In the religious services of our liberal friends, the prayer on “decolonization” is a big one. And the recitation started in the 1940s, about when the colonial empires started to break up. Here is Google’s nGram viewer on the question.
As you can see, the interest in decolonization didn’t die out as the former colonies obtained their independence. And why interest has soared since 2010, who knows.
And, of course, the question of colonial oppression is not just a political question, but a cultural one. For instance in Decolonising the Mind, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o deals with the problem of everyone in the former colonies still being saddled with the hegemonic languages English or French.
Then there is Franz Fanon and The Wretched of the Earth.
Through critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to the establishment of imperialist identities, such as coloniser and colonised, to teach and psychologically mould the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master, and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution.
Of course the combination of “intellectual” and “revolution” is about as close to straight-up colonialist domination as you could get. Or is it cultural appropriation? Perhaps diversity scholar Claudine Gay could write a paper… After all, nobody in a society not colonized by the Brits or the Frogs would have thought about intellectuals and revolution. They would just be talking with the local shaman.
The funny thing is that, as our liberal friends drone on about decolonization and peaceful protests to demand it this week, they are blessedly oblivious of their own global imperial project — that has not even begun its decolonization but hasn’t even thought of itself as a “thing.”
In politics, the educated elite imposes its vision of “democracy,” has no thought of alternatives, and you better not object.
But when the educated class designs and implements and enforces a particular political system, isn’t that a colonization of the lower orders?
In education the educated elite imposes its current vision, which may be segregation one decade and desegregation another decade and blacks-only graduation ceremonies in another decade.
Even ruling-class mascot Nikole Hannah-Jones is confused about that. She was bused across town in Waterloo, Iowa, from the poor black part of town to the rich white part of town in a voluntary desegregation program.
In [a] 2016 Times Magazine feature, she described it “as emotionally and socially fraught, but also as academically stimulating and world-expanding.” In a Times article from November 2019, she defended busing as a helpful if imperfect tool to prevent “resegregation.” But in a 2021 Vanity Fair profile, she insisted to the writer that “being bused led me to be a very angry student.”
How about if Americans were free to design the education of their children without having to listen to bossy liberals? That would be the decolonization of education.
In culture you had better bow the head to the ruling class culture on the latest turn in sex and gender as a marker of oppression with the last turn in the LGBT saga or lose your job or get disciplined in school or get canceled for “hate”speech.
Do you not understand, dear liberals, that the enforcement of your cultural enthusiasms is the colonization of the culture, of a very cruel and vicious kind.
And don’t get me started on climate.
I demand the decolonization of America from liberal and educated-class domination and hegemony in politics, and culture and everything else that liberals insist on.
We Demand Decolonization Now!