Imperialists continue to exercise control of former colonies from the comfort of their metropolises as their former subjects appear resigned to their post-colonial fates.
“The budding stages of colonialism witnessed the quick obliteration of indigenous languages for formal communication.”
Europe outweighs other powers in the colonization and subjugation of peoples in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australasia. Beginning with the voyages of “discovery” at the zenith of Spanish maritime power in the 15th century, followed by Portugal, Britain, France, Holland and to a lesser extent, Italy, Germany and Belgium, the foundations were being laid for the four essentials (the 4 C’s) constituting the moral justification for an ambitious project of European colonialism and hegemony: “Civilization”, Confiscation (of resources of the colonized), Christianity and Commandeering (of the identities of colonial subjects). The undertaking meted out generous servings of brutality of genocidal proportions and derogation of natives in colonized lands, variably termed savages, brutes, barbarians --- anything but human.
Classic colonialism was a massive project that generated states of mutually exclusive otherness between colonizer and colonized, the “us vs them” paradigm that defined the lopsided relationship between victor and vanquished. The paradigm spawned narratives that constituted reference points for bondage, murder, theft, derision and narrative appropriation. Subsequently native self-loathing emerged as greater numbers of colonized subjects were recruited into colonial education systems. Colonized subjects arose whose culture was a farrago of native and Western norms, straddled precariously between the two ethos, in reality belonging to neither. Inculcation of colonial attitudes to select individuals among the vanquished was integral to the subjugation of the colonized, initially achieved via orchestrated armed interventions, territorial appropriation, followed by education, imposition of colonial languages as formal languages of administration along with proselytizing. The latter strategy efficiently camouflaged colonial rule to lend a non-violent and an ostensibly more divine face to conquest. Today’s megachurches and evangelical proselytizing originating in the Bible Belt are inseparable from America’s imperial and racist faces.
“Native self-loathing emerged as greater numbers of colonized subjects were recruited into colonial education systems.”
Organized religion’s power to subvert former colonial subjects is richly demonstrated in Africa where Nigerian and Kenyan evangelical converts openly prayed for Trump to emerge victorious in the ongoing electoral circus. Trump’s labeling Africa a sh*thole continent did little to dissuade the converts from praying for the electoral success of their racist nemesis. Neither did Africa’s own history of dispossession, theft, enslavement and appropriation of their natural resources by former colonizers or current imperial powers deter African tourists from visiting the holy land in anticipation of the coming triumph of racist Zionists in fulfillment of Biblical “prophesies” and the impending “rapture.” Such a surge of African tourists did not parallel their preference for internal tourism in their own homelands.
The psychological and cultural violence visiting colonized peoples was to become increasingly evident with the passage of time. Fierce armed resistance to colonial rule remained powerless in annulling the enduring psychological and cultural mutilation and attrition of the colonized persona. This had telling effects on colonial subjects during the later colonial and post-colonial phases. It served to obviate the need for physical occupation by the former colonizer in order to continue browbeating their former subjects employing economic, cultural devices and chicanery, tactics that have withstood the test of time. The task is greatly facilitated by hand-picked native agents doing their former masters’ racist bidding while betraying their own. As matters presently stand, imperialists continue to exercise control of former colonies from the comfort of their metropolises as their former subjects appear resigned to their post-colonial fates.
”Nigerian and Kenyan evangelical converts openly prayed for Trump to emerge victorious in the ongoing electoral circus.”
Psycho-cultural conquest was accomplished less from a desire to winning hearts and minds, than forcibly permeating and inhabiting thoughts, as so eloquently described by the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his landmark book Decolonizing the Mind. Among other measures, colonialism took the astute and callous step of implanting ideas in the minds of the colonized subjects led by colonialist-picked bellwethers to render them moldable, servile and complicit, turning them into extensions of the colonizers to corral their kinsfolk into cultural gulags. In such instances, colonialism acquired a native front. These colonial puppets gained few tangible rewards for their treachery beyond donning attires of their colonizers, adopting their mannerisms, cultural affectations, speech and tastes that alienated them from their fellow citizens, morphing them into turncoats and tragicomic clowns for the inadvertent amusement of their compatriots and scorn by their masters alike.
The colonial project was a near flawless strategy that produced a class of natives in sync with colonial aspirations and their facile conversion to ready mediators of their own fellow citizens’ subjugation. The evolution of colonial domination went from barefaced and wanton genocidal mania that transmuted into varied forms of subtle control from covert or overt military to economic and cultural ploys that remain operative to this day. As could be expected, the budding stages of colonialism witnessed the quick obliteration of indigenous languages for formal communication. They were replaced by colonial ones as added tools of control and governance. The groundwork of colonial administrative and educational canons to conclude what might have escaped the impulses of brute force during the nascent colonial mission was nearing full differentiation.
One useful classification of colonial rule is that based on location – external and internal. The former involves subduing alien peoples in distant lands whose mission carried unabashed ethnocentric underpinnings. Internal colonialism employs similar tactics of brute force in tandem with concurrently quashing the aspirations, voiding and debasing the humanity of minority citizens and residents of the colonial power’s domain. It is largely through native language seizure and erasure that powers like the United States, Britain and France abetted by their media, where the denial of rights acknowledging the inalienable and equal humanity fitting for their marginalized citizens is deeply entrenched. A strong case for the colonizing of the mind as equally valid illustration of internal colonialism was made by the talented writer Jason Hirthler in his incisive analysis entitled “Colonizing the Western Mind”. In this scenario, that colonial model transcended ethnic boundaries in which all fell victim to internal psychosocial colonialism.
“Fierce armed resistance to colonial rule remained powerless in annulling the enduring psychological and cultural mutilation and attrition of the colonized persona.”
Empty phrases other than those reflecting frank colonialism are employed as attenuating tools so that the aggrieved as well as their kinsfolk that identify with the dominant powers are maintained in a state of befuddlement and downright impotence. Internally colonized subjects like African Americans, Native Americans, Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Hondurans, Afro-Colombians, the Rohingya of Myanmar, Kashmiris, Palestinians or aboriginals in Australia and New Zealand, non-European immigrants of Europe and lately the Muslims of India suffer deprivations not unlike those wrought on their counterparts outside the colonial metropolises of classical colonial rule. It is the glib coining of attenuating phrases such as “civil rights,” “affirmative action and equal employment opportunities,” “the rule of law” that obscure the inexorable reality that it is human rights that are being pulverized and swept under the carpet of public view and discourse. As Palestine is methodically being erased from the map, even its favored label – “Occupied territories”, is falling out of vogue. It is a colonized land that has been spared the tag “colony”, even though all classic colonies were in fact occupied territories.
Such that the disenfranchised themselves are only too happy and willing to participate in futile debates devised by their rulers in which the marginalized subjects only became part of the lexicon, not its participants or creators. Yet again, even as racism is tactfully and deceitfully acknowledged by its purveyors, such as the pointless and symbolic “taking a knee” before football games in the English Premiere League, racist abuses continue unabated. Correctness, justice and rightness are being supplanted by political correctness to indefinitely postpone any serious and concrete measures to redress balances.
Among buzzwords that obscure colonialist indicators in international relations are “globalism,” “free speech,” “free trade,” “human rights,” “justice,” “The War on Terror,” and “promoting democracy” — terms that are being quietly degraded by the very powers that coined them, if their actions in the foreign theater of operations are anything to go by. These fresher manifestations that have evaded the connotations tied to colonialism, are hurled onto the public heads and under their noses to distract them from a colonial reality. Advocating for human rights would be noble only if it were universal, not selective. All humans are deserving of their rights as inalienable, not patronizing handouts. Yelling human rights till the imperial voice is hoarse when it comes to Chinese citizens in Hong Kong, Muslim Uyghurs of mainland China and Venezuelans by America and Europe, but observing an earsplitting silence on colonized minorities such as Palestinians occupied by Israel or dispossessed native survivors of unprecedented White genocide and enslavement is rank hypocrisy taken to the next level in the evolution of racist-driven colonialism. The upshot: the plights of the dispossessed indigenous peoples no longer count as such, merely documented as a benign and inevitable onward march of history.
“It is the glib coining of attenuating phrases such as “civil rights,” that obscure the inexorable reality that it is human rights that are being pulverized.”
Voluntary colonialism: it would be illogical, indeed futile, to argue against societies — few and far between — that have opted by their own free will, to remain under the dominion of a former colonial power. New Caledonia is a recent example. French President Macron made the announcement with certain satisfaction, despite his clear hostility and refusal to accept French Muslims as equal citizens, instead, siding with those ridiculing their Prophet under the pretext of protecting free speech, something unthinkable when it comes to criticism of the Jewish state. Whether the case of New Caledonia was an admission of incompetence for self-rule, or simply leaving the hassles of governing to those more experienced in that role as colonizers, remains to be determined. The same could be said for the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in faraway Southern Pacific whose British invaders, not surprisingly, chose to remain British in a recent referendum. This stands in sharp contrast to the natives of Diego Garcia who were forcibly evicted from their island to make way for an American military base in a shameful act of robbery and displacement, mafia style. The military facility was the principal base for launching aerial attacks on Iraq in an invasion that left an estimated one million Iraqis dead.
Beneficiary colonialism: is a class of informal and unrecognized — albeit very real — colonialism. It must rank as one representing the highest state of evolution of dominion. Admittedly, only one country mirrors this class of colonial rule par excellence: Israel. But the tentacles of its psycho-cultural infiltration are much more far reaching than the relatively small Jewish populations in the countries they exercise inordinate control over. Riding on holocaust sentiments, a privilege that has been denied indigenous peoples of the Americas despite their own holocausts of even greater magnitude and scope, Israel exercises lopsided control of Middle Eastern foreign policies of the US, Canada and much of Western European countries, Russia in somewhat muted fashion, and Australia.
A taboo subject of Jewish control of mainstream media, financial institutions, entertainment and Ivy League university admissions are added tools used to gag and criminalize anyone bold enough to so assert, as the famous ex-CNN news anchor Rick Sanchez would quickly discover. Marc Lamont Hill followed suit after declaring the obvious about free Palestine. His African American background clearly exacerbated his ethnic vulnerabilities and received his marching orders from CNN. Indeed, by all indications, that bit of expressing his First Amendment rights actually hastened his firing from CNN. Mr. Hill was caught in the crossfires of two certified and thoroughgoing racist entities: White America and Zionist power wielded by Israel firsters in the country, in mutual reinforcement of their shared histories of bigotry, genocide and dispossession.
“The tentacles of its psycho-cultural infiltration are much more far reaching than the relatively small Jewish populations in the countries they exercise inordinate control over.”
Still, Israel has pulled off a massive coup in being the first and largest documented welfare beneficiary of American tax dollars to actually colonize the benefactor country. Successive presidential candidates bend over backwards out groveling each other to please their Zionist puppeteers masquerading as patriotic Americans. The voluntary colonial model described above applies to Israeli colonies of America and their lesser colonial counterparts in Western Europe, Canada and Australia. Because of that, Israel has the edge in seizing the initiative of effectively preempting any resistance war waged by the colonized against their sly colonial rule. The parasite may appear to overwhelm the host, but still retains the wherewithal to keep it viable enough to ensure its continued nourishment and endless largesse from its host. If there were to be a phenomenon of winner-take-all symbiosis, this latest display of Israeli colonialism must surely uphold that. The host in this case extracts no tangible benefits, indeed is pushed to act contrary to self-interest as the parasite derives enough perks while ensuring the host remains a gift that keeps giving.
It is only by a matter of degree that these undeclared and oversized colonies would appear to differ in their abandonment of sovereignty in deference to their Zionist masters. Outright contradiction and violation of “principles” tirelessly fenagled by the West on the rest led by the US, are paid scant attention when the violator is Israel. In this regard, just as American racist cops who murder unarmed African Americans are given a free pass, so too America will continue to give a free pass to Israeli crimes in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and colonized Palestine. There has been no crime committed by this latest and stealthiest of colonial powers, no violations of human decency, no act of dispossession that has not received tacit approval, a blind eye or total silence from Israel’s racist American and European benefactors. No other nation in the annals of modern colonialism has enjoyed such levels of unadulterated impunity. It is a unique demonstration of the evolution of colonialism whereby the colonized benefactor should extend open-ended protection for the criminal acts of the colonizing beneficiary. If any phenomenon belies the empty slogans pushed by the West on the rest, Israel more so than any other country underscores the rank hypocrisy behind such slogans that have become little more than stale buzzwords.
Kweli Nzito, Ph.D., is a retired scientist living in Thailand.
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