From Decolonized To Colonizers

Anti-colonialism led to the “liberated” people demanding benefits from the West, not independence

Frantz Fanon, the black apostle of anti-colonialism, claimed that decolonization would turn third worlders into new men and create a better world. The only thing holding back the colonized world was the white man; with him gone, Africa, Asia, and Latin America could reach their full potential and displace the West.

Things haven’t turned out that way. The decolonized did not turn into new men engaged in creating a better world. Instead, most of them couldn’t maintain the countries the colonized turned over to them. Wars, famines, poverty, and political chaos have reigned supreme in much of the previously colonized world. Seeing the poor state of their countries, many of the decolonized have fled to the white man’s homelands in a kind of reverse colonialism. Rather than whites settling in far off corners of the world, non-whites from all parts of the globe come to settle in the West. There isn’t much gratitude involved and certainly no reflection on the failures of decolonization. There’s no longer the desire for independence from whites. Studies show that over half of young Africans want to emigrate. They don’t care about making their native land better. The new dream of the decolonized is pampered dependency where they get welfare, free housing, and free healthcare courtesy of the colonizer. 

This situation makes one wonder who’s the real colonizer now … 

The world is a very different place from when decolonization took place after World War II. Mass migration was less pervasive. The countries that left their colonies didn’t worry that the natives would follow them back home. It was thought that the newly independent people would forge their own destiny and keep to themselves. Europeans would focus on themselves, as would the Asians and Africans. Everyone would stay in their own countries, and no one would try to rule the other. The age of settler colonialism was over. 

Or so it appeared. 

Now when these decolonized lands witness wars, tyranny, or severe poverty, its people rush to the West. Their attachment to independence and their homeland doesn’t amount to much. They’d rather trade that for the benefits of the western welfare state. They will still wave the flag of their homeland and root for their true soccer team in the World Cup, and they don’t plan on fully assimilating to their host country. But they have no intention of returning home. They plan on permanently settling in the West, even if they constantly complain about its “racism.”

There are some similarities and some differences to the white settlers of the past. The Europeans who migrated to the Americas, Africa, and Asia didn’t assimilate to the new lands. They brought their culture and ways with them, just like the non-western migrants of today. The white settlers also fundamentally changed the lands they settled, just like the new migrants. 

That’s basically where the similarities end. The white settlers were loyal subjects of the colonial regime and were instrumental in making the settled lands governable, prosperous, and committed to the empire. The new migrants aren’t quite like this. Many of the new migrants come here for welfare. They pay very little in taxes, so they don’t contribute much in comparison to what they take. Some do take jobs that the natives “won’t do,” but also also take housing that the natives would certainly take if offered. 

Unlike the colonizers of the past who built up the lands they settled, the new colonizers only take from the natives and don’t build anything. The West already has roads, hospitals, schools, and many other amenities that the migrants enjoy free of charge. White settlers didn’t demand welfare and free housing from the Indians or Africans, but the new arrivals absolutely demand those things from the whites.

Whether migrants are “loyal subjects” is another matter. The American Empire is betting that the migrants will assimilate enough to count in this category. The empire needs recruits for the military, and it apparently needs more people for manual labor. If the migrants do these things, then they can count as loyal subjects. Their elevation to this status can also prove that America is a “proposition nation” where anyone can be an American. All it requires is moving here; you don’t even need to learn the language. More migrants arriving and claiming to be Americans affirms the imperial ideology of multiculturalism. It also counters the “nativism” of Americans who think there’s more to the nation than the dollar and platitudes. 

Europeans, which have little experience with assimilation and only recently decided they are proposition nations, are facing a bit of a different situation. No one pretends that Angolans, Algerians, and Syrians are turning into Europeans. But the reigning ideology dictates that Euros welcome them in any way. Both the migrants and the welcome mats see this as compensation for colonization and other past European misdeeds. The only way to atone is to resettle third worlders in their own countries. 

Fanon, Malcolm X, and others like them stressed that non-whites need to demand independence to reclaim their manhood and sense of self. In their view, colonialism had stripped them of their dignity and reduced them to spiritual slaves. Fanon and Malcolm X both cheered on violence as an empowering way to reassert the colonized’s personhood. It was necessary to kill and maim whites to regain what they allegedly took. It was all necessary to achieve that grand objective of independence. 

Independence turned out to be not so grand. Rentseeking has taken its place. Why build up something of your own when you can take from those who allegedly wronged you? Dependency on public benefits sounds a lot better than the harsh struggle of building up your own nation. 

The story of decolonization is one of grand dreams dashed by cruel reality. While colonialism is demonized, immigrants indicate it wasn’t so bad after all by moving to their colonizers’ countries. But they will never admit that. The moral guilt needs to be upheld so they can dwell in pampered dependency. 

And that’s the real dream of the decolonized.