Terms like "settler colonialism" operate independently of history and fact. They function as code words. A secret handshake for revolutionaries. It's a kind of flagellaton brotherhood.
There is an entire generation, maybe two, of educated people who were soaked in Critical Theory. It metastisized and grew. It has many offshoots, and "Post Colonial" theory is one of those offshoots. Critical Theory was sexy, edgy, destructive, and it smelled like power. The professor as intellectual pimp.
It has now spilled out of the academy and into the streets. Historicism is a blunt instrument. We view objectivity as a kind of oppressive sin. We can no longer distinguish constructive self critique from bashing our own head with a baseball bat. Our enemies know this.
So please finish this project. Lay out the indisputable facts. Let them speak.
I do think this is an interesting fact of history that just goes completely ignored, heck Europe almost came under the thumb of the Islamic empire and those armies were only turned back after a great amount of bloodshed.
In The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray points out that the Paris cathedral where Charles Martel was buried is now in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood.
In part 3, I plan to consider what things like this mean.
I think there is a way to talk about this stuff that gets people to understand the contradictions at play in modern day arguments without getting into just bashing groups of people in unhelpful ways. I feel like you did that in this first piece.
Is there a chance these academics just want to feel powerful themselves? I read in Douglas Murray that a large number of social science academics consider themselves “activists”. Maybe so much of this crap is driven by their own egos and need to feel important since one could argue that their areas of study rarely make an impact in the world. That is a claim I can’t really justify with evidence - more a gut feeling
Oh absolutely! And in so doing they provide talking points to everyone from liberal intellectuals to terrorists. There also seems to be some two-way cross-pollination going on. If you look at the founding charter of the PLO or Hamas, they decry western imperialism in terms that sometimes seem like a leftist rally. But the updated 2017 Hamas charter leans into the language of settler-colonial theory more directly IIRC.
One (rather conspiratorial) explanation for this demoralization project of the west with false claims of colonialism and of endogenous rights would be the whitewashing of current day colonialism and ethnic cleansing by the USSR, Russia and the Muslim Ummah (i.e., the Muslim enduring quests for a global Caliphate).
It’s a doctrine we see used time and time again (one which Yuri Bezmenov talks about extensively) - to take the same exact accusations against your country / culture (e.g., claims of dictatorship and colonialism against Russia and against Islam) and turn them 180 degrees over on the other side (e.g., towards the Anglophile world) so that people start doubting all truths and eventually can not differentiate between right and wrong - thus allowing moral-less predators to have their way and in the end they only realize the error when it is already too late…
This chimes with my thoughts on the matter. The concept is politicised to the point of meaninglessness and also romanticised -- no one admits that "indigenous" cultures fought each other bitterly before white people arrived and sometimes attempted, or committed, genocide. They are assumed to have been living in some kind of pacifist utopia.
I think most Western "anti-imperialist/anti-Zionist" protestors have no idea that there are plenty of non-Arab indigenous groups in the Middle East, all persecuted by the Arabs/Islam.
Reading Efraim Karsh's *Islamic Imperialism* recently, I was struck that the Egyptians didn't even consider themselves Arabs until the 1950s (inevitably, they felt themselves to superior as the descendants of the Pharaohs). It was only when Nasser wanted to get his hands on Arab oil wealth that he suddenly declared the Egyptians to be Arabs and therefore to have a claim on oil revenues in the interests of his pan-Arab and anti-Zionist schemes.
I would posit that post 7C Egyptians, being mostly Arabs after invasion, had a strong Arab identity (how else could they conquer what they did so quickly?), but Arab nationalism rose in response to the increase in Jewish population in the region, rather than oil wealth - which Egypt had to some degree in Sinai (unrealized probably). Nasser was certainly the spark for that nationalism, spurred on by his sponsors, the USSR.
In Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about the transition from majority-Christian Coptic Egypt to Muslim Egypt, as a process that took centuries, despite conquest gains during the establishment Rashidun caliphate. I don't know about the details, but NNT's point was that converting to Islam for business advantage or other non-enforced reasons is still a one-way street. Even if one thought of oneself as a crypto-Copt or harbored heretical ideas about the Trinity, one's children can't go back to Christianity on pain of death. So in a matter of a few generations, people went from "We took on the trappings for personal advantage" to thinking they had "always" been Muslim. Would be interesting to know if someone has dug into the details of that transition.
As an old person, all of this seems obviously true. Back in the day history classes included the repeated settlement of the British Isles, Muslim expansion and the Ottoman invasions of Europe. It needs restating.
I’ve been wondering for years why Islamic and Arab expansionism is never part of the discourse. It’s a perfect storm of antisemites, anti-Zionists and academics trashing historical truths and ascribing to convenient and opportunistic double standards. Thank you for writing this. I look forward to the next column.
This cries out for an animated zoom-able map showing the history (as far back as we know it) of all imperial conquest / assimilation / settling / colonialism / ethnic cleansing etc - to put all of it into historical context in an easily understandable visual format
That would be really interesting! The video I mentioned in the footnotes shows maps and gives a homebrew ranking of Islamic empires, but the timeline I linked has links to other (non-Islamic) conquest and colonization events that would be relevant to such a visualization.
Do you think the war of islamic fundamentalists against the Yazedi is related to a goal of eradicating religious views that meld Zoastrianism, Judaism and Islam, which may reveal the interrelated nature of all religions that evolved in the middle east? I don’t mean in the rather plagiaristic nature of Islam’s adopting a share genealogy with Christianity and Judaism, nor by that am I implying I don’t think Christianity and Judaism have plagiarized adjacent religions themselves.
However, philosophies, such as Zoastrianism, and polytheist myth-based religions seem to be considered more primitive by monotheists, of whichever flavor they inhabit, even though monotheists criticize each other frequently? Being raised atheistically, observing variations in belief and the hierarchies in which the faithful place themselves, with regard to their perception of the validity of the precepts upon which belief systems’ metaphysics rest, is in many ways perplexing.
In my observations, it appears the metaphysics of Islam were designed to dovetail with those of other people of the book. However, the existence of Zoastrianism and other religions that show their connection as a basis for later religions naturally defies the claims of Abrahamic religions to be singularly representative of the sole, evolving voice of god.
For instance, why destroy Palmyra? Is it because it is vibrant example of a thriving and advanced pre-Islamic culture in the region of Islam’s birth? In school, we were taught the Moors spread a cosmopolitan and advanced culture across northern Africa and into Europe. They did not as much teach us what they destroyed, to do so, as much as the reaction of Spanish monarchs to that invasion, with their subsequent Inquisition.
Since then, I have investigated the development of the post-Roman Iberian peninsula. However, what I’m driving at is a question. Is the destruction of Syria similarly about the destruction of a functional pluralistic society in the region, in order to rebuild a caliphate in place of it?
Why is the US even considering supporting that? Weren’t the British interested in propping up the Ottomans before WW1? Why are almost all contemporary US foreign policy objectives aligned with those of the purportedly defunct British empire?
Terms like "settler colonialism" operate independently of history and fact. They function as code words. A secret handshake for revolutionaries. It's a kind of flagellaton brotherhood.
There is an entire generation, maybe two, of educated people who were soaked in Critical Theory. It metastisized and grew. It has many offshoots, and "Post Colonial" theory is one of those offshoots. Critical Theory was sexy, edgy, destructive, and it smelled like power. The professor as intellectual pimp.
It has now spilled out of the academy and into the streets. Historicism is a blunt instrument. We view objectivity as a kind of oppressive sin. We can no longer distinguish constructive self critique from bashing our own head with a baseball bat. Our enemies know this.
So please finish this project. Lay out the indisputable facts. Let them speak.
Thanks! I've got at least two more articles planned. You're right on target with these comments.
I do think this is an interesting fact of history that just goes completely ignored, heck Europe almost came under the thumb of the Islamic empire and those armies were only turned back after a great amount of bloodshed.
In The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray points out that the Paris cathedral where Charles Martel was buried is now in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood.
In part 3, I plan to consider what things like this mean.
I think there is a way to talk about this stuff that gets people to understand the contradictions at play in modern day arguments without getting into just bashing groups of people in unhelpful ways. I feel like you did that in this first piece.
Thanks! I'm trying to find the right blend of seriousness without sensationalism.
Is there a chance these academics just want to feel powerful themselves? I read in Douglas Murray that a large number of social science academics consider themselves “activists”. Maybe so much of this crap is driven by their own egos and need to feel important since one could argue that their areas of study rarely make an impact in the world. That is a claim I can’t really justify with evidence - more a gut feeling
Oh absolutely! And in so doing they provide talking points to everyone from liberal intellectuals to terrorists. There also seems to be some two-way cross-pollination going on. If you look at the founding charter of the PLO or Hamas, they decry western imperialism in terms that sometimes seem like a leftist rally. But the updated 2017 Hamas charter leans into the language of settler-colonial theory more directly IIRC.
Are Muslims colonizing Europe right now?
Stay tuned....
Settler colonialism - Morocco and Western Sahara
One (rather conspiratorial) explanation for this demoralization project of the west with false claims of colonialism and of endogenous rights would be the whitewashing of current day colonialism and ethnic cleansing by the USSR, Russia and the Muslim Ummah (i.e., the Muslim enduring quests for a global Caliphate).
It’s a doctrine we see used time and time again (one which Yuri Bezmenov talks about extensively) - to take the same exact accusations against your country / culture (e.g., claims of dictatorship and colonialism against Russia and against Islam) and turn them 180 degrees over on the other side (e.g., towards the Anglophile world) so that people start doubting all truths and eventually can not differentiate between right and wrong - thus allowing moral-less predators to have their way and in the end they only realize the error when it is already too late…
Kind of like psychological projection at a geopolitical scale, one could say
This chimes with my thoughts on the matter. The concept is politicised to the point of meaninglessness and also romanticised -- no one admits that "indigenous" cultures fought each other bitterly before white people arrived and sometimes attempted, or committed, genocide. They are assumed to have been living in some kind of pacifist utopia.
I think most Western "anti-imperialist/anti-Zionist" protestors have no idea that there are plenty of non-Arab indigenous groups in the Middle East, all persecuted by the Arabs/Islam.
Reading Efraim Karsh's *Islamic Imperialism* recently, I was struck that the Egyptians didn't even consider themselves Arabs until the 1950s (inevitably, they felt themselves to superior as the descendants of the Pharaohs). It was only when Nasser wanted to get his hands on Arab oil wealth that he suddenly declared the Egyptians to be Arabs and therefore to have a claim on oil revenues in the interests of his pan-Arab and anti-Zionist schemes.
I recently learned that some Lebanese Christians refer to themselves as Phoenicians.
I would posit that post 7C Egyptians, being mostly Arabs after invasion, had a strong Arab identity (how else could they conquer what they did so quickly?), but Arab nationalism rose in response to the increase in Jewish population in the region, rather than oil wealth - which Egypt had to some degree in Sinai (unrealized probably). Nasser was certainly the spark for that nationalism, spurred on by his sponsors, the USSR.
In Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about the transition from majority-Christian Coptic Egypt to Muslim Egypt, as a process that took centuries, despite conquest gains during the establishment Rashidun caliphate. I don't know about the details, but NNT's point was that converting to Islam for business advantage or other non-enforced reasons is still a one-way street. Even if one thought of oneself as a crypto-Copt or harbored heretical ideas about the Trinity, one's children can't go back to Christianity on pain of death. So in a matter of a few generations, people went from "We took on the trappings for personal advantage" to thinking they had "always" been Muslim. Would be interesting to know if someone has dug into the details of that transition.
Nailed it! Thanks for this. I love “not-yet-Muslim states” - all too true, the way Europe is going.
As an old person, all of this seems obviously true. Back in the day history classes included the repeated settlement of the British Isles, Muslim expansion and the Ottoman invasions of Europe. It needs restating.
I’ve been wondering for years why Islamic and Arab expansionism is never part of the discourse. It’s a perfect storm of antisemites, anti-Zionists and academics trashing historical truths and ascribing to convenient and opportunistic double standards. Thank you for writing this. I look forward to the next column.
The money from Qatar flowing to universities and endowing chairs of Middle Eastern studies might be part of the problem. But it's not just that.
Exactly!
Huh.
This cries out for an animated zoom-able map showing the history (as far back as we know it) of all imperial conquest / assimilation / settling / colonialism / ethnic cleansing etc - to put all of it into historical context in an easily understandable visual format
That would be really interesting! The video I mentioned in the footnotes shows maps and gives a homebrew ranking of Islamic empires, but the timeline I linked has links to other (non-Islamic) conquest and colonization events that would be relevant to such a visualization.
I appreciate your framing about assimilating cultures over the colonisation frame. Excellent piece!
Thanks!
Do you think the war of islamic fundamentalists against the Yazedi is related to a goal of eradicating religious views that meld Zoastrianism, Judaism and Islam, which may reveal the interrelated nature of all religions that evolved in the middle east? I don’t mean in the rather plagiaristic nature of Islam’s adopting a share genealogy with Christianity and Judaism, nor by that am I implying I don’t think Christianity and Judaism have plagiarized adjacent religions themselves.
However, philosophies, such as Zoastrianism, and polytheist myth-based religions seem to be considered more primitive by monotheists, of whichever flavor they inhabit, even though monotheists criticize each other frequently? Being raised atheistically, observing variations in belief and the hierarchies in which the faithful place themselves, with regard to their perception of the validity of the precepts upon which belief systems’ metaphysics rest, is in many ways perplexing.
In my observations, it appears the metaphysics of Islam were designed to dovetail with those of other people of the book. However, the existence of Zoastrianism and other religions that show their connection as a basis for later religions naturally defies the claims of Abrahamic religions to be singularly representative of the sole, evolving voice of god.
For instance, why destroy Palmyra? Is it because it is vibrant example of a thriving and advanced pre-Islamic culture in the region of Islam’s birth? In school, we were taught the Moors spread a cosmopolitan and advanced culture across northern Africa and into Europe. They did not as much teach us what they destroyed, to do so, as much as the reaction of Spanish monarchs to that invasion, with their subsequent Inquisition.
Since then, I have investigated the development of the post-Roman Iberian peninsula. However, what I’m driving at is a question. Is the destruction of Syria similarly about the destruction of a functional pluralistic society in the region, in order to rebuild a caliphate in place of it?
Why is the US even considering supporting that? Weren’t the British interested in propping up the Ottomans before WW1? Why are almost all contemporary US foreign policy objectives aligned with those of the purportedly defunct British empire?
Interesting questions! I will have to give them some thought.