Why we all need to understand Settler Colonialism
‘It is the aim of this book to show that no aspect of settler rule was, or is, inevitable, and therefore that its continued existence is not inevitable either.’ (Sai Englert, Settler Colonialism: An Introduction)
If we are to be able to help the Palestinian struggle we have to resist every attempt to normalise the oppression of Palestinian people - and that means to understand and challenge settler colonialism in all its forms and disguises. A copy of Englert’s book can be ordered from here and all good independents. Some of the main points are summarised below.
The settler is the oppressor
Settler colonialism is an ongoing reality in many parts of the world including Palestine, the Americas and Oceania. Settlers represent an existential threat; they challenge the ‘indigenous people’s right to the land, the basis of all collective life’ and thus the ‘defining logic’ of settle colonialism is the ‘elimination of the native.’
This is not a balanced conflict. Native Americans, Maori and Aboriginal Austrailians are not merely ‘disappearing’ people. Palestine is not a struggle between ‘two peoples with equal and conflicting claims over it.’ Thus, it is important to recognise that indigenous people continue to face the most heinous aggression and ‘dispossession…at the hands of the different settler states that they confront.’
Settler colonialism and capiltalism
From the 1500s, European conquests to accumulate extortionate amounts of wealth through ‘plunder’ and ‘genocide,’ played a central role in the ‘emergence of the global capitalist economy.’
Capitalists ‘individually and as a class’ seek to ‘extract always more value from those over whom they already exert control,’ and have an insatiable need to ‘capture, conquer and subjugate new resources, people and lands.’ For example, England’s Industrial Revolution dispossessed English peasants of agricultural land forcing them into low paid labour. The dispossessed peasants were then ‘available…to participate in the settler colonial enterprise,’ helping to advance the capitalist project oversees.
We need to centralise and normalise ‘indigenous political thought’ - by which Englert means, ‘indigenous knowledge, ways of life and world views’ to counter claims by settlers that murder and theft is justified in order to help advance ‘progress’ and ‘development’.
Englert reminds us that in 1948 after violently dislocating 700,000 Palestinians and destroying 500 villages (and enacting a genocide of thousands), Israel seized Palestinian assets to the sum of £120 million - a figure that was larger than its domestic capital until 1953.
Furthermore, As Jeff Halper argues, Israel has continued to pivot itself as a key player in the military-industrial complex by serving ‘military and security services world over’.
Settler colonialism and violence
Settler violence, even when it’s happening in front of our very eyes, is often ‘obscured’ or presented as retaliation. Much of settler colonial history is defined by the following ‘cycle’ - settlers claim indigenous land/resources; the indigenous fight back; settlers then punish the rebellions while claiming more land/resources. For example, in Jamestown, the first English colony in America, settlers demanded ‘food, land and labour’ from the Powhatan people and when they refused, Jamestown settlers ‘unleashed war’ on the Powhatan and a year later ‘mass murdering their children’ as revenge. Quoting, Dunbar-Ortiz, Englert argues that the US was not taken by the ‘superior technology’ but by the ‘willingness’ of European settlers ‘to eliminate whole civilisations of people in order to possess their land.’
This practice that was shared by other European settler communities who were able to dominate many part of the world, not by virtue of their ‘innate civilisational superiority,’ but rather by the ‘extraordinary levels of violence’ they utilised and continue to unleash today.
Settler colonialism and racism
Racism has been used as a from of social control to present settler colonialism as ‘natural’ and ‘unchallengeable’. Englert argues that the first settler colonial regimes of the Spanish Reconquista and English settlements of Ireland aided in the development of racial justification for subjugating indigenous communities which were then transported to the Americas, Australia and Africa.
Writing before the latest onslaught against Palestinains, Englert, notes that a success of liberation stuggles world over has been to challenge the ideas of white supremacy and its subsequent hierarchical classification. If we failed to see it before, we now understand the devastating cost of the dehumanisation of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims since the onslaught of the Crusades, right through to the present day media and political establishments.
‘The process of bringing an end to the racism’ that ‘justifies’ settler colonialism ‘cannot be separated from ending the underlying process of domination that gave birth to it.’
‘Only by ending the social reality of settler domination can the ideology that normalise it die.’
Global oppressions are interlinked
Halper argues that; ‘Israel-Palestine is the microcosm of the larger world. What Israel’s doing to the Palestinians not only reflects what the Global North is doing to the Global South, but also reflects the kind of war that capitalism is having to fight now.’
The White South African government visited the US in 1910 to learn more about the government’s system of reservations for Native Americans. Three years later with the creation of The Native Land Act they dispossessd black South African of 83% of the their land by placing them in reservations amounting to 13% of the land. In recognition of a common struggle, indigenous tribes such as the Navajo Nation as well as government such as South Africa have led calls for en end to to the genocide in Palestine.
The importance of centering resistance and liberation struggles
The settler colonialism ideology perpetuates a sense of permanence in order to render all resistance futile. Englert argues that making sense of how settler colonialism processes connect to capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and nationalism, also requires us to think about how these structures can be challenged and dismantled.
Settler structures are fragile and self-defeatist primarily because they lack moral, and even by hypricrtial western standards, international legitimacy. As Muslims, we know that ultimately all power resides with Allah. We look to make right our inner conditions and draw closer to Allah in order that our prayers and efforts may be uplifted for our brothers and sisters in Palestine and elsewhere.
Finally, why is there a focus on European Settler Colonialism projects?
Englert provides three justifications:
‘The overwhelming majority of settler colonial processes originated from, were implimented throiugh and continue to be supported by, European states and their settler desdendnets.’
European settler colonialism led to and is still supported by exploitative capitalist systems
We must resist attempts by politicians, academics and commentators to normalise, minimise and to erase the severity of crimes committed by European settlers and thier descendants.