In 2021, we launched a series with controversial political science professor Bruce Gilley. The series was about the increasingly relevant topic of decolonization—a topic that continues to enrage people today. Building on his cancelled (literally) 2017 article and book
I have read Dr Gilley's book and wish that school teachers would have in their arsenal. Sadly, they don't. I am a mum of a fourteen year old boy who knows very little about the great things colonisation has done for our country and what it is today. They are being taught how terrible we are and have been to our indigenous Australians. They have them and the younger children as it's a K-12 school writing sorry letters and saying a welcome to country at every school gathering. There is no Easter hat parade for the children in kindergarten or the singing of the national anthem. Eurocentric ideas are being discontinued and discredited because they are too "white". They are teaching about the atrocities of industrialisation but not the benefits and how we are living today because of what we have experienced in the last 250 years or so.
We live in bizarre times. They want our children to know nothing of the past or a fabricated version to be advocates leading to activism for the "protected minorities" of the 21st century. For this year we have decided to homeschool our son. I don't agree with decolonisation. Colonialism has made us who we are today. The good and the bad of how we arrived here.
I think these are great resources for young children who want to know about why they know very little about history of western civilisation.
If you are interested in Australian history then I've read a lot of eye opening facts at the Quadrant (dammit they used to have open access that was locked down just recently). A mass of unpalatable facts has been locked away from public knowledge about Indigenous pre-contact culture such as infanticide, cannibalism and traditional violence against women. Stephanie Jarrett is a name to seek out for factual unbiased histories.
I was taught about the myth of the noble savage as a fad that existed in the 18C. But this has returned as an academic ideology again. I've followed Kathleen Lowrey & her associates like Elizabeth Weiss in Canada - worth a read: https://substack.com/home/post/p-148626526
Indeed, Fredrick! It sounds like the Quadrant contains a lot of valuable history! Personally, I think the Aboriginal people of Australia and the Māori people of New Zealand being conquered by the British did them more good than harm on balance. Being brought into the British Empire with all the brutality and injustices that entailed, brought them into contact with liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, higher wages, higher living standards, English Common law, advanced technology, better healthcare, widened employment and educational opportunities, protection of Indigenous women, the end of backwards cultural practices, sanitation, and western values just to name a few.
Wow! I am continually amazed that so many thoughts that occurred to me over the recent years are now coming to be expressed in a more coherent form by public commentators. We are currently in the middle of a culture war whose base ideology is "anti-Westernism". It is a deliberate denigration of Western culture, history and even revanchism against European ethnicity.
Whatever you call it (Cultural Marxism?) it is a combination of Marxism and post-modern academic ideology, proselytised by a generation of post '68 academics.
The people who resent the West actually want the benefits it has brought, but want to denigrate the culture that brought them. Not ironically because they don't possess the cultural competence to create these values themselves.
A phenomenal limited series by Peter Boghossian and the esteemed Prof. Bruce Gilley! Thank you, gentleman! The Case for Colonialism is one of the finest books I've ever read, and I'd recommend it to anyone! European Colonialism and American Imperialism both did more good than bad for the peoples and nations they brought under their dominion. Decolonization as Prof. Gilley so eloquently explains here, was once the fulfillment of liberal principles and people becoming self-governing. Sadly, there are only a few examples of successful decolonization, those being: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Belize, Botswana, and Singapore. The vast majority of nations that decolonized from European or American rule immediately went downhill and never recovered. This was because decolonization was done too fast, too soon and without a clear plan as to what the future would look like. Just look at nations like Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Jamaica, The Philippines, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, etc. all became failed states and are poor or middle-income countries run by dictatorships where standards of living, wages and literacy rates are low, poverty, unemployment, crime, and food insecurity are high and political and societal corruption run rampant, and racial, ethnic or religious minorities, women, LGBT people, and disabled people are in grave danger and have no rights. South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively fell apart after the end of white minority rule. But in any case, decolonization was once a noble idea. But then it was transformed by radicals in the academy and among the activist community to mean segregating peoples and balkanizing western society. Instead of everyone mixing together and becoming one people and all playing by the same set of rules, we would instead be separated and each live in our own alternate universes so to speak and we would each be playing by a different set of rules. Decolonization in its current form is antithetical to western and liberal values and the colorblind and identity blind society where people would be treated as individuals, not as groups that the Abolitionist, Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage and Women's Liberation, LGBT Rights, and Disability Rights Movements fought for! As Prof. Gilley also astutely points out, decolonization also means putting any ideas, historical facts or historical figures you don't like down the memory hole, lowering standards and getting rid of mathematical and scientific standards, for POC and people from the third world because it's "racist" and "Eurocentric." Personally, I think people of color here in America, Asians, Africans, Arabs, Persians, Latinos, and Indigenous peoples from around the globe are just as capable as us white westerners of mastering these subjects and excelling at them based on the standards we've always used. I don't believe in the soft bigotry of low expectations. I'm glad he recommended the PIG Guides! Those are such great books. I'm planning to buy some in the future myself to read. I think the advice he gave to get evidence of what woke school boards are advocating for and teaching your children to think critically and be curious is great! As to Portland State cancelling his course on Conservative political thought, that doesn't surprise me at all sadly. It just goes to show how little they care about providing their students with a good, well-rounded education and turning them into well-rounded, full-fledged adults and how their far more interested in pursuing their own agenda.
Decolonization is a Marxist ideology that developed out of the colonial theories of Marxist Franz Fanon. The goal of decolonization is to destroy Western civilization and replace it with an Eastern totalitarian regime.
The aim is to destroy society for it to be replaced by ideology. Society accommodates contradiction (as does culture) meaning the only suitable political system is one that respects disagreement being democracy. Decolonisation in this context is double speak for colonisation.
Abstractions cannot have any agency because they have no physical presence or consciousness. They are massively influential but only in a passive sense. The plan requires individuals to be stripped of agency and that agency accorded in an impossible manner to abstractions. Truth being that individual ideologues pretending to be servants of these abstractions such as identities or workers etc are the real agents pretending to be servants of supposed abstractions with agency.
It is an ugly deeply dishonest and inhuman scene. This is not a culture war but a war on culture and society by people who have no freedom of thought being in the grip of ideological thought algorithms. They are, strangely, very innocent but in such a state are very dangerous to people who still control their own thoughts and understand the importance of toleration and respect for contradiction.
Decolonizing the Balkans from Turks and sometimes Russians, Austrians and Hungarians was a net good.
These arguments are only made by people that fear they would suffer if ethnic states would be normalized. Which Israel is already doing, so the West should follow its lead.
Agreed, this is fascinating. I listened to the video only, I would like to get hold of Bruce Gilley’s book to understand more. However my first observation is that the author is anchored at certain (geographical, historical, cultural) perspective of decolonialisation and his reason does not apply broadly. Two examples:
(1) decolonialisation of Poland and East Europe from Russian rule in 1918 and than again from Soviet rule in 1989 was not about things explained in Bruce’s video. It was about end of oppression, prison, torture, secret police, forced labor camps - gulagh, poverty, hunger and corruption
(2) decolonialisation of Senegal which has still not happened but might soon, is about ending the economic grip of France on practically all important sectors of industry. France owns all telecommunication, much finance, tourism, supermarket chains, industry and land - while taxes of those multinationals are mostly being paid in France. This prohibits the country from development.
I do not want to understate what was said in the video, it gives an intriguing and worthwhile alternative look. I just want to indicate that this perspective may not be universally correct. I also may not be getting the fuller context for not (yet) having read Bruce Gilley’s book
Hmm . Decolonization, mis and disinformation, DEI , all seem to have a similar outcome . The suppression of free speech . The recent election showed a rejection of these policies at least in part. But the advocates of these policies won’t give up. They will find new terms that sound very enlightened and agreeable to try and silence dissent . That battle will never end
I have read Dr Gilley's book and wish that school teachers would have in their arsenal. Sadly, they don't. I am a mum of a fourteen year old boy who knows very little about the great things colonisation has done for our country and what it is today. They are being taught how terrible we are and have been to our indigenous Australians. They have them and the younger children as it's a K-12 school writing sorry letters and saying a welcome to country at every school gathering. There is no Easter hat parade for the children in kindergarten or the singing of the national anthem. Eurocentric ideas are being discontinued and discredited because they are too "white". They are teaching about the atrocities of industrialisation but not the benefits and how we are living today because of what we have experienced in the last 250 years or so.
We live in bizarre times. They want our children to know nothing of the past or a fabricated version to be advocates leading to activism for the "protected minorities" of the 21st century. For this year we have decided to homeschool our son. I don't agree with decolonisation. Colonialism has made us who we are today. The good and the bad of how we arrived here.
I think these are great resources for young children who want to know about why they know very little about history of western civilisation.
If you are interested in Australian history then I've read a lot of eye opening facts at the Quadrant (dammit they used to have open access that was locked down just recently). A mass of unpalatable facts has been locked away from public knowledge about Indigenous pre-contact culture such as infanticide, cannibalism and traditional violence against women. Stephanie Jarrett is a name to seek out for factual unbiased histories.
I was taught about the myth of the noble savage as a fad that existed in the 18C. But this has returned as an academic ideology again. I've followed Kathleen Lowrey & her associates like Elizabeth Weiss in Canada - worth a read: https://substack.com/home/post/p-148626526
Indeed, Fredrick! It sounds like the Quadrant contains a lot of valuable history! Personally, I think the Aboriginal people of Australia and the Māori people of New Zealand being conquered by the British did them more good than harm on balance. Being brought into the British Empire with all the brutality and injustices that entailed, brought them into contact with liberal democracy, free-market capitalism, higher wages, higher living standards, English Common law, advanced technology, better healthcare, widened employment and educational opportunities, protection of Indigenous women, the end of backwards cultural practices, sanitation, and western values just to name a few.
Wow! I am continually amazed that so many thoughts that occurred to me over the recent years are now coming to be expressed in a more coherent form by public commentators. We are currently in the middle of a culture war whose base ideology is "anti-Westernism". It is a deliberate denigration of Western culture, history and even revanchism against European ethnicity.
Whatever you call it (Cultural Marxism?) it is a combination of Marxism and post-modern academic ideology, proselytised by a generation of post '68 academics.
The people who resent the West actually want the benefits it has brought, but want to denigrate the culture that brought them. Not ironically because they don't possess the cultural competence to create these values themselves.
A phenomenal limited series by Peter Boghossian and the esteemed Prof. Bruce Gilley! Thank you, gentleman! The Case for Colonialism is one of the finest books I've ever read, and I'd recommend it to anyone! European Colonialism and American Imperialism both did more good than bad for the peoples and nations they brought under their dominion. Decolonization as Prof. Gilley so eloquently explains here, was once the fulfillment of liberal principles and people becoming self-governing. Sadly, there are only a few examples of successful decolonization, those being: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Belize, Botswana, and Singapore. The vast majority of nations that decolonized from European or American rule immediately went downhill and never recovered. This was because decolonization was done too fast, too soon and without a clear plan as to what the future would look like. Just look at nations like Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Jamaica, The Philippines, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, etc. all became failed states and are poor or middle-income countries run by dictatorships where standards of living, wages and literacy rates are low, poverty, unemployment, crime, and food insecurity are high and political and societal corruption run rampant, and racial, ethnic or religious minorities, women, LGBT people, and disabled people are in grave danger and have no rights. South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively fell apart after the end of white minority rule. But in any case, decolonization was once a noble idea. But then it was transformed by radicals in the academy and among the activist community to mean segregating peoples and balkanizing western society. Instead of everyone mixing together and becoming one people and all playing by the same set of rules, we would instead be separated and each live in our own alternate universes so to speak and we would each be playing by a different set of rules. Decolonization in its current form is antithetical to western and liberal values and the colorblind and identity blind society where people would be treated as individuals, not as groups that the Abolitionist, Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage and Women's Liberation, LGBT Rights, and Disability Rights Movements fought for! As Prof. Gilley also astutely points out, decolonization also means putting any ideas, historical facts or historical figures you don't like down the memory hole, lowering standards and getting rid of mathematical and scientific standards, for POC and people from the third world because it's "racist" and "Eurocentric." Personally, I think people of color here in America, Asians, Africans, Arabs, Persians, Latinos, and Indigenous peoples from around the globe are just as capable as us white westerners of mastering these subjects and excelling at them based on the standards we've always used. I don't believe in the soft bigotry of low expectations. I'm glad he recommended the PIG Guides! Those are such great books. I'm planning to buy some in the future myself to read. I think the advice he gave to get evidence of what woke school boards are advocating for and teaching your children to think critically and be curious is great! As to Portland State cancelling his course on Conservative political thought, that doesn't surprise me at all sadly. It just goes to show how little they care about providing their students with a good, well-rounded education and turning them into well-rounded, full-fledged adults and how their far more interested in pursuing their own agenda.
Decolonization is a Marxist ideology that developed out of the colonial theories of Marxist Franz Fanon. The goal of decolonization is to destroy Western civilization and replace it with an Eastern totalitarian regime.
The aim is to destroy society for it to be replaced by ideology. Society accommodates contradiction (as does culture) meaning the only suitable political system is one that respects disagreement being democracy. Decolonisation in this context is double speak for colonisation.
Abstractions cannot have any agency because they have no physical presence or consciousness. They are massively influential but only in a passive sense. The plan requires individuals to be stripped of agency and that agency accorded in an impossible manner to abstractions. Truth being that individual ideologues pretending to be servants of these abstractions such as identities or workers etc are the real agents pretending to be servants of supposed abstractions with agency.
It is an ugly deeply dishonest and inhuman scene. This is not a culture war but a war on culture and society by people who have no freedom of thought being in the grip of ideological thought algorithms. They are, strangely, very innocent but in such a state are very dangerous to people who still control their own thoughts and understand the importance of toleration and respect for contradiction.
Ending this little rant, reason depends on temporary suspension of the axiom of non contradiction. You cannot reason if you do not temporarily accord contradiction truth. If this is denied you are trapped in the closed system of logic. In effect, you have to be unreasonable to reason. (Second Paradox of Reason). For more info: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/charles-m-cawley-34666518_emotion-drives-reason-motivating-agency-activity-7287058397567279105-WiVD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Decolonizing the Balkans from Turks and sometimes Russians, Austrians and Hungarians was a net good.
These arguments are only made by people that fear they would suffer if ethnic states would be normalized. Which Israel is already doing, so the West should follow its lead.
Decolonization falls apart when you ask who the original occupiers of Europe are.
Agreed, this is fascinating. I listened to the video only, I would like to get hold of Bruce Gilley’s book to understand more. However my first observation is that the author is anchored at certain (geographical, historical, cultural) perspective of decolonialisation and his reason does not apply broadly. Two examples:
(1) decolonialisation of Poland and East Europe from Russian rule in 1918 and than again from Soviet rule in 1989 was not about things explained in Bruce’s video. It was about end of oppression, prison, torture, secret police, forced labor camps - gulagh, poverty, hunger and corruption
(2) decolonialisation of Senegal which has still not happened but might soon, is about ending the economic grip of France on practically all important sectors of industry. France owns all telecommunication, much finance, tourism, supermarket chains, industry and land - while taxes of those multinationals are mostly being paid in France. This prohibits the country from development.
I do not want to understate what was said in the video, it gives an intriguing and worthwhile alternative look. I just want to indicate that this perspective may not be universally correct. I also may not be getting the fuller context for not (yet) having read Bruce Gilley’s book
Once we've been effectively 'decolonized' They, can effectively 'white wash' history.
Hmm . Decolonization, mis and disinformation, DEI , all seem to have a similar outcome . The suppression of free speech . The recent election showed a rejection of these policies at least in part. But the advocates of these policies won’t give up. They will find new terms that sound very enlightened and agreeable to try and silence dissent . That battle will never end