By Abdul Masih —
Within hours of Hamas militants infiltrating Israel killing, raping, kidnapping, pillaging, liberals reacted with unabashed glee online.
How did Israel — once seen widely as a post-Holocaust, anti-colonialist success story — become the Left’s most prominent and abhorrent example of expansionist settler colonialism? There are historical reasons and plain old antisemitism in the mix, but one powerful fountainhead is academia’s theory of “decolonization.”
“What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays?” Somalian-American journalist Najma Sharif posted on X at noon on the day of the attack. “Losers.”
If you didn’t know what she was referring to, decolonization is an idea that started in the 1940s to get Europeans to relinquish their holdings around the world. Instead of passing into memory after Europe “decolonized” the world, the idea got new life when Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978) proposed that “power imbalances” perpetrated colonism.
Resucitated in this fashion, decolonization became a driving force in liberal arts studies, media and politics. It powered critical race theory, Black Lives Matter and reparations. The socially concerned must “decolonize the mind,” including wellness, science, art and even diet (hence Mamdami flaunts eating ethnic food with his fingers instead of a fork. Apparently forks are colonializing.).
The cultural and intellectual critique of postcolonial theory spread widely and has provided broad moral and political framework adopted by many.
Up until Oct. 7, 2023, it was mostly bandied about in academic circles — as Najma pointed out. Hamas showed the real world application of these research papers.
“Decolonisation operates as a rigid, almost Manichaean ideology that neatly divides the world into evil perpetrators (Western colonisers) and innocent victims (the colonised, indigenous people,” writes Maarten Boudry in Quillette.
“In this worldview, there is no room for moral ambiguity. Those on the wrong side of the divide are irredeemably rotten and deserve everything that’s coming to them, while those on the side of the angels are completely absolved of any wrongdoing,” he adds. “If they appear to commit atrocities, these are reframed as understandable—perhaps even inevitable—responses to prior injustice. In fact, the more extreme the violence, the greater the wrongs they must have endured.”
The power of this theory lies in its simplicity but also in its morality. People of color have been so oppressed that anything they do is now justified and righteous.
But the moral condemnation of colonizers only goes so far. It only applies to Israel. The boatloads of Americans — who appropriated Native American land — are quite willing to demand Israel give back its land while at the same time insisting on their right to keep theirs. Such is hypocrisy that the simplicity and morality breaks down.
