IMO the real reason young people are recognizing colonialism is because we’re in late stage colonialism (on a global scale) and if it wasn’t this generation it would be whichever future generation came of age during capitalism breaching insolvency. The economy has people experiencing the shoe on the other foot for the first time. That’s what’s breaking the spell. Not exposure to semantically accurate facts.
IMO a false equivalence between Hamas/Zionists won’t convince people that Israel bombing hospitals and the USA bombing schools is where we want our tax dollars going.
Cuz that is the core of the issue. Canadian tax payers are funding this. Way I see it the more top of mind that fact is the better.
I think it’s certainly fair to say that the receding benefits of colonialism and capitalism in the metropole has influenced how privileged groups have begun to question the legitimacy of this system, but it’s also important to remember that this isn’t the first time that’s happened in America or Europe, and liberalism is exceptional at appropriating challenging ideas. The current fascist culture in the US and Canada is the consequence of a decades-long neoliberalization of the economy and integration of social justice rhetoric into neoliberal politics with popular success (Jasbir Puar has produced some incredible scholarship on how this relates to contemporary imperialist and appropriation campaigns in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times). It also isn’t like Canadians and Americans are terribly concerned about imperialism through “neocolonial” tactics like corporatization and privatization instead of direct state occupation and extractive enterprise.
For example, Canada hosts the majority of the world’s mining corporations, and the state heavily invests in that industry; the current Liberal government was elected on the grounds of being preferable to a more overtly fascistic Con platform and has since expanded public funding support for privatized extractive industries like fossil fuels as climate change kills more and more people in the Global South every year. So, the fact that most people only recognize the colonialism in Palestine as a result of Israel’s very visible and undeniable genocidal violence is actually beneficial to a system that primarily uses those more invisible and abstract mechanisms of genocidal violence. The genocide in Palestine is only a part of Canada’s participation in genocidal violence, and the state’s interest in supporting Israel is more peripheral than its investment in continued extractive and destructive industry in colonized spaces of the Global South.
That’s also why I’m saying that it is important to recognize the fundamental values behind these politics, as the majority of people are denied political literacy by this same state and are therefore vulnerable to rhetoric that occludes those values.
Okay fair point. Now I see what you’re saying.
IMO the real reason young people are recognizing colonialism is because we’re in late stage colonialism (on a global scale) and if it wasn’t this generation it would be whichever future generation came of age during capitalism breaching insolvency. The economy has people experiencing the shoe on the other foot for the first time. That’s what’s breaking the spell. Not exposure to semantically accurate facts.
IMO a false equivalence between Hamas/Zionists won’t convince people that Israel bombing hospitals and the USA bombing schools is where we want our tax dollars going.
Cuz that is the core of the issue. Canadian tax payers are funding this. Way I see it the more top of mind that fact is the better.
I think it’s certainly fair to say that the receding benefits of colonialism and capitalism in the metropole has influenced how privileged groups have begun to question the legitimacy of this system, but it’s also important to remember that this isn’t the first time that’s happened in America or Europe, and liberalism is exceptional at appropriating challenging ideas. The current fascist culture in the US and Canada is the consequence of a decades-long neoliberalization of the economy and integration of social justice rhetoric into neoliberal politics with popular success (Jasbir Puar has produced some incredible scholarship on how this relates to contemporary imperialist and appropriation campaigns in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times). It also isn’t like Canadians and Americans are terribly concerned about imperialism through “neocolonial” tactics like corporatization and privatization instead of direct state occupation and extractive enterprise.
For example, Canada hosts the majority of the world’s mining corporations, and the state heavily invests in that industry; the current Liberal government was elected on the grounds of being preferable to a more overtly fascistic Con platform and has since expanded public funding support for privatized extractive industries like fossil fuels as climate change kills more and more people in the Global South every year. So, the fact that most people only recognize the colonialism in Palestine as a result of Israel’s very visible and undeniable genocidal violence is actually beneficial to a system that primarily uses those more invisible and abstract mechanisms of genocidal violence. The genocide in Palestine is only a part of Canada’s participation in genocidal violence, and the state’s interest in supporting Israel is more peripheral than its investment in continued extractive and destructive industry in colonized spaces of the Global South.
That’s also why I’m saying that it is important to recognize the fundamental values behind these politics, as the majority of people are denied political literacy by this same state and are therefore vulnerable to rhetoric that occludes those values.