How can a libertarian oppose decolonization? Colonization not only oppressed conquered peoples, as the staunchest early classical liberals never tired of pointing out, but also burdened the taxpayers of the home country, who were forced to pay through the nose for massive a military establishment, which subsidized the profits of the politically privileged few. Imperialism stunted economic growth by depriving entrepreneurs of resources they would have invested to benefit consumers. Adam Smith showed this in The Wealth of Nations (1776), but he was later echoed by Richard, Cobden, Herbert Spencer, and, in America, William Graham Sumner.
So if colonization is bad, how can decolonization also be bad? Very simply. The people who use this term today—I’ll call the current usage Decolonialism®—do not mean only that occupying powers should leave conquered people to manage their own affairs, which began happening after World War II. That was literal decolonization, and it was good if incomplete, although too often the exit was followed by tribal warfare, massacres, expulsions, dictatorship, and grievances in Africa and Asia that endure to this day.
In contrast, Decolonialism® is something else. It insists that all vestiges, whether real or imagined, of colonization—no matter how objectively good they may be—should be purged from everything everywhere precisely because the colonial powers may have imported them. Some protestors have this in mind when they call for a “global intifada” (uprising).
It is important to understand that Decolonialism® is just one application (along with race, sex, and more) of the Critical Theory metanarrative, according to which everyone is either an oppressor or a victim of oppression. Oddly, nonbinary thinking is impermissible in this case. The goal is to overthrow classical liberalism, private property, and the market economy by sowing doubt about almost everything people justifiably believe, such as that sex is binary, immutable, and important, and not a “social construct.” The metanarrative is a form of gaslighting, a term that comes from the title of an old movie in which a conniving husband makes his wife doubt her sanity so he can commit her to a mental institution and control her wealth.
Decolonialism® would mean removing or massively suppressing so-called Western themes from school curricula, art museums, and orchestral programs, but that’s small potatoes compared to what some people have in mind. Why? Because Western civilization is seen as rotten to the core, the source of all evil, with nothing worth salvaging.
Think of what that would mean. Hardly any spot on earth would be exempt, certainly not the Western Hemisphere. Whole societies would have to be uprooted—it’s sometimes called “the great reset.” Never mind that parts of colonial legacy, whatever the intention, have been good for colonized peoples. (See the scene “What have the Romans ever done for us?” in the brilliant movie Monty Python’s Life of Brian.)
Slated for deletion would be the English legal tradition (including the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and the state’s burden of proof), roads and other infrastructure, reason (logic, universality, and objectivity), the scientific method, written language, linear thinking, individualism, property, the profit motive, the division of labor, trade, middle-man activity—in a phrase, Enlightenment classical liberalism (precursor of libertarianism), the product of a thousand-year struggle on the ground in Europe. All of this could be, and in many cases has been, stigmatized as “Western,” “white supremacist,” “patriarchal,” and “colonial,” although some of these great customs were indigenous.
As Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay write in Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody, “[D]ecolonial narratives frequently attack rationality, which postcolonial scholars see as a Western way of thinking.”
Advocates of Decolonization® would uproot philosophy originating in ancient Greece, despite its universalism, and not simply refute it. “That is,” Pluckrose and Lindsay write, “it is not enough to add other philosophical approaches to the field one wishes to decolonize. Postcolonial Theorists insist European philosophy must be entirely rejected—even to the point of deconstructing time and space as Western constructs.” These intellectuals push four themes, the authors write: “the blurring of boundaries [for instance, between male and female], the power of language, cultural relativism, and the loss of the universal and individual in favor of group identity…. These themes are explicitly central to the postcolonial Theory mind-set and decolonize movement.” The authors provide ample quotations to support that claim.
On the other hand, some indigenous customs abolished by the colonial powers presumably would have to be restored, such as suttee in India, which the British abolished. Suttee, or sati, was “the act or custom of a Hindu widow burning herself to death or being burned to death on the funeral pyre of her husband.” I guess cultural relativists would have no problem with its restoration.
Would abolishing everything associated with the West help formerly colonized people seeking Western living standards? Some Asians and Africans think not. Rather, they see Decolonization® as condescending and harmful. Imagine being told that reason, science, intellectual rigor, the division of labor, and material progress were not meant for you and your kind but rather were straight white male social constructs invented to keep you subjugated. (See Pluckrose and Lindsay for details.)
Moreover, could these “vestiges of colonialism” be abolished without violence? I wouldn’t bet on it. It is Jacobinism, and where you find Jacobinism, a Robespierre with a guillotine is nearby.
We should add that the West is not even close to being uniquely guilty of conquering and enslaving people. No one has any cause to feel superior on this count. Conquest, murder, and enslavement occurred everywhere throughout history, including pre-Columbian North America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab and Muslim world up until a few centuries ago. Yet anti-slavery does seem to have been uniquely Western. It was the British navy that stopped the slave trade on the high seas.
Why is it always fashionable to criticize the West for its crimes but strangely impolite even to mention that the same or worse crimes were committed by non-Westerners? Is it because woke progressives have low expectations for non-Westrners? If so, how dare they call anyone else racist!
Movements such as Decolonization®, part of the larger Social Justice® cause, began in the universities, but what starts there doesn’t stay there. Students are taught this insidious nonsense and then go out in the world to become popular authors, activists, politicians, bureaucrats, and public school teachers, counselors, and administrators. (Exiting the schools is a good idea.)
In closing, we might ask: who are the true radicals, the Decolonizers® or we libertarians? That depends on what we mean by radical. We libertarians don’t want to pull society up by the roots and start over, as the Decolonizers® wish to do. On the contrary, we want people to rediscover and adore those roots—reason and the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness—which were never fully honored and then were smothered by the progressive weed.
If that makes the Decolonizers® more radical than libertarians, so what? They can have the word. We’ll take liberty, reason, and peace.
