The other day, I was arguing with someone israel and Palestine, and they brought up the whole “everybody has done settler colonialism before” trope. While it’s an idiotic argument even if true (directly contradicting their whole “rules based international order” sthick), it did get me wondering.
I’ve assumed up until now that settler colonialism is a phenomena unique to the capitalist phase of history, but how true is that exactly?
Even if settler-colonialism was common throughout the ancient world, that doesn’t excuse it happening today. Remind them that rape and slavery were common throughout the ancient world as well.
The point is that collectively speaking, the vast majority of humanity rightfully agrees that rape, genocide, slavery, colonialism, and unprovoked murder should belong in the dustbins of the past, to not be repeated going forward.
Israel, the U.S., Britain and India (the Kashmir region is arguably Indian colonialism) are the only or primary countries still engaged in settler-colonialism, and actively holding humanity back, and these countries must be completely destroyed or rebuilt into socialist states.
It’s important to make a distinction between the “imperialism” of the Roman empire and the 20th century imperialist structure which coalesced in the 20s-60s, likewise we must distinguish between the existence of torture throughout history (often tenuously supported by Victorian hobnobbing and the ability to make a shitty little website that shows up on Google and little else) and the trail of forensic evidence we have stretching back from the SBU’s detention centers where they electrocuted babushkas thru the kidneys (I’m not kidding) all the way to Malaysia
European colonialism is an entirely new phase of history that began 1000 years ago.
Can you elaborate more on the differences?
At least when it comes to imperialism, you should read lenin’s imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism to understand modern imperialism. Modern imperialism is a distinctly capitalist phenomena.
I’ve read that work of Lenin, but I haven’t read it in years, and I was hoping if you had an in-depth analysis of pre-modern colonialism. But I understand.
I don’t know anything about pre-modern colonialism. That’s why I asked this question in the first place.
It’s a pretty serious historical investigation. I’m not an actual historian, I can only gesture to the words of world systems theorists. I just do takes and book reports for now. Not a real Marxist.