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Colonized Weak Minds
The modern left is a weirdly procrustean, static project that wants to halt the natural flow of change, and technological and economic growth so they can impose The Future. For example, we must not notice the dramatic change in attitudes and ideologies regarding race and the concomitant material progress of non-whites. We must instead remain in racial categories reminiscent of late 19th-century Louisiana and forever wear our respective labels as oppressor and oppressed. We must give up the illusion of racial progress and also not continue to grow and innovate in general. Hold still and wait for the enlightened ones to bring you into The Future. Quit trying to get there on your own.
The notion of “colonialism” originated by Edward Said (1935-2003) is just such a weirdly static notion and now one of the principal contrivances of wokeness. We are told that the great sin of the West is that we view Asia and the Middle East through the lens of our own cultural biases and presumed superiority. It is, of course, a complete shocker to be told that the perspective of most people, most of the time, is filtered through their own learned biases, cultural influences of their era, and personal experiences. Heavy.
For example, oddly enough, Americans still tend to think that the mass murder on 9/11 was the result of extremists predictably emerging from a widespread pathological, deformed, dysfunctional political and religious culture when we should instead see it as one event emanating from the richly varied pastiche that is the Arab Muslim world (and somehow our fault). Are the scales falling from your eyes as you read that last bit?
Said was from a Palestinian-Lebanese Arab Christian family. Thus, his ethnicity and religion were the result of the imperialistic Arab Muslim invasions of the region with an interlude of invading Crusader kingdoms followed by the invading Ottoman Empire. His immediate childhood was during (also invading) British rule after the defeat of the Ottomans, concurrent with the rise of Arab nationalism and the founding of the Jewish state. But his resentment of overbearing Anglican faculty at a British school in Jerusalem appears to have been the one influence that trumped all else.
The British were consciously training an administrative class to run things after they left. In other words, Said was educated by people engaged in a project of voluntary decolonization in which the colonizers were leaving behind the principles and values they believed to be most useful to a self-governed people. The bastards.
“Colonialism” is a pretty useless concept as a general explanatory term. To make it useful, we really need to pretend that it is 1903 and we all use terms like “wogs” or “fuzzy-wuzzies” and that we should then feel guilty for that and then remove our own culture from everything to assuage that guilt. What we are then not permitted to do is to notice the fluidity of history, that invasion, conquest, and imposition of the invaders’ culture has been very common, perhaps even the historical norm. And especially not notice the inconvenient fact that, unlike all others, the Western colonial empires ended mostly because of internal political pressures created by Western values. As the Lightbringer said of us: We are the change we were waiting for.
Western culture “imposed” antibiotics, human rights, vastly more productive farming methods, and the end of slavery. Much of the world is said to be undergoing re-colonization because of a choice to acquire Western technology and political values and thus becoming dependent on obtaining the Western cash to do so. In response to that phenomenon, we should feel guilty because the successes that are our heritage are sought by other peoples who are abandoning methods and values that do not work as well. We should be ashamed.
Israel a modern, Westernized state and currently the object of the stale charge of “colonialism” has insisted on voting and due process rights for Arab residents, attempted to invest and upgrade the region, and continues to insist on a deference to freedom of religious expression. All of that is largely missing from the lands in which original indigenous cultures and religions were exterminated by colonizers from Mecca, Baghdad and/or Istanbul. The residents of Gaza should be so lucky as to be “colonized” by Israelis.
Published in General
“Procrustean” is one of the best adjectives that could be applied. Well done.
Although colonization had its faults, on balance it was an enormous benefit to those who were colonized. But that will likely never again be the dominant view. We’re all monsters, oppressing those colonized.
A fancy word for “Maoist”. Half of Americans have a “govern me harder” mindset. Like they said in that movie, “humans are made to be ruled.”
Let me recommend “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire.” One of my favorites.
Funny how former British colonies (Canada, Australia, USA, etc) seem to be pretty good places to live, as opposed to former French and Spanish colonies. The island with Haiti and the Dominican Republic is a nice compact example.
Your results may vary.
The British East India Company was incredibly ruthless. Belgian rule in Africa was the worst of all European powers on the continent.
On the other hand, incomplete colonization may be worse. It has been argued that if the Norman English had finished the conquest of all of Ireland in the 12th century, it would have had a better chance of evolving as a nation state earlier and more organically. Some African academics proposed 20 years ago that the UN recolonize most of Africa because the national borders made no sense and the process of educating and preparing people into readiness for a modern state was not completed.
The point here is that the woke insist that history is frozen in amber, once there has been oppression by white people, the sin is eternal.
Not only that, unfair generalizations of horror are made, and people like me try to create a balance.
I’ve noticed that, too. The Brits by and large left things a lot better than when they found them.
In the 1990s I taught a few courses at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. I noticed that all the things that worked well (infrastructure like water supplies, power, phones, etc.) were products of the old British rule.
I never hear the left calling the Ottoman Empire as “Colonialist”. Or the Aztecs, Mayan, Iroquois as Colonialist, the Soviets, the CCP. All have colonized their neighbors.
It seems to be reserved for western powers.