universalism proclaimed equality while colonial modernity imposed
hierarchy. Still, the myth of Western moral superiority
endured—particularly among Western elites, their colonized intermediaries,
and privileged sectors of the white working classes who benefited
materially from imperial plunder.

Gaza has torn away the remaining veil. The spectacle of mass destruction,
rationalized and defended in the name of “civilization,” exposes the moral
contradictions long embedded in Western political culture. When Western
powers felt compelled to maintain the appearance of humanitarian restraint,
there were at least rhetorical limits on their conduct. In the current era
of openly lawless global fascism led by the United States and Israel, those
self-imposed constraints have disappeared.

We must harbor no illusions about the nature of Western power or its
pathological commitment to maintaining white supremacy. A commitment that
has a cross-class character.  The dehumanization of non-European peoples
has always provided the ideological justification for enslavement, settler
conquest in the Americas, colonial consolidation in Africa and Asia, and
contemporary doctrines such as American exceptionalism. The same biblical
imagery invoked in Gaza echoes the language of Manifest Destiny. The logic
is consistent: the lives of non-Europeans are expendable in the service of
a civilizational mission atoned by a white Christian God.

The racial dimension of imperial aggression becomes particularly clear in
cases such as Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. These are not merely geopolitical
rivals; they are targets marked by racialized narratives of irrationality,
authoritarianism and political fanaticism. Narratives that are not just
constructed by rightist forces but embraced by forces that define
themselves as left, and anti-imperialist.  The resistance that emanates
from global South forces challenges not only U.S. strategic interests but
the myth of Western indispensability in both its left and right expressions.

Iran and Venezuela, working with BRICS partners, have developed mechanisms
to circumvent sanctions through alternative trade arrangements and digital
currencies. They have demonstrated that resource-rich nations can survive
economic warfare. Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the
world; Iran ranks among the top three. Iraq also occupies a critical
position. Control over energy resources remains central to U.S. strategy,
particularly in relation to China. The contest is not simply about regional
influence but about preventing the emergence of a multipolar order that
would weaken dollar dominance and, by extension, U.S. global leverage.

Dollar hegemony has been foundational to postwar U.S. economic growth and
its capacity to sustain massive deficits. With national debt approaching
unprecedented levels and annual deficits soaring, maintaining control over
energy markets and reserve currency status is not optional—it is
structural, and in fact, existential for Western white hegemony under the
leadership of the U.S. Therefore, what is presented as a security doctrine
is in fact an economic imperative.

“Full spectrum dominance,” articulated in U.S. national security strategy,
calls for preventing the rise of any regional power capable of challenging
U.S. supremacy. This doctrine explains the relentless pressure on Iran in
West Asia and Venezuela in the Americas. It also clarifies U.S.
interventions in Africa, including destabilization efforts that ensure
regional powers remain subordinate.

Security-first narratives—counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, border
enforcement—provide ideological cover. But beneath them lies a deeper
crisis of Western capitalism. As that crisis intensifies, fascist
restructuring becomes more explicit. Opposition to imperial policy is
criminalized. Surveillance expands. Anti-terror and public order laws are
weaponized. Domestically, Indigenous, African/Black, migrant, and labor
movements are reframed as security threats. Internationally, sanctions
regimes function as collective punishment, imposing siege conditions on
entire populations.

The psychopathology of white supremacy fuels this process. Unable to accept
limits, Western elites double down on coercion. Yet this very overreach
contains its own contradiction. By misreading global realities and
underestimating the resolve of targeted nations, Western powers accelerate
their own strategic decline. Each failed intervention erodes legitimacy.
Each sanction that pushes nations toward alternative financial systems
weakens the architecture of dollar dominance.

For those engaged in social justice and radical struggle, these
developments pose urgent questions. Can justice be achieved domestically
without confronting imperial power internationally? Can movements ignore
the racialized foundations of global capitalism while seeking reform within
its structures? The consolidation of fascism abroad and repression at home
are not separate phenomena; they are mutually reinforcing.

Renewed U.S. dominance, pursued through militarism and economic warfare,
reshapes the terrain of struggle. It narrows democratic space, intensifies
polarization, and demands clarity. There can be no effective oppositional
politics that refuses to confront the ideological and material consequences
of normalized white supremacy. Anti-racism detached from anti-imperialism
becomes hollow. Anti-imperialism that ignores racial hierarchy is
incomplete and reactionary.

The psychopathology of white supremacy, paradoxically, may be its own
undoing. By distorting perception, it drives policies that hasten the
decline of the “collective West.” By denying the humanity of others, it
strengthens their resolve. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Palestine demonstrate
that sovereignty cannot be bombed or sanctioned out of existence.
Resistance exposes the limits of the Pan European colonial/capitalist white
supremacist patriarchy.

The choice before radical movements is stark. Either we confront
fascism—domestically and internationally—and challenge the structures that
sustain it, or we drift into accommodation and become complicit in our own
subordination. History suggests that empires rarely relinquish power
voluntarily. They must be compelled by organized, principled resistance
grounded in an unflinching analysis of power.

The era of illusions is over. What is required is clarity—and the
responsibility to act.

No Compromise, No Retreat!!

*Ajamu Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda
Report. He is the Director of the North-South Project for
People(s)-Centered Human Rights and serves on the Executive Committee of
the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S.-based United
National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC).*
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