A comprehensive overview from Sai Englert on the history of settler colonialism. In discussion with Alex, this instalment of the always-excellent Politics Theory Other looks at North America, South Africa, Brazil, and Algeria, the processes that drive different settler projects, and how Israel sits in this continuity of infamy.
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6 comments:
«looks at North America, South Africa, Brazil, and Algeria»
I guess we can also mention mexica settler colonialism in central America, zulu settler colonialism in South Africa, inca settler colonialism in south America, arab settler colonialism in Algeria (and north and east Africa in general), never mind uyghur settler colonialism in central Asia, turk settler colonialism in western Asia, many of which came with mass exterminations rather than mere ethnic cleansings. One of the problems with moralism and history is that there aren't many clean hands and two wrongs don't make a right either.
Thanks for this, Phil
I highly recommend this Alexei Sayle podcast, where he talks to Prof Jacqueline Rose (Birkbeck University) about Zionists and their collective guilt and shame from a psychoanalytical perspective. Skip the first 10 mins of waffle…..
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-alexei-sayle-podcast/id1540500007?i=1000640941789
To reduce the circumstances surrounding the creation of the state of Israel to "settler colonialism" is political illiteracy that, while not in itself necessarily antisemitic, certainly lays the groundwork for antisemitism and "absolute" anti-Zionism.
@Jim Denham - ok, but the connection between Zionism and colonialism used to not be so controversial, as early Zionist leaders were fairly open about their desire to colonise Palestine.
How does being anti-zionist "lay the groundwork for antisemitism" ?
Some of the biggest critics of Zionism are and were Jewish people.
The early Zionists were not out of tune with the general attitude in the late 19th and early 20th century among Europeans (and Indians, and Chinese), including left-wingers, to settling in foreign lands. They saw it as brave pioneering, not oppression. If there was a difference, though, it was that the Zionists showed more concern, not less, about the future welfare of the local people, than socialists settling in Australia or the USA, like William Lane, the Fourierists and other utopian socialists in the USA, James Connolly, Tom Mann, Adela Pankhurst...
The left-Zionist Ber Borochov wrote: "The Jewish people aims at creating a secured place of employment for its déclassé, wandering masses: it seeks to increase the productive forces of the country in peaceful cooperation with the Arab population. The Jewish colonization is already a considerable factor in Palestine’s economic development. The Jewish immigration brings progressive methods of labour, a higher standard of living, and a higher scale of wages. It can therefore only assist the Arab population..."
He believed (delusionally, but he believed) that the Arabs would in due course become assimilated into a Hebrew majority, as previous peoples in the area had been assimilated to become Arabs after the Arab conquest centuries before.
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