Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a 29-minute speech to world leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. In his speech, Rubio expressed longing for the days of colonization, suggesting many times that “the West” should unite to exert its unified force against the Global South, where the vast majority of the world lives. Framing his speech mostly around immigration, he argued that “the West” is facing an existential identity crisis.
His speech was riddled with dog whistles, often heard among hate groups in the U.S. and in Europe. Ideas of white people going extinct and the need to protect white culture from the same Black and Brown people that form the basis of everything most in the West consider “white” in the modern era, all drive these unfounded fears. Let’s be clear: before the Revolutionary War, the founders also feared white extinction, which, to them, meant White Anglo-Saxon Protestants specifically. That was hundreds of years ago, and white people still exist.
Interestingly, the founders didn’t consider Italians, French, Spaniards, Germans, the Irish, and many others to be “white.” Marco Rubio certainly would not have been. Even now that Rubio decided to deny his Cuban ancestry, it’s not just racists who don’t consider him white; U.S. society overall doesn’t, despite “white” being dubious. The denial of his culture and heritage exposes the self-hatred many in the Latino and Black communities have pointed out for years.
All of this came to a head in his speech, which clarified how he sees himself.
The Dog Whistles
Rubio invoked “Western civilization” many times, a term used to argue that white people have to protect themselves from immigrants. The term started regaining traction in recent years after being popularized in racist and neo-Nazi circles. In his speech, he used it as a unifying message to try to highlight shared perogatives among nations. As with most racist rhetoric, to argue that all of Europe shares culture and language alongside ancestry flies in the face of everything racists believe. Just as there is no clear definition of what “white” is or may be, there is also no singular definition of so-called “Western” civilization. For example, Latin America is in the West.
“We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir,” said Rubio.” Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis, which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West.”
Rubio then jumped right into viewing the colonialist slaughter and displacement of hundreds of millions of Indigenous people around the world through rose-colored glasses. He romanticized the horrors that came with missionaries, of countless genocides, of the transatlantic slave trade, and how all of the West was built on the oppression and suffering of non-white people in the name of corporate profits, greed, and power. Meanwhile, he refers to decolonization efforts across the Global South, such as anti-Apartheid efforts, as “godless communist revolutions.”
“This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon,” said Rubio. “It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again. For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Rubio lamented. “But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain, and the rest looked like it would soon follow,” Rubio continued. “The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”
Rubio, who for decades referred to himself as being proud of his Cuban heritage, skipped over that part of his family’s history in his speech. This serves to highlight how little connected he is to Cuba and his lack of a full understanding of life on the island, the Cuban people’s ideas, or political beliefs. It also acknowledges his agenda seeking control by force, how it aligns with U.S. foreign policy, and the Trump White House’s dominionist plans for the Global South. It’s not uncommon for white Cuban Americans to claim they’re Italian or Spanish while ignoring their diverse roots in Cuban history, as Rubio does here.
“The year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Geroldi lived in Casale Monferrato in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, said Rubio, referring to his alleged Italian ancestors. “And Jose and Manuela Reina lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don’t know what, if anything, they knew about the 13 colonies, which had gained their independence from the British Empire, but here’s what I am certain of: They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation.”
Rubio then gleefully echoed the words of white nationalists on social media that have become more prominent in recent months. They argue that certain things specific to Europe represent “white culture.” What he doesn’t acknowledge is how many of these artists who are of Italian, French, or German descent were not considered white by the founders of the United States. He ignores that much of Spanish culture comes from the Moors, who were Black and ruled Spain for 700 years. Instead, what Rubio is doing is attempting to unify Europe under that banner of “western culture,” which any racist will tell you is code for white culture.
“It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born,” said Rubio. “It was here in Europe where the world – which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution. It was this continent that produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,”
After ignoring advances in education, science, and art from the rest of the world outside Europe, Rubio described the importance of Catholicism and Christianity in the West’s rise to power and how it foreshadows the future. He framed this part as being unapologetic about Europe and the United States’ shared heritage and common inheritance, a framing that often rationalizes racist beliefs. As previously noted, Rubio has often used language suggesting ownership of other countries and of entire regions from Latin America to Africa and the Middle East.
“And this is the place where the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne, they testify not just to the greatness of our past or to a faith in God that inspired these marvels,” continued Rubio. “They foreshadow the wonders that await us in our future. But only if we are unapologetic in our heritage and proud of this common inheritance can we together begin the work of envisioning and shaping our economic and our political future.”
Rubio’s rhetoric inevitably exposes the racism and xenophobia motivating these ideas. He framed it as a battle between “the West” and the rest of the world. He called immigration a threat to the “fabric of our societies” and the survival of “our” civilizations, in an attempt to blur the lines between his Latinidad and Western definitions of whiteness. Meanwhile, in the U.S., he’s simply Latino, not white. In using this language, he’s engaging in the rhetoric behind the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that suggests there is a concerted effort to make white people extinct.
“Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate,” said Rubio. “It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty. And the failure to do so is not just an abdication of one of our most basic duties owed to our people. It is an urgent threat to the fabric of our societies and the survival of our civilization itself.”
What Rubio did in this speech was argue for the recolonization of nations and regions that have fought for centuries to free themselves from the grip of colonization. That he received a standing ovation at a conference with many world leaders is alarming. What we have seen with many countries, whether it’s attacks on the sovereignty of Venezuela and Cuba or meddling in several Latin American elections last year, is that the United States stands poised to go to war with several at once.
When Rubio attacked the United Nations, saying it “has no answers and has played virtually no role” in pressing global issues, essentially calling it a failure, he made it clear that the U.S. is seeking support of European partners outside the boundaries set by the United Nations. The support the U.S. seeks is for its dominionist agenda set in motion by the Trump White House, while outright ignoring international law and the UN charter.
As Western news media refer to his speech as a “unifying” message with “some criticism” for the U.S’s European partners, the reality is he called to set the wheels in motion for Western domination over much of the world. That’s the terrifying part of all of this, and it’s being largely overlooked.
Legacy news media seem to have already fallen in line.
Watch the Full Speech
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It's so nostalgic and cranky. He might as well be wishing for rotary phones. I am holding Bad Bunny's half time show as my highest vision for the future. More diversity and love for our unique communities.
I'm concerned about his standing ovation speech to "world leaders" in Munich, of all places, using white nationalist dog whistles. I'm getting conflicting information from Europe about attacking these types of dog whistles so who was Rubio exactly talking to? I want to know who is ALL IN on this.