One thing that makes me cringe from post colonial studies is at times making it look like people descended from colonial nations are monsters. Yes systemic racism is a thing, and the legacy of colonialism TO THIS DAY is causing harm. People born in these cultures lack perspective sometimes, and often are complicit in the systems we have today. I totally get that.But sometimes the impression I get is one of collective blame, a hunger for collective punishment over historical crimes. The reason I bring this up is one could argue the Mughal empire was a colonial power, and it certainly didn’t take over India peacefully. Yet in Canada when an entire Pakistani immigrant family was wiped out, with only a little boy survivor, some articles had comments expressing joy over their deaths, and the names were often hindu or Indian names. Not to mention actual acts of violence against Indian Muslims and dehumanization of them as threats, all because the Mughal empire ruled over India.
Yet I understand the sentiment. I’ve seen Pakistanis express happiness over Corona virus hitting India hard, precisely because of stories such as the one above. Because many remember how Hindus attacked them during the dark days of partition.
I’ve seen people of color follow laugh at the white farmers getting beat up in South Africa as if they were the same people that practiced segregation. I noticed yes, many South African whites can be very racist, bitter at the loss of apartheid. But those ones almost always left when the black Africans took the country back. The ones that stayed clearly believed in the new government to some extent, those that had the power to leave but did not. And even if many are racist, how exactly do we know individually? Did the people attacking the farmers ask them individually what they thought of apartheid? Ask them why they stayed when Apartheid ended?
A Korean friend of mine told me his family and friends were happy to see disasters hit japan, happy to see them die. The rationale was Japan was fascist during ww2 and they did atrocities to Korea. Therefore it’s okay if some young japanese children many generations later die. He said he even saw some online spaces advocate invading and raping Japanese woman because they did it to Koreans. Again, generations have passed. Those random Japanese woman often have no appreciation for fascism. He said when confronted they always cite the past crimes of japan, as if somehow that represents millions of individuals born under a vastly different government system.
I saw the sentiment when that American kid in North Korea was told if he brought a piece of propoganda back someone would pay for his family medical bills. The kid came back brain dead from what was probably torture, and many people of all races and religions laughed and called him a spoiled American brat, all in the name of anti-Imperialism. But lets look at that story for a moment. Let’s think about it. He was desperate, that’s why he did that. He wasn’t doing it for American hegemony. And now he’s brain damaged, and we mock him. I see these trends in us all, and it’s ugly as fuck. And I don’t like it.
I swear to God one arguement was “I know lots of spoiled American white boys like that. I have no pity for him!”
Yeah because someone desperate for cash doing something disrespectful isn’t worthy of some kind of sympathy? The person saying this identified as a socialist by the way. She can’t see how he is a victim of capitalism and the dystopian conditions capitalism creates? That capitalism made him desperate enough to risk getting tortured? And he was tortured. Unless the CIA gave him brain damage to make the North Koreans look bad, while he was in North Korean custody.
The most cringeworthy example of this is the Arab/Israeli crisis.
Up until recently, we mostly heard stories of how hateful Palisitnians are toward the Israeli population, how they rejoice at their suffering and death. But with the advent of social media and telephone cameras, we get to see that maybe Israel isn’t too different from the Palistinians afterall. Polls and social media posts among Israelis shows strong support of ethnic cleansing of Palistinians, and even Arab Israeli rights are threatened by many of the views of the Jewish population. And often the expelling of Jews from Arab nations is a huge talking point they use, and super impose that rage on arabs in general. At one point it was hatred of Muslims too, but with Saudi Arabia and UAE growing closer to Israel, it’s becoming more focussed on the Palistinians and Iran. Either way, just like the Palistininas, there is a strong sense of collective hate toward them. You can post a link of a Palistinian child killed, and if it’s not justified it’s even mocked with “Hamas shouldn’t have used him as a shield” or something like that. Well great, you knew their hiding inside Gaza instead of holding up a giant sign saying ‘we are here’ so you killed civilians anyway.
And hey, no one knows historical persecution more than the Jews do. They are still the basis of modern conspiracy theories, painted as a collective threat to the world. Only black people and gypsies have a historical and modern experience that can relate to them.
But if your someone who got molested by his mother and father, does that make it okay to go around beating up every other mother and father? Because once a couple abused you? That’s the logic used to justify it.
And guess what? It’s not unique to Israel. I remember reading news stories about Jewish old ladies and Israeli school girls getting stabbed by Palestinian Militants. And again it’s regarded often as something these people deserved because of past crimes. Really? You want to avenge dead Palestinians by stabbing school girls and grand mothers?
“Adeel I hate you. You’re both siding a conflict that is clearly one sided!”
I’m not saying the conflict is equal. Regardless of historical claims of indigenous status, you have one powerful population deliberately trying to displace another and replace them. Then then that powerful population is surprised the weaker population responds with violence when politely saying ‘stop’ doesn’t help. I’ve picked my side in the conflict. What I haven’t picked is justifying the deaths of innocents because of fucked up nationalism. I won’t ever view Palestinians stabbing old ladies as self defense, nor would I see bombing a beach full of Arab kids playing soccer.
What touched this off was the death of a Muslim family in Canada. Some guy in his pick up truck mowed down a whole family, only a nine year old kid survived. Police say it was the result of Anti-Muslim prejudice.
The same anti-Muslim prejudice pushed by think tanks funded by nefarious groups that constantly stoked anger and tallied all evil done by anyone even loosely associated by Islam.
The young man that ran this family over was motivated by a sense of what he thought was rightious indignation. They were enemies after all, bad people. Their immigration and presence in Canada would destroy us!
And on the BBC articles on this story, many names that were Indian in origin expressed Glee at their deaths. Some Facebook posts had laugh reacts.
It was collective punishment and blame that causes people to have such an inhuman reaction to such a brutal tragedy.
What's the deal with Adeel? 